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Which happened to be the floor.
I blew out the breath and, cupping my hands over my face, let out a long shudder to realign whatever that shiver had knocked out of place.
Because it’d done something. I could tell you that. Couldn’t tell you what, but it’d done something.
Who knew a kiss on the cheek could send a girl crazy?
***
“You have to help me!” I begged, pacing back and forth across my room. “I have no clothes for a dinner date!”
“Okay,” Ava said, the line cracking when she breathed out. “Where are you going?”
“Mario’s,” I said, referring to the Italian place on the edge of town. Noah hadn’t seen the beach yet, and even though Creek Falls Cove technically wasn’t inside the town lines, it was close enough. Mario’s was only a two or three minute walk from the access path.
“Are you going to the beach after?”
Sitting on the bed, I finally loosened my grip on the phone I had plastered to the side of my face. “Yes. So I need to be smart but casual. This is an actual date, Ava, and I have nothing to wear!”
Yep. It was the latest inconvenience of the fire. Perhaps the most petty one yet, but an inconvenience was an inconvenience, after all.
Talk about first world problems.
“When are you going?”
“He’s picking me up in an hour.”
“Jesus fucking Christ!” There was a crash on Ava’s side. “And you’re just now telling me? What are you, Cinderella?”
“I forgot!” I flopped back on the bed with a whine. “I autopiloted! Ava! I’m fucked!”
“No. It’s fine. We got this. Okay.” It sounded like she was pumping herself up for a triathlon or something. “We can do this, Reagan!”
“Are you convincing yourself or me?”
“Both of us.”
“It’s not working, Ava.”
“I know. Give me fifteen minutes. I’ll show up with a haul full of dresses and shoes.” She hung up before I could say anything else.
At least we were the same shoe size.
Oh, God, I was going to throw up.
I dropped my phone and got up to pace once again. What the hell was it about Noah that made me feel like this? It was as if I was going to explode. I could barely keep myself together, and I was still wearing my ratty old bathrobe that was covered with faded Superman logos. It was all I had here and honestly, I was more shocked that this hadn’t been thrown out.
Okay. That was better
Focusing on all the things that were weird about the fact none of my high school clothes had been thrown—
Wait.
My high school clothes.
I walked over to my closet, then paused. This was a stupid idea. Not only was I at least fifteen pounds heavier than I was eight years ago, fashion had evolved. All I needed to do was look at the corkboard above my desk to know that some fashion was not timeless.
There had to be something, right? There was no guarantee that what Ava was bringing would even suit me, considering we had different styles. She favored bright, flirty, girly things, especially for dates.
I favored black.
I grimaced. Then I opened the closet door. The worst thing that could happen would be that I’d find nothing, and that wasn’t exactly going to put me in a worse situation than I was already in.
I had nothing as it was.
It smelled ever so slightly musty, but that didn’t seem like anything that couldn’t be fixed with some deodorant and air freshener.
Air freshener? On my clothing?
Desperate times and all that.
I rifled through the hanging clothes. Maybe there really wasn’t anything in here. I wasn’t exactly known as a partier in high school. There were a few things from college mixed in here, too, and that make me perk up slightly.
My college style wasn’t quite as bad as the high school one…
I dug in even further. There was a clothing bag in the very back, and when I grabbed for it, there were several hangers inside.
Hmm.
I pulled it out and laid it on the bed to open it. The first thing that caught my eye was the bright red of my prom dress from my pre-purple hair days, and the next was the black dress that peeked out from beneath it.
Thanks to the bag, these clothes smelled a lot fresher than the other ones. I pulled the black dress out and laid it on top of the prom dress. It was simple but figure-hugging, and I chewed down on my bottom lip.
I had no idea if it would fit.
A glance at my phone told me I had fifty minutes to get ready and another five before Ava got here. That gave me just enough time to try on this dress and, if I looked like a stuffed sausage, nobody would ever know.
I quickly stripped down to my underwear and snatched the dress up. The zipper was at the side, so I undid it and stepped inside to pull it up my body.
