Текст книги "Endless Summer"

Автор книги: Jennifer Echols

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

As for me, I wanted so badly to sit across the aisle from Sean. He might scoot over and share my seat with me, like two days before. But no, he would never do this and mess up his “relationship” with Rachel—not while it was having the desired effect on Adam.

Subtlety and patience were not a couple of my strong points. Perhaps you have figured this out. However, I managed to keep my eyes on the prize, which meant bypassing the seat next to Sean and hunkering down against the wind in the bow with Adam. Problem was, Sean’s seat faced backward so he could spot for my brother wakeboarding. He didn’t even see the knee-weakening look Adam gave me as I sat down.

But Cameron in the driver’s seat could see us, and Sean might be so gracious as to turn around once in a while. I wondered what Adam would want to do with me.

Whether he would try to touch me, and where. Maybe he was thinking the same thing I was thinking: it was a bit early for PDA in our faux couplehood. If we suddenly fell in love after almost sixteen years of being friends, it would be obvious we were faking to show Sean we didn’t care about him and the treacherous Rachel.

For whatever reason, Adam didn’t touch me. He was content to watch me, darkly. I had no idea why he was looking at me this way. Clearly we were not thinking the same thing after all.

en I had another problem. Adam had told me two days before that I’d screwed my chances with Sean by taking his place in the wakeboarding show. Maybe I should face-plant an air raley so Sean wouldn’t think I was rubbing it in. But you know what? I was still so thrilled with my great runs two days in a row, I wasn’t willing to throw it for a boy. Even a boy this important. Maybe this was something I could work on as I matured.

Sean had another bad run. Adam did too—ouch!—but at least he enjoyed it. I had another run so fantastic, I decided I’d work on an S-bend the next day. Ideally this would involve landing the S-bend, unlike some adrenaline junkies I knew.

And Sean didn’t seem to mind I did well and he didn’t. He was his usual pleasant self, a bit too distant for my taste, same-old, same-old. He must have really been basking in the fact that he’d gotten Adam’s goat. I mean, girlfriend. That was okay. I would get Sean in the end.

I was feeling very hopeful about the whole situation when we docked at the marina. Maybe it was the sun again, or the lingering glow from my good run. But when Adam helped me out of the boat and we did the secret handshake, I didn’t even care it was a complete waste of handshake because Sean had already gone into the warehouse and didn’t see it happen. Doing the handshake made me feel like somebody valued me enough to do a secret handshake with me.

“By the way,” I said during the high-five, “what was up with the look you kept giving me in the boat?”

“What look?” Adam asked, blushing. He knew what I meant.

“This look.” I showed it to him.

He squinted at me. “I’m not a doctor, but I’d say either indigestion or a stroke.”

We laughed, touched elbows, and parted ways on the wharf. I sauntered to my house, taking big sniffs of the hot evening air scented with cut grass and flowers, not minding too much that I had to spend a few minutes blowing a gnat out of my nose. I wished Sean had asked me out like he was supposed to. But if I had to go on a fake date to get him, there was no one I’d rather go on a fake date with than Adam. I might even enjoy it, as friends.

After supper with Dad and McGillicuddy, and a luxe beauty routine that included teasing my mascara-coated eyelashes apart with the comb attachment to McGillicuddy’s electric razor, I was ready. An hour early. I peered out my bedroom window at Adam’s house and wondered what he was doing right now. Getting ready himself? Taking a shower?

Even though the picture of him in the shower was all in my head, I took a step back from the window at the force of the picture, and the realism. I must be picturing Sean in the shower, because the boy in the shower wasn’t wearing a skull and crossbones.

Adam wore the skull and crossbones while wakeboarding and swimming. He must wear it in the shower too. Or did he? In all the times over the years we’d worked together at the marina, when he’d bent down and the pendant had swung from the leather string, I’d never noticed a dirty patch in the shape of a skull and crossbones on his neck. Okay, I couldn’t stand another hour of torturing myself this way.

I said ta to my dad and waded in my high heels down my yard to the dock. en I untied the canoe and set off across the lake. Crossing the lake in a canoe, a sailboat, or anything without a motor could be harrowing. e lake was about a half mile wide at this point, and a canoe crossing the traffic pattern was likely to get T-boned by a speedboat driven by someone from Montgomery who didn’t understand boating laws and was drunk to boot. But the busiest part of the day was over, and I paddled fast.

