Page 66 of Him

My heart spasms, because there is someone else. Sort of. Wes and I aren’t a couple, exactly. We’ve never had one word of conversation about it. But there’s no way I’m sleeping with someone else right now—that just wouldn’t be right.

“There is,” I admit.

Her eyes widen. She’d asked the question, but she still seems pretty shocked by my answer. “Who is she?”

I shake my head. “You don’t know her. I’m sorry,” I say quickly.

She takes her hand off me and steps backward. “Okay.” She bites her lip. “I should have called.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeat.

And I am. Holly has only been good to me. But after graduation, we’d had a little talk. She’d said, “I want to see you when you’re in Detroit,” and I’d said, “That’s probably not going to work.”

She’d said, “We’ll see.” And now here she is, her face turning red.

“Look,” I tell her. “Let’s go have ice cream. Or tequila, if you prefer. I want to catch up with you.”

“We’re still friends,” she says softly.

“Always.”

Her eyes wander away from me and over toward the lake. She takes a slow breath and lets it out again. “Okay, Jamie Canning. Show me Lake Placid. You always talk about how much you love it here.” Her gaze returns to mine. “Show me why.”

For a moment, my mind goes straight into the gutter, because Lake Placid means something a little different to me this summer than it ever has before. But I clobber that thoughtand hold out a hand for her. “How do you feel about waffle cones?”

She closes her fingers around mine. “I feel pretty good about waffle cones.”

We spend the afternoon together walking all over town. Holly likes to poke around in the little touristy shops, and this gets old pretty fast. But since I’ve ruined her day once already, I just go along with it. I show her the toy store with the awesome rubber band guns, and she buys one for her brother. They have targets set up inside the store, so we stand there for a long time trying to outshoot each other.

A few doors down there’s another kitschy shop, and I hold back my sigh when she leads me inside. She stops to look at a bunch of Miracle on Ice coffee mugs, while I wander over to the back aisle where they have a bunch of candy for sale in bulk. And when I take a closer look, I let out a bark of disbelief.

“What is it?” Holly asks.

“Purple Skittles!” I grab a bag and hold it under the chute. “Pull the lever,” I tell Holly. She does, and I don’t say “stop” until the bag is full. Then I chuckle all the way to the checkout counter.

“What’s so funny?”

I toss my wallet onto the counter. “I have this friend,” I begin. I feel like a heel describing Wes that way, but it’s the best I can do at the moment. “We used to send this box back and forth with, like, gag gifts inside.”

“That’s fun. And he likes purple Skittles?”

“Yeah. Except the last time I sent him purple Skittles in the box, you had to buy all the colors at once. I bought four giant bags at BJ’s…” Holy God, the name of the store causes an inappropriate bubble of laughter to rise in my chest. “I sorted them myself and sent him only the purple ones. Then I shared, like, five pounds of the other ones with my high school buddies at a party. It was a kegger, and when they did the Technicolor yawn, it wasreallyTechnicolor.”

She hip-checks me. “Thanks for that visual.”

“My pleasure.”

When we step outside, she clears her throat. “Jamie, I need to find a place to stay tonight. Can we sit down somewhere so I can use my phone?”

I don’t answer right away, because I’m wracking my brain for a solution. Which doesn’t come easy, because the dormitory is always plenty full. “Let me find you a hotel room,” I suggest.

“I’ve got it,” she says quickly. “Seriously. It’s no big deal.”

Still. “Let’s sit on the porch at the dorm. You can use the wi-fi. And if everything is booked up, I’ll ask Pat for help.”

“Thank you.” Her voice is low.

Another apology is on the tip of my tongue. But I don’t say it, because I don’t think she wants to hear it.