Free Solving for Ex by LeighAnn Kopans Page A

question was, did I like someone like him?
    Really, I didn’t know much about him. Hardly anything at all. I knew I liked Brendan—I knew I liked his easy, oblivious smile, the way we were together, the way he smelled. But how much of him did I like because he was familiar? Because he’d rescued me? Because he’d been the lives-next-door best friend that I’d never had living in farm country, because he’d been my ticket to everyone liking me at Mansfield? Brendan was the person who helped me start over.
    He also happened to be perfect for me.
    “It’s just a dance,” I said under my breath. I trudged up the front steps and into the house, which was cluttered but not dirty, like always. A problem of people with too much money and too much time on their hands—shopping. The living room was full of random department-store bags containing things like brand-new comforters and napkin rings, and yet another black cardigan or pair of silver earrings for Kristin.
    I stopped in the kitchen to grab a soda, and a note waited for me on the kitchen counter. It was in Kristin’s scrawling handwriting: “Out late. Frozen pizza in freezer.” I wrinkled my nose. Pizza was okay, but the cardboard crust made the frozen stuff completely inedible for me. Kristin meant well, but she never paid much attention to things like that.
    I traipsed through the open living room area, pulling out my phone and checking the texts for the homework questions from Brendan I knew would be there. Every day last year I’d had to field his questions clarifying the assignment. Nothing. I scrolled through to make sure. Nope. Seriously? Nothing? It must just be that he didn’t want to bother with it the first few days—even though he was a little bit of a slacker, he was smart as hell, and always caught up.
    My limbs buzzed with some weird feeling I couldn’t name. Antsiness, annoyance, I didn’t know. I just knew I didn’t want to sit still.
    I dropped my backpack with a thud at the doorway to my room, and kept walking toward the bathroom. Without even pulling up my hair, I cranked on the cold water, bent down, and splashed my face with it. When had it gotten so hot in the house? Or was it just a weird bubble of heat around my whole body?
    Either way, that water felt good. I leaned forward, planting my hands on the sink and staring in the mirror. Water dripped off my eyelashes, my nose, and my bottom lip. I wiped the water from my lids and leaned in even more.
    I’d always thought of my hazel eyes as a mess of colors that couldn’t make up their minds to be one thing or another, but now that I really paid attention, the light brown flecked with green and a little blue and ringed with dark brown on the outside was mesmerizing. Like a kaleidoscope. My lashes were dark, thick and pretty, and combined with the careful makeup I’d applied there, they looked mysterious. Like something a guy might want to lose himself in. Suddenly, I could see why Vincent looked at my face, instead of scoping out my chest.
    I leaned back a little then and pressed my fingertips to my cheeks. They had thinned out over the summer, I realized now that I really looked at them, leaving what appeared to be a higher cheekbone. Even though my face was tanned golden and sprayed with freckles by my summer in the sun, I definitely looked more grown-up than I had the last time I stared in this mirror. The summer had changed me.
    I mean, hell. I was pretty. Pretty enough for a guy like Vincent to really, really notice me. To be excited, instead of annoyed, when he got stuck going to Sadie with me.
    Pretty enough for a guy like him to pursue, even.
    Staring in that mirror, imagining how Vincent had been looking at me in the hallway, my eyes trailed down my neck, which I stroked with my fingers, and down to my shoulder. My bra peeked out of my tank top strap a little. It was actually a little sexy.
    If I was Vincent, would I really want to go to Sadie with me? If I didn’t know about