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Mom and Barry hadn’t waited up for me, thank goodness. I hurried through the dark house to my new room and quickly shut the door, flipping on a light. As I did, I continued to scrub at my mouth. Though no one could see me, I blushed.
Honestly, the whole messy business was plain embarrassing.
I kept wondering why Todd had kissed me, why I hadn’t liked it, why I’d let him continue so long.
My mind wandered to Ryder. Of course. After asking myself if it would’ve felt the same to kiss him, I immediately banished that question from my brain and decided I shouldn’t be thinking about him at all.
Too keyed up to sleep, I flopped onto my bed and pulled my laptop out of my book bag that lay cushioned on a pillow. After booting up, I logged into Facebook, hoping maybe some of my Hillsburg friends were online. I needed a good dose of the nerd herd after the night I’d just had. Craving conversation with people more like me, I typed in my password and logged on.
I should’ve known better. At this time of night, they were no doubt sleeping peacefully in their beds. But the little red number 1 in my friend requests box reminded me of Kiera’s request from Ryder.
Biting my lip, I stared hard at that number. If I ignored it, everyone would know, especially after Kiera had made such a big deal of sending it, and they’d think I didn’t like Ryder. Or maybe they’d know I did and was too mortified to friend him. Then again, Ryder hadn’t bothered to tell Kiera to stop, so he must not care whether we were Facebook friends or not.
I was seriously over-thinking this, so I decided to just do it. Letting out a shaky sigh, I clicked on the red number and then slid the cursor over the accept button. I hovered on top of it a moment before holding all the air in my lungs and quickly pushing down.
And Ryder Yates became my friend, on Facebook anyway.
Temptation was impossible to resist, I clicked his link and checked out his profile. He had two hundred thirteen friends, twelve of which we shared. His profile picture showed his truck, the new extended cab I’d seen parked in his driveway. In the text box under that, he’d written, “Yeah, I’m that one guy who goes to that one school.”
I rolled my eyes but sucked in a breath when I saw how his relationship status read, In a relationship, with Kiera’s link under that. I clicked back to my own profile before I could open any of his photo albums and torture myself further by staring int
o his gorgeous green eyes.
Bridget had invited me to a party in Farmville.
As I began to reply, I noticed a new friend had logged on. Hoping Bridge couldn’t sleep either, I checked to find out who was online with me and gasped.
Ryder was on Facebook.
Ugh.
I was about to disconnect when my chat box popped up and, yes, he wrote to me.
“Hi.”
I froze, totally petrified. Ryder Yates wanted to chat with me on Facebook. At midnight. Not that the time mattered, but still. I briefly wondered if I should quickly go ahead and logoff, but I’d already stalled too long not to be able to see his comment without being able to say, “Oh, I must’ve missed it before I logged out. Sorry,” tomorrow in school if he asked why I’d ignored him.
So I typed in a quick “Hi,” hoping he was one of those people who just liked to acknowledge everyone he saw online, and that would be that.
He wasn’t one of those people.
“What’re you doing up?”
Grinding my teeth, I kept my answer simple. “Unpacking.” Probably what I should be doing, anyway, instead of chatting with him on Facebook.
“Really?” he wrote back. “I would’ve taken you for the tidy type to have all your things in order by now.”
Was he making fun of me? There was no way I could keep a simple response after that comment. “I AM the tidy type. That’s why it’s taking me so long. I have no idea where to put everything.”
My room hadn’t been nearly this mammoth in Hillsburg; it still felt weird sleeping on a king-sized bed. I was used to the single I’d had at home. There was almost too much storage with all the closet space and bureau drawers I had now. I felt like a little beggar girl who’d broken into a five-star hotel for the night. The place definitely did not feel like my room.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Ryder typed.
His admission sent warmth around my belly. Something about guys showing their soft side always made me feel all sigh-worthy. But I didn’t want to get mushy toward Ryder Yates any more than I already was. Not wanting to disconnect because, well, I felt all warm and mushy toward him, but not wanting to actually show those feelings, I decided to keep things light.
“Mourning your bowling defeat?” I asked.
I could almost see him grin as he read my response. Something inside me glowed with delight.
