Page 100 of Maid For Each Other
“Well, Dex hadn’t either, but now he loves it. Anyway, Jess Mariano is one of the characters. And he really loves french fries.”
I looked down at her and quietly said, “Does he?”
“I have no idea,” she muttered around a laugh, her eyes dancing, “But he’s smart, so probably yes.”
“Okay, time to bowl,” my mother said, putting an end to a conversation that could’ve blown our cover.
Everyone except for my parents looked stunned to be wearing community bowling shoes and like they didn’t quite know whatto do with themselves. The whole business-in-the-front, party-in-the-back thing was going on with these designer outfits that were now paired with bowling shoes.
“Ready for a beatdown?” Abi teased, and every time I looked at her, I felt utterly transfixed.
Even if we hadn’t just had mind-blowing sex in our hotel room, the sight of her in my faded favorite sweatshirt and jeans, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail and glasses on her nose, made me feel like I was in love already. She was fucking adorable, and hilarious, and suddenly I didn’t really care about anything else, much less winning a game of bowling.
“Don’t be cocky, Green,” I said anyway, giving her a look. “You’ve got no shot of beating me.”
“What do you think a nerdy asthmatic kid did with her Saturday mornings?” she asked with her eyebrows raised. “I played in a bowling league. The Saturday Strikers kicked ass and you’re about to see evidence of such.”
“ ‘Evidence of such,’ ” I said, shaking my head. “Maybe we should make a bet on who’s going to win.”
“Enough with all your little bets and deals,” she said, shaking her head.
“Yeah, I suppose it’s not necessary now, right?” I said quietly, leaning down because I wanted to bury my nose in her hair. “What more could I possibly want?”
I heard her suck in a breath, like she was surprised by my words, but Abi couldn’t let me have that.
She looked up at me with a smile and said, “To beat me at bowling.”
37
Locket
Abi
I found it to be totally unfair that since Declan was so much stronger than me, his ball hit the pins harder—when he knocked a few down, they knocked all the others down easily. I stood by the fact that I was better at the sport of bowling, but he managed to beat me in all three games.
His entire family had been wildly entertained by our competition, because all three games were close; he only beat me by a total of ten pins.
But it was, without question, the most fun I’d had in years (aside from New York with Dex). With the few boyfriends I’d had in high school and college (and I could count those short-lived relationships on one hand), I’d never experienced that partnership feeling, where it felt like it was the two of us against the world.
But somehow, I had that with Declan.
And as someone whose family had always pretty much consisted of just me and my mom, it was overwhelming—in the verybest way—to be surrounded by all these people who seemed to love one another.
Dex’s aunts teased him, Nana Marian doted on him, and he had inside jokes with, like, ten or eleven cousins.
I didn’t haveanycousins.
It felt like the smile never left my mouth for the entire night, and I seriously got a little misty when his Nana Marian kissed me on the cheek before she left.
I was terrified to put my trust in him, in this, but it was too late for me to do anything but.
My heart was already his.
I wasn’t saying I was inlovewith him, but I really did like him a whole lot and there was no turning back from that.
Especially after the sex.
Could it be called sex? It’d been so good, so…like nothing I’d ever experienced with another human, that I wasn’t sure it could be referred to as such.
