Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,140

sniff as she leaned onto the armrest. “Hm. Yeah. For cinema class.”

“Oh, yeah, Greg watched that the other day.” Nelson hesitated as he looked at them again.

Ripped between the film and knowing how this looked, Taylor glanced up at Nelson. It wasn’t easy to be nonchalant. “There’s food in the frig if you’re hungry.”

He shrugged out of his coat and dropped his backpack on the way to the kitchen. “Great. I’m starving.”

When Nelson walked into the kitchen, Taylor glanced down at Greg still sleeping there peacefully. She sighed and shook her head, but she could do nothing that wouldn’t make the whole thing even more awkward. Unfortunately, she had barely figured out what was going on in the movie again when Wes came through the door. Trying not to be frustrated, she fought the eye roll at the absurdity of trying to watch a movie when everyone else insisted on having a life, and she half-smiled at him when his gaze came up and met hers.

“Oh, hey,” he said, his gaze sliding from her down to Greg and back up again as he retrieved his key from the lock.

She wanted to say, It’s not what it looks like, but there was no way to say that and not cause even more commotion. “Hey,” she said as off-handedly as possible. The movie was trashed anyway. “How was car shopping?”

That yanked a surprised look onto Wes’s face as Nelson came in and sat in the chair. “Oh. Uh. We decided against one of them.”

“The Shelby?” Taylor asked, pulling up the only name she remembered from Lauren talking at the table.

Wes looked even more surprised as on the screen Iceman tried to talk his superior out of something to do with Maverick. “How’d you know that?”

“Oh. Uhhh. Lauren just mentioned it at lunch,” Taylor said, and hoping no one thought to mention how insanely awkward this was, she looked back at the television. “There’s food in the frig.”

“Cool.”

With Nelson in one chair, Greg sleeping on the couch next to her, and Wes rummaging around in the kitchen, Taylor tried to focus on the storyline which she had completely lost in the tumult of real, actual life.

“Man, I love this part,” Nelson said, setting his glass by Greg’s on the coffee table as the fighter jets took bullets and dodged missiles. “I would kill to go up in one of those things.”

“A fighter jet?” Taylor asked in concern. Following anything on the screen was pointless.

“You know it.”

“Yeah, I don’t think Paige would be too keen on that,” Taylor said, and the thought did nothing good for her either. Somehow the dogfight ended, and Maverick was hailed as a hero. Would’ve been nice to understand why.

“So are you writing your paper on Top Gun too?” Nelson asked as Wes came in and sat in the other chair.

“Nah. I was doing it on City of Angels.”

“The Nicolas Cage one?” Nelson asked.

“Yeah,” Taylor said, both surprised he knew it and annoyed that whatever was happening in the movie was now happening without her.

“Paige loves that movie,” Nelson said.

“Which one is that?” Wes asked, and Taylor had to bite her tongue not to scream at both of them.

“You know, that one with the angel dude and the doctor?”

“Oh, ‘I was there on the stairs’?” Wes asked in a deep, almost creepy voice.

Nelson nodded as he ate another bite. “Yeah. That’s the one. I mean, it’s okay, but the ending is so ridiculous. Waa-POW!”

With a glass of water in his hand, Wes waved his hands slightly. “Oh, golly-gosh-darn, I’m going to have a random bicycle accident right out here in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason.”

“Right? At least she could’ve been in a car,” Nelson said. “That would’ve made more sense.”

“Tell me about it.”

For two guys who claimed to love this movie so much, they sure didn’t watch much of it. Taylor wanted to tell them to shut up, but between her newfound gratefulness for them and this finally feeling halfway normal, she didn’t dare. The ending came and went before she even knew it was close. With no warning, there was Goose sitting in class like nothing had ever happened, and then he, too, was gone.

She couldn’t move lest she wake Greg, and the laptop was all the way over on the coffee table. So she went still and waited for whatever came next.

“So, did you hear anything on your room today?” Wes asked, and Taylor was a little surprised he remembered that.

“Housing says they’ll try