Her Kiss (Griffin) (9 page)

CHAPTER 22

When Kendra yanked open the door
three minutes later, declaring “Times up!” I made a low groaning noise.
Reluctantly, I pulled away from Heaven, resting my forehead against hers. For a
minute there was just
me
and Heaven in the world.
Us breathing hard, our flushed faces, and exploding hearts.
Us panting together as we tried to catch our breath.
Only
us.

I wanted it to last forever—
me and her in each other’s arms
.

But Kendra laughed, yanking Ally
away from me. “Wake up, Cous—love trance time is over,” she announced.
“You told me not to let you do this—you want a nice boy, remember? Not
The Griff.”

My
head jerked up at that. Amused and highly intrigued by this information, though
I pretty much already knew it.

Cracking
a smile, I looked from Ally to her cousin. “What else did she say?”

Kendra
laughed. “Oh, wouldn’t you like to know. Look, stay away from my cousin.” She
literally pulled Heaven towards the door. “Ally’s not your type.”

I sighed. Why did everyone keep
saying that?

CHAPTER 23

Turned out Kendra’s words were
right.
At least sort of.
I mean, no, she definitely
wasn’t right about Ally not being
my
type. But obviously I wasn’t Ally’s. She went back to running away from
me—though she did start leaving me “anonymous” baked treats taped to my
locker on a fairly regular basis. At first I thought it was to thank me for
fixing her car … but the treats kept coming. And coming.

One time there was a fried chicken
leg taped to my locker (not even kidding). It was in a baggie and right next to
it was a peanut-butter brownie (in a baggie also).

From a distance, I’d noticed
it—that there was something taped to my locker. My pulse sped up, since I
knew it was an Ally treat. At the time, I had a problem though. There was this
girl with me, Shondra. She was letting me borrow her notes, so I couldn’t
exactly send her away when I saw my locker had been
Ally
gifted.

I tried to think fast, but my eyes
kept darting to my locker, all happy.

“Hey, maybe we can meet up after
next class,” I said to Shondra, stopping in my tracks so we didn’t get any closer
to my source of happiness. I wanted to get the gift alone.

But it was too late. Shondra had
followed my involuntary gaze.

“There’s something taped to your
locker, Griffin,” she said. Then she skipped over to it before I could stop
her.

I blew out a breath and trailed
after her.

“Oh, yum!” She smiled huge. “You
must have a fan that has advanced cooking class third period. I have Spanish
next-door to that classroom. I smelled those peanut-butter brownies baking
all
through class.” She grinned and her
eyes lit up playful-like, “And I
know
you don’t like peanut-butter.”

She said it teasingly, since I’d
just announced that to my whole class—like five minutes ago.

I mentally did a face-palm.

Our teacher had gone around the
room having each of us stand and say something we were afraid of. (It was for
some sort of writing exercise … I think.) When it was my turn I’d said,
“peanut-butter.” The stuff gives me the shudders. It’s because that’s
all my
mom used to feed me—every day.
Peanut-butter sandwiches, sometimes with no jelly.
Every.
Single. Day.
For years.

Shondra’s eyes glittered. She was
used to getting what she wanted.
Especially from boys.
She snuggled close to me. “So … can I have your brownie?”

I winced. I knew she was going to
ask that.

I felt sort of trapped. I mean,
she’d let me stick my tongue down her throat the other night at party, and now
she was letting me borrow her notes, and actually she was going to write my
paper for me, and I needed it written—like now. My grades—they
weren’t so good.

But I couldn’t give her Ally’s brownie.
That seemed disrespectful—giving it to a girl, even if I couldn’t eat it
myself. It seemed like Shondra could get that on her own, right?
But apparently not.

Mason came walking by right at that
moment. His eyes lit up. “Oh, dude!”

I knew he was talking about the fried
chicken. But I lied to Shondra, handing Mason the brownie anyway. “Sorry,” I
told her all apologetic-like. “I promised it to
Mason
.”

Mason took it with a laugh, getting
that I couldn’t give Ally’s treat to a girl. So he took it as a win and moved
on to his next class.

