Crossing the Barrier (10 page)

He liked green tea.

As thoughts of Lily crossed his mind, he pulled away, grabbing Andrea’s arms and removing them from around his neck. And just in time because Andrea’s tongue had touched his lips in an attempt to deepen the kiss.

Malakai took a step back and looked at the girl. She was nice, she was more than all right, but she was all wrong for him. Her kissing him hadn’t done anything for him while a simple touch from Lily set him on fire.

Lily.

It was all about Lily.

“Listen, Andrea, you’re nice and all, and pretty too, but I don’t think I’m the guy for you,” he said, trying to let her off as easily as he could.

“I thought you liked me.”

“Well, I do. As a friend.”

“Okay,” Andrea said, looking away.

“I’ll see you tomorrow at school,” he said, turning around and taking a step to leave.

“It’s that band girl, isn’t it? Lily?” Andrea asked, her voice cracking.

Malakai stopped and sighed. He didn’t know how to answer that, and he felt like a loser for making Andrea cry.

Slowly, he turned around. “Andrea, go home,” he said gently, instead of answering.

As he walked away, his thoughts returned to Lily, the girl he wanted to get to know more, the one he wanted to talk to, the one who was able to chase the loneliness away. But he didn’t even have her phone number. He hadn’t dared ask her, and to be honest with himself, he didn’t know how. One would think walking up to someone and saying “I want your phone number” would be easy, but with Lily, it was the hardest thing in the world. She was so much better than him, and she confused him in more ways than one. He didn’t know if she would really care for him to begin with.

And what would she see in him? Her life looked so perfect, so easy. Why would she burden herself with a guy like him?

As Malakai got to his jeep, his phone pinged. He retrieved it from his back pocket and looked at it. It was a message from Andrea.

I’m sorry.

Malakai decided the best thing to do was to ignore it. As he got in the driver’s seat, he threw his phone on the dashboard.

Chapter Eighteen

LILY

All evening while
she tried to do her homework, Lily was constantly distracted by Beatrice’s disapproval permeating the house.

Beatrice was having a function again the following Friday and required Lily to attend. Lily had no interest in being paraded in front of anyone anymore, and for once in her life, she had refused to attend. After all, she was not a girl on display for the highest bidder to marry, and that’s exactly how Beatrice treated her.

“You ungrateful child,” Beatrice had hissed. “I give you everything you want. I house you. I clothe you. I pay for your activities…”

“Really, Beatrice?” Lily had asked with a raised eyebrow. “I’m sorry to inform you that I own the house. I pay for my clothes. I paid for band. All you paid was for me to join the dancers, and I want nothing to do with them. And oh, by the way, I paid for my last laptop and my phone. So you don’t really have a hold on me, whether you like it or not.”

Then Lily had noticed a deep red stain on Beatrice’s white blouse. Fighting a frown, she had looked up; Beatrice’s nose was bleeding.

“So you know, your nose is bleeding, and you’re making an embarrassment of yourself,” she had added, pointing to the blouse.

Lily had hit a nerve. Beatrice worked hard to make sure she would never embarrass herself, regardless of whom she was with. Quickly, she had put a finger to her nose and pulled it away, red with blood. She had thrown a murderous glare at Lily before storming out to her room.

“Don’t worry, Beatrice, your secret is safe with me,” Lily had said flippantly to Beatrice’s retreating back.

The entire episode had been strange. Lily had never known her mother’s nose to bleed before.

Without adding a word, Lily had gone to her room, exhausted from her afternoon of band practice and in no mood to have any further discussions.

Doing homework now was a total waste of time. She couldn’t get Malakai out of her head long enough to read two sentences. Add to that Beatrice’s hostility, and it was impossible for her to concentrate at all.

And she was getting hungry.

Lily took her phone and texted Sandra.

Need to go out. Feel caged. Wanna go eat?

The response came a moment later.

Same as usual. You drive. Be out in five.

Lily smiled and went to her bathroom to see if she was presentable. Once she was satisfied, she grabbed her purse, her phone, and her keys from the dresser, and went down the stairs.

As Lily walked outside, Sandra was crossing the street. “You’re lucky,” Sandra said, as she got to the passenger door.

They both got into the car, and Lily started the engine.

“I was about to sit at the table when you texted. Mom excused me, of course.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”

“You didn’t bother us. If you text me last minute like this, it’s because you need me. Mom knows you’re not prone to spontaneity without reasons.”

“That’s what she said, isn’t it?” Lily asked with an amused smile, backing the car out of the driveway.

“Yeah, her exact words,” Sandra answered with a grin. “David almost asked to tag along, but I think Mom must have thrown him a glare ‘coz he just opened his mouth and didn’t say anything. It was funny, really. He looked like a fish.”

“I wish I had a brother like yours,” Lily said, driving down the street.

“No, you don’t!”

But what Lily felt from Sandra belied what she had just said. Sandra and David bickered all the time, but they loved each other deeply. Sandra could always count on her little brother to have her back, and David could rely on Sandra to have his.

“Zoe came over last night,” Lily said, breaking the silence.

“What? And you didn’t tell me that this morning? What did she want? Drown herself in your pool, I hope.”

“She said Malakai was seeing Andrea.”

“Yeah, right! I’ve never seen Malakai with Andrea. Besides, he likes you.”

“How can you tell? I mean, I’m the empath, and even I can’t tell.”

“Because of the way he looks at you.”

“You’ve never seen him with me.”

“Oh, but I know things,” Sandra said, mysteriously.

Lily rolled her eyes. Sandra was reading way too much into this.

