“Since I’ve been in Florida, I’ve been exhausted,” he admitted.
I sighed. “Tonight will take care of itself. Angelica will be here. If she’s going to get jealous seeing you and me together, we don’t have to help that along. Let’s forget about our nightly goals and have a good time. Okay?”
The worry line disappeared as he gave me his sexy sideways smile. “What kind of good time do you mean?”
Fifteen minutes later, we were facing off for a dance-competition video game throwdown. I had thought I would laughingly drag him into the space in front of the huge TV and he would flirtatiously back out again. But as soon as I suggested it, he was ready to go. A crowd gathered around us, bored with my antics but astonished that tight Will Matthews was really going to do this thing.
And then, while the game beeped an electronic countdown to begin and the people around us held their breath, he pointed at me, meaning I was dead meat—just like I’d pointed at him on the football field before the challenge for drum captain.
“Oooooh,” the spectators moaned. I felt my face turn bright red. I had to win now.
But at the end of the song, Will had beaten me up and down Kaye’s expensively appointed living room. And he’d drawn an even bigger crowd. Will Matthews could totally do the Dougie.
“That is not even fair!” I squealed after guys had stopped slapping him on the back and Chelsea had shooed us off the dance floor so she could have a turn. “There’s no way I would have challenged you if I’d known you could actually dance! I should have made you sign some sort of disclaimer.” I poked him in the chest.
He grabbed my hand, grinning. “Never underestimate me.”
“I won’t!”
“My sisters have that video game. Let’s get in line and go again.” He tapped me on the chest like I’d poked him. This placed his fingers in the bare V-neck of my dress, just above my cl**vage and my heart. “You’re mine.”
Over the course of the party, he beat the stuffing out of me twice more, then beat Chelsea to become the undisputed champion. The rest of the time, we were mostly standing to one side while somebody else took a turn. His arm circled my waist and my head nestled under his chin in a way that absolutely turned me on, and not just physically. I felt my friends’ eyes on us, overheard their whispered conversations about us, and I loved it. I began to understand, just a little bit, why couples latched on to each other and went off into a corner to watch the party instead of participating themselves. There was a certain high, a heady bonding experience, in seeing and being seen.
A bonding experience with Will was the last thing I needed when our alliance was only temporary, to drive Angelica to distraction. But I did think the party was good for both of us as individuals. As we moved from circle to circle, entering different conversations, everyone told me, “You look great!” I could have taken this to mean, “Normally you look like crap. I am pleasantly surprised that you can hang when the affection of a ridiculously cute guy is on the line!” But there was no point in taking offense about an observation that was true. I felt great.
And everyone said to Will, “Nice moves!” He colored and laughed when people told him this. He didn’t offer his own thoughts on his dancing prowess or join the conversation, but he didn’t look like he wanted to crawl away and die, either. Being crowned our unofficial Best Dancer had given him an identity besides Fucking New Guy or Cheating Dog, and his new title was one he seemed strangely comfortable with. I found myself looking up at him, his earring glinting in the lamplight, and experiencing a wash of pleasure that he was so adorable and, for the time being, mine.
But one thing nagged at me the whole night. When Will was in conversation with some football players about the Tampa Bay Lightning professional hockey team, a subject on which he was the authority and I was clueless to the point of not knowing the nouns from the verbs in this terminology, I took him aside and whispered in his ear. “Look without looking like you’re looking. Who is Sawyer staring at so forlornly?”
I held still while Will gazed over my head. Sawyer stood against the wall. He talked to the many people who passed by him, but he wasn’t organizing a practical joke or getting plastered on surreptitious boxed wine, like normal. He seemed quiet, for Sawyer—almost thoughtful. And I could have sworn he was staring at one girl in particular.
“Kaye?” Will asked in my ear.
That’s what I’d been afraid of. Talk about a girl out of Sawyer’s reach.
“Now he’s headed for the door,” Will reported.
I looked up at Will. “Don’t say anything about this, okay? It’s sensitive.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to talk to him for a sec because I’m worried about him. I am not flirting with him.”
“I trust you,” Will said.
If he’d genuinely trusted me, he wouldn’t have needed to say this.
I couldn’t think about that right now. After squeezing his hand one last time, I crossed the crowded living room and slipped out the front door, hoping to catch Sawyer before he disappeared.
From the high porch, I should have been able to glimpse him descending the staircase or walking through the yard toward the street. I didn’t see him until I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. He was sitting by himself on the porch swing, one foot propped on his knee and the other on the floor, propelling himself gently back and forth. I slipped onto the bench next to him.
His arm had relaxed along the back of the seat, but now he pulled it close. “Careful. Your boyfriend will get jealous.”
I glanced at the house behind his shoulders. I didn’t want anybody inside to overhear us. I was pretty sure the nearest window was the dining room rather than a place where the party was going on. Not taking any chances, I asked very quietly, “It’s Kaye, isn’t it?”
He gave me that half-crazed look he got when threatened—but this time his raised eyebrows made him look less dangerous and more desperate. “Am I being that obvious?”
“Definitely not,” I assured him. “I only saw it because I was looking for it. Anybody else would be flabbergasted.” I gazed at him, his blond hair bright in the dim light. He looked incredibly sad. Now that I saw this, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed before. “How long?”
“Since I moved here,” he murmured.
That was two years ago. By that time, Kaye had already been dating Aidan for a year and was locked into the habits of her life with him.
“It’s worse lately,” Sawyer said. “I used to think surely she would get tired of him telling her what to do and break up with him. That’s when I would make my move. But the closer we get to graduation, the clearer it seems they’re not breaking up. Being back at school with her makes it excruciating. The mascot travels with the cheerleaders to every school event, you know. I thought I wanted to be near her, but it turns out I’m just putting myself through hell.”
