“And… are you getting distracted?”
She smiled. “No.”
“Well, that’s an ego killer.”
“I like you,” she said seriously, “but I won’t let anything distract me.”
“That’s good. I like a girl with a plan.”
She looked him right in the eye, happy, content, and so damn confident. “We both have a plan.”
* * *
THE THREE OF THEM fell into a lunch routine over the next several weeks. He expected it, counted on it—seeing Mia and talking to her. It was the best he’d felt since the funeral. The squeezing around his heart loosened when he was with her. He grew more decisive on Hannah’s play clothes versus pajamas, and her little shoes were on the right feet more often than not.
The grassy hill they sat on was strewn with fall leaves. Hannah lay on a thin blanket he’d added to his already-stuffed backpack. Curled up, she drifted into her postlunch nap.
Mia sat beside him, chin down, her eyes and attention on a stack of notecards she was flipping through. Such a good student. Such a beautiful student, he thought, with a clenching in his stomach. He was falling for her. This dark-eyed, quietly confident girl who had blindsided him with one smile.
He’d known girls who remained comfortably in the friend zone. And then there were others. Something hotter than friendship had been on his mind. But he and Mia were friends, definitely friends, which, combined with his other, more… nonfriend thoughts, confused the hell out of him.
Mia tapped her pen lightly against her chin, her pretty lips pursed like she did when she was thinking hard. It made him crazy. Even worse, she was oblivious to what she did to him or what he felt when he looked at her.
She was different, and he tried to figure it out. Mia’s kind of beauty wasn’t flashy. She didn’t throw sultry glances, inviting a guy to play a game of chase. She wasn’t short term or casual. Mia was serious but had a wicked quick sense of humor. She was also thoughtful, sweet, and smart and definitely long term, which should scare the hell out of him.
When she wasn’t studying, they talked about books and movies and parents and songs. Siblings, the fact he had so many and she had none.
They quizzed each other before tests, though with her perfect ACT and nearly perfect SAT, that last-minute push was more for his benefit. She was strong, determined, brilliant, and much, much too good for him. A Boston girl who spoke Bosnian, fluent Russian thanks to her mother’s parents, and near-fluent Mandarin thanks to her private-school education and her own achievement.
Hannah thought she hung the moon. So did he.
He wanted to ask her out, but he didn’t go out. Didn’t go to parties. Didn’t live in the fraternity house as he’d planned. His friends had finally gotten the message and stopped asking him to come by for band parties and drinking games. He didn’t exactly miss it. Mostly, he was too busy to miss it. But it felt weird, as if he’d undergone a massive change overnight, and he didn’t quite know the new person yet.
Mia made it better. The crushing weight of loss and new responsibility lifted when he was with her. Maybe the twins could watch Hannah, he thought, but leaving her with them while he went out…No. That didn’t feel right. Plus, he was too afraid to give child protective services even one reason to swoop in and take Hannah, or even his brothers, pain in his ass that they were.
“You should be studying,” Mia said without looking up.
Strands of her citrusy-smelling hair blew over her shoulders and across her face, making it impossible for him to concentrate on anything but her.
He extended his arm behind her, his hand on the grass. “I’m studying you.”
She tried to hide her smile as she continued through a stack of notecards with chemistry symbols.
“Say something in Bosnian.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t beg.”
It was an old game they had: him trying to get her to speak to him in Bosnian and her telling him it was unattractive to beg.
“You’re distracting me.”
“Am I? Sorry.” But he didn’t move, instead leaning closer until his breath brushed her ear. She hadn’t turned a notecard in several seconds. He kissed her bare shoulder and felt her shudder. They’d kept it friendly up until this point. Not much else to do, sitting in public with a two-year-old between them. He hadn’t been sure what he could do but knew what he wanted. Had known and battled it for weeks.
Mia glanced up, catching him with her liquid brown eyes, and he couldn’t stop himself. Without warning, he pressed his lips to hers. He wouldn’t have to steal a kiss with anyone other than Mia, but that’s who she was. Heat flooded his entire body even though nothing touched but their mouths.