Page 49 of Wedding or Not

For some reason, it tickled me. More than it probably deserved.

I started laughing and couldn’t stop.

As often happens, my laughter encouraged the boy to continue doing and saying things to make me laugh until I had trouble paying attention in class.

Eventually the teacher had to separate us because her grand scheme of using the good girls for classroom regulation had failed spectacularly.

Sitting in the seafood restaurant for the rest of the evening, I can’t help but think of that cute little bad boy who sat next to me for a month in third grade.

Because Wes seems to be doing the same thing.

After making me laugh so hysterically the one time, he keeps trying for the rest of our meal.

He makes dry comments about our fellow diners, all of them clever and astute and good-natured. I keep giggling, partly because they’re funny and partly because I’m so relieved to be over the awkwardness from earlier.

When the food arrives, I’m excited because my salmon, baked potato, and fried okra look delicious. But then it gets even better when Wes casually breaks apart his lobster and puts half of it on my plate.

“What is this for?” I ask, staring from my plate to his face and back.

“This is because you were afraid to order it and there’s no reason you shouldn’t have it.”

I gape at him, genuinely dumbfounded that he somehow realized that.

“What?” he asks after a minute. “You’re not going to deny it, are you?”

“How did you know that?”

“Because I’m pretty good at reading your face.”

“Are you?”

“Yes. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

“Maybe.” I think it through and realize he’s given me plenty of evidence of that talent.

“In all truth, it isn’t very hard. You don’t exactly have a poker face.”

“I have a good poker face.”

“No, you really don’t.”

I scowl at him.

“Case in point,” he mutters with another twitch of his lips.

So there I go, spilling over into laughter again.

CHAPTER 16

We’re leaving the restaurant to a series of phones photographing us from tables and the waiting area when a voice calls out, “Wes! Hey, Wes!”

Wes has his arm around me like a bodyguard protecting a celebrity from the paparazzi, but he pauses and glances back toward the voice.

“Shit,” I hear him mutter before he turns around to greet the man who is jogging toward us.

I study the man with interest since clearly Wes isn’t happy to see him, and I’m surprised to see it’s Judd Harris, who went to high school with us.

He was actually my escort to one of the dances in my junior year, and I thought I’d hit the jackpot by having a date with a popular senior.