Double Clutch (13 page)

“
Yeah.” It sounded annoyed, even though that’s not really how I felt. I curled on my side and cradled the phone next to my ear, blinking in the dim light of my empty room.

“
You don’t know how sorry I am. You have a lot to do tomorrow. I should let you go.”

And I knew that he was really asking if I wanted to get off of the phone with him, and I also knew that if I said yes, it would break his heart a little. And as much as Jake Kelly had made me crazy, I still felt protective over his heart, like it was an egg I held in my hand that could be crushed without much force at all.

“
Not yet. What’s up with your comments on my photos?” I knew I managed to make my voice sound almost exactly the way it had sounded on Friday just after I kissed him.

His laugh was so sheepish I could practically see him blush. “I was feeling brave. It’s what I’m thinking. You’re just…” He stopped again. “You’re like the kind of girl I’ve only ever imagined meeting, and then you just show up one day across the table from me at school, and I know this is my one chance and I’d better not screw it up. I don’t know how to say it. You’re gorgeous and smart and funny. And you’re not judgmental. You know, I feel like I could tell you all of the crazy stuff I’ve been through, and you would still see the real Jake under all the bull.”

It was essentially what Saxon had told me about myself, and I felt ashamed that Jake had given me so much credit when I didn’t really deserve it at all.

“
Jake, you make me sound like some perfect girl, but…”

“
But you are,” he interrupted. “My idea of perfect, anyway.”

“
I’m far from perfect.” I pushed my bangs back with the heel of my hand.

“
I know I’m not really in your league,” he said matter-of-factly.

“
Yes you are.” I laughed and sat up, cross-legged on my mattress. “I think you’re just fishing for compliments.”

“
No. Seriously, I’m not.”

“
I actually believe you,” I admitted and leaned forward, the phone pressed hard to my ear, my voice low. “So I’ll give you some anyway. No interrupting or being all humble. You are very good looking.” I heard him make a noise, but I rushed on to stop him. “You are a very hard worker. You’re smart, don’t even say you aren’t. I don’t waste time on dumb people, Jake. And, this one is important.” I paused for dramatic effect.

He laughed shyly. “Lay it on me.”

“
You are an awesome kisser,” I whispered.

He laughed loud and long. “Here I thought you were going to get all deep on me.” When he was done with his laughing, his voice got deeper and very sexy. “So you think I’m a good kisser?”

“
You’ve had enough practice!” I joked. The memory of kissing him made my breath come fast and my lips tingle.

His voice got really serious all of a sudden. “Not really, Brenna,” he admitted. “It was…kind of heartless. It wasn’t…” He didn’t speak for a few seconds. “It wasn’t good,” he said finally. “At all. But if you and I were, um, together, it would be different.”

My traitorous body shivered and squirmed with a need that I didn’t really know how to respond to. “I don’t have any plans to do much more than kissing for a while,” I said carefully, even as I fought waves of something hot and hungry that crashed over me.

“
I didn’t mean
that
,” he rushed, and his voice was so sexy I got goose bumps. “I meant kissing. The way it felt with you today was ten times better than all of the sex I’ve had put together, and that was just one kiss.” He took a breath, and it sounded jagged and unsteady. “Or maybe I felt something you didn’t?”

“
No.” I smiled so wide my cheeks ached. “I felt it, Jake. I’ve felt a lot for you. Since the minute we met.”

“
I have a feeling we’re going to be crazy happy together, Brenna Blixen.” The naked optimism in his voice stung my conscience.

If I decided to move forward with Jake Kelly, I had better be positive that it was all through with Saxon Maclean. If not, I was going to have one hell of a nightmare on my hands.

“
I…want to see you again. Soon.” I only realized how much I felt the words as they came out of my mouth.

“
You will. Now I’m going to go ogle your Facebook pictures and let you get some sleep. Sweet dreams, Brenna.”

“
You too,” I said, and we clicked off.

The feeling of aloneness that swelled around me once we disconnected was overwhelming. I usually liked being alone, especially late at night when I could think on my own. But this was different. This time I wanted Jake’s voice back next to me. For the first time I tried to imagine what it would be like to sleep next to someone, like to have Jake lying in the bed next to me. Just thinking it made me smooth my hand over the empty bed. I was always the only one in bed, and had a hard time imagining it otherwise.

I believed Jake when he told me things that sounded crazy, like that kissing me was better than sex had been. But my belief had more to do with my feelings for him than any type of real knowledge, because I had almost nothing to go on physically. I just had to take Jake’s word for it and hope he wasn’t saying what he thought I wanted to hear.

It took a long time to fall asleep in my empty, echoey room, and I even considered calling Jake back, but squashed the thought before it could really take root. My own company was never that intolerable.

The next day dawned brighter than I expected, and Mom and Thorsten already had my window cranked open and primer rolling before I rolled off my mattress. I put on old clothes and pulled my hair up in a messy ponytail, then got to work.

Mom and I had picked a robin’s egg blue for the accent wall behind my new bed, which was a dark wood frame with a high headboard that had a deep shelf on the top. The bedclothes had bright red poppies on a cream background with brown accents and pillows. The other three walls were painted a caramel-type color. There was a large blue and brown rug with swirling flowers. I had a new desk with a roll top and a set of hung shelves with glass doors. There was also a tall bookshelf with glass doors on it and shelves underneath. We fitted a new organizing system into my closet and moved all of my new clothes into it. The old clothes that had clogged up my closet got put in a pile for Goodwill. Thorsten hooked up a cream colored chandelier that hung with long swaths of red crystals. I put together several paper lamps, a few oblong and a few spheres, and hung them from the ceiling, where they shined light on the floor and cast a soft glow. We hung the paintings: Cassatt’s
Girl in the Blue Armchair
and Chagall’s
Wedding Portrait.
Mom helped me pick the prints based on color and what I liked. We hung a bamboo shade and curtains with huge red and cream flowers.

