Page 72 of Little Lies


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Not once did she think they might be adorable together. It stumped her.

“Aren’t we?” Nathan said and looked at her smiling. The act came back together easily, just like that, and fake Tully couldn’t help matching his grin.

They helped clear the dishes when the meal finished, and Sandy excused them to finish what they needed upstairs while she finished washing the dishes.

Back in Nathan’s room, Tully was stuffed and satisfied. She wanted to fall back onto Nathan’s neatly made bed and sink into the soft mattress. She held it together and grabbed her bag. “I think we can call it for today. We did enough and I’m too full to focus.”

“Thank God. I think I’ll fall asleep if I do anymore,” he laughed.

“Just make sure to look at the cards when you have a chance. It will help with a lot of the things we covered today.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“It’s just our deal.”

“No. I mean thank you for yesterday,” he said. She paused, and her fingers tightened around the straps of her backpack. Another reminder she didn’t need about the kiss yesterday. “I think it worked for now. My mom wouldn’t be that happy if she heard anything about the cheating thing.”

Tully’s lips drooped, confused. “Your mom? Is that why you wanted to stop it? You didn’t want her to hear about it?”

Nathan must not have meant to say that much, because his eyes widened a bit and he stumbled a little on his words. “Uh, yeah. It is.”

There was more there that he wasn’t saying, but it wasn’t her place to push. He didn’t owe her anything. “I should be thanking you. I’m the one that got us into that mess.”

“But I wouldn’t have gotten out of it if you hit me. So, thanks for not hitting me this time.”

The real Tully smiled. It was so like Nathan to make something that drove her crazy seem so simple. “No promises next time.”

“I guess I better get good at dodging.”

Thirty minutes later, Tully went home with a plate of cookies that Sandy handed her as she left the house and instructed her to share with her family. When Tully walked in the TV was on. Without looking, she knew that was where her parents would be, and probably Joliet if she was home.

She glanced at the plate of cookies in her hands and considered for a moment taking them into the room.

But they looked too good. They smelled so sweet. They looked like something she didn’t want them to have. So, she walked past the living room without a greeting, past the kitchen, up the stairs, and took the entire plate into her room.

thirty-two

nathan

Nathan had one of those dreams: the kind that sticks with you past opening your eyes, but you can’t remember a single detail other than the way it made you feel.

No, notthatkind of dream. Purely PG, he thinks, but still . . . romantic? Heart racing?

His chest was fluttering when he sat up to turn off his beeping alarm and flicked the blankets off him, but he couldn’t tell why. One thing he did know was that it was the kind of dream he didn’t want to wake from.

He wished he could remember.

Lost, hazy thoughts distracted Nathan all morning. He woke up earlier than normal for morning practice and had made a stop at the store for a few things. Waking up that early combined with it interrupting his dream muddled his mind. It showed in practice when he missed every single free throw.

Coach blew the whistle to end practice and Nathan shook the sweat from his hair to the showers. He lingered under the cold water, trying to set his head back on straight. When he thought it worked he turned off the stream and returned to his locker to get dressed with the metal door open. He didn’t pay attention to the rowdy boys around him.

“Damn, Rondeau. Has your handwriting always been this . . . pretty?” Joey Larsen held up a red notebook in his hands and scanned the pages with a smirk on his face.

If his mind connected quicker, he would have recognized the colored highlights covering the note page immediately, but he didn’t. He hadn’t even noticed Tully’s notebook slip from his bag onto the damp locker room floor until Joey held it on display.

Once it connected, Nathan reacted by lunging to snatch it back, but by then several sets of freshly showered hands had passed it around and smeared the ink on the meticulous notes. “Ah great, look what you guys did,” he groaned and held it up so everyone could see the smeared damage. “Now I can’t read some of it.”

“Are thoseyournotes?” Bruce Tao rubbed a towel over his hair.

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