On the other side, I tied up to the Harbargers’ dock. Funny that the kids weren’t swimming. ey’d probably been swimming all day and had brained each other several times with plastic shovels and nearly drowned once, and their nanny was about damned tired of it and had made them get out of the water. I was all too familiar with this scenario.

Sure enough, as I waded up their yard, I heard the kids laughing behind the fence. Even I, the Great Lori, Number One Seed Wakeboarder on the Vader’s Marina Team, didn’t think I could scale a wooden fence wearing high heels. Pitching one shoe over and then the other, I jumped up, grabbed the top of the fence, and hoisted myself up.

e kids were making castles in the sandbox. Really just mounds of sand, but I’m optimistic. Frances sat cross-legged in the grass nearby, wearing her summer hippie uniform: tie-dyed T-shirt, hemp shorts, bare feet. (Stuck in the grungewear of her college days, she also had a winter hippie uniform that involved wool and Birkenstocks.) She and the kids stared up at me.

I dropped down on their side of the fence, walked over, and sat on the edge of the sandbox. “Whatsamatter?” I asked the kidlets. “You’ve never seen such a vision of loveliness?”

“There’s a gate, you know,” Frances said.

“I didn’t notice.”

“It’s on the other side of the house, off the driveway, where people usually put gates.”

“I got in, didn’t I? God, you always want me to do things your way.” is was sort of unfair. Frances had been pretty hands-off as governesses went. Like I had anyone to compare her to. “Well, this time I’ve definitely done something that isn’t covered in the child care manual. Go ahead, ask me what happened at the party. Ask me what happened the night after the party. Ask me where I’m going now, dressed to kill.”

e kids gaped at me when they heard the K word. Which probably didn’t reassure them about their futures as well-adjusted teens under the instruction of Fanny the Nanny. It didn’t help matters that while I told Frances about Sean and Adam, she placed her hands on her knees and began one of her deep-breathing relaxation techniques.

“Well?” I shouted. Her eyes flew open. I prompted her, “Doesn’t this sound like a supreme girl-adventure? Do you watch MTV reality shows? at’s a silly question, isn’t it? Never mind. Maybe they have drama like this on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.”

“Something else is going on with those boys,” she said.

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure. It’s been years since I gave Adam or Sean or Cameron or Bill the evil eye. You’re the only one who comes to visit. Except… Mirabella, we do not eat the sand.” She scooped up the girl and took her inside. The girl didn’t protest. These children had been drugged or lobotomized.

I turned to the boy. “Don’t you ever protest?”

He shook his head.

“Hold strikes? Write letters of complaint? She always told us we had permission to do anything if we could write a convincing argument for it. We tried.” He intoned in a cute little zombie voice, “We do not eat the sand.”

Frances came back out and deposited the girl in the sandbox again. e girl examined some nearby dried leaves hungrily. “I guarantee you something else is going on there,” Frances repeated. “Yours isn’t the only plot.”

“Right. Sean stole Rachel from Adam to get revenge. Sean is always the instigator of the plot. For the record, Sean is the one who started calling you Butt I Don’t Need a Governess. I probably wouldn’t have been half the hellion I was, if it hadn’t been for Sean egging everybody on.”

“I don’t know,” Frances said thoughtfully. “It was Adam who set off the firecrackers in my homemade cheese.”

“OH MY GOD I HAD COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE HOMEMADE CHEESE.” I laughed until I choked. e children studied me with serious eyes. They were adapting to the Montessori method a lot better than McGillicuddy and I had.

“I always loved Adam,” Frances said.

I sniffled. “You did?” Frances wasn’t too free with the professions of love.

“But Adam had room to grow. Sounds like he still does.”

Feeling strangely defensive of Adam all of a sudden, I said, “Everybody has room to grow.”

“And I don’t want you to be his field.” She gave me a stern look.

“What am I, a crop of rutabagas?”

She glanced at the kids and said through her teeth to me, “Do you understand?”

“Not really. Are you forbidding me to see Adam?” This was actually kind of romantic, though ridiculous. I forbid you to see the boy next door!

“Mirabella and Alvin,” Frances said, “please turn on the garden hose and water your mother’s beautiful flowers.” Miraculously, the brainwashed kiddies stood and obeyed, taking half the sand with them. Frances watched them go, then turned to me.

“Ever since your mom died,” she whispered, “your dad has been terrified for you kids. But he’s gone out of his way not to be overprotective so that you don’t live life afraid. And those were the instructions he gave me as your caregiver.” She reached over and patted my knee. “No one’s going to forbid you to do anything, Lori. Just…

watch out around those boys.”

