The Secrets of Boys (20 page)

“Positive,” Cassidy said.

“Twenty-nine,” Zach teased. “Twenty-eight …”

Cassidy leaned forward and kissed him. They never got to twenty-seven.

Text message from Eric, 5:19 p.m., Aug. 23: Im over you

Text message from Eric, 5:24 p.m., Aug. 23: Miss you. Call me.

“Who keeps texting you?” Zach asked, shifting so the beanbag chair made a soft swishing noise.

“Just an old friend.” Cassidy clicked her cell phone to vibrate and shoved it under her pillow, thinking that she really should call Eric later that night just to check in. They were supposed to be friends, she reminded herself. But she would deal with that later. For now, she had an important study session to attend to.

She turned to Zach. “Where was I?” she asked.

“You were talking about Monet’s ‘Water Lilies’,” Zach reminded her.

“Oh, yeah.” Cassidy took a deep breath and launched back into her presentation, trying not to glance at the index cards Zach had helped her make, which were spread out across the bed. Practicing in front of Zach made everything easier. She felt like she was learning more in the afternoons with him than she had in an entire summer of classes with Madame Briand.

Plus Zach’s special technique to help her get over her fear of public speaking was a
lot
more fun than anything they’d done in class.

“Hey!” Zach interrupted suddenly. “You messed up there, Cass. Your noun and verb didn’t agree. You know what that means.”

Cassidy giggled. “But I don’t have much left to lose,”

she said. She stood in front of him in her bra, panties, and one sandal.

“Then maybe you should make fewer mistakes,”

Zach teased. “Besides, practicing au naturel is good for you. If you can do your presentation naked, speaking in front of a whole class with your clothes on will be no sweat.”

“If I didn’t give you so much credit as a teacher, I’d say you had some kind of ulterior motive.” Cassidy laughed, bending to unbuckle her sandal.

“Motive? Me? Never.” Zach grinned. “I just want to see you ace this presentation, that’s all. Now, weren’t you in the middle of saying something important about art?”

Cassidy tried to compose herself, but the moment she started talking, Zach stuck out his tongue and wiggled it around in the air so that she broke down again in giggles.

“No giggling!” Zach called. “Time to lose the bra!”

“But that’s not fair,” Cassidy protested. “You
made
me crack up.”

“There will be distractions in the classroom,” Zach reminded her. “It’s up to
you
to maintain control no matter what’s going on. But I’ll be nice—I’ll help you with the clasp.”

“I still can’t help thinking you’re getting something out of this too,” Cassidy mused, crouching down in front of him so Zach could unhook her bra. He turned her around, still laughing, and kissed her lightly on the mouth. Cassidy had a feeling it was going to be a while before she got to the end of her speech, but she was too happy kissing Zach to care.

* * *

Cassidy could barely sit still behind her desk. She glanced at the clock just as it ticked loudly and advanced to 10:13 A.M. Just six hours and seventeen minutes until

she and Zach could be alone together! Factoring in the drive, that was a little over six hours until his shirt would be on her bedroom floor and the baby-smooth skin of his back under her hands. Cassidy wriggled in her chair at the thought.

Ever since their reconciliation at her pool, life had taken on a hazy, glimmering sheen. Cassidy felt physically lighter, her limbs warm and loose, as if she’d been huddling against an invisible cold that had finally given way to a dazzling springtime. Her mind was wrapped around Zach 24/7—and so was her body, whenever they had the chance. She had never felt this way about Eric.

In fact, she had never felt this way about
anyone
, and it was the most wonderful feeling in the world.

Zach was draped over a chair in the front of the room. He turned around to survey the class. His eyes rested on hers for a long moment as a molasses-slow smile played across his face. He didn’t wink. He didn’t need to. There was so much energy zinging through the air between them that Cassidy was surprised the rest of the class couldn’t feel it too.

There was a timid knock on the classroom door, and Cassidy automatically sat up straighter in her chair as Madame Briand sang out (in French, of course) for whomever was knocking to enter. A clerk who Cassidy vaguely recognized from the admissions office scurried in and whispered something in Madame Briand’s ear.

