Elly & Kent - The Complete Story: Includes Books 1-3 Read Online Free Page A

kissed him to seal the deal. Is that what I had to do?  
    I sighed softly and turned my attention to him working on my toenails and looked at the TV whenever he looked up, or looked like he was going to look up. My yawning progressed through the movie and near the end where Patrick Swayze delivered his famous line, 'Nobody puts Baby in the corner,' I felt my eyes falling closed.
      My eyes popped open when I felt him retreating. "Where are you going?" I cleared my throat to try to get the sleep out of my voice.
      "I was going to pick things up and let you sleep, Elly. That's all. You can sleep a little if you want."
      I looked at the TV, and then back to Kent. "I'm good. I'll help you clean up."
      "Why don't you just hang out there and I'll pick things up then I'll put another movie in for us."
      "What time is it? I told Jake I'd be online tonight so he could wish me a happy birthday." I hated to do it but I was trying everything I could think of to try to spurn some sort of jealousy in Kent, to get him to realize that he didn't want to be my guy pal forever. This Jake plan had been in action for a few months and he hadn't showed anything yet.
      "Oh, you made plans with Jake?" I saw him chewing on his lip as he stood. "The computer is over there. I'm gonna put the Dew up so it doesn't get hot."  
    If he was being jealous he was hiding it behind a blank face. I sighed as I watched him leave the room. I grabbed my fishnets and put them on in the bathroom. I returned to his room and booted up the computer. I stared blankly at the screen as I sat down in front of it, waiting for it to load.
      I heard him banging around downstairs and knitted my brows together as I stared at the top of the stairs. What the hell was he doing down there? Cooking a gumbo?
      I logged into AIM and then waited for the familiar ding signaling a new instant message. I smiled at the computer as Jake IMed me. He was a hot 19 year old boy from Texas, and I had met him in a chatroom called "The Coffeehouse." We'd clicked almost immediately. Our conversation flowed, we joked and asked lots of questions of each other. Jake had recently gotten a girlfriend and I was always asking about how that was going. I had no idea what real relationships were like as I'd never experienced anything in the dating world.  
    I started typing away to Jake, and after ten more minutes of missing Kent I went to the top of the stairs and called down to him. "Hey, you okay down there?"
      "Yeah. I'm okay." He was gone a little while longer. Finally he came back to his room and walked over to the TV. He switched to the gaming system before sitting down on his bed. I watched him skeptically.  
      "What the hell were you doing down there? Licking your wounds from the crushing defeat?" The good thing about IMing was that usually the other person took a little while to respond, which gave me lots of chances to bug Kent.
      "Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't. Maybe I was looking for a phone number. Regardless, I'm sitting here playing a game now while you chat with your boyfriend."  
    For the first time it sounded like there was some jealousy there and I felt my chest tighten. Was he jealous? He was probably just bitter that I'd made plans to spend time with another guy friend.
      I rolled my eyes. "He has a girlfriend now and lives in Texas. He is like you, a boy who is a friend. What phone number were you looking for?" I chose to ignore the jealousy, figuring his anger was because he had to play video games by himself.
      "Amanda Holland gave me her number last year and I was wondering if I still had it." He was absorbed in his video game at this point. The screen flashed colors and things over the glasses on his face.
      I frowned at him, "Why were you looking for her number right now?"
      "I was just curious." Kent shrugged, acting very nonchalant.
    Seriously? He was looking for another girl's number on my birthday? The jealousy trap hadn't worked, instead it had