Heartbreaker - Julie Kriss Page 0,19

and me. I’d liked him in high school—a lot. Too much, as it turned out, and I’d gotten hurt. Then I’d spent ten years not liking him. Now I had seen him again and I not only liked him, I suspected that the not-liking of the past decade was possibly a lie I’d told myself. And at the same time, part of me wanted him to get back in that elevator so I could slam the door shut on him all over again.

It had just been so damned satisfying.

“Come on, admit it,” Tess said.

“Okay, I like him,” I said. “Somewhat. With grave qualifications. The liking will probably pass and I’ll stop liking him again.” Liar, liar. Holden was hot and gorgeous and he saved freaking lives for a living. Still, I didn’t want to teach Tess that crushing on a guy was the path to happiness, because I knew for a fact that it wasn’t.

“I knew it,” Tess said. “You totally like him. As in, you naked like him.”

I snapped to attention. “What? You’re fourteen. What do you know about it?”

Tess rolled her eyes in a way that was supposed to annoy me but always amused me instead. “Yes, I’m fourteen, but it isn’t the fifteen hundreds or whatever, when you grew up. I have the internet and almost no adult supervision.”

I was horrified. “Do not go on the internet,” I said, so loudly that a few New Yorkers gave me an irritated look.

“Too late. I’m fourteen.”

“Oh, my God. Then don’t look up—”

“Too late. I probably looked it up already.”

I shook my head. “How do parents even cope?” I racked my brain. “Okay. Um. Whatever you’re feeling is normal and completely natural, and you’re perfect the way you are. Everything will be fine. Also, if anyone so much as touches you, mace the hell out of them.”

Tess blinked. “Are you actually trying to give me sex advice while we’re on the subway, Mina? For real?”

“I have to do something,” I said. “You’re already talking about naked liking. You shouldn’t naked like anyone for a long, long time.”

“I know,” she said, as if that were obvious, as if I shouldn’t be freaking out about a fourteen-year-old being naked anything. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you, and the fact that you naked like this Holden guy.”

“I do not.” Okay, I sounded like a middle schooler myself. I couldn’t help it.

“You do too.” She pointed to my face. “You get a little gooey when you talk about him. I think if he asked you, you’d definitely get naked. That’s naked liking.”

“Let’s talk about something wholesome.” Thinking about Holden Whittaker naked was not wholesome, and it was making me flush hot in parts of my body I hadn’t thought about in months. I bet he had a dark trail of hair on his flat stomach. Maybe he even had a six-pack. And that butt… I forced my thoughts back into the present situation. I gestured to the bag on my shoulder and the bag on Tess’s. “Let’s talk about dance class.”

Tess’s expression shut down, and she looked unsure. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this. If I wasn’t so desperate to get out of my sister’s place, there’s no way I would have said yes.”

“It’ll be fun, I promise. And it isn’t really a class. It’s more of an instruction with a lot of room to do your own thing.”

She actually looked a little panicked, and all of her attitude had temporarily evaporated. “I’m going to suck anyway. I’ve never been to dance class before. I don’t even have the right clothes.”

Yeah, I remembered fourteen really well, especially that feeling that looking stupid would be worse than death. “You’ll be fine,” I assured her. “It’s really laid back, I promise. We’ll stay at the back of the class. You don’t have to memorize any steps or anything. Just try a few things and have a little fun. No one in this class is a pro.”

“You are,” Tess said.

“I’ve done some serious lessons, yes.” When I could afford them, which wasn’t all the time. “But this Saturday class is my fun class. It’s the one I go to when I just want to move and try things without a lot of pressure. I’m not actually a pro dancer, though I’m a better dancer than I am a singer. But if you want to be on Broadway, you have to be able to sing and dance at the same time.”

Tess