Biggest Flirts (15 page)

He huffed out the smallest laugh. “It’s a drum line thing.”

“Some kind of sick initiation for the Marching Wrath of God? I love it! We should totally do that to the damn freshmen.”

“No,” he said, “we won the state championship.”

“What?”
I exclaimed. I was impressed with his band, and frustrated all over again about everything our second-rate town was putting him through. Our band made great marks at contests, but we didn’t
win
.

“A tattoo would have been better,” he said, “but you can’t get ink in Minnesota until you turn eighteen.”

“You mean, everybody on the drum line got an ear pierced?” I couldn’t imagine everybody on
our
drum line doing
anything
, especially not as an organized group.

“Yeah.”

“What about the girls?”

“They both had their ears pierced already, but they got another piercing in one ear. Carol—” As the memory came back to him, he cracked up. “They loomed over her with the gun, and she passed out. The first thing she said when she came to was, ‘Drum line forever!’ ” He laughed again, then looked sidelong at me. “I guess you had to be there.”

“It sounds like you guys had a lot of fun together.”

“We did.” He smiled into space and fingered the stud in his ear.

And with a rush, I realized how much he’d lost when he’d moved here. Not just the position of drum major, the office of student council president, the status of Most Academic, but a group of close friends. Like a second family.

Will put his hand down and glanced at me. “Is wearing a stud uncool in Florida? I thought I might quit wearing it, but then I would have a hole in my ear. Somehow that seems worse.”

“I see what you’re saying,” I told him, because I really did. “And I have never met anyone who took his earlobe so seriously.”

He cracked another smile. “I’m a serious guy.”

A week and a half ago, I would have agreed with him wholeheartedly. Now I was beginning to wonder. I’d thought Sawyer was growing deeper the longer I knew him, but Will seemed fathomless.

I told him truthfully, “Your earring is the first thing I liked about you.”

“For all the wrong reasons.” He pulled to a stop in front of my house and looked across the car at me in the dim light. “You were completely wrong about me.”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I may be the first person who’s been absolutely right.”

13

I FELT SO TERRIBLE ABOUT
my pity party Wednesday night that I was determined to make it up to Will when we went out Thursday. I’d been wrong when I’d made fun of him for thinking the Tampa area was a hockey mecca. There
was
a rink not far from town. I laced up skates and let him half teach me, half drag me around the oval. But I wished I could have sat there, without being a weirdo, and watched him skate. He made it look easy, even natural. The cold breeze ruffled his short hair as he sped around the rink without me. Best of all, it was cold as Minnesota in the building. While I shivered in a sweater, he grinned in his T-shirt and looked genuinely happy.

Friday we drove a few towns south to a tourist spot full of neon lights and corn dogs for their sunset celebration. The long pier was full of couples embracing each other, acting like they couldn’t wait for the day to end and the dark to start their night of romance. More than once I caught Will glancing at girls and guys our age making out. Now that our relationship was fake-official, flirting wasn’t as easy as it used to be. An awkwardness still hung between us after I’d gone all TMI Wednesday night.

Saturday was different. I could feel it when I woke up, and I heard it in his voice when he called me to ask about going out that night. We were both sick of these polite dates that ended with him giving me a peck on the cheek at my front door. I made sure that when I opened my front door on Saturday night, he had something to look at.

He gaped at me. Simply looked me up and down with his mouth open.

“You’ve never seen me quite so clean before.” I bent toward him. “Smell me.”

He obliged, taking a long whiff of my floral hair. “Great dress.” He stared at my legs.

“Thanks.”

He lifted my chin with two fingers. “Is that . . . mascara?”

“Yes!” I exclaimed, triumphant.

His eyes roved all over my face, making me feel like our senior class’s Best Looking, a title I’d never wanted but that didn’t sound too bad when Will was the one bestowing it on me. Finally he said, “Your hair’s down.”

“It unravels from the braids, sure enough.”

“Indulge me for a minute.” He tapped his phone, then held it out in front of us. “Selfie. Kiss me right here.” He pointed to his cheek.

Taking this picture reminded me a bit too much of Beverly’s treacherous selfie with Will’s best friend back home. But I wasn’t going to deny him this. I pursed my lips—with shiny gloss on them, even—and gave the phone a knowing glance. He snapped the photo.

As we looked down at the image, he slipped his arm around my back with more of that Minnesotan sleight of hand. He said ruefully, “I wanted to post it online to show my friends how cool I am. It’s not going to work. You look gorgeous, but I look too exuberant standing beside you, like I can’t quite believe it.”

I laughed. He did look a little starstruck. Guys didn’t get starstruck around me. “I think it’s perfect.”

