Nolan: Return to Signal Bend Read Online Free PDF

get lost.”
     
    At Nolan’s command, Mug nodded and got lost.
     
    “Congratulations on graduating. That’s cool.” He lifted his own bottle, and she knocked hers with his.
     
    “Thanks. Took long enough, but I got it done.” Feeling nervous, she took a long drink and set her bottle down. There was a Christmas doodad on the bar—a plastic headband with a springy pole sticking up from it. A little plastic sprig of mistletoe dangled from the top. Iris rolled her eyes. One of the club girls must have left it behind.
     
    “That’s a big deal. Did you do the whole big walk in a Hogwarts robe and all that?”
     
    She laughed. “Nah. My school only does a ceremony in May. I could go back to Indiana and walk then, but I don’t see the point. I got what I wanted out of college.”
     
    “And what’s that?” he asked and took a long swallow from his beer, killing it.
     
    Normally, she kept her real answer to herself. It pissed her mom off, and most people just didn’t get it. She’d gone to college without knowing what she wanted to do with her life, and she’d graduated without finding the answer. But she told Nolan with a shrug, “It was interesting. I learned stuff. I guess that’s all I wanted.”
     
    When Nolan laughed, she thought he was making fun of her, and she blushed and started fidgeting with that stupid Christmas headband.
     
    But he was nodding. “If everybody thought of school like that, maybe it wouldn’t suck so bad.” He put his empty down and stood. “You want another?”
     
    “Sure.” She still had half of the first one, but, as Nolan walked around to the other side of the bar, she put it to her mouth and tried to chug it.
     
    He noticed, and the smile he gave her looked like it belonged on his face. While he opened two fresh Buds, she finished her first with one more try.
     
    “So what’s next?” he asked as he sat and pushed a bottle toward her.
     
    “Huh?”
     
    “Now that you’re done with school? Or is that a shitty question?”
     
    “It’s kind of a shitty question, actually. Everybody asks.”
     
    “Sorry.”
     
    Because it was Nolan, and they were having a real conversation that didn’t have anything to do with the club or their parents, and she wanted it to keep going as long as possible, she gave him another real answer. “It’s okay. I just don’t have much of an answer. I guess…I guess I just…don’t want much. People always want to know about my dreams and plans, and I don’t really have any.”
     
    He considered her quietly, long enough that she began to feel self-conscious about blabbing too much about herself. “No?” he finally asked.
     
    She dragged the headband thing back and forth over the bar. “Uh-uh. The future is just empty to me. I don’t understand how people can decide what their life’s going to be like five years from now. I’m excited to know what I’m going to be doing on Monday.”
     
    Nolan dropped his hand over the headband, which by now Iris had arcing wildly back and forth. Embarrassed, she pulled her hand back and set it in her lap.
     
    Then he picked the headband up and, with both hands, he reached over and pushed it onto her head, catching her hair and pulling it tight from her forehead.
     
    He smiled—just a little one, a corner of his mouth drawing up a bit. “Merry Christmas, Iris.”
     
    He leaned in and kissed her.
     
    Iris’s heart completely stopped, and then it began to bang like a bass drum in her ears.
     
    The kiss wasn’t much. He just laid his lips on hers for a couple of seconds and then backed off.
     
    But he was staring at her, and something in his eyes—which were a dark, totally not-average shade of blue—was different. He put his hand on her face. His fingers slid over her cheek, under her ear, until he was holding her head. When he leaned in again, Iris leaned in, too, and the kiss was a lot more. His tongue slid into her mouth, and the stubble around his lips scratched her skin