I nodded. “I know what you mean.” I remembered marching through the halftime show next to Will on Monday, so close to him physically, but so far away. My stomach turned over. And my heart went out to Sawyer. I couldn’t imagine living with that pain for a couple of years.
“I’m blowing this joint,” Sawyer said, easing up from the swing so it didn’t shift and send me flying. He could be courteous, but Kaye would never believe it. “I’m sure I can find a better party.”
“I hope you have a good night,” I called as he headed for the stairs.
Descending into the darkness, he called back over his shoulder, “I hope you don’t fall in love.”
Walking back into the party, I tried to shake the uneasy feeling he’d given me. I’d had a great time with Will that night. Just like my very first night with Will, I counted it as one of the best experiences of my life. The key to enjoying myself with Will was making sure I didn’t think too hard about it. I wanted that euphoria back again.
Will was exactly where I’d left him, talking hockey with the football team. He was even speaking as I approached. But his eyes cut to me and stayed on me. When I reached him, he encircled me with one arm and whispered, “Angelica watched you follow Sawyer out.”
Tingles spread across my face as I whispered back, “Then you and I need to look like we’re finally having that good time we talked about.”
14
I TOOK HIS HAND AND tugged him farther into the living room. I’d thought we could claim a couch in the corner or—if push came to shove—one overstuffed chair. But the night was growing old, and the comfy furniture was occupied by couples getting to know each other better. Will saw this too. He walked through the stately arched doorway of the living room and kept walking until we reached the kitchen table.
I stepped closer to him and spoke in his ear so he could hear me over the video game music and the laughter. “We can’t flirt here. All the surfaces are hard.”
He turned his head slowly. His eyes were wide and his mouth was twisted to one side to keep from laughing while he pretended to be outraged at me for uttering the word “hard.”
“Damn it,” I said, “you know what I mean.” Surely he did. Settling in for flirting (or more) at a party required plush seating.
“We’ll make it work.” He pulled out a chair for me from under the table. After I sprawled in it with a dispirited sigh, he sat in the chair next to mine. We might as well have been doing our calculus homework together, the turn-on nobody could deny.
And then he reached around my sides, grabbed the seat of my chair, and dragged me toward him until we were facing each other, knee to knee. “There,” he said.
That did seem better for flirting. But all of a sudden, I felt shy around him. I found myself looking toward the cabinets—nothing more interesting there than a state-of-the-art microwave—and then the other way toward the crowd in the living room, where, on the couch, Brody and Grace had not gotten into it sufficiently to draw anybody’s attention for real.
Will put two fingers on the side of my chin and pointed my face toward his again. “Hey. You’re supposed to be flirting with me.”
“Oh, suddenly this is my job? You’re supposed to be flirting with me.”
“I did flirt with you,” he insisted. “I touched your chin just now.”
“Oooh!” I said, raising my eyebrows and pursing my lips to show him exactly how impressed I was, which was not.
“I touched your chair,” he said.
“If that counts for flirting, I’m going outside to touch the right rear fender of your car. That will count for getting to third base.” I started to get up.
“No,” he said, grabbing both my thighs just above the knee.
While the shock of his touch shot through me, I eased back down in my chair. He slowly took his hands away, a horrified expression on his face. He started to put his hands up in the air to show me he hadn’t meant to touch me quite so high—and then realized this didn’t look very flirtatious. He put his hands back on his own thighs.
After another silent thirty seconds of staring at the design on his T-shirt, I said, “I don’t know why this is so hard.”
Then I realized I’d said the H-word again. He gave me the fake-outraged look, which should have broken the ice but didn’t. Nothing could. We sank into another excruciating silence. The more our flirting mattered, the worse we were at it.
The song on the video game changed, from an emo classic to a funky groove. Will relaxed as he always did when the beat was good, transforming from an uptight faux-boyfriend to my friend the drummer. His shoulders settled against the back of his chair, and his fingers tapped out the beat on his thigh, his right pointer finger on the snare downbeat and his left finger on the bass drum.
I relaxed too. My unease fell away, and all that was left was the usual desire to be around him, talk to him, joke with him, capture his attention, bask in his glow—coupled with the fun of sitting so close to him, our knees touching.
Slowly I reached across my thighs, across his, and put my fingers on top of his hands. I moved his hands from tapping on his thighs to tapping on mine.
Still drumming his beat, he glanced up at me, flashing those blue eyes, and gave me a sly smile.
I kept coaxing his hands up my thighs, so high that if Angelica had looked in, I might have gotten called a name.
Will was aware of this too, apparently. His lips parted like he couldn’t believe I was so forward and he wanted out.
Now I wished I hadn’t done it. I’d only been teasing him, frustrated that we were reduced to this awkward silence. I hadn’t meant to chase him off and make things worse.
He turned and glanced into the living room. With his eyes still on the front door, he leaned toward me and said, “Angelica just left with Xavier Pilkington.”
Inside, I burst into laughter. Of course Angelica was finally going to get it on with Xavier Pilkington. They would be rocking his car with their synchronized typing as they spent the end of their Saturday night working on the English paper that wasn’t due until two weeks from Tuesday.
But I died a little too. I was afraid of what this meant. Now that she was gone, especially with another guy, there was no reason for Will and me to continue this charade. Our heady night together was over.
“Tia,” he said.
I nodded, bowing my head and bringing it closer to his. At least I could feel his breath in my ear one last time before we went our separate ways.
“When we arranged our deal to make Angelica jealous, I didn’t say what I really meant, which was, please go out with me. I want to be with you. I don’t want it to be fake, and I don’t want it to end tonight.”