“Oh,
mon Dieu!
” Madame Briand gasped. Then she looked at Zach. “You have a phone call in the office,”

she told him.

Cassidy felt chills shoot through her limbs. People only got phone calls in offices when things were serious—

like a disease or a death in the family. Her heart went out to Zach, but he didn’t turn to look at her. He was already following the clerk out the door and down the hall.

Cassidy spent the next fifteen minutes in agony, envisioning every possible gory scenario. When the door swung open again, the entire class swiveled their heads toward it. Zach strolled in, not looking like he’d just gotten news of a death or an unwanted pregnancy.

In fact, he was smiling.

“C’est rien,”
he told the class.
It’s nothing.
But his smile flickered when he looked at Cassidy, then faded entirely. And somehow she knew that whatever the phone call had been about affected
them
.

There was no way she could just sit there and listen to Madame Briand prattle on about the weather in Normandy with all this going through her mind. She was probably getting upset over nothing, but she needed to chill out. She raised her hand and excused herself to the bathroom.

Cassidy was halfway down the hall when she heard footsteps behind her. Whirling around, she saw Zach running to catch up and nearly sank to her knees in grat-itude that he’d been so quick to read her mind.

“What’s going on?” she said, wrapping her arms around him after glancing quickly up and down the hallway to make sure they were alone.

Zach stroked her hair and looked into her eyes. “It’s good news for me,” he said. “But not so good for us.

You know how I told you I was a junior RA my fresh-man year?”

Cassidy nodded, wondering what that had to do with her. “Well,” he continued, “one of the senior RAs just dropped out, and they need someone to replace him right away. It’s great for me because I get free room and board—but it means I have to leave early tomorrow morning. Training has already started.”

For a moment, Cassidy was unable to process the information. “Leave?” was all she could manage to say.

“Leave Malibu,” he confirmed grimly. “Fly to New York. For the year.”

“Oh.” Her voice echoed hollowly in the hallway.

“Cassidy, I’m sorry.” He brought her in for a tight hug. “I know things were just getting good between us. I was enjoying this as much as you were, but you know I have to do this.”

“I understand,” she said flatly. She’d known from the beginning that he would leave sooner or later, but why did it have to be now?

Zach disentangled himself and looked around guiltily, worried someone had seen them embrace. But nobody had. “Listen, I need to get back to class,” he said. “But I want to spend every moment I can with you afterward. I even want you to drive me to the airport tomorrow morning if that’s okay—I have to drop the Xterra off at Avis. You can tell Madame Briand you have a dentist appointment or something. She’s so flaky, she won’t know the difference anyway.”

Cassidy nodded miserably. She watched his slow, rolling gait as he walked back to class before running to the ladies’ room, locking herself in a stall, and bursting into tears.

So much for having changed: She felt like the same old Cassidy, always crying in bathroom stalls. How was she supposed to sit through six hours of French class knowing that Zach was about to get on a plane and fly three thousand miles away from her? Nothing could have prepared her for how much it hurt.

As she tossed another ball of snotty toilet paper into the bowl below her, she almost wished she’d listened to Zach and stopped what was happening between them before she got too attached. The whole temporary-summer-romance thing had made their relationship more romantic, but now that the “temporary” part was a real-ity, it hurt like nothing had ever hurt before. The continuous sunny day her summer had become with Zach in her life was suddenly cold, gray, and drizzly. And he hadn’t even left yet! She had to stifle a sniffle as the door to the bathroom creaked open and a small pair of heels clattered tentatively on the tile floor.

“Cassidy?”

“Yeah?” she replied, hoping the tears weren’t coming through in her voice.

“It’s Cecilia. You were gone for a long time, so Madame Briand wanted me to come and see if you were okay.”

Cassidy struggled to think of some excuse for spending the past half hour in the bathroom. The last thing she needed was for the teacher’s pet to find out she’d been getting it on with the TA. “Well, this is kind of embarrassing. Do you happen to have a tampon?”

“Oh!” Cecilia gasped. “No, but there’s a machine out here. I could put a quarter in it for you.”

“Could you?” Cassidy asked as sweetly as she could.

