The ABC's of Kissing Boys (14 page)

My father pressed his lips into a flat line. Then looked at Mr. Murphy. “I can live with it if you can.”

Mr. Murphy glanced at his son. “What are you getting out of this?”

“Are you kidding?” Tristan laughed. “Uh … hanging with Parker? Status at school.”

His dad considered this. “I guess.” Then he draped an arm around Tristan's shoulder and steered him toward the house. “But this doesn't change anything between us, Stanhope!”

“I'm still going to own your ass!” my dad charged back.

Tristan threw me a weary smile that I returned, and I made my retreat back to my own house with my dad.

•

I couldn't wait to see Becca that next day and get her take on everything. Although as I waited for her by the grill truck, it was hard to miss the irony that the girl I'd pushed away so I could climb to greater social heights was now the one I turned to, to bring me back down to earth.

“Talk about living large, Parker,” Becca said later, when we were finally eating after I'd spilled my life's building drama. “All
I
did last night was homework.”

“Consider yourself lucky.”

I glanced up, to see Kyle crossing in front of us, shooting a grin my way. I was sure that Chrissandra had told him the latest and that he was laughing both behind my back and in my face now. Normally I looked away from his kind of trouble, but today I couldn't resist lifting my hand and waving. Just to make him cringe.

He pretended not to see me. “He's such a jerk,” I told Becca. “Staring. Smiling. Trying to rub salt in my wound.”

“Oh, he wants something from you, all right,” she said, and laughed. “But I promise you, it has nothing to do with salt.” I must have looked as confused as I felt, because she rolled her eyes and continued. “Duh, Parker. He's totally into you. Can't you tell?”

“Kyle? Uh- uh. He's with Chrissandra. And that's just his smile, I mean, the way he looks.”

“Yeah. At
you.”

In the back of my mind, I remembered what CeeCee had said.
Huh.
I idly wondered if Chrissandra had heard anything like this, too. But Becca pushed those thoughts away by asking more about Chrissandra's plan.

“So basically,” she clarified, “she wants you to put a note under the door and run like the wind?”

“Pretty much.”

“Wouldn't Hartley recognize your handwriting?”

“I suppose I could write it in block letters or type it out on the computer.”

“Or you could always cut out letters from magazines, like in ransom notes in old TV movies. Be super-dramatic.”

I nodded, but my thoughts had slipped back to Kyle. I wondered now if those rides he'd offered me last year had had some sort of deeper meaning.

And I realized that it wouldn't have mattered. Even though he might be able to pass for Colin Farrell's younger brother, the fact that he let Chrissandra call all the shots in their relationship said volumes about his character. The more I had gotten to know him, the less I would have liked him.

I went for the take- charge types, the guys who weren't afraid to take risks or put themselves out there. Okay, not that I'd actually gone out with that kind of guy, but once this varsity mess was over and I had time to think about dating, I'd do a much better job of choosing.

“Parker?”
Becca said. “You're not considering writing the note, are you?”

I snapped back to the present. “No … not really. I mean, it would be wonderful if it worked. It would save Luke, Clayton and me time and hassle and save me money—and it would totally take care of who got kicked off the team. But … well, I guess I just don't trust Chrissandra to have my back.”

“Yeah, unless you're okay with her stabbing it.”

The end- of- lunch bell rang, and Becca and I wandered inside. She was telling me about a guy she'd dated from the supermarket, and I was just about to ask if they'd tried any of the kisses I was learning from Tristan when some strained female voices, and a rush of feet, broke me from my musing.

Maybe I was paranoid, but I couldn't help jumping to the thought that it had to do with me.

“My locker again?” I muttered to Becca. It had been disturbingly clean that morning, making me think the girls were busy working on something grander than wrapping paper and coupons.

But we were still several classrooms away, so either the girls were still at work and had placed lookouts, or they'd done such a bang- up job that word had already spread. Or both.

Becca craned her neck. “Look away. I'll check and try to break it to you gently.”

