Romancing the Nerd (9 page)

Chapter Eleven

Dan

I know she doesn’t want my pity, but I can’t help that I feel sorry for her. I’ve always found her accident-proneness endearing and kind of adorable at times. But this isn’t one of those times. The urge to touch her, to put an arm around her shoulders, or to simply squeeze her damp hand is strong, but just like when her character died at LARP, I know she won’t welcome that kind of sympathy from me.

“Go away. You can’t be in here.” She goes back to splashing cold water on her hair, which is doing nothing to remove the mayo slime. I’m suddenly more angry than usual at the state of our school’s funds. Can’t even get the hot water fixed in the ladies’ room.

I might feel really bad for her, but I won’t show it, for her sake. “Fine,” I say. “I guess you don’t want my shampoo I just happened to grab from the locker room on the way here.”

I don’t even try to play out my bluff by turning around and walking away. I set the bottle of shampoo on the counter and I can’t fight that urge to help her any longer. I take the elastic band out of her hair and run my fingers through her braid, separating the locks of crimson.

“Hey,” she says and tries to bat away my hands.

“If you don’t let me help, you won’t get it all out and you’ll probably end up with a soaked shirt. So just be still.”

She tenses for a second, gripping the edge of the sink, then she relaxes, accepting her fate. I start by getting out all the chunks of potato, egg, and, oh God, is that pickle? Gross. I massage the shampoo in then rinse it. The water turns her hair to a nice shade of dark auburn and I’ll be damned, but the silky feel of it turns me on. I try my best not to slide my hand across the back of her neck and search out stressed muscles. I have a feeling she wouldn’t like that.

Well? What do you want from me? I’m a virile seventeen-year-old male. Excuse me for thinking her hair is pretty.

I turn the faucet off and grab my hoodie from my backpack to use as a towel. She doesn’t stop me. Maybe she’s glad I’m messing up my favorite, super-soft-from-a-million-washes hoodie. That would be very Zelda of her.

She takes the hoodie from my hands. “I can handle it from here.” Surprisingly, she doesn’t follow that with some insult. She pushes the big, silver button on the hand dryer and puts her head under it.

I step outside with my stuff and lean against the wall by the bathroom door. I decide to go ahead and analyze something that’s bugging me. All this started out as me just wanting some talking-to-a-girl advice from Zelda and now I’m relishing the feel of her hair sliding between my fingers, and the cute way she snorts when something unexpectedly strikes her as funny. But, to be honest, it didn’t really start there. She’s been in the back of my head for at least a couple of years. Not that I would admit that to anyone other than myself. I try not to wear my heart on my sleeve, which I learned from Taxidermy Todd himself, so I told myself I was okay with her not showing interest/hating me.

Am I being unfaithful to effyeahFinityGirl by thinking about Zelda this way? I mean, how messed up is it that I’m having thoughts about the girl I want to ask for advice about talking to this other girl? Epically messed up, me thinks.

And of course, this moment of self-examination is the perfect time for Douchebag Donovan to stroll by on his way to class.

“Waiting to use the little girl’s room, dude?” He punches me in the shoulder like we’re buddies or something.

“Maybe I am. It’s a lot cleaner than ours.” I stand up straight and cross my arms.

The door opens next to me and Zelda steps out, then freezes, her eyes darting from me to Donovan and back. Her hair is kind of back to normal, but it’s frizzier.

“Oh man!” Donovan yells so that all his lackeys beside him prepare themselves for the no doubt, super awesome burn he’s about to deal out. “It’s Miss Potato Head! I loved you in
Toy Story 3
.”

I have to admire her. She doesn’t shrink away from him. She doesn’t tear up. She raises her chin and hoists her backpack onto her shoulder. “Don’t you ever get tired of being a walking cliché?” Then she turns, saying, “Let me know when you figure out what cliché means.” And then as she starts to walk away, she pauses. “Wait, you know what?
Don’t
let me know.”

One of Donovan’s more quiet lackeys snickers, which earns him a scowl from the man himself. I laugh long and hard. Maybe I go overboard a little, but the guy totally deserves it.

Leaving Donovan to his douchey ways, I jog to catch Zelda. “Wait up.”

“No.” She doesn’t even look at me, just keeps stomping ahead.

“Come on, wait.” I reach her and put a hand on her shoulder.

She shrugs it off. “Leave me alone.”

“Look, that guy’s an asshole. Don’t let him get to you.” She might’ve acted like Donovan’s childish words didn’t hurt her feelings, but they obviously did.

