Chapters (37)
- Cover
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Acknowledgments
- Readers Guide
- DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- About the Author
- What’s next onyour reading list?
“Don’t you grump at me.”
Fox glances at Joy. “Do you see what you started?”
She laughs. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t have told her everything.”
Twenty-Nine
Joy doesn’t stay at Summer’s house past eight p.m. It’s a work night after all.
Fox walks her to her car with promises to call her later and confirming their plans for her to visit his workshop. Once she’s at home, she does a speed-run through her nighttime routine, hoping to already be in bed by the time Fox calls her for their next movie date.
Well, he didn’t call it that. Joy decided some creative, hopeful liberties were in order.
Someone knocks on her door as she’s pouring Sleepytime tea into her favorite giraffe mug. She checks the peephole first—her breath catches in her throat, and she quickly unlocks the door to open it. “Malcolm. Hi. What are you doing here?”
He’s standing in her hallway, rubbing his forehead, anxiety levels clearly on the rise. “Can I come in?”
“Of course. Yeah.”
Joy steps to the side, and he barely enters her apartment. He stops near the couch, not sitting or moving beyond it. She knows this stance—whatever it is he has to say is important enough to stress him out like he’s about to give a big presentation at work. Once he’s in the thick of it, he’s smooth as butter, working the attendees until they’re putty in the palm of his hand. But before? It’s DEFCON 2. Joy always has to talk him down and gas him up.
“Malcolm,” Joy says, using her patented best friend calming voice. “Is everything okay?”
“Do you remember how we met?” Malcolm doesn’t wait for an answer, instead telling the entire story by himself, but when he gets to the part where Joy asked for his number, it suddenly changes. “I waited all day for you to text me. Checking my phone and getting my hopes up that maybe you wanted to hang out. That day passed. And then another. And then it was a week later. I still couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
Joy’s frown feels intensely epic. She’s positive, absolutely sure he’s never told her that last part before.
He continues, “I couldn’t get you and the way you smiled at me out of my head. I figured you just forgot about me. I didn’t see you anywhere on campus. A friend of mine said they saw someone who looked like you around his dorm. I went there every day hoping to see you. But you disappeared. I started beating myself up because I found my dream girl and she got away. You didn’t tell me your name, so I started calling you Cinderella.”