I glanced off to the side—only to see my JV- soccer teammates Emma and Marg flanking my (big, strapping and incredibly accommodating) “boyfriend,” wrapping him with rolls of toilet paper from the shoes up. Marg was on one knee, perfecting a tie- off midthigh, while Emma stood, moving around the waist of his white T-shirt.

Several froshie girls watched at a respectable distance, enraptured by the whole process, their gazes flying between Tristan, Emma—and now me.

“ Uh- oh,” one girl muttered.

Emma turned, saw me and flinched. “Parker!”

“English presentation,” Tristan said from his frozen stance. “Remember, I told you.”

“You told me,” I parroted. Because I didn't know what to say, because I didn't know what I felt. I mean, who
cared
what Emma and Marg and Tristan did in their classes? Not me.

“It's about a summer read,” Emma told me. “With extra credit for props.”

“Tristan is the prop,” Marg volunteered, clearly thinking I was too dumb to do the math on that.

I kept my eyes on Emma, who was getting way, way,
way too
intimate with my faux beau's body parts. Which brought heat to my face and tension to my muscles. For while this public display might have been as innocent as they claimed, it didn't change the fact that “my” guy had given himself up to these girls. Which made me look like the fool who couldn't keep him happy.

“What book did you read?” I asked.
“Captain Underpants?”

The peanut gallery cracked up. Beside me, Becca laughed, too.

“It was a book about King Tut,” she said defensively.

“King Tut,” I said, frowning madly, “was short.” Then I cringed, wondering where I'd come up with that and why.

“I think it's more the point of someone pretending to be Tut than the physical resemblance,” Marg explained, somewhat slowly. Like I was an idiot.

Fury—rational or not—engulfed me. I turned and stormed off. I'd deal with Emma and Marg later … as their “drill sergeant” on the soccer field. And Tristan … uh, Tristan … I'd have a good, long talk with him later, too. He'd have to know that he'd never make the A list if he let girls humiliate him in public.

“Slow down, Cleopatra,” Becca said, grabbing my arm.

I did, working to catch my breath, too.

“What was all that? ‘King Tut was short’?”

My face was still hot, but I didn't know if it was a wave of embarrassment or lingering anger. “I don't know. Emma and Marg get on my nerves— big- time.”

“Especially when they have their hands on your boyfriend?”

“He's not—” But I caught myself. Anyone could hear us. I gave her a stern look. “I guess.”

We paused in front of my locker. “Cradle Robber” had been written in red lipstick across the front, but I barely gave it a glance.

“You're jealous, Parker,” Becca said.

But there was no twinkle, no smile, no nothing. Nothing but the truth, hanging out there bolder than the message on my locker. And I couldn't deny it. Not to Becca; not to myself.

Oh, God, did this mean I'd started to like Tristan for real?

My life was only getting crappier.

Reassurance
:
Show your
partner how much you care. Try gently caressing
his cheeks while kissing.

T
hat evening, Tristan cruised out his front door, dribbling his trusty basketball. I knew this because I was peering out from behind our living room curtains. I felt like a TV title should flash across my face—
Stanhope Spies: The Next Generation.

The thing was, I wanted to talk to Tristan about the way I'd acted at school, but I didn't know what to do. Apologize for freaking out when Emma and Marg had their hands all over him? Explain that he really shouldn't let girls—even cute ones—mess with his cool? Remind him that as long as we were “together,” his actions reflected on me, too?

Nothing struck me as exactly doable, so I did just that: nothing. Including not moving away from the window.

Tristan got into a good rhythm with the ball, making a fair number of baskets, but he seemed to keep glancing my way. So when I saw him move the ball to the crook of his arm to leave, part of me felt relieved.

Until I realized he was headed in the opposite direction, away from his house.

I scurried outside to head him off on the lawn. My parents were in the TV room, and why tempt fate?

“Hey,” he said, approaching, somehow seeming older and bigger and, okay, hotter than at any time before.

