Bonham (Pushing Daisies Book 3) by Heather Young-Nichols (the little red hen read aloud txt) 📗

have an abortion, either. As a preemptive strike, Mom had basically forced me onto birth control when I’d been fifteen. I liked what it did for my skin, so I stayed on it, but I’d never needed it for its intended use. Maybe one day when I decided to get naked with a guy, I’d be glad it was there.

For the first time in a very long time, I could imagine that—with Bonham. Imagine what it’d be like for him to kiss me. No way would his be like the overeager, sloppy teen boy kisses I’d had so far. Even in college, there was no finesse with the guys I’d been out with and kissed. That was as far as it’d gone. Kissing.

I was a twenty-one-year-old virgin and was beginning to think that made me a freak.

But if Mom and Dad thought I was saving it for marriage, they were out of their minds. I didn’t intend to get married for a while, but I did intend to lose my virginity the first chance I felt comfortable.

It might not have made any sense and I hadn’t even told Delaney or Cassidy. This was just for me. Yet another small step to getting out from under my parents. One they wouldn’t even know about.

“Dinner’s ready,” I called out as I put the chicken on the table.

I would’ve been content to make a plate in the kitchen, but Mom and Dad insisted that when we ate together, which wasn’t all that often these days, we bring the food to the table so no one would be running back and forth at any time.

We ate and talked for a while. Even after we finished eating. Sometimes when we were together like this, it was easy to forget how overbearing our parents were. Their helicopter parenting of me was one of the reasons I liked to get lost in books.

As we cleaned up from dinner and filled the dishwasher, Delaney asked, “Want to come downstairs and watch some movies?”

“Oh, fun. Yes,” I said right away. “We haven’t had a movie night in a while.”

“Exactly. I just have my good night call with Lily, but that’s not until seven-thirty. We can watch as many as we want and you can sleep on the couch.”

“Perfect. I’ll get changed and meet you down there.”

It didn’t take me long to brush out my hair and pull it into a bun, wash my face—because who wants gross makeup all over in the morning?—and throw on some pajamas. I was ready for movie night.

It didn’t matter that it was only six-thirty. We’d start a movie, pause for the Lily call, and then dive right back in. She had drinks in the fridge, so I didn’t even bring anything with me. We settled on a romantic comedy that we’d both been wanting to see and cuddled down on each end of the couch with our own blankets. It might’ve been summer, but there was nothing cozier than watching a movie snuggled under a blanket with the fan on. She turned that on so we wouldn’t get too warm.

It was our system and it worked for us.

When we paused for Delaney to call Lily, I grabbed my phone to scroll through some TikToks but found a missed text message instead.

Do you really not have Snapchat?

I bit my lips together to keep from howling with excitement. It was Bonham. He’d put his name in my phone when he’d added my number. No last name, though. Weird. And when I’d told him about my run-in with the guy at the bookstore, I gave him a play-by-play. That included me telling him that I’d said I didn’t have Snapchat.

I do, but what am I going to do? Give it to a creepy stranger?

I’m not a creepy stranger, am I? he answered immediately.

I can’t be sure, but… my Snapchat name is JurnieToNowhere.

The three little dots appeared and I knew I shouldn’t have been waiting for his reply, yet I was.

That seems sad. Is it sad?

Depends on the day, I told him. Because it did. There were so many times I’d thought I was going nowhere. The last couple of years not as much, but I’d had this account for a long time.

Check your requests.

I swiped out of text messages then opened up the other app. Sure enough, there was a friend request from DrummerBoy. Clearly, he was the drummer boy but I had no idea why he’d chosen that.

As soon as I hit the accept button, or at least it seemed like as soon as I hit the button, a snap came through of Bonham with the goofiest look on his face. One eyebrow was up and he was biting his lip. Honestly, it kind of looked like he was in pain. His dark hair was messier than it had been earlier and if I could’ve, I would’ve screenshotted the pic. But Snapchat told the other person when you did that, so nope.

The caption read, “I really liked talking to you today. You’re easy to talk to.”

I pulled up my reply, just a picture of me smiling. “You too.”

Another came through of him from the shoulders up. Dang. Now I was wishing he was sending me shirtless pics. I needed to get control of myself here. “So when are you available to go out?”

I bunched my shirt into my hand and lifted it so he’d only see from my nose up. My eyes were my best feature, after all. “Anytime.” Then I groaned and tapped my phone against my head three times and quickly took another pic of me with my hand slapped over my face. I typed out, “Well, I bet that doesn’t sound too eager.”

“Who are you Snapchatting with?” Delaney asked suddenly, done with her phone call.

“No one,” I said, putting my phone to sleep. She couldn’t accidentally see anything over my shoulder.

“That guy from earlier?” she asked. Still, I didn’t answer. “Can you at least tell me if he’s a nice guy or