Page 136 of While You Were Trending

“Because they’re bad for your feet.”

“What else do you think?”

“I hate messes.”

“Like water on the floor?”

“Like empty chip bags and months-old magazines and half-done art projects and tissues littered all over bedrooms.”

Mabel makes a choking noise.

“You been snooping in our bedrooms?” Olivia says.

Declan shakes his head. “Just guessing after knowing Ginny as long as I have.”

This is good. He’s making me madder. I need to be mad.

Also, he’s making shit up now.

“I was a neat freak,” I declare. “And you know it.”

“You cleaned up for Alex, but you didn’t want to.”

“That’s a bold assumption.”

“You’d walk in the door after class and drop your bag right in the hallway, then head into the kitchen and leave the milk out, and drop towels on the floor in the bathroom and not pick them up until Alex looked at your messes, and then you’d spring into action cleaning everything like you thought he’d dump you if you didn’t.” He shrugs. “Or so it seemed to me.”

My toes and fingers tingle.

Flow whimper-whine-howls as she collapses against my legs.

Declan’s not wrong.

Being a neat freakisn’tmy default. I had to do it onOn the Rhodesbecause we lived in a camper trailer and even the tiniest thing out of place would send my mother into a fit.

I did it with Alex—forAlex—because I’d been taught cleanliness was something you do for the people you love who’ll be mad if you don’t.

But Declan saw me.

He saw right through to not just what I did and what I wanted, butwhyI did it.

And that’s giving me a case of the shivers.

“I’m going to bed,” I repeat.

And this time, I don’t turn back.

Because I’m a chicken.

26

THE KISSING TRUTH

Declan

Since my dogfollowed Ginny when she left the cookout, I head back to the main house to collect her after the barn is cleaned up.

Felt good to talk to Adelaide about her mom. To do a good deed for the day.