My Best Friend's Brother Read Free Page B

talking to her mother in the background. “What? I didn’t hear you.”
    I turned my head toward the bookshelf so he couldn’t read my lips. “There’s this guy in here, and he’s really, really HOT .” I turned my head in time to see him stick his nose back in the atlas. “Did you hear me?” I asked in my normal voice.
    “Yeah,” she uttered, “something about a hot guy. So go talk to him!”
    “I don’t know…” I was always the shy type.
    “No, you should. Where are you?’
    “At the mall,” I replied. Then I remembered. “Hey, how’s your brother?” Please mention his name!
    “Oh, he’s good,” she breathed. “He met Burke this morning, because Burke was on a business trip much of the weekend,” she said, going off on another tangent.
    The giggly girls grew noisy, so I pressed the phone hard against my ear to try to make out what she was saying. I couldn’t catch most of it.
    “Are you there?” is the next thing I heard.
    “Yeah,” I breathed. “Can you come by the mall?”
    “I’d like to, but I’m packing. Can you come by here? When I finish, maybe we can go skate?”
    I was about to say yes when a smile formed on his lips. He was still looking at the atlas, but it felt like it was directed at me. I bit my lip, trying to decide—best friend or drop-dead gorgeous hot guy? Ugh, decisions! But what kind of a friend would I be if I refused to see her before she left on vacation? “I’ll be right—”
    She cut me off. “Someone’s on the other line, how about I call you in a few hours, okay? I think it may be my brother, probably lost already. He’s been out all weekend in some cheesy rental! I just hope it’s not that dumb jock again!”
    “Um, okay.” I was going to ask if she wanted me to drop by, but she hung up.
    I put my phone away and looked at the giggly girls. They’re all pretty short—not that I’m tall or anything—two brunettes and three blondes. All between fourteen and sixteen. One of them pointed to him , the others checked him out and whispered back and forth like sixth-graders.
    Annoyed, I stuck my nose back in the book. When my eyes wandered a few seconds later, he was looking at me, plain as day!
    He gestured to the giggly girls with his head, made a bit of a face and smiled.
    My shoulders sunk toward my feet and my mouth formed a grin. He’s looking at me! Naturally, I tried to contain myself—I’ve imagined things like this before. Yes, I’ve imagined gorgeous, literate guys checking me out, when they’re merely zit-faced losers with braces, dirty hair and the inability to formulate a sentence.
    Need I remind you, the guys at school are not much to look at?
    His attention shifted away from me. He put the atlas back on the shelf and pulled out another. Yup, I’d imagined it! But I found pleasure in watching him anyway, so I did.
    There’s a term for that—it’s called stalking , right?
    Before I could stalk much longer, he put the atlas down and very coolly strolled my way.
    I pretended not to notice. I didn’t want to look dumb when he’d pass by me. That’s happened before, too, and not with a guy this hot.
    My eyes fixed to page sixteen. I waited in suspense.
    No one passed by. My breath stopped when I looked up: There he was.
    “Good book?” he asked with a half-smile.
    “Uh-huh,” I uttered, unable to find my voice.
    He cocked his head and looked at the cover. “ Love at the End of the Day ,” he read, straightening his head and nodding as if that answered his question. “Going to buy that?”
    I glanced toward the front of the store, where the clerk sat in a rotating chair, blowing a bubble and lost in a book. My eyes met the Greek god’s. “I don’t know. Should I?”
    He shrugged. The giggly girls laughed loudly, but he blocked my view of them. “You could buy it and have lunch with me. Or you can leave it and have lunch with me…” The corners of his mouth rose into a seductive smile. “Or, you can bash me over the head