If the Shoe Fits (Meant To Be #1) by Julie Murphy

“Very subversive,” he says, his eyes tilted down toward mine and my body still pressed against his.

I’m not a first-move kind of girl. Not because I don’t want to be or because I think there’s anything wrong with it, but because I’ve never been courageous enough. The fear of rejection has always pinned me in place, waiting for the guy to go out on a limb first. But I’ve come all this way, and if I go home tomorrow night without having kissed Henry Mackenzie, I’ll wonder for the rest of my life what could have been.

I tilt my head just a millimeter closer, and just like that, our lips are pressed together. His mouth moves effortlessly against mine, and he pulls me in closer to him, wrapping his arm around my waist. My mouth opens for a brief second, and it’s just enough for his tongue to dance against mine.

The crowd cheers, and we pull away from each other slowly, our lips touching until the very last second, like we’re two intoxicated teenagers drunk on each other.



Back at the house, I take a shower while Addison announces that she’s moving into Chloe’s room.

“I guess she couldn’t handle the heat,” Sara Claire says when I return wrapped in my towel.

“Guess not.”

“Pretty steamy moment there with you and Henry, huh? You know,” she says, “it’s a competition and I want to stay here for as long I can, but I want us to be friends too.”

I nod as I sit down on the edge of my bed. “I want that too.”

“We just gotta be real with each other about the fact that we both want the same thing.”

“God, this is so weird,” I tell her.

She’s about to respond, when the doorbell echoes through the house.

The date invitation. It’s here.

We both run out the door and down the stairs, and I nearly slip on the last step, but I’m still first to the door.

I swing it open and find Mallory waiting there with an envelope. I take it and slam the door in her face, immediately feeling a camera at my back.

“Rude,” I hear her say on the other side.

“Sorry!” I call.

Well, I hope being on television straight out of the shower in a tiny towel is on the Before Midnight bingo card, because here I am with two cameras on me and a crowd of girls circling me.

I rip past the wax seal in the shape of a scroll to read the invitation.

“Come on,” Chloe says. “Read it aloud!”

Addison slinks down the stairs, her hips swiveling with each step.

I pull the card from the envelope and begin to read. My heart sinks. “‘Dear Addison…’”





“Shit, shit, shit!” I hear someone mumbling as they stomp down the hallway outside of my bedroom as I lie curled in my bed with a fresh blank sketch pad page teasing me.

Although I can see Addison out of the corner of my eye, I refuse to acknowledge her standing there in the frame of my bedroom door.

She clears her throat.

“Hi, Addison,” I say without looking up from the page, like I’m actually working on something. “Is there something I can help you with?”

She walks in and hovers above me.

I hold the sketch pad to my chest because it turns out pretending to work on a totally blank page is deeply embarrassing.

“Uh, yeah, actually,” she says in the most normal voice I’ve ever heard her use. “I heard you went to, like, sewing school or whatever.”

“I wouldn’t call it sewing school, but yes, I know how to sew if that’s what you’re asking. What’s the problem?”

She pouts, and her eyes are a little glassy, like she might actually cry. Pulling her long, perfectly straight hair over her shoulder, she turns around to show me that the zipper of her curve-hugging champagne minidress is split right up the back. “Irina dressed me in this super-expensive dress and I guess the stupid zipper was, like, defective, and now the whole crew is waiting outside and so is Henry and—”

“Why don’t you just go ask Irina for help?” I ask.

“She might already be mad at me for…” She mumbles the rest, her chin resting on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry. What did you just say?”

“For refusing to wear the first fourteen options.”

“Are you serious? This isn’t your wedding dress or something.”

She turns around, her arms flapping. “Can you help me or not?”

I don’t want to. I really, really don’t want to, but I’m like a moth to a flame when it comes to a fashion emergency. And even though I truly doubt that karma is real, ditching awful, manipulative Addison in her hour of need is pretty mean. Even for her.

“Take off the dress. I can’t promise anything. It could need a whole new zipper. And I only have a travel sewing kit with me.”

She obeys and strips down, tossing me her dress as she sits on her old bed in her strapless bra and smoothing undergarments, watching me nervously.

“Watching me won’t make me go any faster.”

“Just do whatever you have to do. Sew me into it if you have to.”

I take a quick look at the zipper, which luckily for Addison is an easy fix. The zipper just got off track, so all I have to do is rip a few stitches, retrack the zipper, and sew it back in place. That, however, doesn’t stop me from making some very thoughtful and unsure noises just to keep Addison on her toes.