Page 62 of The Fall Affair

She glanced at me, eyes narrowed, and her pencil paused mid-stroke. “Why?”

I swallowed but made myself stop being a coward. “Because you’re pretty.” I paused. “And you’re…interesting to watch. You do things other girls don’t—like clean up garbage you find on da walk home and leave random poems on sticky notes on desks in school. And you stick your tongue out the side of your mouth when you’re concentrating.”

She stared at me for a heartbeat, then smiled faintly and turned back to her sketch pad. “That’s kind of creepy.”

“Yeah.” I laughed nervously. “I guess it is.”

Izzy shaded her cloud quietly for a few minutes while I stared up, pretending to find one to sketch. I was actually busy thinking about whether I should apologize for watching her so much. Before I could come to a decision, her pencil stopped.

“Do you watch other people, too?” she asked.

“No. Just you.”

“I guess that makes you creepy and kind of sweet.”

My heart sped up, and my lips curved to a smile. “Yeah? You think it’s sweet?”

“I do.” Her eyes flicked to mine. “I think you’re sweet, Matteo.”

Suddenly I wasn’t shy anymore. “Do you want to be my girlfriend?”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

It felt like I’d swallowed my heart and it got stuck in my throat. “Oh. Okay.” I shrugged, trying to act like it wasn’t a big deal. “That’s cool.”

She looked over and smiled. “My dad says I can’t date until I’m sixteen.”

“Oh.” I was fifteen, turning sixteen next month. “When’s your birthday?”

“Four months from tomorrow.”

I looked at the clouds, then at her. “I can wait.”

She blinked. “You’ll wait for me to turn sixteen?”

“Yeah,” I said as our eyes met. “I’ve waited a year to get da courage to ask at all. What’s another four months?”

Chapter 20

Allegra

TONIGHT WAS THE best date I’d ever been on, and it hadn’t even been a date.

I slipped into bed at midnight, smiling like an idiot as thoughts of Matteo filled my head. He was so thoughtful. He could calm me in the middle of the storm that had become my life. And God, the way he looked. That last thought lingered. In the past, the hotter the guy, the faster his rating had seemed to drop once I got to know him and spotted all the red flags. But Matteo? The more time I spent with him, the higher his rating grew. After taking this trip, he was at least a fourteen, possibly higher if he kept on smiling at me the way he had all evening.

Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was him. Either way, I suddenly wanted him to know exactly what he did to me.

I grabbed my phone from the nightstand, thumb hovering for a few seconds before typing.

Allegra: I think you’re pretty amazing. I’m going to bed smiling on the eve of what might turn out to be one of the worst days of my life. Thank you for coming here with me.

The reply came almost instantly.

Matteo: I think you’re pretty amazing, too. And I love your smile.

That made my already-big grin grow wider. Rather than text back, I decided to take a selfie of me beaming to show him I wasn’t kidding. I held my phone out, tilted it down for a good angle, and snapped a photo of me lying in bed. Only when I checked the picture, I realized the camera had caught a lot more than I’d intended. Yes, I was smiling, but I was also wearing a black slip nightgown, the top of which was lace and showed a lot of cleavage. I hadn’t been going for sexy, but damn, it was.

I bit my lip, debating whether I should take another. Then the wine, or maybe the adrenaline, pushed me. Screw it. Send.