She turns to face me and I almost run into her. She stands at her full height, which puts us almost eye to eye, but the ferocity in her stance makes me take a step back.

“Was that your plan? Stall me long enough so you could get ahold of your jerk friends so they could make fun of me?” With every few words, she tags me with that metal lunch box of hers.

I flinch, expecting another hit, when she lets out a long, angry sigh. Instead, her shoulders slump and there’s that sad, defeated look again. I suddenly hate that look and never want to see it again.

“I had nothing to do with him showing up. I can’t stand that guy.” Why am I trying so hard with her? I obviously can’t do anything right in her opinion.
Because you need her help,
my brain says, and I’m not sure if it’s the truth or an excuse.

“Whatever.” She turns to leave again, but I stop her.

“You wanna get out of here?” I put on a mischievous grin, one that I’ve seen Logan do a million times. It always seems to work on Maddie.

I must do the smile wrong because Zelda is unaffected. She shakes her head. “And let all those people think I was too much of a wuss to face them after the potato salad incident?”

“You have a name for it already? That’s not good, dude. Psychiatrists say that naming a thing gives it a permanent home in your head.” Psychoanalyzing her just earns me a frown. “And besides, those people might think that, but in the end, who got to skip the rest of the school day, you or them?”

Zelda

Maybe being accident-prone has nurtured a self-destructive quality inside me. Like, something bad is probably going to happen at any moment so why not go ahead and get it over with? That’s the only reason I can think of as to why I agree to go with Dan.

Okay, it’s not the only reason, but it’s the only one I’m willing to entertain at the moment.

“Are you cold? This monstrosity has seat warmers.” He goes to fiddle with some controls on the dash of his SUV, but I shake my head.

“I’m fine.”

It’s uncomfortably quiet for a moment, then he says, “How about some music? Or talk radio? I’m sure there’s some idiot on at the moment, with lots of opinions he calls ‘honest’ but are really just sexist or racist, that we can make fun of.”

I shrug. “Whatever.”

I hear my mom’s voice in my head then:
Stop being a child. He’s trying to be nice.
And as I’m frequently inclined to do, I argue with her.
No, he’s not. He’s doing something else. He’s planning something.
And as she’s inclined to do as well, she argues back with some little tidbit of wisdom she probably read in a romance novel, but which is actually good advice.
No one will ever be in your heart if you don’t open it
is one I’ve heard many times.

“Fine.” I agree with brain-mom under my breath, but I’m sitting right next to Dan in a quiet, enclosed vehicle so of course he hears me.

“Fine what? Heated seats or talk radio? Or music? I can do all of them at once if you want.” He starts flipping switches, making the corresponding sound effects. Leave it to Dan to turn his super fancy Range Rover into the USS
Enterprise
.

My body betrays me and I snuggle deeper into the warming leather seats. “Where are we going anyway?”

“Why, the happiest place in Natchitoches, of course.” He waves his hands in a broad gesture to encompass the whole town.

I panic for a second when he doesn’t immediately put his hands back on the wheel. “Oh my God, will you be careful!”

He smiles at me then glances down at his knee, which can apparently steer just fine. “I’d never endanger your life, fair lady.”

I roll my eyes and take a relieved breath. Something walks into my thoughts and takes a seat.
Is he…flirting?

“Looks like no matter how hard you try, you can’t stop talking like you’re in the middle of a LARP game.” I find myself scratching at my nail polish again, so I tuck my hands under my thighs.

“I didn’t know I should be trying to not talk that way. In fact, I try to find every opportunity to practice my verbal skills. I can’t seem out of practice when Craytor returns again.” He holds a fist up in the air. “Heads shall roll, maidens shall be rescued, and elves shall be insulted!”

I make sure he sees my blank stare followed by a slow blink before saying, “Right. You never said where we’re going.”

“The Phoenix, of course. We don’t exactly have Disney World Natchitoches.” He puts on an
über
-cheesy smile, which is way more endearing than the fake mischievous one he tried back at school.
That smile turns on the heated seats around my heart
. Oh God, did I just think that? Gross.

He nudges my arm. “Get it? Because I said the happiest place in Natchitoches. And that’s a well-known advertisement slogan for—”

I hold my hands up. “I get it. Really, I get it.”

I turn my head to watch a group of college kids playing hackysack outside the local coffee shop—not because I’m interested in hackysack but because I don’t want Dan to see me smile. If I could have picked one place that would cheer me up, The Phoenix would be it.

