Ten minutes later, I’ve discovered I’m not such a girly girl after all: I can successfully light a fire! Indoors. With matches and wood and plenty of newspaper stuffed in between. Okay, so it’s not exactly an impressive achievement, but I’m still fist-pumping the air because it’s my very first fire.
I get up off the floor and go to the kitchen to wash my hands. I wonder how long it will be before Adam wakes up. Perhaps I should tap on his—
Wait, was that his voice? Yes. That’s definitely him. He must be talking on the phone. Or—OHMYGOSH what if there’s a girl in his room with him? A girl who stayed over last night? What if he—
No, don’t be ridiculous, Livi. He wants you, remember?
I peek around the kitchen doorway into the passage and listen carefully. Adam’s voice—a pause—Adam’s voice—another pause. So he’s on the phone. I think. Unless the girl in there has a really quiet—
Stop thinking that! There’s no girl!
His door opens. Crap! I hold back a squeal and dash to the lounge before Adam can step out of his room and see me. I drop onto one of the cushions and instruct my thundering heart to slow down. It doesn’t listen. I bring my knees up to my chest and hug them tightly. My eyes are trained on the doorway. I don’t hear footsteps, but if he’s wearing socks and walking slowly, then he probably wouldn’t be making much—
Ohmygosh it’s him. Standing in the doorway. Holding the note up. And because I’m sitting on the floor and because of the way he’s holding the note, I can’t see his face. I can’t see his reaction.
My brain whizzes through the words I wrote at top speed.
Dear Adam,
You said that what I’ve always wanted is to be accepted by the right people. That’s true. What’s also true is that the right person is YOU. I made a lot of mistakes on the path to figuring this out, but now that I’ve realised it, I won’t ever forget. You’ve always been the one. You were there every day at school. You were there every holiday when my parents didn’t have time for me. When I was in a faraway country, you were always at the other end of an email. And this year, no matter how many times I’ve taken you for granted, you’ve been there for me.
Adam, I don’t want the popular guy, the hot guy, the rich guy. I want YOU. Only you. And if you want me too … just follow the arrows.
Yours, if you’ll have me,
Livi
Falling in love with Adam was something that happened slowly. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment or day or week. But seeing him standing there in his boxers and hoodie with sticking-up hair, one sock pulled up to his calf, the other scrunched around his ankle, and his glasses just a tiny bit skew, my wildly beating heart falls in love with him all over again.
He slowly lowers the note, and the moment I see that half-smile of his, relief and hope collide within me. Maybe I still have a chance. Maybe I haven’t completely ruined things.
“Do you wanna, um, sit?” I ask. He crosses the room and sits on a cushion on the opposite side of the blanket. I slide my legs down and cross them. Then I pull them back up again. I fold my hands across the top of my knees. Then I sit on them. “This is so silly,” I eventually blurt out, “because I’ve been thinking about you every second of every day this week, daydreaming of the moment when I finally get to see you again—even though it’s only been a few days—and now you’re sitting in front of me and … other than everything I wrote in that letter … I can’t think of what to say.”
Adam smiles and looks down at his lap. “I’ll say something, if that’s okay?”
I nod. “Please.”
“I was happy to see your car here when I got home last night. Ridiculously happy, in fact.” My insides begin to melt, and my breath comes out unsteadily. “I was so worried last weekend. You were gone by the time I got up on Sunday, and you didn’t come back. I just … I thought I needed time to figure out if I believed you, and I thought you needed time to figure out if you actually meant everything you said. And then you didn’t come back, and I realised I didn’t need any time at all. Not knowing whether you wanted me or not didn’t for one second change the fact that I wanted you. So I decided that even if you hadn’t meant all the things you said to me outside Jazzy Beanbag, I was willing to beg you to mean them. To give me a chance to show you I could be enough for you.”
“You are,” I say, my voice coming out as a wobbly whisper. My legs slide away from my chest, and I crawl across the cushions towards him. I sit as close to him as I dare and slowly reach for his hand. He laces his fingers between mine, and shivers course up my arm.
“So it’s kind of funny, I guess,” he continues, “that while you were planning this—” he gestures to the picnic “—I was planning something else.”
Now I’m really struggling to breathe normally. “Y—you were?”
He nods, then rolls his eyes. “It’s the cheesiest cliché ever, but …”
“I don’t care. I like cheesy.”
“I kind of … wrote a song. For you.”
He wrote a song. FOR ME.
“It’s, um, not really finished, but …” He stands up and hurries from the room. When he returns, he’s holding Hugo’s Dad’s guitar. He sits, crosses his legs, and places the guitar in front of him. I’m about to hyperventilate because this—the guitar—the socks—his concentration as he slides his hand up the neck of the guitar—is one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen. “Okay,” he says. “Hang on. I need more sugar so I don’t pass out from sheer nervousness.” He leans forward, grabs two strawberries, and pops one in his mouth.
