I pulled back, a smile playing along my lips. “You are. I can tell you are.”
Ivy placed her hands on her hips, sassy as ever.
“How can you tell?”
I snickered at her attitude. “Because even though it’s been six years, I can still read you like a freaking book.”
A conniving smile formed on her flushed face. “Oh, you learned how to read in the last six years? That’s wonderful, Dawson.”
As I scanned her face, I couldn’t help but lose the hold I had on my laugh.
After my laughter subsided, I shook my head and I asked her again. “What’s going on? Why did you push me out of your house?”
Her face dropped and then I remembered my earlier thought. Fuck, what if there really is a guy in there?
“Is there a guy in there or something?”
She gasped, bringing her hand up to her mouth. “No!”
“Then why can’t I come inside?”
“Why are you here again?”
I pulled the blueprints up and waved them in front of her face. “I came bearing a white flag.”
Her eyes slanted. “I see you learned to read but you forgot your colors. How sad.”
I couldn’t help it. I barked out another laugh.
“Someone has gotten quite sassy over the last six years.”
Her soft giggle filled the air, and something inside me came alive.
“I thought maybe…” I pulled my lower lip in my mouth, feeling as nervous as I did the night I kissed her, which was completely pathetic that I still remembered how nervous I’d been, even this many years later. And Jesus, fuck, I was a man now; there was no need to be nervous around a female like I was still going through puberty.
“You thought what?” she asked, looking at me so sweetly that I felt my body visibly relax.
I let out a breath. “I just think we should start over. I don’t want to be mad at you anymore…” I looked away for a second, then brought my attention back to her hopeful-looking doe eyes, “Actually, I can’t really justify my being angry at you anymore. Not after what you told me. I don’t know if we’ll ever get to where we were before, as best friends, but I think we should probably try to let go of some of this anger and hurt feelings from six years ago. That’s stupid.”
Ivy nodded her head up and down and looked relieved. Did she really think I could still be upset with her after what she’d told me? It was just this giant misunderstanding. So giant that it had caused a lot of pain, but it really was a misunderstanding. I probably wouldn’t have looked at it like that six years ago, but I liked to think I was a little more mature now. Even if I was acting like a dweeb with taped-up glasses talking to the most popular girl in school.
“That sounds nice.”
Ivy’s voice was a little wobbly, so I studied her face, and found my eyes getting lost in all the beautiful small curves, lingering on her lips for far longer than a second, and then landing back onto her big, green eyes.
“So, do you want to talk about these, then?”
“Um,” she started, looking back to the front door and then back to me.
A nervous pit filled my stomach. “What is going on, Ivy?”
She timidly said, “Well…”
I’d had enough. She was hiding something inside and I wasn’t waiting for her to beat around the bush. I took one more glance at her face before jostling around her and stalked to the door.
I sent a silent prayer up to God that she wasn’t lying when she’d told me there wasn’t a guy in there. It’d been awhile. The Ivy I once knew was long gone. Hell, for all I knew, she could be fostering a thousand puppies inside, or running a meth lab. I truly had no idea what I was dealing with.
I opened the door with her hot on my heels, preparing myself for the worst, and then my eyes took in the fucking warzone.