We pull into the parking lot and, as always, the blazing bird over the entrance of Natchitoches’s most beloved comic shop makes these little happy vibes go skipping over my skin. When we get to the door, Dan holds it open for a couple of guys who are leaving, then continues to hold it open for me. I grind out a “thanks” and step through. His soft touch on the base of my back as he follows startles me, so I jump and look over my shoulder at him.

For a second, he just looks at me, his eyes heavy-lidded and a slight grin on his face. Then his eyes go wide and he glances down at where his fingers are touching me. He jerks his hand away, mouthing a “sorry,” then gets this weird look like he’s really confused about something.

Chapter Twelve

Dan

D
ear hand, what the hell do you think you are doing?
I’m hoping that scold will be enough to calm myself until I can have a good discussion with my body and how it needs to stop betraying me. Hopefully, Maddie will be here and I can sit both Zelda and her down. Once I start telling them about effyeahFinityGirl, I’m sure all randy thoughts of Zelda-freaking-Potts will leave my head.

Logan is behind the counter. “Dude!” he says when he sees me. We give each other a manly hug, slapping each other a couple of times on the back, because that’s what real men do. They acknowledge the bro-love and are never embarrassed about it.

Logan’s mom and the owner of The Phoenix, Martha, sticks her head out of the office and is happy to see me, too, but her smile quickly becomes laced with suspicion. She squints at me. “It’s good to see you, Daniel, but shouldn’t you be in school?”

I hold up my hands in defeat. “I know, but Zelda and I needed to take a, uh, personal day. High school’s tough for those like us.”

I hear a muffled scoff from somewhere…below me? Zelda and I both look over the edge of the counter underneath the register. Maddie is nicely ensconced beneath a shelf that holds all the regulars’ bags of pulled comics. She grabs Logan’s foot and he sits back on his stool before she puts him off balance. She opens a red Sharpie, fine tip, and goes to work on his shoe.

“Why is she desecrating a perfectly good pair of Chucks?” I ask, and Zelda nods like she, too, needs to know the answer.

Logan shrugs and rolls his eyes like he has no idea and he’s annoyed by it, but I also see that stupid puppy-love look that means this makes him infinitely happy.

Ew.

“Cheerleader, if you could maybe stop vandalizing footwear for a moment, I need to speak with you and Zelda in the backroom.” I take the Batgirl comic from Zelda’s hands and place it on the counter.

“I was reading that,” she says as I drag her down the hall. She stares back longingly at the comic, and the friendship bracelet on her wrist, which I currently have my fingers wrapped around, is as soft as my favorite hoodie. The whole situation makes me want to talk about effyeahFinityGirl even more because, damn it, could Zelda stop being attractive in all the right ways? I’m here to get advice on winning over FinityGirl, not to fan the fires that was—“was” being the most important word—a silly thing for Zelda that will never come to fruition.

“Please take a seat.” I motion to a couple of white long boxes, the kind made for storing comics.

Maddie turns to Zelda. “I love this skirt, Zel. And you paired it with that shirt? Genius. I wish I was creative like you.”

I halt that conversation before it goes any further. “Okay, fingers on lips.” I demonstrate what I mean by making the
shush
gesture. I hold my finger there until they mimic me with confused looks. “I have something important to discuss with my two favorite female friends.”

I should’ve known the “fingers on lips” request wouldn’t last long with the cheerleader. Maddie grabs a stack of comics and starts flipping through them. “We’re your
only
female friends, Dan.”

Zelda nods in agreement. “I don’t really think I’d even consider myself your friend.”

My mouth drops open. “You cut me to the quick, fair lady.”

Is that a blush in her cheeks? I don’t think I’ve ever seen her blush. I didn’t think she
could
blush. I definitely didn’t think a blush could make a girl look prettier. Weird.

Put it aside, Dantheman. You’re here for FinityGirl, damn it.

I blurt everything out before I get distracted again. “Right, so here’s the thing. I’ve been talking to this amazing girl online and I think I want to ask her to meet.”

Zelda’s hand that she’s using to keep from sliding off the box slips and she goes from vertical to horizontal in a second flat. But I’m close enough and my reflexes are probably the best they’ll ever be in my lifetime, so I catch her upper arm before she hits the hard floor. I wrap an arm around her waist and pull her up so she’s pressed against my chest. We’re face to face now. I watch her eyes go all celestial again, and now there’s absolutely no doubt that Zelda Potts can blush.

