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Pepper sneezed and trotted into the kitchen, probably to hover by his food bowl. Although she’d fed him before she left, he was never satisfied.
“It is weird to talk to animals.”
Kelly laughed. “You only say that because you don’t have one. Believe me, if you got a dog or cat, you’d be just as crazy as the rest of us.”
“Yeah, maybe. Speaking of crazy, I never told you, but I had a hefty crush on you in eighth grade,” Chris said, abruptly.
Kelly stumbled in astonishment, slamming Chris into the wall just outside the guestroom door. The pictures that decorated the wall shook under the force as Chris grunted.
“Ow, geez, don’t kill me!” he said.
Kelly leaned against the wall and stared up at him, completely thrown. “What did you just say?”
Chris met her gaze with his bleary blue eyes. “I said, I had a crush on you too, but Ray called dibs. So, I let him have you.”
She spluttered with indignation. “You let him have me? Like I’m a freaking ball you two found on the playground? Because if you had told me that you liked me, I might not have gone with Ray?”
His mouth flopped open and shut like a fish trying to get air, his brain obviously not working at full capacity. “No, I just meant…I just didn’t want to fight my best friend over a gi
rl. You know, bros before—”
Kelly poked him in the stomach. “If you finish that sentence, I will drop you right here and let you sleep on the hardwood floor.”
“I’m only saying he told me about his crush first, so I was the good guy and kept my mouth shut.”
Still irritated with him, Kelly scoffed. “You know, good guys finish last, right?”
“That seems to be the truth, at least for me. I keep getting dumped.” His expression drooped like a hound dog denied a car ride. “Why do you think that is?”
Kelly honestly didn’t have a good answer for him. Chris was sweet, funny, successful, and all in all a great catch, when he wasn’t saying stupid drunk shit. She had no idea why women kept letting him get away.
“Maybe it’s because you still say things like ‘bros before hos.’”
“Technically, I only started to say it. You actually said it.”
His sloppy grin hit her right in the stomach, melting her irritation and leaving her giddy.
Giddy? Where the hell had that come from?
“All right, I’m going to put you to bed before you do say something that pisses me off.”
She helped him through the doorway of the guest room and onto the bed. The minute his butt hit the comforter, he flopped back on it, staring up at her pensively.
“Did you ever think about it?” he asked.
She paused in the process of bending over to untie his shoes. “About what?”
“About you and me? If you hadn’t gone out with Ray?”
Kelly’s cheeks warmed up, and she was thankful she hadn’t turned on the light or her blush would have given her away. “When you were a skinny, towheaded kid? Nope, not once.”
“Hey, I was a little awkward! I wasn’t that bad though.”
No, he hadn’t been bad at all. And she’d never said anything out loud, but, when Chris had approached her, she’d thought he was going to ask her out.
And she’d been a little disappointed when he didn’t.
Not that she hadn’t loved Ray. She had with all her heart. But she’d been a thirteen-year-old girl noticing boys for the first time and Chris, well…
