Page 69 of The Breakup Artists

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valentine

Me

Update??? I’m dying to hash out next steps.

August

Still out with Mom. Errands. Come over when I get back?

I glance at my clock from my lounging position on my bed. 7:05 p.m. Bentley is on his way over. I’ll just make it a short visit.

Me

Yup. Text me and I’ll climb through your window like a boss with my power notebook.

But before he can respond, there’s a knock on my door and I put down my phone. “Valentine?” Mom says through the wood.

“Come in!”

She opens the door, revealing a freshly showered Bentley in a white T-shirt and distressed jean shorts. “You have a visitor,” she says, and one of her eyebrows goes up as though it were observing the situation and declaring it interesting.

I slide off my fluffy white comforter onto the carpet. “Hey,” is all I say to Bentley, yet my mom’s other eyebrow appears to join in on the amusement. So I add, “Mom, we’re good.”

“Kicking me out, huh?”

“Mom.”

She puts her hands up and heads into the hallway.

The smell of woodsy soap and minty toothpaste drifts toward me as Bentley moves into my room and sits on the end of my bed.

He smiles up at me. “Is it weird that I missed you?”

I laugh, sitting down next to him with one ankle tucked under my knee. “You didn’t miss me.”

“I mean, I did, though,” he replies, and I’m not sure I like the way my stomach drops. He’s like that dessert you cannot resist no matter how full you are.

I bump him with my shoulder. “You just can’t help but say things like that.”

“True things?” he asks, practically batting his long eyelashes at me like a Disney princess.

“Line things,” I correct him.

“What if I told you that I thought about our kiss about every other minute today?” Only this time when he says it his voice has a note of weight to it, and it rings true.

I decide either he’s an expert at this kind of thing, or he really does fall this hard and fast, which would explain why he’s had so many relationships. Unfortunately, there’s no correlation between falling quickly and lasting. Not that I want a relationship from him. “I’d say that’s a great line.”

He stares at me like he’s trying to work some meaning out of my expression. “Then tell me... did you?”

“Did I what?” I say innocently even though I know what he’s asking.

“Think about our kiss?”

“I mean”—I pause like I need to consider—“I’d be lying if I said no.”

Now he’s grinning. “So you missed me, too.”