By early evening we were finally finished and just stood in the middle of it.

“
Thank you, Mom.” I laid the hugs on thick. “Thank you, Fa.”

“
Let’s take a picture!” Mom grabbed her camera and analyzed angles. We snapped a few shots, and I asked if I could borrow the camera. “Sure honey. What for?”

“
I told some of the people at school that we were doing this, and they were curious about what it would look like. I just wanted to post them.” I flipped through the shots on the screen.

“
Is that safe, all that picture posting?” She had a mom’s neurosis about the internet, basically seeing it as a huge pool where pedophiles swam and lured unsuspecting children in their little floaties to the scary deep end.

“
It’s just pictures of the room, Mom.” I tried to sound comforting. “I would never give out my address or anything.”

“
Okay.” She looked a little guilty. “Honey, Thorsten and I were thinking of going on a date tonight. Would it be too weird to leave you to hang here?”

“
No! I just got those new books I ordered and look at this room.” I gestured around. “Go out. Have fun. It will be totally fine. And, remember tomorrow is a day off, so you can stay out late.”

Thorsten smiled and gave me the thumbs up behind Mom’s back. I gave him a conspirator’s thumbs up back. She was a worrier, and we both loved her for it, but it made life hard to live sometimes. Poor Thorsten! Mom still acted like I was in elementary school. The man could hardly get a date.

I sat in my room and uploaded pictures to Facebook. There was nothing interesting going on online, so I clicked my laptop off and grabbed a new book. A big, thick Barbara Kingsolver was waiting for me. I promised myself I would reread the assigned
Lord of the Flies
chapters in a few hours. Monday morning at the latest.

Mom ordered me a pizza and fretted over me before she and Thorsten left, but they finally did go, and I was happy to watch them pull out of the driveway. They were good together; loving, respectful, kind. It gave me hope that people could get married and still be in love years later.

I turned my mind off of love! I didn’t want to think about any of it. The conversation I had with Jake the night before left me feeling dizzy, but I couldn’t think about it too much or my mind would go crazy obsessing. I lay in my room, and the delicious new décor made it feel so much more my own. I got completely dragged into Kingsolver’s world when I heard the whine of an engine outside my window. It sounded almost like a weed whacker, but those weren’t exactly used much in New Jersey in the autumn.

For a split second I experienced the kind of panic that comes from being a gullible weenie about horror movies. I’ve told myself a thousand times that the point of a horror movie is to try to scare the person watching it, I’ve watched the behind the scenes stuff and read interviews the (living) actors gave about their gory onscreen death scenes, but they still scared the crap out of me and there was no getting around that.

So for a long, cringe-worthy minute, I was sure the whine I heard was a chainsaw and a thousand blood-splattered images blew through my mind.

Then I saw a dirt bike. It sailed out of the woods behind my house and landed neatly in my back yard. The driver parked under my window and pulled his helmet off.

Jake!

I opened the window and stuck my head out. My bedroom was on the first floor, but the bottom sill was still a good five feet off of the ground.

“
What are you doing here?” I gasped. “You didn’t ride your dirt bike all the way here from the lake, did you?”

He smiled at me, and my heart melted into a puddle inside my chest. I loved his sweet smile, his never-neat hair, and the rough skin on his hands. I wasn’t going to go so far as to say I loved Jake, but put together everything about him that I loved and you got a pretty intense emotion.

“
I finished work and thought I’d come over. I don’t want to bother you. Or your parents.” He looked from side to side, and chewed the inside of his cheek, obviously nervous to get caught here.

“
My parents aren’t home.” I realized once the words fell from my mouth that they were pretty much the standard ‘come in and have your way with me’ words in the realm of teenage romance, but I didn’t mean them that way.

Something flashed in Jake’s eyes, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

“
I just wanted to say hello.” He offered me his crooked smile.

“
Wait here.” I moved through the house, my heart thudding like mad, positive my mother and Thorsten would absolutely in no way approve of this, and I promised myself that I would make sure Jake only stayed for a little while. I opened the front door and waved him in.

He stood in the front hall and looked around. “Nice house.” His eyes took it all in slowly.

While he looked around, I took the opportunity to look at him. I appreciated the way I could see his muscles under his clothes. I noticed he had kicked the dirt off of his boots before he came in, and I could also tell from the way he shuffled his feet nervously that he wanted me to ask him to take them off so he didn’t have to track mud through my house, but I didn’t. Just in case Mom and Thorsten came home early, Jake was going out my window, no questions asked, no booted evidence remaining.

“
Mom ordered me a pizza before they left,” I said. “You want some?”

“
If you were going to eat alone, I’ll have some with you. You know, to keep you company.”

I grabbed the box of pizza, the soda, and two glasses and led him to my room.

“
Wow. This is your room?” It was a simply stated fact, but the way Jake said it you could hear the “so” that he had wanted to attach to the beginning of that sentence. Like,
Here I am, finally in your room, which I’ve been wondering about for awhile.

“
We just finished it a few hours ago. That‘s why it still smells a little like paint. Nice, right?”

“
Yeah,” he agreed and we plopped down on the floor. He poured me a glass of soda first and then poured one for himself, which I thought was really sweet. Then we started to eat, and Jake wolfed down the pizza so fast I had to check my urge to laugh. I was glad Mom bought a large pie. She and Thorsten knew that when I wanted to, I could eat most of a pizza on my own. They would never even ask if they came home and there was nothing left but some grease and crumbs in the bottom of the box.

“
Do you like Folly?” I asked. He nodded, his mouth full.