Breaking Rules (13 page)

“
Of course not,” I said, trying to divert my stare, but my eyes kept coming back to him. “Why would you think that?”

“
You’re on edge,” he said, taking one tiny step closer. At that point, we were touching.

I thought to
agree with him. I thought to mention that my edginess probably had more to do with the fact that he kept dipping into my personal space than anything else. But I didn’t say a word, fearing that if I did, he would respect my boundaries and back away. That was just the kind of guy Gabe was. And as uncomfortable as it made me to have him standing so close, I preferred the discomfort to the alternative. I didn’t want him to leave.

“I’m sorry
,” I said, starting to look down to the floor again, but Gabe caught my chin with his thumb. He tilted my face upward, and then he shook his head.

“Can I help you?” he asked, and his blue eyes softened with each blink. “Talk to me, Mandy. What’s going on?”

His finger still held my chin as he watched me and waited for an answer, but I couldn’t find the right words. There wasn’t enough time in the world to even try to explain. Unable to muster even the simplest explanation, I looked away, and that’s all it took for him to drop his hand. He backed away, took the purse from my hands, and set it aside on the floor. Then he pulled me into a hug. My head rested against his chest as he wrapped one hand around my back, and the other held my head closer to him. He rested his head on top of mine, and his thumb caressed my hair, each gentle stroke lulling me into a haze of mixed emotions. Just being close to him, being inside his embrace, I felt my entire body go limp. I knew the only reason I hadn’t collapsed was because Gabe’s strong arms were wrapped around me, keeping me from crashing to the floor.

I knew better than to shed a tear, but it didn’t matter how hard I tried to keep the flood gates from opening. Wrapped up with Gabe, restraining tears wasn’t any kind of option.
I cried hard against his shoulder, feeling my heartache weigh a little heavier in my chest with each passing minute, but Gabe never loosened his grip.

“Five minutes are up, Mandy,” Dad’s voice called from the hallway, and I felt Gabe’s head jerk up to look at my father. He stroked the back of my hair once more, and I finally peeled myself away from his tear-soaked shirt. Gabe looked d
own at me again, and he raised his hand to wipe my tears away.

“Mandy?” he asked quietly
.

“It’s fine,” I whispered, matching his tone. “But you should go before
—”

“I don’t want to leave if you need—”

“I’m okay,” I promised, and I kept my voice low. “I’ll …” I wiped a fresh tear with the back of my hand and stood taller. “I’ll just see you Thursday, okay?”

“Maybe I can see you before then?”

“I don’t have the time.”

“I’ll come to you. I’ll come here to Sugar Creek,” he said. “You won’t have to go out of your way at all.”

“It’s not a matter of going out of my way,” I said. “I have school and work, and I just don’t have the time, okay?”

“You can’t spare one hour?”

“No. I can’t.”

The thing was
I
could
make time for him. I could spare more than just an hour between now and then, but for what? It would only give me one more chance, one more opportunity to see how perfect Gabe was; it would just give me one more chance to fall for him. And I had to be careful letting myself fall, especially when my parents had made it their life purpose to tear me away from everything I let myself get close to.

“You need to go
, Gabe,” I said, swallowing hard. “You have to leave.”

Ten

I should’ve never let Gabe walk out the door, but I couldn’t see that I had any other choice. With the mood Dad was in, he would never let him hang around, and even if he had, I knew better than to even entertain the idea. I couldn’t get any more distracted, and I wasn’t about to get any closer to Gabe, only to be ripped away.

Besides, even if Dad hadn
’t made plans to uproot and move back to LA, I still let myself get carried away with thoughts that I should never have had in the first place. Yeah, Gabriel Raddick was the only reason I felt things I had never felt before. He was the reason I started questioning all the things that I never thought I would question. He was the reason I finally learned that maybe I had it in me to feel an emotion that was so much stronger than the hatred and resentment I’d carried around for so many years. He was the one who had me considering the possibility of breaking a rule—
the
rule!

But I couldn’t be that stupid.

I’d watched my parents split apart, the only two people I never imagined giving up. They loved each other once, and their relationship crashed and burned. But even after it had shattered, even after there was nothing left to save, they had an image to protect. Even that, though, the thing they cared most about protecting, couldn’t save them from the inevitable. And if my parents couldn’t make their relationship work to hold up appearances, then I wasn’t convinced there was hope for anyone.

L
etting go of everything I’d learned from their marital demise, I still knew better than to fall into the trap. I’d read hundreds of novels, and I’d watched thousands of rom-com movies with my sister. While Bailey was dumb enough to fall for all of the mushy-gushy love nonsense, I knew better. I knew that those tingling, warm, fuzzy feelings that Gabe sparked inside of me were nothing but crazy, little jitters girls get when a cute guy pays them any kind of attention. It wasn’t love. It was just a buzz, and one that would fizzle out in due time.