The thing that finally pulls my attention from the smell of my shampoo in Zelda’s hair is Maddie tiptoeing to the door.

I make sure Zelda is steady before asking, “Where are you going, cheerleader?”

She freezes mid cartoon-style-sneaky-pose. “Nowhere. I definitely wasn’t going to make popcorn. Definitely not doing that.” She sits back down on the box with a disappointed look.

“Good, then sit down. I need your help. Like I said, I’ve been talking to this girl and she’s great and I want to meet her, but I don’t want to scare her off. So I need you two, being girls, to tell me what to say.”

They glance at each other, eyebrows raised, frowns firmly in place, and I’m suddenly not so sure that this was the best idea.

Maddie leans forward, elbows on knees. “Well, first things first, who is she? What’s she like? Tell us everything.”

“Her name is effyeahFinityGirl. She likes all the same stuff I do, but she has her own opinions about things. She’s smart and funny. Ya know, all that good stuff. There’s just something about her. Like I’ve been waiting my entire life just to get to know her.”

Zelda kind of sighs. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said about…” She shakes her head like she needs to rattle her thoughts. “I mean, that’s got to be one of the sweetest things anyone’s ever said about anybody, which freaks me out, since you’re the one who said it. But anyway, how do you know she is the person she says she is?”

“Good point,” Maddie says.

“I guess I don’t have any proof, but it’s a feeling. She speaks like she is who she claims to be, if that makes any sense.” I shrug, then point a mean finger at Zelda. “And don’t think I didn’t notice that slight against my honor, woman.”

She scrunches up her face at me in a sort of what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it way.

Maddie thinks for a second or two before saying, “Maybe asking her to meet is a bit much. How about asking for a video chat first? That way you can get confirmation of her identity without risking the possibility of her being a serial killer or of you having a kidney harvested and waking up in a bathtub full of ice.”

I take a moment to think this idea over. “That’s actually a really good idea,” I say.

She scowls at me. “Also, maybe next time, don’t sound so shocked when I have a good idea. It does happen, ya know?”

Zelda isn’t convinced, though. “I don’t know. What if she says no? Then you probably wouldn’t feel comfortable talking to her anymore and you’d stop. Do you want to risk losing that?”

I pace back and forth. She’s right. It would suck to lose FinityGirl. She’s been there for me when I didn’t feel comfortable talking to anyone else. But after she helped me with the whole thing with my dad, I have this overwhelming need to see her face, to hear her voice. “I don’t want to lose her, no, but I just have to know.”

Zelda

I’m so very screwed on so many levels. Dan is going to ask for a video chat and I’m going to have to say no. I haven’t gotten even one tiny tidbit from him and it looks like I won’t be able to continue digging. I have to fix this. Then there’s level two of screwedness: the fact that I’ve had several moments of actually liking him today. He’s been nice and impossibly, dare I say it, attractive. That hooded stare of his coupled with being wrapped in his arms, which were surprisingly strong, at The Phoenix made me want to melt into a Zelda-sized puddle. And what he said about other-me was so sweet. No one’s ever said something like that about me that wasn’t either a friend or family or imaginary.

Even now, as we pull into my driveway, I have to grin at how he knows every word to Allison Blair’s new song “Suck it Up.” When I realize I’m just staring at him, probably with a goofy look on my face, I go to open the door so I can make a quick escape. But when I unlock it, he locks it right back with one of the multitude of buttons on his steering wheel. He turns the song up as it hits the chorus and begins to belt out the lyrics, singing to me like he wants me to join him. And I swear on Captain Mal’s pretty, floral bonnet, he is a horrible singer.

I refuse to join in, but I do laugh at his elaborate hand gestures. “All right, this is your car, not Carnegie Hall.”

He scowls at me and unlocks the door. “In my humble, but totally correct, opinion, life isn’t worth living if you’re not always pretending to perform at Carnegie Hall.”

I shake my head and open the door, but a quick glance at my front porch has me plopping back into the seat. “Damn it.”

“What?” He looks at the porch, too, and sees exactly what.

A big box is blocking the front door.

“Must be the dryer Mom ordered. They were supposed to come tomorrow. And I don’t have a back-door key.”

“I’ll help.” He jumps out of the car before I can stop him.

“Nonono, don’t worry about it.” The last thing I need is to spend any more time around him, or to be indebted to him.

