“But—”

He held up his hand. “I know, I know. I’m leaving soon, you’re job hunting. We have no future. Whatever. Who cares? I like you, and I know you like me. What’s more fun than following through on how we feel? Not everything has to be this carefully laid-out plan with a guaranteed future. We can just have fun, Frankie. Forget about everything else.”

A fling. Basically exactly what I had wanted. Every instinct I had itched to ask for rules and set guidelines on what this was. Where was this going physically? How long would we have? How deep were we getting? I forced myself to let it go, though. Those types of thoughts had no place in what he was asking.

“S-sure.”

He grinned, leaning in for another kiss. It felt natural.

Which kind of freaked me out if I was being honest.

FIFTEEN

Frankie

“I’ve never seen you this nervous,” Mattie said from behind me as I franticly brushed out a curl that looked too curled.

“I am not nervous,” I snapped, tugging at the curl more. Should I spray it with water? The last thing I wanted was for Oliver to think that I had tried for this…for this…for whatever this was. Date, I guess. But when I thought of it like that, my stomach instantly rocked with nerves.

“If you tug at that piece of hair anymore, you’re going to be bald,” Mattie pointed out.

“I don’t want him to think I curled my hair!” I said, giving up and plugging in the flat iron.

“But you did curl your hair.” Mattie looked at me like I had completely lost it.

“Yes, but I don’t want him to know that. I want it to look effortless. Like bouncy waves I rolled out of bed with.”

“As if the beauty standard for women isn’t already high enough, now we have to pretend like we didn’t even try while also achieving perfection?”

“Let me live,” I cried, finally flattening the piece successfully with the lukewarm flat iron. Mattie was right. This was out of sorts for me. I didn’t date often, but on the few occasions I had, I’d never been this much of an anxious mess.

The fact that Oliver and I had already established that we liked each other and shared more than a few kisses did little to quell my nerves. In fact, the reality that we’d already kissed left me even more nervous, because what was next? While everything in my body told me that I absolutely wanted this evening to progress beyond a quick peck, it didn’t mean I wasn’t any less in my head about it.

Oliver was like…incredibly attractive. And he was so extreme and outdoorsy and adventurous. And he was always so calm and collected and never seemed to have a care in the world. Why did he even want to hang out with me? I was an uptight mess of a human. Especially right now. At least when I had a thriving career, I could blame my bad personality on that. Now what did I have? I lived in my sister’s basement and could barely get a second interview.