Just a crush
, Mandy, I reminded myself. A stupid crush that would go away the moment we packed up, boarded a plane, and landed in California. I may like Gabriel Raddick in the moment, and I had no choice but to admit the truth to myself (because come on, who was I trying to kid?), but so what? If there was
one
thing I learned from my mother, it was that it didn’t take more than a few seconds to just flip a switch on feelings. When it came time, I’d forget Gabe the same way my mother had forgotten about us. I could stop liking him whenever I wanted to.

“What’s gotcha down?” Jones asked, leaning on the counter at the Sugar High Bakery, where we’d both
landed part-time jobs over the summer. That’s how he ended up meeting Bailey; she’d come by the bakery one night to pick up a cake for Dad’s birthday, they got to talking, and
bam
! The rest was history. Two months later, they were both happily and blissfully infatuated with one another.

“Mandy,” he said, waving a hand in front of my face.
“Yo! Dude, are you alive?”

My eyes snapped in his direction, and I stood taller, suddenly realizing that I
’d carried myself away in a daydream.

“Yeah?”

“What’s going on with you lately?” he asked. “You’re not yourself.”

It was Tuesday evening and closing time, and I was still
trying to put the last twenty-four hours behind me. It hadn’t been a full day since I’d fought with Dad and Gabe had showed up at the door with a soft gleam in his eye and a sympathetic shoulder for me to cry on. And since Gabe walked out, I hadn’t spoken a word to my father. I’d barely said anything to anyone else.

“Nothing,” I said, but he tilted his head and watched me a little closer.

“I’m gonna go ahead and call
bull
,” he said, sounding far too much like my sister. “Spill the beans. What’s going on?”

Because Jones and I had worked at the bakery together for so long, he
’d become the closest thing I had to a real friend. I hated that because Jones wasn’t any kind of friend to have. I rarely confided in him, especially now that he and my sister were romantically involved, but when I did have something to say, it was usually because he coaxed it out of me. I never went to him by choice. He always forced his way in.

“I don’t really know that it’s my place to say anything,” I finally said as I reached around and untied my apron. I hung it on a peg on the back wall and turned back to him. “It sort of involves you, too, in some roundabout way. It’s probably something you should hear from my sister.”

“You mean your Dad’s plans to move back to Cali,” he said, confident that was exactly what I’d been talking about. “Yeah, Bailey mentioned it.”

I nodded and turned back to the register to start closing down for the night. I
punched the three-button code to start printing the day’s receipts, and then Jones stepped a little closer.

“And?”

“And what?”

“That’s not why you’ve been moping around here all night,” he said as if he knew. “Your sister hasn’t shut up about your lives out west since the day we started dating. I’ve heard about a thousand stories about how both of you were happier out there than you’ve ever been
here. So don’t play dumb with me, Mandy. You’re not upset because you’re going to California. And if you are, color me shocked. I always thought you’d be the first one back on the plane to LA if you had the chance. You seem to hate everything about your life here.”

Ha! I tried not to snort because that would
’ve been rude, right? Still, if that was really what Jones thought, then that only showed how little he actually knew about me (or his girlfriend, for that matter).
Bailey
would be the first on the plane, and she would have to pull
me
through the terminal, kicking and screaming.

Sure, I had some pleasant memories of my time back home
. As much as I’d loved that life back then, the ending—and the memories of that end—had ruined it for me now.

California wasn
’t an option. It would never
be
an option for me again. Why couldn’t anyone understand that?

“You gonna talk, or
—”

“I’m just sad that we have to do it all over again, that’s all,” I said, hoping to leave it at that, but
Jones only stared harder. “We’ve just started our senior year,” I further explained. “I’ve got the paper, my commitment to the Raddick Initiative, and…”

I stopped myself just in time to keep from saying
Gabe
. I didn’t
have
Gabe, so I didn’t know why I even let it cross my mind. Still, I almost said his name, and that would’ve been terrible.

“
Ah, I get it
,” he said, and a coy smile crossed his lips. He snapped his fingers and then pointed at me in a knowing manner. “It’s the boyfriend, isn’t it?”

“Excuse me?”

“Bailey said you’ve met someone, but I couldn’t believe it was true. What do you know? Our little Mandy has gone and found herself a man. And now it makes a ton of sense why you’re depressed and don’t wanna leave.”

“That couldn’t be further from the truth, Jones.”

“Yeah, then what was with that goofy smile just then?”

“What goofy smile?”

“You said,
I’ve got the paper, my commitment to the Raddick Initiative, and…
and then your lips went all twisted and goofy.”

