Running Back To Him (7 page)

Chapter 10

I expected the inside of Kellen’s car to smell like funky football cleats, greasy French fries, and stale Bud Light. But it’s quite the opposite; vanilla blended with a new car smell. I’m impressed.

He cracks the window and the bite of the early Michigan September morning slips through. It’s still not enough to slice through the wave of thorny silence that’s consumed us since we got in the car.

And so far he’s said absolutely nothing about how cute my butt looks in these new leggings. I suck my teeth. I know boys aren’t the best at paying attention to the minor details with girls, but sheesh? Even Stevie Wonder could see how cute I look in these. Okay, maybe a compliment about my booty is too much to ask. But, a ‘hey Mags, those are cute shoes’ would suffice.

I mean, does he not think I’m cute enough for him? Lucas wouldn’t have been with me if he didn’t think I was somewhat cute. Does Kellen still think I’m some dorky, weird girl from across the street that could skateboard better then he could? Because clearly I’m not, I have the bra size to prove it. I don’t have mountainous showstoppers like Mackenzie has, but I’m not chopped liver either.

I see a sliver of a grin curl his mouth. “You’re nervous aren’t you?” he asks.

I glide my clammy hands down my leggings. “Not in the slightest,” I say trying to shroud the tightness in my chest.

He sniggers. “You’re scared to death...it’s cute.”

“I am not!”

“Really? Then why are you doing that?” He nods his head down to my left hand resting on my knee.

“Doing what? I’m not
doing
anything.” I swallow hard.

“Your tic is showing and you don’t even realize it.” He shakes his head.

I look down at my left hand and I’ve been picking at the skin on the side of my thumb. It’s raw and beet red. I pull it away and tuck it under my thigh. I’ve been doing it since I got in the car with him so much I didn’t even notice. I couldn’t believe he remembers how much I used to do that as a kid.

“You never could get rid of that habit.” We pull up to the red light at the intersection nearest the school. He turns his head to me. “Remember when your Dad promised to give you a hundred dollars if you could go a week without doing it. You didn’t make it to the end of the day.” He snickers.

I stare out the window in shock that he hadn’t forgotten that. It’s been so long ago that slipped my mind. We’ve acted like total strangers over the last few years that I couldn’t believe that he would recall such a thing.

“I almost forgot about that,” I say giggling. “I can’t believe you remembered that…it was so long ago.”

“You crazy? I’ll never forget that. You used to wear those cute Sesame Street Band-Aids all the time. It was so adorable.”

I slap his knee. “It was so dorky.”

He shrugs and flashes an irresistible smile at me. “It was so sweet.” Our eyes lock and I become lost in the deepness of his eyes. He swallows hard, his eyes still fixated on me.

A horn honks behind us, we both jump slightly, breaking us out of the allure.

The light turns green and Kellen floors it.

***

We sit in his car in the back of the parking lot—silent. He takes his sunglasses off and places them on the dashboard.

“So,” he says.

“So,” I respond.

“I guess this is it.” I nod. “Any last words…because things are about to get really trippy.”

I sigh and think about how I
could
tell him that when we were at the intersection and there was that intense standstill where we were gazing at each other, I wanted to reach over and kiss him. I
could
tell him that, but what’s the point of making my life more drama-filled than it already is.

“Nope.” I smile brightly. “No last words at all.”

“Good.” He opens the door and gets out. “So, I guess we’ll totally run a no-huddle offense.”

I shut the door a confused look colors my face. “Speak English why don’t you.”

“No-huddle is when the offense doesn’t go back to the huddle after the play; they go right back to the line of scrimmage.”

“You said that like I’m still not confused.”

“It’s kind of like winging it. It keeps the defense on their toes.”

“Gotcha.”

He extends his right arm out to me and I stare at it. “If we want to make this believable we better get started, right?”

It’s only been a few seconds, but it feels like minutes have passed by. I clear the frog in my throat. “You…m-mean hold hands?” I couldn’t fathom something so simple being so petrifying. This is supposed to be pretend, remember Mags?

“No, I mean play patty cake. Of course I mean hold hands. Who’s going to believe we’re going out together if we don’t do the whole PDA thing? All in, one hundred percent right?”

“You’ve got a point,” I say in the best bubbly, flirty voice I can muster. It probably sounds ridiculous to him through my chattering teeth. My entire body is juddering, at least on the inside.

I grab his hand and nestle my tiny digits within his. I close my eyes and exhale deeply. It feels charged to be touching him like this. My knees almost buckle about halfway to the school entrance. Out of the corner of my eye I look at Kellen; he’s not even batting an eyelash. This is light work for him; another day at the ballpark.

While for me, I’m about to have a panic attack. We’re practically strangers now, but I can’t help but be reminded me of the summers we used to go swimming. We’d run to the fence, grab each other’s hand and cannonball into the pool.

I look around us and surprisingly; we’re the only two people walking into school.

We come up to the doors and I take in a huge breath.

“You ready?” I ask. My voice shakes and it’s obvious to Kellen.

“Your breath smells like onions,” he says shaking his head laughing. He holds the door open for me. He always knew how to ease the tension in the air by saying something funny. I’m not sure if he was joking or if he was telling the truth, so I pop an Altoid in my mouth just to be sure.

“I’ll walk you to your homeroom,” he says as we reconnect hands. “Third floor, right?”

Again, I’m dumbfounded. We haven’t spoken in over four years and all of a sudden he knows where my homeroom is. I can’t wrap my head around this.

Kellen clenches my hand tighter as we walk past the huddle of girls standing in front the bathroom. The whispers and the glares have commenced. So far so good.

“Don’t be afraid,” I say mockingly, “they’re just teenagers.”

