Read Ever: The Ever Trilogy, Book One (Volume 1) for Free Online Page B

a bath, and then, well, you can see what happened. Let me go change! I’ll be right back!”
    I turned away from him without a second thought, knowing only that I had to get out of the drenched, dog-hair-covered clothing immediately—before I died of embarrassment right there on my front lawn.
    I was almost to the door when he caught up to me.
    “Hey, Ever, wait,” he said, as he reached for my elbow to slow me down.
    I may have actually skidded to a stop at the feel of his hand on my skin, but luckily, when I looked down at my feet, my heels weren’t smoking, and I hadn’t left any grooves in the cement. Phew.
    He glanced briefly behind me to my house.
    I panicked, picturing Frankie’s face at the window.
    “Can I come in?”
    “What? No!” Easy there, turbo, no need to alarm him. He looked taken aback by my sharp response, so I tried again, a bit more calmly. “No, sorry, not right now. I gotta go. Sorry.”
    “Wait up. Was your friend telling the truth about you wanting to take me out tonight?”
    “Tonight?” And there they were: Jessie’s words coming back to bite me. My hands were in my hair again. I had to force myself to bring them back down to my sides. Damn that nervous habit. My cheeks flared. Ugh . Damn that one too.
    Why is he asking me out again? I lied to him when he’d asked before, but obviously he had no way of knowing that. I was trying to come up with another lie, another way of getting out of going on a date with him, when my mouth opened up against my control and said the word I was trying to avoid, but deep down wished I’d said yesterday.
    “Yes.”
    “Great,” he said with a grin. He was clearly pleased by my response, which in turn left me pleased by his smile, and soon we were both grinning at each other like fools.
    I mentally cursed myself. And Jessie. This was all her fault.
    “You don’t have school tomorrow or anything, right?”
    “Well, yeah, I do. Wait, no. I don’t go to regular school. But, I mean, I don’t. I don’t have school tomorrow. It’s Spring Break anyway. Sure. I can go out, I guess. Let me go change first though.”
    His smile grew at my choppy, nervous response.
    “Cool. Your boyfriend won’t mind?”
    “Um … no. I don’t really … .”
    “It’s cool. You don’t have to explain. See you here in an hour or so?”
    “Cool. Yeah.” And, just like that, I was back to those single syllable responses.
    I was bursting with excitement, and I couldn’t ignore the feeling even though I desperately wanted to. As I walked inside, a huge smile stretched and distorted my face. I imagined I resembled something of a clown. A big, dumb, goofy clown who’d just accepted a date with a guy she barely knew. A guy who wasn’t Frankie.
    At least Jessie would be happy. I forced myself to walk in slowly, trying desperately to mimic Toby’s perpetual nonchalance, but of course, I tripped coming in the door. I didn’t turn around to see if he noticed—best to act like it didn’t happen. A quick glance around the living room showed me that Frankie was nowhere in sight, but I still tried to act as casual as possible as I walked down the hall, just in case he appeared before I got to my room.
    Once inside my room, with the door closed, I could no longer keep my excitement at bay.
    “I have a date! I have a date!” I squealed in as close to a whisper as I could muster, not wanting to be overheard. Jessie was sitting on the bed, flipping through a magazine, and she looked up at me with a doe-eyed expression of mock surprise.
    “Let me guess … you have a date?” she asked with a giggle.
    “Shh!”
    “Why are we whisp—?” she looked at me and sighed. “Oh, okay. I’ll play along. So, I guess we’re not having dinner tonight, huh?” Shaking her head and laughing as she gathered her things, she started to head for the door.
    “Shoot. I forgot! You’re not mad, are you, Jess? I’ll cancel if … .”
    “Oh, Ever ! Are you kidding me? New Hottie on The