Adam sat on the end of my dock with his shoes beside him and his bare feet swinging in the bryozoa-infested waters. Just kidding—my dock had been Sanitized for My Protection by a minnow net with a very long handle.

I skimmed the canoe against the dock and stopped myself with an oar. He stood up dripping, caught the rope I threw him, and wound it around the dock cleat. “Date or what?” he asked.

Grabbing my shoes from the bottom of the canoe, I confirmed, “Date. Ew. It’s so weird to think about. Help me out, lovah.” He put out a hand to help me onto the dock. He did it in such a gentlemanly fashion, with no tickling or pinching or even a secret handshake, that I couldn’t help but yank his arm to startle him. en he put his weight on me to keep from falling, and we both came within a few millimeters of flipping the canoe over and landing in the lake.

We both managed to save at the last second. He helped me out of the canoe as if nothing had happened, except his face was bright red, and he wore that don’t make me laugh look. “Your dad said you went to see Frances.”

“Yeah. I told her about the plan, and she thinks you’re only going along with it because you want to get lucky with me.” We shared an uncomfy titter at this ridiculous idea as he slid his feet into his shoes, but something made me press him about this. “Did you get lucky with Rachel?” He stared down at me, disapproving. He turned the disapproving stare in the general direction of the Harbargers’ dock across the lake.

“You did,” I said with a sigh. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath.

“N—,” he started. “W—Mmph.” He put both his hands into his hair. is showed me how strong and well-formed the biceps were on this tanned, beautiful boy. “I didn’t, but you don’t know that, okay? I have two older brothers. As far as they’re concerned, I’ve been doing the entire cheerleading squad since I was fourteen.” He hadn’t. So why was I picturing the tanned biceps straining as he braced himself above… who?

“Your dad’s thinking the same thing,” Adam said.

“About your biceps?” I chuckled.

Slowly and oh so painfully I realized no one had made a joke out loud about Adam’s biceps.

Slowly and less painfully he put his arms down. “I would like some gum,” he said. “Would you like some gum?”

“I would love some gum,” I croaked.

He reached deep into the pocket of his shorts and drew out each of the following items in turn, placing them in his other pocket: his wallet, a lighter, a Sacagawea dollar, a plastic box of fishhooks, a four-inch-long pocketknife. Finally he produced a pack of gum so old, the company had switched to a new logo since it was made. Fine.

Anything I could stuff into my mouth.

“I meant,” he said, jaw working hard on a petrified square, “your dad thinks I want to get lucky with you too. At least, that was his second reaction when I rang the doorbell and told him I was there to pick you up for our date. His first reaction was to threaten to have me arrested.”

“Oh, pshaw.” I swallowed a mouthful of artificial flavoring. Mmmmm, igneous. “He threatens to have me arrested. It’s a term of endearment.” I walked down the dock so Adam would follow me. When I glanced back, he was still standing at the end of the dock. I threw over my shoulder, “I’ll visit you in prison.” He jogged to catch up with me, and held my arm to balance me as I slipped my heels on. I knew better than to wear heels on the dock. I’d seen too many girls wear them at the boys’ parties. Heels got caught between the planks and arrested forward motion, yo.

“Why didn’t you tell your dad we’re hooking up?” Adam asked. “I told my mom we’re hooking up.” He sounded almost hurt, like he thought I was embarrassed of him.

“Would you come off it? You shouldn’t have told your mom. She gave me the third degree this morning, like she knows something’s up between you and Sean. You tried to get her to ground him? How am I supposed to go out with him if she grounds him?”

Adam shrugged and said with a straight face, “If you really loved him, it wouldn’t matter what you did when you went out, as long as you were together.” He pressed his lips together.

“You are so full of it. Anyway, I told Dad you were giving me a lift to town to buy an eyelash comb tonight, and we might hang out for a while. I figured he’d stage an intervention if I told him the whole truth. And if I told him you and I were hooking up for real, he’d give me the fourth degree about it, and you, and sex, and… oh.” Adam nodded. “Whereas if you didn’t tell him, he’d give me the fifth degree.”

“I guess I didn’t think it through. It didn’t seem worth the trouble, since we’ll only be together a couple of weeks.” Truth was, I’d focused on how our diabolical plan would help me get Sean. With an emphasis on Sean. Not that Adam’s relationship with my dad didn’t matter, because they did have to live next door to each other for several more years, but come on. What were a few fake dates between friends?