A breathy laugh escapes me. “Don’t be nervous. It’s just me.”
He chews and swallows. “Exactly,” he says, and his face is flushed as he looks up and adds, “It’s you.”
I hug my knees again and bite my lip. Adam puts the second strawberry in his mouth, then repositions the guitar. He finishes chewing and takes a deep breath. “I’m not nervous, I’m not nervous,” he mutters.
“You’re not nervous,” I whisper to him, hoping it’ll help.
His right hand hovers above the strings for a moment, and then he begins. I close my eyes and breathe in the music, not only hearing it, but feeling it. Notes tumble over each other as he plucks the strings. I want to keep my eyes closed, but I can’t because then I’ll miss the way his hands move over the instrument. He starts singing, and then I can’t look anywhere but at his lips. And then I can’t think of anything but kissing them. And I know I should be listening to the words, but I’m lost now in his voice, and then he dares to look up at me, and his eyes—his beautiful, bright, luminous eyes—capture me, and I can’t tear my gaze away, even though my neck is heating up and my face is heating up—
And then he stops. “It’s … yeah, I know it’s not perfect.” He places the guitar on the floor beside the blanket. “But I was just trying to take everything you make me feel and put it all into one—”
The moment the guitar’s out of the way, I launch across the cushions and pin him down. I kiss his lips and his chin and his nose and, after only about a second of surprise, he starts kissing me back. “Please …” I manage to get out between kisses “… don’t ever … sing songs to anyone but me.”
“I never have,” he says before dragging his lips along my neck. He rolls us until somehow I’m underneath and he’s above me, pressing his lips to my forehead. “The song at Jazzy Beanbag?” Another kiss on my nose. “It was for you.” His lips find mine. His tongue, my tongue. Strawberries and toothpaste. It’s an odd combination, but I don’t care. All I want is more. “And all the cheesy pick-up lines,” he says against my mouth. “They were for you too.”
I laugh. “I know.” I kiss his bottom lip. “I loved them.” His top lip. “Especially the one about perfect fourths and fifths. Although,” I add, pulling my head back slightly so I can look at him, “that one would only make sense to someone who speaks music jargon.”
He gently pulls my left hand away from where it’s wrapped in his hair and kisses
each of my fingertips on the pads of rough skin produced by years of violin-playing. “Good thing I used it on my favourite musician girl then.”
We’re wrapped in each other’s arms again, tumbling across cushions, and then I squeal because I just rolled onto a tub of something. “What did I squish?” I ask, leaning to the side and laughing.
“Yum,” Adam says, looking at the back of my pyjama top. “Squashed tomatoes.”
“Ew.”
“You might just have to lose this article of clothing,” he adds with a sly smile, his hands snaking beneath my top and around my waist. It’s deliciously ticklish.
“Look at you,” I say through my giggles, “casually mentioning getting naked without even a hint of a blush.”
That turns the tips of his ears red, and then he’s burying his head in my neck and saying, “Ugh, I’m terrible at this stuff.”
“No! You are so not terrible, trust me. However, if you’d like to learn from the master—or, in this case, mistress …” I pause and frown. “No, ‘mistress’ definitely isn’t right either. Let’s go with expert. If you want to learn from the expert—” I lean around him and grab a cherry “—here’s how to do it.” I tilt my head back and hold the cherry over my mouth. I part my lips, then slowly lower the cherry. I grip it between my teeth, intending to seductively pluck it from the stalk. But it slips from my teeth and out of my fingers, rolls down my chin, bounces off my chest, and lands in the squished tub of tomatoes.
We both burst out laughing, and Adam covers my face in kisses. “You’re right,” he says. “You’re definitely also terrible at this stuff.”
“Seems to be working on you, though,” I point out. “So I must be doing something right.”
“Definitely.” His eyes soften as he stares into mine. He takes my right hand and presses his lips gently aginst the inside of my wrist. It’s a kiss that gives me goosebumps and starts my heart racing all over again. “Everything about you is just right. I love you the way you are, and you don’t need to change anything about yourself.”
My heart skids to a halt, then races even faster. “Did you just say you love me?”
“Um …” Adam looks startled. “I guess I did.”
My smile is practically taking over my whole face. “So smooth the way you just snuck that in there,” I tease.
His ears are red, but he’s laughing. “That’s me. I’ve got all the smooth moves.”
“I know.” I pull him closer and skim my lips along his neck until I reach his ear. “I love you too.”
THE END
Turn the page for bonus content!
