Flirting with Boys by Abbott, Hailey (freda ebook reader TXT) 📗

town and various resort employees but they managed to nab a booth by the window.

Celeste slid across the slick red leather seat and grabbed the hem of her white skirt as it rode up on her thighs, practically flashing her nude-colored bikini to the whole restaurant. Quickly, she glanced at her breakfast companion, but he didn’t even seem to have noticed. He was busy studying the one-page menu encased in limp plastic. It was a little weird, Celeste thought, being out like this with him. There had been no flirting since they left the resort, just basic friendliness.

“Hi there.”

Nick and Celeste looked up. A plump, gray-haired waitress with a stained white apron around her ample middle was standing over them, her pen poised. “What can I get you?”

“I’ll have the oatmeal with strawberries and a side of bacon, please,” Celeste said. “And a coffee.”

“I’ll have the three-egg breakfast, scrambled, with home fries, toast, a double order of bacon, a short stack of pancakes, and the fruit bowl. And a large orange juice and a large coffee.” Nick smiled pleasantly and handed back the menu. “Thanks.”

Celeste was staring at him with her mouth open.

“Nice breakfast,” she said. Nick shrugged.

“I’m always starving. I probably have a tapeworm or something.”

Celeste took a deep breath. “Okay, look, Nick, we have to talk.”

He arranged his face in an innocent expression and folded his hands like a little boy in school. “What ith it, Mithith Tippen?” he asked in a lisp.

“Be serious—this is important. Devon’s leaving,” she began.

“Right,” he said.

“So, my dad wants”—Celeste hesitated–“me to be in charge of planning the screening party with you. Like figuring out the theme, hiring the vendors and the band, getting the stuff for the film showing in place, doing the publicity—everything.” She watched him carefully. His face remained totally blank and neutral. She went on.

“And this party is going to be a really big deal—like huge.

I mean, the whole festival is a big deal. This is really our chance to show the guests what Pinyon can do.”

Nick nodded. “I get it. I mean, I want this to be perfect as much as you do—if my film gets a good reception, who knows what could happen? Maybe it would even get picked up… .” His face turned red and he looked down at his hands and fidgeted with a paper napkin.

Celeste raised her eyebrows. This was the first time she’d actually seen the suave and cool Nick actually look, sort of, well, unsure.

Nick looked up from the napkin, which he had

impaled on the tines of his fork. “So all this is actually just me being selfish. And you can always count on me to pull through with that, right?” His old devilish grin flashed across his face, and he sat back, draping one arm over the back of the booth and stretching his legs out under the table.

“Here you go.” The waitress set down their food.

Celeste stirred her oatmeal and watched Nick stuff half his eggs into his mouth in the first bite.

“So, what’s the deal with your movie, anyway?”

Celeste asked, pouring milk over the oatmeal so that it swirled with the brown sugar on top. “I mean, don’t you spend all your time hanging out with the Olsen twins and Rumer Willis at clubs?” she teased. “When did you find time to do actual work?”

Nick laid several strips of bacon on top of his toast, which he’d slathered in butter and jelly, and put another piece of toast on top. He looked at the whole thing with satisfaction and took a huge bite. “Ashfter …” he tried to say, spraying a few crumbs across the table. He held up a finger. Celeste waited while he chewed. He tried again.

“After I finished the film for my film studies class, I thought it could be better if I took more time with it.” He shrugged. “So I got permission to use the editing studio at UCLA and worked on it a bunch this year.”

“Yeah?” Celeste said, spooning up some oatmeal.

“Most people wouldn’t work on something after it was due, if it was for a class.”

Nick shrugged. “Well, it was my project. I wanted it to be good.” He took another gargantuan bite of his toast-and-bacon sandwich.

“Yeah, I totally know what you mean,” Celeste said, a little more enthusiastically than she’d intended. Nick looked up, surprised.

Celeste focused on her oatmeal bowl instead of meeting his eyes. The words had just slipped out.

“What do you mean? Do you have a film too?” Nick asked.

Celeste could feel her face getting hot. She stirred her coffee a little too hard, slopping some out onto the table. “Um, no, not a film or anything. It’s just that I did that once with a story,” she mumbled, laying her napkin over the coffee spill and watching the brown liquid spread across the white paper.

Nick looked interested. “What are you, a writer or something?”

Celeste looked at the ceiling and then out the window, hoping that if she just ignored the question, he would forget about it and they could move on to another subject. But when she looked back at Nick, he was still waiting for an answer. She dropped her eyes to her plate and nibbled at a strip of bacon.

“I’m not really,” she said. “I just like to write stories and stuff sometimes. Just for myself.”

“So wouldn’t that make you a writer then?” Nick

asked.

“No, definitely not. I mean, it’s not like I’m good or anything.”

Nick picked up his fork and stabbed the stack of pancakes. “Usually the people who say they’re awesome writers suck and people like you turn out to be the real writers,” he remarked, sawing off a hunk of syrup-soaked pancake. “Anyway, what do you mean, you did something like that with a story once?”

Celeste shook her head. “It was nothing. Just that I really liked this story I wrote for English, so I kept working on it later—for almost the whole rest of the year.”

“Cool,” Nick said. “Can I read it sometime?”

“No!”