Page 49 of The Perfect Distraction

But it was a feeble attempt, and they both knew it. Whatever intimacy they’d shared earlier seemed to have disappeared, and now they were left floundering.

“What time should I pick Joey up on Monday?”

“I’ll leave that up to you.”

“How about eleven o’clock? That way, we can have lunch together too.” She considered asking Colton to join them, but for some reason, she stopped herself. Whatever this thing was between them, it still felt fragile, and she needed to proceed with caution.

He nodded. “Let me walk you home.”

“This again? I’m right next door!” she said, hoping to lighten the mood.

But he barely cracked a smile. “Okay. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“I should pay you for the pizza.”

He shook his head. “You’re tutoring my son for free. The least I can do is buy you dinner.”

While it was a nice gesture, something about it bothered her. It made their relationship feel like a business transaction more than anything else. Though, earlier, it had felt like anything but.

“I told you before, I don’t mind at all. It’ll be good practice for when I have to go back to work in the fall.”

And there it was, a reminder that this would come to an end. As if the past hour hadn’t been awkward enough, she’d just sealed it.

After a hurried goodbye, she made her escape. And like a thief in the night, she scurried across his yard to her house and didn’t look back.

“Well, how’d it go?” Becca said the second she’d answered Beth’s call.

“Eh.”

“Eh?”

“Great at the beginning and then ‘eh’ at the end.”

“What happened?”

“We went to Petoskey State Park for a picnic.”

“Sounds romantic.”

“It was a little too crowded to be romantic, but I suppose it kind of was. We went swimming, ate lunch and then searched for Petoskey stones.”

“Just like we did when we were kids,” Becca said, sounding sentimental.

“Colton found one and ended up giving it to me.”

“Aww. How sweet.”

“Yeah, and then we realized that he’d gotten sunburned, so we had to leave.”

“Oh, so your date got cut short?”

“Not exactly. We went back to his place so I could put some aloe on his back, and…”

“Then you had sex?”

“No! Well, sort of.”

“Okay. This is the most excruciating conversation we’ve ever had. One doesn’t ‘sort of’ have sex. One either has it or they don’t. Which one was it?”