***

Kaye was throwing the night’s party in her big, beautiful historic home on a lagoon where the homeowners docked their massive sailboats and had access to the ocean. As we parked at the end of a long line of cars stretching along the grass near her house, I explained to Will that Kaye didn’t have parties when her parents weren’t home. Her mom actually helped her throw them. Consequently there was no alcohol, but the food was good enough that people came anyway. These gatherings had an innocent, fifties, sock-hop vibe. Frankly, I found them a refreshing change from sitting on the ground and trying to use an empty Coke can as a weed pipe. But guests really bluesing for a drink could always access a box of wine. One had only to determine whose truck bed it was in.

As we hiked up the lawn to her house, holding hands, Will asked the next logical question, knowing me. “Do you want a drink?”

I had a crazy answer: “Not if you’re not. It’s really hard to communicate with somebody when one of you is drinking and the other isn’t.”

He gave me a quizzical smile. Now that we were walking near the house, we were getting close to other couples making their way up the yard, so he lowered his voice. “That’s an excuse. You don’t want to drink every time you go to a party, but by now you have a reputation to uphold. You’re glad I’m here, aren’t you? You can blame me for all your good behavior.”

This boy scared me sometimes, he was so right. I tried to throw him off balance by murmuring, “If I cut down on my drinking, I will still have plenty of bad reputation left. I’ll show you later tonight.”

He laughed out loud. He looked as pleased and astonished as he had when we took a picture a few minutes before.

“Aw, you’re blushing!” I exclaimed, squeezing his hand. “You’re cute.”

Chelsea and DeMarcus were walking a few yards away—approximately fifteen, in my expert estimation from years of marching up and down a football field. Chelsea called, “I thought it was a robot, but it laughs!”

“It laughs only for me,” I called back. I said more quietly to Will, “Seriously, I think that’s where we went wrong the first night, why we were misreading each other. I was drunk and you were . . . new.”

He winced. “It’s terrible being new.”

“Is it? Sometimes I fantasize about what it would be like to start over.”

“You want to move to Minnesota?” He made it sound like a threat.

“No. I would freeze to death.”

Keeping hold of my hand, he backed far enough away to get a good look at my gauzy dress. “You would,” he agreed, “because I would want you to keep wearing stuff like that.”

“And I think it’s beautiful here.”

He looked up at the live oaks arching over the house. “It is.”

“But I fantasize . . . this is terrible.”

He tugged me closer. “You’ve told me a
lot
of terrible things.”

“Er, this is not sexy-terrible but actual-terrible,” I said. “I wonder what it would be like to start over without sisters. Not that I want them dead, of course, but if they never existed, and it was just me. I wonder if I would be the same person, or if I would be like Angelica, fighting it out for valedictorian with Aidan and Kaye and DeMarcus and Xavier Pilkington.”

Will gave me a dubious look. “You would never be anything like Angelica.”

That hurt. After he’d been so nice tonight, though, I was pretty sure he hadn’t meant to spray lighter fluid on my feelings and set them on fire. “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t mean
that
!” he exclaimed. “It’s just . . . Angelica tries really hard, but she’s not that bright.”

“Really!”

“Yes. Not to be mean. Just my opinion.”

Why do you want to date her, then?
I wondered. But we didn’t all want a rocket scientist, did we? Girls didn’t hang out at Xavier’s locker. I tried to edit the bitterness out of my voice as I said, “That’s my opinion too. I’ve never heard anyone else say it, but I’ve known this about Angelica since kindergarten.”

He nodded. “She does well in school because she cares and she worries. Like me.”

At the bottom of the grand stairs up to the covered front porch, I pulled him to a stop. “You’re not like that. Angelica and Aidan care, and they worry, and it’s part of their nature. You care and worry too, but it makes you tired.” I reached up and rubbed my thumb across the worry line between his brows. “Do you feel tired?”

“Since I’ve been in Florida, I’ve been exhausted,” he admitted.

I sighed. “Tonight will take care of itself. Angelica will be here. If she’s going to get jealous seeing you and me together, we don’t have to help that along. Let’s forget about our nightly goals and have a good time. Okay?”

The worry line disappeared as he gave me his sexy sideways smile. “What kind of good time do you mean?”

Fifteen minutes later, we were facing off for a dance-competition video game throwdown. I had thought I would laughingly drag him into the space in front of the huge TV and he would flirtatiously back out again. But as soon as I suggested it, he was ready to go. A crowd gathered around us, bored with my antics but astonished that tight Will Matthews was really going to do this thing.

And then, while the game beeped an electronic countdown to begin and the people around us held their breath, he pointed at me, meaning I was dead meat—just like I’d pointed at him on the football field before the challenge for drum captain.

“Oooooh,” the spectators moaned. I felt my face turn bright red. I had to win now.

But at the end of the song, Will had beaten me up and down Kaye’s expensively appointed living room.
And
he’d drawn an even bigger crowd. Will Matthews could totally do the Dougie.