We walked up the hill to Adam’s driveway. I opened the passenger door of the pink truck and climbed inside—and I do mean climbed, because when I stood on the ground, the seat was even with my head. Adam sat in the driver’s seat, weirdly. He’d driven McGillicuddy and me home from tennis the night before, but I was used to sitting in the backseat with Adam while someone older drove. I wasn’t used to seeing him as a driver himself.

Sean’s new truck had already left the driveway. He had to drive all the way across town to pick up Rachel. No worries. We’d see them at the movies. Our biggest problem would be deciding whether to sit on the back row with the other couples who planned to make out, or further down where Sean and Rachel could see us. en maybe there would be the additional problem of the making out. But I was getting ahead of myself. We could solve that problem when we came to it, and we hadn’t even reached the movie theater yet. We were taking a detour at the dirt track, probably to show some of Adam’s friends the new (to him) pink truck. And the hot prize of a girl inside! Yeah, probably not.

Instead of parking in the dirt track lot, he drove around to the mud field. It was just a huge pit of mud that the owners of the dirt track lovingly sculpted into valleys and bumps, and watered daily. Build it and they would come. Boys loved to splash across the mud pit in their pickup trucks. ey didn’t do this with their girlfriends, though.

Girls wouldn’t put up with this.

And yet here we were, perched on the lip of the pit. Scooter Ledbetter pulled up behind us in his jacked-up F-150. We couldn’t even back out.

I ventured to ask, “Is this our date?”

“In all its glory.” With one arm, Adam made a sweeping motion across the mud field before us.

“Great. We’re trying to make Sean and Rachel jealous, besides which it’s my first date in real life, and you’re taking me mud riding.” I’d been with the boys and Mr.

Vader to the dirt track countless times to watch races. I’d always thought my first date would be with Sean. Adam wasn’t too far off. But I’d never imagined my first date would be with Sean’s stand-in at the dirt track. “You’re bringing sexy back.”

He stuck out his bottom lip. “Where did you want to go?”

“Didn’t Sean and Rachel go to the movies?”

“Yeah, but I’ll bet she made him take her to the new Disney cartoon. at’s his punishment for stealing her from me. at and MTV. Endless reality shows on MTV.” He cracked his knuckles.

“Adam, I don’t care if it’s Mickey and Minnie Bust a Move. We need to be there.”

“We want to make them jealous,” he agreed, “but we can’t follow them around. We don’t want to admit we’re trying to make them jealous. And that’s exactly what we’ll be doing if we set foot in Mickey and Minnie Bust a Move.”

I started to protest. But as I thought about it, I remembered every time I’d watched a DVD with the boys, Adam had left the room after thirty minutes, asking Cameron to call him back in for the juicy parts. And we were always telling Adam to be quiet. We couldn’t hear the movie over his CD player, or his drum set, or the roar of the blender as he made milkshakes in the kitchen. I asked, “You can’t sit through a whole movie, can you?” He frowned, which made cute little lines appear between his brows. He fished the lighter out of his pocket and flicked it, studying the flame.

Either he couldn’t sit through a whole movie, or it hurt him too much to be around Rachel while she was with Sean. is wouldn’t help us make them jealous. But it was only the second night after the freaking shock of seeing Sean and Rachel together for the first time. Adam’s heart must be breaking every time we talked about Sean and Rachel, yet he’d come with me this far. I could be more understanding and give him a few days for the wound to scab over.

“We don’t have to go to the movie,” I sighed, “but we need to go somewhere girls will see us. ere’s no one here but boys. It’ll never get back to Sean and Rachel that we were together. Boys don’t gossip.”

“Pah! You don’t know us as well as you think.”

This was a disturbing prospect.

He stuffed his lighter back in his pocket. “Here’s an idea. Call me crazy, but what if we actually enjoyed hooking up?”

“Whoa, Nelly,” I said. “You scare me, thinking out of the box.”

“What if we made hooking up productive?”

“That’s what I’m talking about. Producing envy, with or without big fat teardrops.”

“Forget about that, Lori. It’ll come without us trying so hard.” He took the box of fishhooks out of his pocket and rattled it. “You’re turning sixteen in less than two weeks.”

That was a low blow. “You don’t have to rub it in that I forgot your birthday,” I protested. “You remember mine because yours is first.”

“And didn’t your dad stop taking you for driving lessons after you ran his Beamer into the woodpile?”

“Only because he told me to back to the left, and I thought I did. I would have done fine if he’d pointed instead of telling me the direction. Again, you don’t have to rub it—”

“I’ll teach you to drive.”