A few minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot of a popular franchise restaurant in the area. They were about to get out of the car when Lily saw them.

“Isn’t that Malakai and Andrea? With Wes and Zoe?” Sandra asked next to her.

A redhead was talking to Malakai. Lily recognized her as Andrea. She didn’t know her personally, but from what she heard, the cheerleader was a nice enough girl who never made fun of band members.

“Looks like it.”

Lily and Sandra remained in the car, observing them. Wes and Zoe went their separate ways while Malakai and Andrea walked toward a car. They talked for a moment, then Andrea put her arms around Malakai’s neck.

Horror struck Lily.

They were kissing.

What Zoe had said was true, well at least for this part; Malakai was dating Andrea.

Lily believed the ground had suddenly opened underneath her, and she quickly looked away, staring pointedly out of her side window.

“You know what, I’m not hungry after all,” she said after a few awkward moments of silence.

She started the car.

“Lily, it’s not what you think. I’m sure. Malakai likes you.”

“Sure he does,” she said, putting the car in reverse. “In fact, he likes me so much he has his tongue down Andrea’s throat,” she added, shifting the car into drive and getting out of the parking lot.

Lily’s heart broke into thousands of pieces. She should have seen it coming. After all, rumors rarely flew around without a bit of truth behind them.

“There must be an explanation,” Sandra said.

“Sure there is,” Lily said, flippantly. In reality all she wanted to do was cry.

“We’ll find out,” Sandra said, crossing her arms.

Even though her house was only
ten minutes away, the drive felt like an hour to Lily. Once there, she got out of her car and ran inside her house before Sandra had time to say anything. She ran up the stairs, got into her bedroom, and, after locking the door, curled up on her bed and let the tears fall from her eyes.

Letting herself like him had been such a big mistake.

Chapter Nineteen

LILY

When Lily made
her way to school with Sandra the next morning, she was surprised to see some of the cheerleaders and Zoe’s circle of friends close to the door. They usually hung out in the front lobby where it was cooler and the pedestrian traffic was higher. Rarely were they outside by the back door where it was stuffy and humid.

“That’s strange,” Sandra observed, echoing Lily’s thoughts. “Something’s up.”

“Yeah, and I think I know what it is,” Lily said, looking at her friend.

Sandra gave her a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

As they got closer, Lily felt the gossiping girls’ excitement. One of them, and Lily was convinced it was Zoe as it came from her general direction, felt like she wanted someone to know something.

“There’s only one reason why they would be here, especially in this heat,” Lily said.

When Zoe glanced their way, Lily was sure she was the one with an ulterior motive.

“And we had a nice dinner. Then Malakai walked Andrea to her car, and he opened the door for her,” Zoe continued.

“Did he kiss her?” one of the girls asked, excited.

“Yes,” Zoe answered, laughing.

Lily looked sadly at Sandra.

“Wonder where Andrea is?” Sandra said, her eyebrows disappearing under her bangs. “Wonder if she knows they’re talking about her when she’s not here? Wonder if she knows Zoe’s telling all the others about her life?

“Anyway, don’t listen to them,” she said, grabbing Lily’s arm and pulling her toward the school. “I’m sure there’s a reason for what we saw last night. I know Malakai likes you. He wouldn’t go for Andrea,” she kept on babbling.

Lily appreciated Sandra trying to cheer her up, but she couldn’t deny what they had seen.

“You’ll see him in a few minutes,” Sandra continued, once they were inside the school, making their way to her first classroom. “Why don’t you ask him how his evening was?”

Lily didn’t want to ask him. In fact, she didn’t want to talk to him at all. She barely knew the guy and hearing all about his girlfriend shouldn’t affect her, but in reality it made her heart constrict painfully.

“I know you like him, Lily,” Sandra said, squeezing her arm gently. “And let’s face it, Zoe’s friends, the cheerleaders, band members, dancers, and football players are all a bunch of gossipers. And he did visit you at the hospital, which is known. And he did buy you lunch and joined you in the lobby on the first day of school, which is also known. Chances are someone in his group doesn’t like it at all.”

“But he kissed her. We both saw it.”

“Irrelevant.”

Lily stopped walking and frowned. Something felt strange with Sandra as she said that.

“What else do you know, Sandra?” she asked, hoping her friend knew something to cheer her up.

“Well, David heard an argument between Wes and Malakai, and Wes was telling Malakai he shouldn’t be seen with you. Malakai told him no one would tell him who he should see or not. Makes me think he may actually like you. That’s definitely not a conversation that would have happened if he was into Andrea.”

“Wow,” Lily said, her eyes wide. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

That something did cheer her up, but like everything else in her life, that good news could very well be accompanied by something bad.

“You don’t feel it when you’re with him?” Sandra asked, instead of answering Lily. “I mean, you can feel everything I feel, how come you can’t feel him?”

“You know it doesn’t work that way. Yes, sometimes, I get really precise feelings and I know exactly what the person thinks, and yes, sometimes, but not that often, mind you, I can see images from other people’s minds. But sometimes it’s more confusing than not.

“With Malakai, I feel something, but I’m not sure what it is. It’s like curiosity, really. Some interest, too. But a lot of confusion.”

Lily left out the part of how she felt when she was with him, the warm and fuzzy comfort blanket feeling she had when he was around her.

“Like he wants to know you more?” Leave it to Sandra not to pick on the confusion part.

“Maybe,” she answered slowly, not sure if that was the case.

“Well, let’s plan something then, so he can get to know you better,” Sandra suggested with a smile.

“I don’t think so. Not after seeing him kiss Andrea.”