Sway by Amy Matayo Page B

Even the frilly pink robe can’t top this.
    And that’s where the trouble lies, because I’m not sure I want it to.
    It might have looked stupid on me, but I sure liked the heck out of that robe.
    *
    “You want to tell me why you’re not answering your phone? I’ve only called you a dozen times in the last hour.” Scott walks into my office and plops down into the chair across from me, propping his feet up on my desk. It occurs to me to slap them off, but it won’t do any good. It never does.
    “I guess I left it in the car by accident,” I lie. Three days. Only three days, and I’ve leapt backward to a time when lies rolled off my tongue like lime juice after a tequila shot. I don’t like this new side of me. “Scratch that. I tossed it in the backseat of my car. Don’t ask me to go find it.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I don’t feel like digging around to—”
    “No.” Scott studies me with a wary expression. “Why did you toss it in the backseat? Usually that thing is glued to you like an extra appendage. What gives?” He reaches into my candy dish for a peppermint and pops it into his mouth. My candy dish is supplied by my secretary and refilled nightly by the cleaning lady. It doesn’t cost me anything. I reach for one and unwrap it, too.
    “Because I don’t want to hear it ring.” It isn’t the ringing that bothers me; it’s the person who might be doing the calling. I’m not stupid. One look at Kate’s name—which I’ve saved into my address book as ‘Princess’ because I’m already a whipped idiot—and I’ll cave. This isn’t the time for caving. This is the time for playing it cool.
    “That doesn’t make any sense.” Scott frowns. “You’ve never had an aversion to—oh my gosh. It’s the girl.” He stares at me like he just solved the world’s hardest crossword puzzle, which for Scott isn’t a stretch, because he’s a nerd and actually masters them. “You like her. You took her home the other night, and now by some way only you can manage, you wound up liking her.” He stretches his hands behind is head like a smug Mob boss and smirks at me. He just needs a fedora and a cigar to complete the look. “What’d you do, ask her out?”
    My gaze darts to the side before I can stop it, the clear sign of a lie. I learned that on 20/20 when I was a teenager. How can you tell if someone’s lying to you? Watch their eyes. They dart to the left? Lies. All lies.
    “We had breakfast.”
    “Just breakfast?” Scott asks.
    This time I look straight at his face. I might as well confront the stupid truth. “And dinner. And lunch the next day. Followed by a movie…” By this point, I want to laugh at my own self. But why bother when Scott is doing such a swell job for me? He throws back his head and howls.
    “Oh man, what has happened to you? You rescue a damsel in distress and appoint yourself her knight in shining armor. Caleb Stiles with a girlfriend. Who would’ve thought?”
    “She’s not my girlfriend. Don’t say it like that. It sounds ridiculous.”
    He pulls his feet off the table and sits forward. “It is kind of ridiculous. Although I can’t say I blame you. That girl was hot. Even passed out cold that much was obvious.”
    “Hot? Did you say hot?” It’s my turn to laugh. “I’ve never heard you say that word before unless you were talking about the weather or Mrs. O’Hare’s flashes.”
    Scott’s face turns serious. “That woman won’t shut up about her personal issues, and for some reason, I’m the one she’s chosen to describe them to. Just last night, she was telling me about the bunion on her left foot. I’m twenty-two! I don’t want to hear about bunions!”
    Mrs. O’Hare is my secretary and the only woman in the human race born without an internal filter. Some people give daily weather reports. She gives updates on bunions, warts, sinus infections, and leaky appendages. But only to Scott. Lucky guy.
    I hear the intimate details about her