I blinked. He was a daredevil. “Around town?”

“No, right here. It’s safer.”

I pondered the mud field. “I might wreck the pink truck.”

“Who could tell?”

“I might hit somebody else.”

“If they’re here, mud riding, they’d probably get off on it.”

As if in agreement, Scooter Ledbetter chose this moment to start honking his horn in time to his stereo blasting Nine Inch Nails.

“Oh, what the hell,” I said, spitting my petrified gum out the window. It had turned more of a metamorphic flavor anyway. I scooted into the driver’s seat as Adam crawled over me. Nose close to his shirt, I caught a whiff of his cologne.

And then, too soon, he was on his side of the truck and I was on mine. “Is it in first gear?” he asked. “Are your feet on the brake and the clutch? Look both ways and make sure no traffic is coming before proceeding carefully into the mud hole.”

I screamed like a girl as the edge of the pit fell away under us. en I bit my scream off short as we bounced over a little hill and then a big hill that sent us flying. Now I was giggling.

Adam grinned and fastened his seat belt. “Put the truck in first gear again,” he said in an amazing imitation of the calming announcer voice from the films we watched in driver’s ed. “Press harder on the gas to scale the side of the mud hole. As you reach the top and circle back around for another turn, don’t forget to signal.” Later, waiting in line for our seventh time through, he told me, “You drive fine.”

“Really?” I squealed.

“Yeah. Of course, I haven’t told you to turn left or right.”

“Right,” I said, disappointed. I thought I’d been driving fine, too. But I’d done well only because he hadn’t asked me to do anything hard, like tell left from right. And let’s not even think about starboard and port.

“When you’re driving by yourself, it won’t matter,” he reasoned. “You’ve lived in this town forever. You know how to get around. Your dad won’t be sitting in the passenger seat, telling you to turn left or right. The only time anyone will do that is when you take your driving test.”

“at’s also the only time a person taking her first road test will be banned from driving in Alabama for life.” I edged the pink truck forward as a Dodge Ram dropped into the mud field in front of us.

“I have ADHD,” he said. “I’m the master of cheating on tests. Just put your hands on the wheel like this.” He placed his hands on the dashboard with his first fingers up and his thumbs in, pointing toward each other. “ll is for left.”

“Won’t the chick giving me the test notice I’ve got my fingers in an ll on the steering wheel?”

“Hold your hands like that while she’s examining your car,” he said. “By the time you start driving, she won’t think anything about it. She’ll think you have arthritis and it’s none of her business.”

I looked over at him. “You’re a lot sneakier than I thought.”

He smiled.

I said, “Frances hasn’t forgiven you for exploding her homemade cheese.”

His laughter rang out at just the moment I plunged the truck into the pit. He’d given me the confidence of Dale Earnhardt Jr. on holiday. I veered off the very beaten path and into uncharted mud puddles. I kicked up splashes so high, Adam rolled up his window and asked me to roll up mine to save what was left of the ancient interior.

We bounced from corner to corner and were bouncing our way back again when the truck dipped lower than I expected, sending a wave of muddy water across the hood and up the windshield. I pressed the gas and heard a ripping sound.

I turned to him in horror. “I broke your truck.”

“We’re just stuck. It happens.” He unfastened his seat belt. “Switch back.”

I started to crawl over him. He’d crawled over me last time, and I figured this time he’d slide under. But he started to crawl over, too. We met in the middle, laughed, and both moved to slide under at the same time.

“Do you want to be on top or on bottom?” he asked.

“Either way,” I heard myself saying. I had to remind myself that this was Adam, not Sean. is was the baby of the Vader family, who had always been the littlest, up until two days ago. At least in my mind.

He picked me up and, before I could wiggle, removed me to the passenger side. “ere.” He slid into the driver’s seat and pressed the gas, harder than I’d pressed it, with a longer and louder ripping noise. He opened the door and stepped out, sinking much farther than he would have on solid ground. “ey’ll call a tractor from the racetrack to pull us out, but it might take a while. Let’s wait by the concession stand. You’ll ruin your shoes, though. Here, get on my back.” He stood outside the open driver’s side door. His back was waiting. I hadn’t been on a boy’s back since… hmm… a free-for-all fight with girls on boys’ backs at Cathy Kirk’s pool party in middle school. If I’d been included, obviously there hadn’t been enough girls to go around. And in middle school, the girls and boys were about equal in height and weight, so I’d worried I would crush the boy I rode on.

