Kissing the Shy Guy - Stephanie Street Page 0,35

the scholarship. I just didn't contradict him. It was the perfect way to keep him at arm's length.

It had been a gamble, one I hadn't had much time to consider before going along with it. At first, I'd worried he'd back out completely, but he hadn't. If he'd threatened it, I'd have reminded him what he'd said at the park, that our agreement to work together couldn't be about that. Adam was too sweet, too good to leave me hanging all because I refused to kiss him.

My body quaked again, remembering that final kiss. How would I ever be able to keep my distance from him for the next few weeks? With Josh, it had been easy. Even though we were a couple, it had been a long time since I'd felt genuinely attracted to Josh. But Adam? He made me burn.

It didn't matter what I felt, I told myself, drying my face on my skirt. The time had come to prove myself. And I'd do it by keeping a professional distance between us.

The next day, I wasn't so sure. Adam avoided looking at me during school. I reminded myself this was how I wanted things, but it didn't help. My heart still jumped whenever I caught a glimpse of him, it almost jumped out of my chest when he walked into the choir room after school.

He carried his guitar case slung casually over one shoulder. His bangs hid one eye. The stubble that yesterday made my mouth raw colored his hollow cheeks and pointed chin. He'd traded his usual black jeans for black joggers and sneakers with a gray t-shirt hugging his chest and torso. My hands remembered touching his chest and stomach and itched to touch him again.

I balled them into fists at my side and smiled. "You made it."

"Yep." He popped the p. He set down the guitar case without looking at me and opened it while I stood there, staring like an idiot. A lovesick idiot. I hoped he didn't notice.

"You do want me to play, right?" His brows rose once he finally looked at me. "What?"

"Nothing." I cleared my throat and looked away. "And no. Not yet."

First, I wanted to make sure he really couldn't dance. For all I knew, he'd lied to get out of doing something he didn't want to do. I'd taken dance since I turned five. Josh, since he was six. The choreography I'd come up with wasn't complicated. It wasn't necessarily easy, not for someone who didn't have a background in dance. Especially not in five weeks.

Adam frowned but set his guitar back inside its case. "Okay, then where do we start?"

I picked up my phone and connected it to the speaker system in the choir room. I had the music saved in an MP3 file. It wasn't the exact arrangement from the movie, but it fit better with the dialogue. I'd found it online along with the script. Speaking of??/p>

I pulled up my contacts and tapped the screen to add Adam as a new contact. "Tell me your number."

"Why?" he asked, his expression mutinous. He wasn't going to make it easy for me. I already missed the sweet guy I'd confided in the day Josh dumped me. But I'd created this monster, I'd have to deal with it.

I sighed before explaining myself. "So I can send you the music files, and we can coordinate our schedules. Things come up. I need to be able to tell you if I'm going to be late, and I hope you'd do the same."

Without a word, Adam took my phone out of my hands and quickly typed his information.

"There. Now, let's get started. It's my sister's birthday. I have to be home by six."

I took the phone, swallowed the instinctively irritated response on the tip of my tongue, and clicked out of my contacts without looking at what he'd entered to navigate back to the music for our song.

Our song.

I peeked through my lashes at Adam, regretting having ever met him. No, that wasn't true. Because of him, I had a solid chance of winning the scholarship. I just regretted the reasons we couldn't pursue a relationship with each other. Under other circumstances, I'd have been all over that, all over him.

"I thought we could go through the song a few times and see how we sound together. Do you care if I record it so we can listen?"

Adam shook his head and accepted the small stack of stapled papers I pushed toward