I returned the greeting, then dug my bare toes into the warm grass.

“It's our last weekend together, girlfriend o’ mine,” he said, and sort of smiled. The sky behind him was streaked with magenta and purple, and I suspected that if I looked around, I'd get a glimpse of the moon. “We should go out tomorrow night and get seen, give people something to talk about and remember.”

He was totally right. But a flashy romantic date would mean lots of kissing and hand holding and snuggling and …

I shuddered inwardly. After what I'd seen in myself this afternoon, I did not think I could handle that kind of closeness without crossing some lines. What if I let out an involuntary moan when he reached for me, or my knees went and buckled from his kiss? How embarrassing would
that
be?

Luckily, Becca and I had talked about catching a movie, so I was covered. “Yeah. Except I have plans with Becca. Why don't you do a friend thing, too? Then … maybe we could walk around Old Town on Saturday. There's a sale at Anna Banana's.”

He slipped his hands in his pockets. “Shopping? You mean like being your errand boy between the racks and dressing rooms?”

Not a bad idea. In fact, I wanted to point out that being my personal servant would be a heckuva lot more dignified than letting froshies toiletpaper him—then thought better of it. “I meant that lots of girls will be there to see us.”

“Likely story,” he said, then grinned.

“Maybe we could cruise over to Maxim's, too. Be cause
someone
could use some new T-shirts.”

“Someone
likes his three T-shirts. Mr. Blue, Mr. White and Mr. Gray. Why mess with success?”

I rolled my eyes.

“Besides, Parker, what we need to do on Saturday is plan our breakup. You said you wanted a clean break by the sports fair.”

He was right. We had to be dead- and- buried over by Tuesday. But I couldn't begin to go there yet. “We'll talk about it then.”

I took a step back, intending to go inside. Only to discover he'd taken a longer one toward me. And then another, closing any gap between us. Without any effort now, I could touch him, inhale his scent, pretty much taste him. I was caught up in his aura, in his being. And was losing any sense of myself with lightning speed …

“Hey,” he said playfully. “We haven't done the See-You- Later Kiss in a while.”

Omigod, I loved that one,
loved
it….

He angled his head, and I saw the hint of a smile. “We probably need more practice.”

“But my—my parents,” I said lamely. “Your dad …”

“We'll be fast,” he said, his voice humming through me.

But the See- You- Later Kiss was anything but fast. That was part of its allure. Even when the kissers’ lips eventually separated, it lived on (and on and on).

“I—I can't,” I said, pushing him back quickly. “Not now.”

He frowned, then shrugged, and before he could say anything, I hightailed it into my house, trying to block thoughts of Tristan and kissing and what I was missing.

My mom appeared in the hallway. Since I'd been forced to reveal truths about Tristan, the Plan and the kissing booth to my father, I'd gone ahead and told her last night, too. Including the part about kissing Luke, which seemed to mildly amuse her.

But from the tight look on her face, I suspected she'd been watching Tristan and me through the window in the door and was now less than amused.

“I was just coming to look for you, Parker. Chrissandra's called twice. She said it was urgent that you call back.”

I thanked her, bristling. I really didn't want to think about Chrissandra and her anonymous- note thing. I was realizing that I had a more pressing issue to deal with: how to continue this sham of a relationship with my make- believe boyfriend without him—or anyone-realizing that the only pretending I was doing now was that I didn't like him.

I felt like I'd turned into a double agent.

•

Some kindhearted custodian must have wiped my locker surface clean, because when I arrived at school the next morning, the only thing staring back at me was a piece of paper jutting from my vent. My name was handwritten on the top and inside; the message had been typed.

Leave all books and personal items
in your locker and report to the
principal's office immediately.

It was signed by the office secretary and dated with today's date.

Since the only judgment- lacking thing I'd done this school year (so far) was date a freshman, I decided not to get
too
uptight about the ominous summons. And when I came around the bend to see a line snaking out of the office—made up entirely of JV soccer girls—I told myself this was certainly just something routine.