He ignores my protests completely, of course, because he’s a stubborn jackass, and jogs up to the porch. As I approach he says, “Shouldn’t be too heavy for your girly-girl arms.”

I shake a fist at him. “Wanna see what these girly-girl arms can do to your face?”

He holds his hands up in surrender. “I was just kidding, jeez. I’m willing to bet those arms could do much damage. Okay, you open the door and we’ll get this thing where it’s supposed to go.”

I move to unlock the front door, being very careful not to brush against him in any way. The other last thing I need is to turn to puddle-Zelda right now. I have to scramble and lean over the box to reach the keyhole. What kind of idiot deliverymen were these?

I feel Dan’s hand lightly wrap around my free arm. I look at his hand, then at him over my shoulder. “What’re you doing?”

“Making sure you don’t hurt yourself. If you haven’t noticed, you tend to—”

I don’t let him finish. “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

Finally, I unlock the door and push it open. With that done, we stand on opposite sides.

“You ready?” he asks and lifts his end of the box.

I nod and lift my end. It takes a good ten minutes of shoving and maneuvering for us to realize we’ll have to unpack the damn thing to get it through the door.

Dan pulls out his keys, which have a Swiss Army knife keychain, and slices open the box. As we yank out Styrofoam and plastic packaging, I revisit the effyeahFinityGirl conversation. “So, you really want to meet this online girl?”

He grabs a sheet of bubble wrap to entertain himself while he takes a moment to think.
Pop,
pause,
pop, pop,
pause.

“Dan?” I say impatiently.

Finally he hands me the bubble wrap and nods. “Yeah, I do. I’m not one to not take action, as you very well know. I’m not going to waste time on someone who’s not worth it. And I won’t be catfished.”

I pop a bubble. “Catfished?”

“You haven’t seen that movie? Or the show?” He shakes his head like I’m so very uneducated. “Well, it’s when someone starts a relationship online, but they’re posing as someone else, tricking the other person. It’s one thing to leave out insignificant details but it’s a different thing to totally fabricate your entire existence.”

I have to talk him out of this, to give myself some more time. “But what if she thinks the same about you? Or what if she has really bad social anxiety? Wouldn’t asking for a video chat freak her out?”

He shrugs out of his hoodie, tossing it on the porch swing before ripping the box apart. “Doesn’t matter. I mean, I’d hate to cause her distress, obviously, but… I don’t know. If she is who she says she is, then this is definitely the best thing for both of us.”

God, why is he so hard-headed and ridiculous and muscly and, oh my, is that a tattoo of the Death Eaters’ Dark Mark I see on his upper arm, peeking out from his short sleeve?

I catch my thoughts and shake my head to clear it. Get back in the game, Potts. “All I’m saying is maybe you should give it more time. Don’t rush into this. Not only do you need to be sure, but she needs to be sure of you. You need to give her a reason to trust you. Confide in her. And remember, patience is a virtue.”

He stands straight and rubs the back of his neck in thought. Yep, that sure is a tattoo of the Dark Mark. Maybe it’s because I’ve always ’shipped Draco and Hermione, but I find Slytherins extremely sexy. He’s not eighteen yet, so I want to ask how he got that very Potterhead tattoo, but I don’t because I need to keep him on this train of thought.

He sighs, giving in. “Okay, you’re right. But I’m putting a time limit on it. Two weeks at most.”

Thank God. I can handle two weeks. I’m just going to have to up my game. It should be easier now if he takes my advice and is more open with effyeah. “That’s very smart of you,” I say, trying to make it seem like this was all his idea.

And it works. “I know,” he says and motions to the dryer. “Now. Let’s get this sucker inside.”

On three, we lift and it takes a few pauses before we get the thing in its spot in the laundry room at the back of the house.

After a couple of five-minute YouTube videos on setting up dryers, Dan connects all the pipes and whatever in the back of the dryer then stands. He lifts the front of his shirt to wipe the sweat from his forehead, and I have primo seats at the ripped, flat stomach show. My own stomach does a little tumble and heat rushes to my cheeks. I try to put distance between us by taking a few steps back because this is getting too much for me to handle. Unfortunately, I trip over an empty laundry basket. I reach out, hoping to cling onto something that will stop my fall, but I grab the last thing that would be helpful. The box of laundry detergent comes down hard on my face and the white powder covers everything, including me, from the neck down. Because that’s how my luck works. I might almost get knocked unconscious and covered in soap, but at least it doesn’t get in my eyes.