Page 3 of Perfect on Paper

“A relationship coach.” He glanced around us, thenlowered his voice to a whisper. “My girlfriend broke up with me last month and I need her back, but I don’t know where to start. This isn’t something an email’s gonna fix.”

Well, wasn’t this guy dramatic? “Um, look, I’m sorry, but I don’t really have time to be anyone’s coach. I just do this before bed as a hobby.”

“What are you so busy with?” he asked calmly.

“Um, homework? Friends? Netflix?”

He folded his arms. “I’ll pay you twenty dollars an hour.”

“Dude, I said—”

“Twenty-five an hour, plus a fifty-dollar bonus if I get Winona back.”

Wait.

So, this guy was seriously telling me he’d give me fifty dollars, tax-free, if I spent two hours giving him some advice on getting back a girl who’d already fallen for him once? That was well within my skill set. Which meant the fifty-dollar bonus was all but guaranteed.

This could be the easiest money I’d ever made.

While I mulled it over, he spoke up. “I know you want to keep your identity anonymous.”

I snapped back to reality and narrowed my eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shrugged, the picture of innocence. “You’re sneaking around after hours when the halls are empty, and no one knows it’s you answering them. There’s a reason you don’t want people knowing. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes.”

And there it was. I knew it. Iknewmy gut was screaming “danger” for a good reason. He wasn’t asking me for a favor, he was telling me what he wanted from me, and throwing in why it would be a bad idea to refuse. As casually as anything. Blink-and-you’ll-miss-it blackmail.

I kept my voice as steady as I could, but I couldn’t help the touch of venom that seeped through. “And let me guess. You’d like to help me keep it that way. That’s where this is going, right?”

“Well, yeah. Exactly.”

He’d stuck his lower lip out and widened his eyes. My own lip curled of its own accord as I took him in, any goodwill I’d been feeling toward him evaporating in one puff. “Gee. That’s so thoughtful of you.”

Brougham, expressionless, waited for me to go on. When I didn’t, he circled a hand in the air. “So… what do you think?”

Ithoughta lot of things, but none of them were wise to say out loud to someone who was in the middle of threatening me. What were my options here? I couldn’t tell Mom someone was threatening me. She had no idea I was behind locker eighty-nine. And I really,reallydidn’t want everyone to find out this was me. I mean, the awkwardness of how much personal information I knew about everyone alone… even my closest friends didn’t know my involvement. Without anonymity, my dating advice business was a bust. And it was the only real thing I’d ever achieved. The only thing that actually did the world any good.

And… god, there was the whole Brooke thing from last year. If Brooke ever found out about that she’d hate me.

She couldn’t find out.

I set my jaw. “Fifty up front. Fifty if it works out.”

“Shake on it?”

“I’m not done. I’ll agree to a cap of five hours for now. If you want me for longer, it’s my call to continue.”

“Is that everything?” he asked.

“No. If you say one word to anyone about any of this,I’ll tell everyone your game is so bad you needed personal relationship tutoring.”

It was a weak addition, and nowhere near as creative as some of the insults I’d thought of a few moments ago, but I didn’t want to goad him too much. Something flashed so slightly across his blank face I almost missed it. As it was, it was hard to define. Did his eyebrows rise a little? “Well that was unnecessary, but noted.”

I simply folded my arms. “Was itnow?”

We stood in silence for a beat as my words played back in my head—they’d sounded bitchier than I’d intended, not that bitchiness was unwarranted here—then he shook his head and started to turn his back. “You know what? Stuff it. I just thought you might be open to a deal.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” I darted forward to head him off, hands up. “I’m sorry. I am open to a deal.”