“But you live with your Dad most of the time?”
“They didn’t want me to change schools.”
She nodded. “Sometimes I wonder if my parents will split up some day – they seem to argue all the time.”
There was a slight pause, Dylan didn’t know what to say about Noelle’s parental strife. Oh, but he didn’t want the pause becoming awkward. He was talking to an attractive girl one-on-one! Okay, so it shouldn’t have been a big deal for someone of his age, but he had to concede that he was shy, that was his nature. Now he was worried she was going to think he was dull, he’d run out of things to say.
He opened his mouth and just said the first thing that came to his mind: “Hey, look, I’m sorry I interrupted your conversation with your friends.”
“Oh, no, that’s okay,” Noelle said, and actually smiled. “Oh, I’m Noelle, by the way. Noelle Shaw.”
And then he nearly jumped out of his skin as she suddenly picked herself up and moved closer to him, so she was sitting right next to him, leaning up against the wall of the store as he was.
“It’s kind of nice talking to someone different for a change,” she said. “I feel like I say the same things to the same people all the time.”
He caught a hint of her fragrance on the breeze, and couldn’t help but melt a little inside. She was so gorgeous. She had a girl-next-door freshness, a small-town sweetness, but the confidence of a glamorous catwalk model.
Dylan felt she’d mistaken his own reckless bravado for a similar innate confidence. Women liked confidence in a guy – he’d read that often enough – and yet the irony of it was, most really confident guys their age were the kind of selfish idiots that would never bother to please anyone but themselves, even if they had a goddess like this interested in them.
Oh, he felt all weak in the knees to have Noelle sitting so close to him, but he knew he had to attempt to portray some kind of confidence if he was going to maintain this veneer that had somehow enticed this princess from the school across town to come talk to a lowly frog.
“So it sounds as though girls at Marchmont are being hard done by when it comes to the guys,” he said, trying to sound casually headstrong.
“I guess we are,” she said, smiling broadly. “So are St Josephs guys so different?”
Dylan shrugged. “I think we probably have our own fair share of idiot jocks interested in noone but themselves.”
“But there’s also guys who could… you know… out-compete a vibrator?”
Was she being flirty with him?
“I should imagine there’s a few of us,” he said, once again surprising himself at how brazen he could be.
“And wait,” she said, “Are you saying that’s because you guys hace read up on how to do it, or are you saying St Josephs men can actually handle a girl telling them what she wants?”
“Both, I’ve no doubt at all.”
She flashed her eyes at him. “Intriguing,” she said. He saw her fingers fidgeting with the hem of her skirt, drawing his eyes down to the alluring sight of her thighs. “You guys must have girls queuing up for dates, huh?”
“Not especially,” Dylan said, his mind scrabbling for some kind of explanation other than – well, most guys who know how the biology of the female body works are so shy and socially awkward they won’t manage to even talk to a girl until at least college graduation.