“They did not!”

“Who’s the guy?” he asked, poking me in the side with a tough jab. “Anyone I know?”

I could
’ve said,
well, yes, of course
, but then that would’ve been an admission that he was right that I had been thinking of a guy. And I hadn’t, had I? Had I thought of Gabe just then? It’d been happening so much lately that I could barely keep track of my own thoughts.

“Come on, tell me,” he begged. “I won’t say anything to Bailey
.”

“
A
,” I said, holding up a finger, “That’s a lie. I wouldn’t get the words out of my mouth before you’d be on the phone, telling her everything I told you. And
B
,” I said, dropping my hand, “there’s nothing to tell, so just drop it already.”

“Psht,” he blew air between his lips and rolled his eyes.

“Please,” I said, giving him a stern look. “Just let it go.”

The paper finished printing
, and I tore the receipt from the register. I opened the till, placed the receipt inside with the dollar bills, and carried it back to the office. After leaving it on the desk for Julia, the bakery manager, I returned to the storefront, only to stop at the threshold between the office and the counter.

My breath halted in my throat, and I suddenly forgot how to breathe.

Gabe was there, waiting patiently for someone to return to the counter. He watched the clock for a few seconds, and then he stared down at his hands. I knew I should say something, but I was frozen there staring at him, wondering why in the world he was even here in the first place. What was he doing in Sugar Creek, and what was he doing at the Sugar High so late in the evening? And how had he gotten in? Had I forgotten to lock the door when I flipped the sign earlier?

Jones turned the corner at the back of the bakery, either returning from the bathroom or the storage closet, and his eyes immediately glued to the back of Gabe
’s head.

“Oh, dude,” Jones said
, “sorry, but we’re closed.”

Gabe turned to meet Jones
’s stare, and his blue eyes widened.

“Yeah, I know
; I’m sorry,” he said. “I just stopped by to see Mandy. Is she still here?”

Jones kept walking and rounded the
counter, never peeling his eyes from Gabe. For a moment it looked as though he was measuring him up, trying to get a good read on the man standing in front of him. Assessing Gabe from head to toe, Jones finally stopped just behind the register and paused. His lips thinned into a long smile after a few quiet moments. He snapped his fingers and pointed at Gabe, and then his mouth hung open.

“
Dude, it’s you
!”

“I’m sorry?”

I closed my eyes and prayed that Jones wouldn’t go on a rant that sounded something like ‘hey, you’re that freak from high school!’

“You’re the guy, aren’t you?”

Gabe leaned forward and squinted, watching Jones very closely. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Mandy’s got it
bad
for some guy,” Jones said, almost giddy with excitement. “We were just talking about it right before you came in, and…
you’re him
,
aren’t you?”
He snapped his fingers excitedly as he tried to get the words out. “You’re the boyfriend, the guy… the reason she doesn’t want to move to California?”

Gabe continued to hold Jones’
s stare, but his hands suddenly fell limp at his sides. When he couldn’t figure out what to say next, he shoved his hands into his pockets and looked around. “Is she here?”

“Yeah, I’m here
.” I took a step forward and came directly into his view. Gabe held my stare as I reached the edge of the counter, and his eyes swept over me with a look of admiration, a look I was definitely not used to getting from guys. I studied his lips for a minute, watching as they quivered, threatening to curve into a grin.

“
Oooo
,” Jones said, rubbing his hands together. “You could cut the tension with a knife! Mandy, man, I knew you were lying about not having a boyfriend!”

“
Shut up, Jones
,” I said through my teeth, and then I turned back to Gabe. “Hi.”

“Hey
,” he said, and his grin suddenly got the best of him.

Again, we stared.

“What are you doing here?”

“I told you I wanted to see you sooner; I thought I’d drive down to check on you.”

“And I told you I didn’t have any spare time,” I said, feeling my lip quirk up. “I don’t think you listened to me very well, Mr. Raddick.”

I
’d only been trying to make him smile with that, especially since he’d asked me not to make him sound like such a stiff, but it wasn’t Gabe’s reaction that I noticed in the moment. Jones’s eyes widened and his head snapped up. It was only then that I realized that he hadn’t put it all together; he hadn’t made the connection between the freak-loser Gabe that he’d gone to school with and the handsome, confident man standing in front of him.

“I know, and I’m sorry. I hope you don’t mind,”
Gabe said, twisting his lips. “I stopped by your house, and your sister said you were here. I just wanted to make sure you were—”

“I’m fine,” I assured him.
“Really. You didn’t have to drive down here.”

Gabe and I watched each other for a few
, long minutes, and we let the silence linger a little longer than we ever had. It wasn’t until Jones cleared his throat that either of us even moved.