Finding Olivia (Trace + Olivia #1) by Micalea Smeltzer

before, you’re never going to know which one I’ve picked. It makes things exciting.” He motioned to a nice beige couch. “Sit down and relax. Watch TV. I don’t care,” he shrugged, heading into the only bedroom.
    “Okay,” I mumbled, sitting down , and looking around at the darkened space.
    In front of the couch were two crates, flipped upside down to create a makeshift coffee table. A bowl of skittles sat on top. Across from the couch was a nice sized flat screen TV.
    Trace came out of the bedroom with clothes in his hands and flicked on a light. “You don’t need to sit in the dark, Olivia. Make yourself at home,” he smiled and closed the bathroom door.
    I heard the shower turn on and breathed a sigh of relief.
    My feelings for Trace were quickly escalating and even though , at this point, we’d known each other for almost a month, it seemed too quick to be falling for someone. But could you put a time limit on something like that?
    This was bad.
    I couldn’t fall for Trace. He was my…friend and he could do so much better than me. He could have any girl he wanted, not just because of his looks, but because of his personality too, and I needed to stop pining over someone who would never be mine.
    Friends, I told myself. We. Are. Just. Friends .
    I buried my face in my hands.
    I couldn’t let Trace know I liked him. There was no way he returned my feelings and he’d just give me some song and dance about how we’d never work. That’s what most guys did, right? I didn’t have any experience and was basing my assumption off of movies. Which was stupid because movies always got it wrong.
    I took a deep breath before I had a panic attack.
    I used to have them all the time as a child but I had grown out of them. Now, would be the worst time ever for them to return.
    The door to the bathroom opened, steam billowing out, effectively cutting off my internal tirade.
    Droplets of water clung to Trace’s dark hair, making it appear black instead of brown. He’d shaved, but short prickly stubbles of hair still remained. I liked that he was never clean-shaven. I always thought that the guys with smooth cheeks looked babyish.
    “I’m ready,” he announced, running his fingers through is hair rapidly, trying to dry it.
    “Okay,” I stood, running my hands down the front of my jeans.
    He locked the apartment behind us and led me to his car.
    “I can drive,” I pointed to my car.
    “Nice try,” he grinned, “but I’d have to tell you where we’re going and that’s not going to happen.”
    “Fine,” I slid into his car. “I don’t care.” Which was a lie. I did care, very much. It seemed completely unfair that he wouldn’t tell me where we were going. But I knew there was no point in arguing with him.
    He hadn’t driven far , when he stopped in front of a small building, in the old part of town.
    “That was fast,” I looked up at the building, reading the sign.
    It was an art gallery.
    “I’ m learning to paint?” I grinned, excitedly.
    “Yeah,” he eased out of the car and jogged around to open my door.
    “This is going to be so much more fun than roller skating!” I squealed and Trace chuckled in response.
    ★★★
    “I suck at this!” I exclaimed, causing the other people in the room to turn, and glare at me.
    It was mostly older people there , aside from Trace and me.
    “It’s not that bad,” Trace glanced from his canvas to mine.
    “It looks nothing like it!” I pointed to the purple blob I had painted and to the purple vase it was supposed to look like. “Yours looks good compared to mine!”
    Which was pretty sad, because his sucked too.
    “You can’t expect to learn to paint in one evening,” the teacher breezed over to me. She looked at what I had done and wrinkled her nose. “Then again, there are those who can never learn.”
    “I take it I’m in the never category?” I huffed.
    She didn’t bother to answer.
    I tried to pretty up the mess I had made on my