Music References
If you’d like to look up and listen to any of the music Adam and Livi played and/or listened to in this book, here are the composers and titles of the various pieces. For a list of YouTube links, visit Livi’s Playlist online.
CHAPTER SIX
Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, II. Adagio cantabile (“Sonata Pathétique”)
Brahms: Waltz No. 15
Dvořák: Humoresque No. 7
Chopin: Grande Valse Brillante in E-flat Major
Chopin: Waltzes, Op. 64: No. 1 in D-flat Major (“Minute Waltz”)
Chopin: Impromptu No. 4 in C-sharp Minor (“Fantaisie-Impromptu”)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Satie: Gymnopédie No. 1 - 3
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Harold Arlen: Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Bach: Suite No. 3 in D Major, II. Air (“Air on the G String”)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Piano Guys: The Mission / How Great Thou Art
South Africanisms
I’m not sure how universally used these words are, so if you haven’t come across them before, here’s what they mean:
digs – (informal) lodgings. In student lingo, this generally means a house shared by several students.
matric – Grade 12, the last year of high school.
Livi’s Photo Journal
View Livi’s photo journal online.
Dear Reader
Thank you for reading The Trouble with Flirting! Whether you liked it, didn’t like it, or just want to tell me what your favourite superhero movie is, I’d love to know your thoughts. Please leave a review somewhere online! Reviews don’t have to be lengthy or intellectual or fancy—they’re simply what you thought and felt about the story. Reviews help readers to find new books, and authors appreciate every single one.
Thank you!
Author’s Note
If you’re planning a trip to Cape Town in the hopes of visiting The Banana Pearl or Jazzy Beanbag, I’m afraid I have to disappoint you. Those places exist only in the pages of this book. However, UCT, Clifton 4th Beach, and Rhodes Memorial are entirely real, and if you’ve got a Cape Town holiday coming up, perhaps you should add them to your list of places to visit!
After a stupid miscommunication, everyone in Andi’s new res thinks she’s secretly dating Damien, boyfriend of resident queen bee Charlotte. Since the rumor’s already out there and refuses to be squashed, Andi and Damien decide to keep up the facade in the hopes of snagging the attention of the people they really want to be with. What could possibly go wrong?
Look out for
THE TROUBLE WITH FAKING
coming in October 2014!
Sign up for Rachel’s author newsletter
to be notified of the book’s release!
Acknowledgements
Here I am, trying to find the words to thank God for getting me to the end of another story, and all I can hear in my head are the words of The Butterfly Song. So thank you, Father, for making me me!
Thank you to the following people who helped make The Trouble with Flirting the story it is:
Mariska, for letting me use your gap year abroad as inspiration for Livi’s backstory.
Rashmi, for reminding me how to play a violin.
Jasper, for the Afrikaans band names (that was fun!).
Tim, Nicola, Gavin, and Marcio, for the pick-up lines (that was even more fun!).
And Kyle, for being the inspiration for every happy ending I write.
Lastly, thank you to you, dear reader. I had so much fun writing Livi's story, and I hope you had fun reading it.
CREEPY HOLLOW
An Amazon Bestselling YA Fantasy Series
by Rachel Morgan
Enter a hidden world of magic, mystery, danger, and romance…
Protecting humans from dangerous magical creatures is all in a day’s work for a faerie training to be a guardian. Seventeen-year-old Violet Fairdale knows this better than anyone—she’s about to become the best guardian the Guild has seen in years. That is, until a cute human boy who can somehow see through her faerie glamor follows her into the fae realm. Now she’s broken Guild Law, a crime that could lead to her expulsion.
The last thing Vi wants to do is spend any more time with the boy who got her into this mess, but the Guild requires that she return Nate to his home and make him forget everything he’s discovered of the fae realm. Easy, right? Not when you factor in evil faeries, long-lost family members, and inconvenient feelings of the romantic kind. Vi is about to find herself tangled up in a dangerous plot—and it’ll take all her training to get out alive.
The Creepy Hollow Series
About the Author
Rachel Morgan was born in South Africa and spent a large portion of her childhood living in a fantasy land of her own making. After completing a degree in genetics, she decided science wasn’t for her—after all, they didn’t approve of made-up facts. These days she spends much of her time immersed in fantasy land once more, writing fiction for young adults and those young at heart.
Connect with Rachel online:
Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads
Sign up for Rachel’s author newsletter to receive updates about her books.
Also by Rachel Morgan:
The Creepy Hollow Series
An A to Z of Creepy Hollow Fae
&nb
sp; The Faerie Guardian
The Faerie Prince
The Faerie War
The Trouble Series
Forgiven (A Trouble Novella)
The Trouble with Flying
The Trouble with Flirting
The Trouble with Faking
The Trouble with Falling
Rachel Morgan, The Trouble with Flirting
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