“Sure, no problem,” Cecilia said. Cassidy heard the clink of coins on metal and the rustling of a plastic-coated wrapper, which emerged seconds later under the door to her stall.

“Thanks,” she said gratefully. “I really appreciate it, Cecilia.”

“No problem,” Cecilia said, sounding relieved that she didn’t have to perform CPR or anything else lifesav-ing. “So, see you back in class? She’s going over the vocab quiz and I really don’t want to miss it.”

“Go,” Cassidy urged. “And thanks a million. Really.”

As soon as Cecilia was gone, she tossed the unused tampon in the garbage, emerged from the stall, and splashed cold water on her face to make the swelling come down.

She’d never thought Cecilia would be good for much of anything, but at least she’d gotten Cassidy’s mind off the Zach situation long enough for her to stop crying.

She was feeling almost confident when she reentered the classroom, shooting an apologetic glance to Madame Briand and sharing a knowing smile with Cecilia. But then her eyes landed on Zach and she knew it would be the last time she’d ever walk into a classroom and see him sitting there, and she almost started crying all over again.

The next few hours were torture. There was no way she could concentrate on the lesson. All she could think about was how Zach-less her life was going to be and how much of the summer they’d wasted before letting what was going on between them happen. If only they had kissed that first day in the sculpture garden, if only she’d confronted him sooner after they had sex, if only she’d known she was in love with him the moment she saw him, they could have had all those extra days together. But then wouldn’t it have hurt even more when he had to leave? There was no way of knowing. All she knew was that she was losing him forever.

* * *

Later that night, Cassidy sat on Zach’s bed with her back against the wall and her knees drawn up to her chin, watching him transfer musty-smelling jeans from a dresser drawer into the large suitcase propped open next to her. She was tired of watching him pack; everything he put in the suitcase seemed to bring him another step closer to New York and farther away from her. She reached over to turn up the CD he’d picked to pack to, some DJ from a club in Ibiza spinning break beats, not so much because she wanted to hear the music as because she didn’t want to talk.

No, it wasn’t that she didn’t
want
to talk. She wished more than anything that she knew what to say. But she was afraid that if she opened her mouth, she’d start screaming at him for leaving her when she’d known it was bound to happen all along. She didn’t want to sound as juvenile and desperate as she felt.

Zach put the pile of jeans down on the bed and sat close to her, taking her hands in his. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Cassidy nodded. “I’m fine. Just a little …

you know.”

Zach leaned over to turn the music down. She could feel the tears welling up inside her again. She felt like they hadn’t stopped since she first found out he was leaving but had been pouring down her insides for the past few hours so that now they were all dammed up somewhere beneath her heart, just waiting for the right opportunity to spill out.

And she knew that Zach could read it on her face.

“Come here,” he said, spreading his arms. She dove face-first into him, huddling against his chest as sobs racked her body.

“It’s just that I’ll miss you so much,” she said when she finally caught her breath.

“I know,” Zach said, his lips against her ear, his voice soothing and hypnotic. “I’ll miss you too, Cassidy.

Don’t think this isn’t painful for me too.”

“But you’re the one who gets to go away to a whole new place,” Cassidy whined. She knew she sounded childish, but she couldn’t seem to help it. “I’ll be stuck here, and everything will be the same. At least having you around made things sort of interesting.”

Zach cupped her face in his hands and she shivered at his touch. “Things won’t really be the same because
you’ll
be different. And when you’re different, the whole world around you changes too. You see it through a new set of eyes.”

“Have I really changed that much?” Cassidy asked.

At the moment, she felt even younger than she had when she and Zach had first met. More vulnerable.

More likely to burst into tears like an overtired toddler who’d spent too many hours being dragged through a department store.

“Yes,” Zach said firmly. “When I first met you, Cass, you could barely talk to anyone. Now you’re like a social butterfly. Remember the way you cracked Larissa’s friends up at the fashion show?”

Cassidy nodded.

“That’s not something the Cassidy Jones I first met would have been able to do,” Zach said. “When I first met you, Cass, you were afraid to even speak to me. You have no idea how much I’ve watched you grow in this short time.”