Young Annabelle Read Online Free PDF Page A

and glanced up at
him.
    I stopped laughing.
    He was staring down at me with a serious look
on his face. I gazed at his beautiful green eyes and he smiled
sweetly for the first time. I felt a slow burn around my heart and,
without realizing it, my eyes lowered to his lips. James began to
lean down towards me. I didn’t move a muscle; I didn’t know if it
was because I was frozen or because I wanted what was about to
happen.
    Hold on! What the hell! Move out of the way
girl! You’re not easy!
    My mind kicked in and I jerked away from his effort to kiss
me.
    “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked,
shocked.
    My eyes were wide, my palms were sweaty, and
my knees were jelly. I was experiencing the whole shebang. I
breathed heavily and my vision became foggy, and the man hadn’t
even gotten his lips on me.
    James furrowed his brows; he sweet smile was
gone.
    “Fireball, you shouldn’t have moved. Could
have made this work thing more fun.” He sounded frustrated.
    I didn’t know what to say. I’d never been the
object of a male’s fascination, so I decided to do what girls do
best: pretend it didn’t happen.
    “Let’s just work, okay?” I whispered, still
bewildered.
    He nodded.
    For the next hour and a half, James and I
circled around each other as we took turns making lemonade and
handling the cash register. There was no need to repeat the
instructions for the club’s lemonade making process; James got it
the first time and made them perfectly. We barely spoke to one
another. When Shelby came by and told me I was first on lunch, I
didn’t say ‘see you later’ to James, I just rushed to change room
to eat.
    So much had happened that morning I’d
forgotten that Mom packed my lunch. As I opened my locker, I
remembered the snack fiasco.
    UGH!
    I pulled out a Ziploc bag full of carrots and
celery, another Ziploc bag with four slices of turkey deli meat
between one piece of whole wheat toast, and a 250ml bottle of
water.
    Yay?
    Fuck this! If she wanted to give me a
sandwich she should have at least given me two pieces of bread. I
didn’t care if it was whole wheat, I just needed two pieces. Wasn’t
it a sandwich rule to always have two slices of bread?
    I sat down on a bench between two rows of
lockers. I glanced at the door before diving in to my meal. Every
time we worked on the same shift, Jenna and I hoped we would get
the same lunch break. Sometimes we did, most times we didn’t.
    Five minutes passed and Jenna didn’t walk
through the doors. I decided to begin with the worst: the celery.
To distract from the awful taste, I dissected what had happened. I
had immediately locked away my emotions until now when I had the
chance to release them for the first time. I prepared to feel sick
and regretful and, most of all, shocked that a cute guy would
actually want to kiss me.
    Oh my GOD! What the hell just
happened? I thought as I
crunched on celery.
    His lips were this close to mine. If I hadn’t
acted like such a wuss, his would lips would have touched mine.
    No! I did the smart thing. I don’t know this
guy and he could have had a disease in his mouth or on his
lips.
    I finished the celery and moved on to the
carrots; they were better than celery any day.
    I continued to dissect as I munched away.
    If he wasn’t so tall he
wouldn’t have had to lean in so much and his lips would have been
on mine making it too late for me to move away .
    I thought of his lips. They were wide but not
stretched, and full but not chunky. The color was a lush, vibrant
peachy-pink that glistened from him licking them.
    Damn!
    I finished the carrots and opened the Ziploc
containing my half sandwich. As I ate the poor excuse for a
sandwich, the realization hit. Now that I was allowing myself to
feel every emotion that I banned this morning, how was I going to
face him? I could barely look at him before and now that I had
dissected every single detail about what happened, I knew I was
going to be a nervous wreck working in