Not so with Adam. My shoes were dainty things you shoved your toes into with nothing to hold them on. I kicked them off and held them in one hand. I slid across the seat and onto his strong, solid back, feeling like a feather. A snowflake! A dainty snowflake surrounded by an acre of mud.

He nudged the door closed with his hip. I looked down. His feet had disappeared. “What about your shoes?” I asked. “Your mom will kill you.”

“They’re Sean’s. I’ll put them in his closet just like this.”

I felt a momentary pang for Sean. en almost laughed out loud, picturing the look on his face. ey were his shoes, and he would have a right to be mad. But if anything could ever make me dislike Sean, it was how much he cared about his clothes. I cared about my own clothes only through great effort.

Sean’s shoes made a schlep sound every time Adam took a step. He struggled getting up the hill to the lip of the mud hole, and I thought I would have to dismount after all.

He felt me start to slide down. “No!” he said, catching my legs more tightly. “We’re fine.” With one last schlep we made it to the top. e prize was a tiny Airstream trailer blowing smoke out an exhaust fan. The air smelled like fried food. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

“No, but that never stopped me before.”

“Me too.” He stepped up to the window and looked in. “What’cha got?”

The clerk/cook/janitor looked up from a NASCAR talk show on TV. “Cheese fries, homemade doughnuts.” With me on his back, Adam couldn’t turn his head around enough to look at me, but he turned it enough to let me know I should choose from this array of delicacies.

“Strangely,” I said, “I have a taste for cheese fries.”

Adam reached into his pocket to pay. Putting me down on the bench beside the concession stand would have been miles easier. I was beginning to understand that he liked having me on his back. Holding my shoes in one hand, I grabbed the cheese fries with the other, and he carried a soda.

He walked to the bench, put the soda down, then put me down. I was still holding the cheese fries and my shoes. I tossed my shoes on the ground (oh well, so much for dazzling rhinestones) and picked up the soda so he could sit down, then handed it to him. It was like one of those problems on a standardized test at school. If Sean hooks up with everyone in school on Wednesday and Rachel on Friday, and Adam hooks up with Rachel on ursday and Lori on Sunday, on what day does the nuclear war commence? One of those problems Adam would just draw an X through because he thought he would never encounter anything like it in the real world.

He crossed one leg over the other casually, as if he weren’t coated with mud up to his knees. en he took a sip of the soda, handed it to me, and pulled out a cheese fry.

I took a tentative sip of soda. Not that I thought he had germs—or really bad germs, anyway—but we’d never shared a soda before. We’d shared popcorn, of course, while we watched DVDs with the other boys. Once the scoop from my ice cream cone had plopped into the lake, and he’d shared his ice cream with me. is was probably kind of gross. Mrs. Vader and Frances had rushed at us when they saw me about to take a lick. I shouldn’t read too much into sharing a soda now, though. It was something people did when they went out.

“Mmph!” he hummed with his mouth full of cheese fry. Swallowing, he grabbed my bare foot and pulled it into his lap. “You painted your little toenails.” I opened my mouth to explain proudly that the toe-nails in question represented hours of meticulous work. Well, maybe forty-five minutes while watching reruns of Deadliest Catch. I’d put the polish on and taken it off three times because it tended toward gloopy. Who knew beauty regimens would be so complex?

But when I looked up, my mouth just stayed open. He was staring at me with those light blue eyes. A chill hit me from nowhere. It made the hair on my arms stand up.

It raced down my body to my toes, which he was stroking with one rough thumb. And so the chill moseyed back up my body again.

I took a slow, shaky breath through my wide open, ridiculously gaping mouth. en I realized what the problem was. His resemblance to Sean was eerie sometimes, especially the light blue eyes. I managed to say, “You’re giving me the look again. Don’t look at me like that.” Stubbornly he gave me the look for ten more seconds, so there. I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the look. I really enjoyed what it did to my skin. He was a superhero with Massage-O-Vision. I enjoyed it too much for comfort. He was just going to turn his Massage-O-Vision on Rachel when he got her back, so the pleasant pricklies I felt were pricklies on loan. He’d be horrified to know he was giving them to me. Besides, I wasn’t going to sit there and let him give me the look when I’d asked him not to give me the look.

Just as I was about to either pinch him or find the strength to look away, he let my toes go and turned away himself, gazing out over the splashing trucks. e mud sparkled in the artificial light. At first glance it might have seemed about as romantic as watching cement being poured, or a building being demolished by a wrecking ball.