With Any Luck (The Improbable Meet-Cute, #5)

by Ashley Poston

And I am, in fact, lucky in everything except the one thing I want: Love.

We are fated, like my grandmother, my mother, my sisters, and me, to be the person before. The rebound, the partner at the beginning of rom-coms who is rarely named because they are always what the main character doesn’t need. They are the utterly forgettable Before.

“but I’m the kiss before you find your true love.”

But what was I supposed to say? “Hold off, tiger, you’re jumping without a parachute?” No. If my best friend’s going to jump, I’m at least going to be his spotter.

I’ve had to play this game for ten years. “No, we aren’t dating. No, he doesn’t like me like that. No, we’re just friends—no, I don’t want us to be more.”

I’d always be his oldest friend, but she soon—and forever—will become his best. That’s the part that is hard to stomach.

Ever since I could remember, whenever I’ve kissed someone—on-the-mouth kissed someone with a purpose—the person finds their soulmate, the love of their life, the next day.

“It’s all too much. It’s scary. And she’s perfect. And I feel like she’s settling for me. She deserves so much more. Someone who gives a shit about this wedding.”

I’ll always be important, obviously, but I won’t be his one. I won’t be the person he calls when he’s drunk, and I won’t be the person who will listen to all of his boring engineering jokes, and I have to be OK with that. I will be OK with it.

“Sometimes when you love someone, you both have to do shit you don’t want to.”

“I know you’ll do anything for her,” I said in the quiet night. My words came out in puffs of frost. “But will she do anything for you?”

It wasn’t that I doubted Carmilla was the one, but I wasn’t sure I wanted her to be, because then I’d be alone.

“Rhett wouldn’t shut up about you when I first met him. You should’ve heard the way he talked about you—like you hung the moon, the sun, and all the stars. I couldn’t wait to meet you in New Orleans, and when I did, I realized he didn’t even tell me the good parts.”

“I wasn’t joking yesterday when I asked you to kiss me.” My bottom lip wobbled. “So you can find your t-true love, too?” “Fuck that,” he growled and took my face in his hands and kissed me. Crushed our mouths together, our breaths intertwining in the cold.

“What made you change your mind?” I asked. “About kissing me?” He felt so hard against my middle, and I hadn’t had anything intimate in so long I wanted it. So, so badly. “Because it’d be you,” he said. “I knew it’d be you.”

didn’t have to explain what it was. It was the thing I had been trying to find my entire life. It had been the thing that always eluded me. The thing that followed every guy I ever kissed. I was always the girl before the happily ever after.

was the person you stopped at for a little while for shelter. I wasn’t the person you stayed with. I ...

Because the way he kisses feels like the way I fall in love, sharp and quick and deep.