He shrugged his shoulders at me, staring out the large front window of the diner he had chosen that was pretty much deserted.
“All right,” I replied, gnawing at my bottom lip when Callie and Zoey’s words from earlier had popped into my head. We didn’t have a title, but I sure as hell wanted to know if he had been with another girl when I thought we had clearly talked about not seeing other people.
“Well if you aren’t going to talk, I guess I will. I heard from a few people that you hooked up with some girl pretty recently. Is that true?” There I said it. I watched his face to see his reaction, and he finally turned to look at me, a scowl in place directed at me.
“And you believed that shit? No, I wasn’t with anyone last week. Haven’t you learned by now that girls like to run their fucking mouths?”
My head jerked back at his tone, and I saw his eyes soften slightly. “I’m sorry, Della,” he huffed out. “I just wanted to come out and have a fun night with you. But then I get there, looking for you, and you’re nowhere to be found. Then I see you coming out of a room with that douche bag.”
My mouth formed into an O as I guessed at what his conclusion had been. So he was jealous? I didn’t think I would ever see this day from Justin Parker. I really thought he had too big of an ego to ever be jealous.
“Nothing happened between us, I swear. Although I have no clue exactly what we’re doing here, I wouldn’t do that to you.” Something unreadable flashed through his eyes, and he rubbed at the scruff on his chin. “Nash agreed to being just friends again tonight. I know he’s said that before, but I think this time I believed him. I’d like to figure out what’s going on between us first,” I picked up his hand, swirling my finger around his wrist. “Because I really do like what we have going here, and I’d like to see where it’s going to go. Are we on the same page?”
He blew out a breath, a relieved look on his face as he squeezed my hand back. “I’m sorry for being such an asshole, Della. I just saw you with that guy and figured something had happened. I don’t know why, you’ve never given me any reason not to trust you.”
He slid next to me in the booth, tipping my chin up so our faces were just inches apart. “I know I’m never serious about things, but I’d like to be that way with you Della. Are you ready to stop all this teasing bullshit we have going on and really be with me? Because I want to be with you and only you.” He brushed my hair back, that I’m sure was a frizzy mess from all of my dancing. I couldn’t help but smile at his sweet words. They were so rare.
“And I want to only be with you.”
“Good, I think we can make this work then,” he said, giving me one of his wide smiles for the first time all night. “I’m glad we have that all cleared up.” I felt his hand underneath the table, creep under my dress and trace the outline of my underwear. “This is mine now.”
“Oh, really? Your one of those guys, huh?” I moved my hand to the front of his jeans and squeezed. “Then this is mine.” He raised an eyebrow at me but didn’t say anything, just grabbed his wallet out, throwing more than enough money on the table for the bill and grabbed onto my hand. “Glad that’s all cleared up. Let’s go and introduce ourselves properly then.”
Chapter 15
I blew out a sigh of relief as I walked out of my last class of the semester right before winter break. It felt good knowing that I would be passing all of my classes, with high grades. All of my hard work had paid off, and I was proud of myself.
My phone rang as I walked into my empty dorm, and I groaned when I saw it was my mother but figured I should get it over with. Her calls were rare and most of the time didn’t last very long, except for a few snooty comments.
“Hello, mother,” I answered, kicking off my shoes to lie down on the couch.
“Always so happy to hear from me as usual, dear.”
“Well of course,” I replied. “And to what do I owe this phone call from you today?”
“Oh, just the usual. I wanted to check in and make sure things were going all right. I know you said you’re grades we’re good, but truthfully I won’t believe it until I see it with my own two eyes.”
“Well, I guess you’ll just have to wait a little longer. I had the last of my exams today, so I’ll be sure to update you when they’re official, but I passed everything with even if I bombed the exams.”