Anyone But Nick (Anyone But... #3) - Penelope Bloom Page 0,1

of a stupid small town and your friends, but you’re in too deep to do anything about it?”

The boy thought about that, then his eyebrows scrunched up. “I play this online game, and I told a girl I met that I was in high school and the captain of the football team. She wants to meet in person now.”

I sighed. “Those were rhetorical questions. The point was you bumped into me and made me drop my nachos. You saw what I did to those nachos when they pissed me off, didn’t you? What do you think I’ll do to you?”

For a second, I thought he was about to cry, but then I saw him start to lift his arms.

“And don’t you dare dab at me again,” I warned.

The kid turned and ran. I couldn’t tell if he was laughing or crying, but I felt like I’d lost my mind either way.

“Wow,” Cade said.

Apparently, he had been watching everything from the stairs at my side. He clapped his hands slowly. “Amazing. That was really just amazing. Oh, and is it okay if I grab one of these, or should I worry about what you’ll do to me?”

“If you repeat any of that to anyone, I’ll—”

“Stomp me?” he asked. He bent down, fished out a miraculously intact nacho, and popped it into his mouth. “Don’t worry. I enjoy dramatic irony. If I told everybody Little Miss Perfect was actually falling apart on the inside, watching you struggle to keep up appearances wouldn’t be nearly as fun. Secret’s safe with me. But, really, you could’ve at least given him some advice about his online girlfriend. That was just rude.”

Cade casually headed back down to our bowling lane to take his turn, as if he hadn’t just witnessed me having a mental breakdown. Clearly, something inside me had become unhinged, and I was only barely holding it all together. I had never been the type of person to let my stress show—or be a jerk to little kids, for that matter. If there were an Olympic event for internalizing problems and putting on a calm face for the world, I would’ve been the most decorated gold medalist in history by now. I let out a slow, controlled breath. I could absolutely do this. I’d even gone as far as writing it down this morning as a daily goal: Survive bowling night with the happy couples. Show no weakness. Do not get grilled on the breakup, and do not talk about getting laid off.

Easy. Everything in the world was easy if you pretended it was. Cade was a slight hitch in the plan, but I believed him. He’d keep quiet, and nobody had to know I didn’t have everything under control. I repeated that to myself as I resumed my slow walk back to our lane.

Calm face, Miranda. Calm face. It was just like losing both of my thumbs and one eye but then having to watch all my friends give thumbs-up and carefree, happy little winks to everyone they saw. Sure, I’d be happy for them, but I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about how it was not winking if you had only one eye. All I’d ever have was blinking, and wasn’t there something tragic about that?

Iris noticed me coming and pretended to jog toward me in slow motion. She also started saying something unintelligible in slow motion, complete with exaggerated tongue movements like she was a dog with her head out the window of a moving car.

I waited impatiently for the full minute it took her to travel a couple of feet. To her credit, she stuck with the slow-motion theme all the way through the part where she noticed I didn’t have any nachos.

“Hey,” she said. “Where are the nachos?”

“Maybe I ate them,” I said dryly.

Iris laughed. “Damn. What crawled up your ass and converted it into a rental property?”

I must’ve looked particularly pathetic, because Iris’s eyebrows scrunched together, and she put her hands on my shoulders. “Hey,” she said more softly. “Are you okay?”

As much as I wanted to smile and nod, I knew Iris would see straight through the lie. “A kid ran into me and made me drop them. Then I stomped them into the ground and made him run off laughing or crying—I’m still not sure which. Okay? And I was really mean to him. I normally like kids. So stop interrogating me about it. That’s everything.”

Iris looked like she was trying to keep a straight