Leslie Kelly - The Guy Most Likely To... - Underneath It All / Can't Get You Out of My Head / A Moment Like This

She and Seth had been as different as chocolate and sauerkraut…yet those ten months they’d been together, she’d believed there was nobody else on the planet as right for her.

Stupid teenager.

“Did they mail your diploma to the dark side of the moon?” she asked with a sweet smile. “I mean, I assumed you were kidnapped by aliens, the way you disappeared.”

“You can’t know how badly I feel about that.”

“Save it.”

“It killed me not to be able to take you to prom.”

“Yeah, well, believe me, if you’d been close and I’d had a weapon that night, I would have happily taken care of that killing thing for you.”

“Lauren…”

“Then, on Monday, when I found out you’d withdrawn from school, I stopped hating you long enough to be really worried,” she admitted, though she chided herself for the note of concern she still heard in her voice.

But she had been concerned. Concerned enough to forgive him, enough to think something truly awful must have happened. Enough to decide to be there for him during whatever calamity must have befallen him. She’d waited for him to reach out to her to explain. And she’d waited.

Finally, she’d called—number disconnected.

She’d written—letter returned to sender.

Only the fact that his younger sister, a middle schooler, had also withdrawn the same day convinced her Seth hadn’t been murdered. That, and his second call. He’d phoned her house that autumn, saying he was okay, and he was sorry.

Lauren had already been living in Georgia with her aunt, having just started her freshman year of college, and her parents had refused to give Seth her number. When her mom called to give her the message, Lauren had only cried for about ten minutes before going back to her regularly scheduled plan of get-over-Seth-and-move-on. End of contact. Until today.

“Lauren, I…”

“Hey, look guys, it’s Seth and Lauren! The king and queen of the prom are finally together!”

“Oh, fuck my life,” she muttered under her breath.

Seth’s quick, short bark of laughter told her she hadn’t been quiet enough.

Never had Lauren so wished for a time machine—she’d get in it and go back ten minutes, to the moment when she’d pulled up her rental car in front of this overly lavish place. Instead of parking, she’d have kept on driving. Canada was nice this time of year. Or Mexico. The Sahara. Anywhere else.

Though, honestly, if she had a time machine, she’d be better off going back to warn her young, vulnerable self to never say yes to Seth Crowder in the first place. She could even take an extra minute during the trip to offer herself a stock tip: Starbucks, yes. Borders, no. Oh, and since you’re single, cruise on up to Harvard and introduce yourself to this dude named Mark Zuckerberg. He’s single right now, too. He’s a bit of an egghead, but he’s got an idea for this thing called Facebook…

“Pose for a picture guys—the one you never got on prom night!”

“Fat chance,” she snapped, turning quickly. They could take a picture of her butt as she walked away. “Lauren, we need to talk,” Seth said.

“No, we don’t.”

“Please!” He held out a hand and put it on her arm.

She shivered slightly, affected in spite of herself. Seth was here, looking at her with desperate longing in his beautiful green eyes, touching her with those strong hands that had once given her as much pleasure as a girl could get with her hymen still intact. This man had been born understanding a woman’s anatomy—no belly button confusion for him. He and her clitoris had made friends on their third date. By the fifth they’d been drinking buddies.

But it didn’t matter.

“Let me go, Seth,” she told him.

“Can’t you give me a chance to explain?”

“Nope.”

“Come on, a half hour, that’s all I ask.”

Considering she was already standing here thinking about her panties and her girlie bits, and his habit of making them sing, five minutes was already too long.

“It’s not going to happen.”

“Why not?”

She answered the only way she could. Truthfully.

“Because I have spent the past ten years either crying over you or hating your guts. I’m over the crying, and I’m past the hating. Now all I feel for you is…nothing. And I intend to keep it that way.”

Then, ignoring the wide eyes of their audience, and the tiny gasp of what might have been dismay that he didn’t try to hide, she stalked through the lobby and back out the front door of this dubiously named resort.

“Celebrations,” hell. They ought to call it “Nightmares.”

WELL, THIS WAS GOING to be harder than he’d thought.

Seth hadn’t expected Lauren to welcome him with open arms, or to smile and melt against him the minute he looked her way. He had never imagined it would be easy to get her to give him another shot, if not romantically, at least in friendship. Not that friendship was what he really wanted from her. But reconnecting in any way was better than the decade of silence he’d just endured.

Still, he hadn’t expected the sweet, funny, sexy girl he’d known to tell him she hated him. That stung; he hadn’t even known Lauren was capable of that emotion. Then again, she didn’t look like the girl he’d known, either. The pretty, vivacious cheerleader had turned into a stunning woman. Her hair was still thick and golden-brown, with highlights that framed her face. Her eyes were still a stunning ice-blue. But the rest of her was all grown-up, intoxicating woman.

“I’d call that being let down hard,” said a commiserating voice.

Glancing over, he saw his kid sister, Emily, who had convinced him to come this weekend. Em worked for Celebrations, and she was the one who’d confirmed for him that Lauren would be attending. He hadn’t even bothered to let the organizers of the event know he was coming. He just came. Heck, he’d skipped out on prom and graduation, why not crash the reunion?

“Ya think?”

“You knew this wouldn’t be easy.”

“Nothing ever is,” he muttered. And it hadn’t been, for a long time. Not since the day of his senior prom, when his entire world had fallen apart.

“You’ve got the whole weekend. You’ll find a way to make her listen.”

“And if I don’t?”

Emily squeezed his arm. “Then she doesn’t deserve you.”

“Dude, you got served!” someone else said. The voice was familiar—as was the chortle.

“How’s it going, Boogie?” Seth replied with a weary sigh as the other man walked over. He wished he’d followed Lauren out the door. But there wasn’t much chance of avoiding the rest of his former classmates in his quest to finally make things right with Lauren, so he figured he might as well get the greetings over with. Besides, he had a few old friends to whom he owed apologies and explanations. Nobody as much as Lauren, but she hadn’t been the only one he’d disappointed with his disappearance all those years ago.

The other man—never a close friend—cast him a sheepish glance. “Hey, keep the Boogie on the down-low, man, my wife’s over there and she doesn’t know that was my nickname.”

Does she know you used to pick your nose and flick boogers on girls in our freshman biology class?

By their senior year, Billy “Boogie” Drake had liked to pretend he’d earned the name because of his mad dancing skills. Seriously, Boogie? Did we go to school in, like, 1978? Of course not. And anybody who’d known him since middle school knew the true origin of the unattractive nickname.

What the hell am I doing here? He could be home in L.A., hobnobbing with his clients, some of the wealthiest, most successful athletes in the country.