“That is not even fair!” I squealed after guys had stopped slapping him on the back and Chelsea had shooed us off the dance floor so she could have a turn. “There’s no way I would have challenged you if I’d known you could actually
dance
! I should have made you sign some sort of disclaimer.” I poked him in the chest.

He grabbed my hand, grinning. “Never underestimate me.”

“I won’t!”

“My sisters have that video game. Let’s get in line and go again.” He tapped me on the chest like I’d poked him. This placed his fingers in the bare V-neck of my dress, just above my cleavage and my heart. “You’re mine.”

Over the course of the party, he beat the stuffing out of me twice more, then beat Chelsea to become the undisputed champion. The rest of the time, we were mostly standing to one side while somebody else took a turn. His arm circled my waist and my head nestled under his chin in a way that absolutely turned me on, and not just physically. I felt my friends’ eyes on us, overheard their whispered conversations about us, and I loved it. I began to understand, just a little bit, why couples latched on to each other and went off into a corner to watch the party instead of participating themselves. There was a certain high, a heady bonding experience, in seeing and being seen.

A bonding experience with Will was the
last
thing I needed when our alliance was only temporary, to drive Angelica to distraction. But I did think the party was good for both of us as individuals. As we moved from circle to circle, entering different conversations,
everyone
told me, “You look great!” I could have taken this to mean, “Normally you look like crap. I am pleasantly surprised that you can hang when the affection of a ridiculously cute guy is on the line!” But there was no point in taking offense about an observation that was true. I
felt
great.

And
everyone
said to Will, “Nice moves!” He colored and laughed when people told him this. He didn’t offer his own thoughts on his dancing prowess or join the conversation, but he didn’t look like he wanted to crawl away and die, either. Being crowned our unofficial Best Dancer had given him an identity besides Fucking New Guy or Cheating Dog, and his new title was one he seemed strangely comfortable with. I found myself looking up at him, his earring glinting in the lamplight, and experiencing a wash of pleasure that he was so adorable and, for the time being, mine.

But one thing nagged at me the whole night. When Will was in conversation with some football players about the Tampa Bay Lightning professional hockey team, a subject on which he was the authority and I was clueless to the point of not knowing the nouns from the verbs in this terminology, I took him aside and whispered in his ear. “Look without looking like you’re looking. Who is Sawyer staring at so forlornly?”

I held still while Will gazed over my head. Sawyer stood against the wall. He talked to the many people who passed by him, but he wasn’t organizing a practical joke or getting plastered on surreptitious boxed wine, like normal. He seemed quiet, for Sawyer—almost thoughtful. And I could have sworn he was staring at one girl in particular.

“Kaye?” Will asked in my ear.

That’s what I’d been afraid of. Talk about a girl out of Sawyer’s reach.

“Now he’s headed for the door,” Will reported.

I looked up at Will. “Don’t say anything about this, okay? It’s sensitive.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going to talk to him for a sec because I’m worried about him. I am not flirting with him.”

“I trust you,” Will said.

If he’d genuinely trusted me, he wouldn’t have needed to say this.

I couldn’t think about that right now. After squeezing his hand one last time, I crossed the crowded living room and slipped out the front door, hoping to catch Sawyer before he disappeared.

From the high porch, I should have been able to glimpse him descending the staircase or walking through the yard toward the street. I didn’t see him until I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. He was sitting by himself on the porch swing, one foot propped on his knee and the other on the floor, propelling himself gently back and forth. I slipped onto the bench next to him.

His arm had relaxed along the back of the seat, but now he pulled it close. “Careful. Your boyfriend will get jealous.”

I glanced at the house behind his shoulders. I didn’t want anybody inside to overhear us. I was pretty sure the nearest window was the dining room rather than a place where the party was going on. Not taking any chances, I asked very quietly, “It’s Kaye, isn’t it?”

He gave me that half-crazed look he got when threatened—but this time his raised eyebrows made him look less dangerous and more desperate. “Am I being that obvious?”

“Definitely not,” I assured him. “I only saw it because I was looking for it. Anybody else would be flabbergasted.” I gazed at him, his blond hair bright in the dim light. He looked incredibly sad. Now that I saw this, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed before. “How long?”

“Since I moved here,” he murmured.

That was two years ago. By that time, Kaye had already been dating Aidan for a year and was locked into the habits of her life with him.

“It’s worse lately,” Sawyer said. “I used to think surely she would get tired of him telling her what to do and break up with him. That’s when I would make my move. But the closer we get to graduation, the clearer it seems they’re not breaking up. Being back at school with her makes it excruciating. The mascot travels with the cheerleaders to every school event, you know. I thought I wanted to be near her, but it turns out I’m just putting myself through hell.”