“I’m cool as a fan,” he says. We stroll past the long stretch of the trophy case by the gym. It’s decorated with huge golden, sparkly trinkets that the football and basketball teams have accumulated over the years.

“Hopefully with a win this Friday you guys can add another trophy at the end of the season.”

He nods, “That’s the plan.”

As soon as he says that, we walk right past the weight room. A few of the football players are grunting, shouting, and the clanging of iron slaps above the fray.

Kellen stops dead in his tracks, yanking me back. “Oh shit!” he yelps, throwing his hands behind his head. The color in his face slips away.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“I can’t believe I didn’t think this through.”

“What? Tell me. What’s happening? Think what through?”

“Lucas! He says through clenched jaws.

I draw a blank, shaking my head slightly, hoping he’d fill me in on my cluelessness. “Yeah, he’s my ex. I hope you didn’t forget.”

“Lucas is my teammate. I can’t believe how stupid I am!”

“Care to fill me in?”

“Rules, Mags! Team rules.” My stare is still blank. “Uh, NO snitching. No dating any sisters. And absolutely, under no circumstances…no exes.” He falls against the wall and beats the bottom of his fists into his forehead. He utters every curse word in the book. And some new ones that my virgin ears have never heard before.

“It’s just a game. I don’t see the big deal.”

He shoots a pointed look at me. The chill in his blue eye startles me. He pauses. It’s a look I’ve never seen from him before.

“Just a game? Football is my life. It’s all I have.” His eyebrows furrow.

I fold my fingers into Kellen’s and his face softens. We catch eyes again and just when I find the words to comfort him and tell him our plan will go forward without a hitch, Lucas approaches us from the weight room wearing a gray tank top and red shorts. Beads of sweat drip from his baffled face.

His eyes fall on me and then to Kellen and then down to our intertwined hands.

“Seriously,” Lucas says, full of attitude. He laughs, albeit nervously. “You two…hooking up?”

Our first true test in my and Kellen’s relationship. I mean…pretend relationship. He squeezes my hand tighter.

“We sure—” I say.

“We sure are,” Kellen says cutting me off. He stands rigid, defiant.

Lucas shakes his head in disbelief. “Unbelievable,” he says. “You’re just trying to throw this in my face aren’t you, Mags? I thought you were better than that. I guess you’re as petty as everyone else.” He laughs. “But with a teammate? With Murdock?”

“Oh when did you become the penis police?” I ask, poking my chest out. “I guess when the shoe is on the other foot it doesn’t feel so good does it?”

He wipes the sweat off his brow. “You’re free to do what you want I guess.” He turns towards Kellen. “But you…I thought you knew better. You know we got rules right?”

“Rules are made to be broken,” Kellen says.

“The day before the game? Really?” Lucas’s voice cracks. “I see where your loyalty lies Murdock. I guess that big game we got tomorrow doesn’t mean shit to you.”

“Don’t question my dedication.”

Lucas squares up with Kellen and closes the space between them, standing chest to chest. Kellen’s hand slips away from mine. The tension mounts. A small crowd forms around the three of us. This could get messy. And not even seconds into our fake relationship.

“Since you’ve been having a bit of a problem with hanging onto the ball lately and nearly costing us the season, I just want to make sure your focus is on the field…instead of my leftovers.” A gasp falls over the growing crowd surrounding us.

Kellen inches closer, only a few centimeters separate the two of them. His eyes harden.

“See that’s your problem Lucas,” he pokes his index finger into his chest. “You need to show some respect to the ladies.”

“What about bros before—”

“You finish that sentence and we’re going to have a problem.” Lucas pauses, backs away and chuckles.

Lucas bites his lip and narrows his eyes. “I’ll see you at practice, Kellen.”

Lucas’s eyes fall onto me, then to Kellen, and then back to me, down to my legs.

“Nice leggings,” he says with a hint of assholeness. At least
somebody
recognizes. But that’s beside the point. “But they make your hips look wide.”

What an asshole. I scowl at him and I nearly pull a muscle in my forehead.

Lucas turns his back to us and stomps back into his dungeon called the weight room.

“Well…
that
happened,” I say with a breathy, nervous tone.

The onlookers surround us, waiting for Kellen and I to react, lock lips, or run in behind Lucas and smack him with a forty-five pound dumbbell. But there’ll be none of that nonsense. This isn’t my or Kellen’s first rodeo of school politics. In the grand scheme of things, Lucas is small potatoes. If it makes him jealous—great. It’ll be just collateral damage. I have a war to win.

“Okay, okay, nothing to see here. Move along,” I say to the circle of vultures wrapped around us with their phones on record. I wave my hand shooing them away. I’m not in the mood to field questions like a press conference for a political scandal.

The flash from their cameras are blinding, causing me to blink away the white spots I see before my eyes. Eight o’clock in the morning is far too early for retina damage.

Kellen, with a scrunched up face, gentlemanly extends his angled hand for me to lock mine into. Always ice under fire. We walk away from the fray.

“That was kind of intense,” he says. “You sure you want to go through with this?”

I plant my hand on my hips. “We’re already knee deep into it. Can’t turn our backs now.” The bell rings.

“I hate to say it, but Lucas might be right.” He pulls his keys out of his pocket and fiddles with it, spinning it round his index finger.

“About what?”

I look up into his eyes and see his uncertainty.

For a moment, I become lost the trance that his blue eyes have entangled me in. I rub my thumb over the smoothness of skin below his knuckles. It’s the perfect blend of the tenderness of my hands and the ruggedness of his. I feel aflutter. The butterflies in my stomach can’t differentiate between a pretend relationship and a real one. And at this point, I’m tempted to say I don’t care. This scene has played out inside my head since I was a little girl. Lying in bed with thoughts of holding Kellen’s hands, us cuddling and us kissing.