“Here, you can have this instead.”
I gave Shondra a red pencil that said, ‘You’re hot!’

Some girl had given it to me in my
last class. But the girl was always putting down this awkward girl that sat in
front of us. So, I didn’t really like Pencil-Girl too much and I had no trouble
giving up her gift.

Shondra was pleased with it too,
purring, “Aww, I think you’re hot too!”

I smiled as I downed my fried
chicken.

It bit that Ally wouldn’t give me a
chance, but man I loved her attention—even if it wasn’t the kind I craved
from her. Still, it was something. And the something was delicious.

CHAPTER 24

I know break-ups are hard. I’d
never personally gone through one.
Because that would have
required, you know, me having actually been in a relationship.
Which I’d
never been in. Ever. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d had plenty of action with
girls. Some might say, more than my share. But I didn’t go for the “dating”
stuff. (Calling, or dressing up, or taking a girl to a movie, or a dance … or
okay, anywhere that I wasn’t already at.) That stuff wasn’t my thing. Still, I
knew a lot of people that had been in relationships (of course). So I was
aware, break-ups suck.

So, though I was inwardly rejoicing
and dancing a jig that Ally was no longer tied to Poser, I was also sorry for
her. The glow I was used to seeing around her had dimmed. It was more like
there was a cloud over her now. I didn’t like that.

One morning at my locker, Hailey
waved her hand in front of my face, blocking my view of watching Ally as
she
watched Poser and Fauna from a
distance.

Hailey glared at me, like I’d been
doing something perverted. And horrifying. But I wasn’t. I mean
,
I wasn’t stalking Ally—which to Hailey would have
been unspeakable.
And unbearable.
And
unforgivable.
But I wasn’t. I mean, I’d just been at my locker, reading
texts people had sent me (I get behind), then I looked up and caught sight of
Ally—and she kept watching Poser, so I found that interesting. But I
didn’t get out binoculars or anything.

Hailey growled. “She’s not free or
anything, Griffin. If she snaps her fingers—Aiden will come back to her.
Besides, to her you’re the devil disguised as a hot biker model. She’ll always
run from the
devil
,
Griffin—always—no matter how good he looks to her. Or how
tempting.”

I quirked an
eyebrow.
The devil, wow.

Restraining a grin, I put my hand
over my heart. “Ouch.”

Hailey rolled her eyes and went on,
like calling me the devil wasn’t enough to make her point. “Besides, she’s
already got another guy on her leash. And he’s just like Baker and Aiden.
Exactly
the same as
them—
exactly
—which is
totally the opposite of you.
The
total
opposite.
Face it Griffin, she’ll
never
go for you—never.”

I bit back another grin. “Take it
easy, Pop-fly. I wasn’t planning my marriage proposal.”

Besides, I already knew about the
guy she was talking about.
This girly guy—Milo.
He sort of swooped in and tried to take Poser’s place with Ally the minute they
broke up. She didn’t seem to really be feeling the guy, but he was definitely
giving it his best shot. Plus he was the star of the school play, and Ally was
playing the piano for the production. So, they had that in common—the
play.

Plus, Milo had a girly vibe. Ally
seemed to be into that. Guys she could take shoe shopping, and cry over chick
movies with, and swap make-up tips while they braided each other’s hair and did
their nails. (Okay, maybe they didn’t do all that. I have no idea.)

But like I said—I could tell
she wasn’t really into Milo. Unfortunately, like I also said, she wasn’t over
Aiden. So, I couldn’t be
too
happy
about their break-up … though I did start getting those “anonymous” gifts from
Ally on a semi-regular basis.
That I
was
happy about.

It was like I was her distraction
from Poser or something. Only if I was, I was second tier. Her real distraction
was Milo—since he got to get near her and everything.

Still, even with girly Milo buzzing
around her—still—she was leaving me baked treats at my locker. And
sometimes she’d even throw in a random vague poem that would whisper about
“kisses” or “heroes” and stir up my heart, and make it hard to pretend it
didn’t warm me up inside every time I looked at her.

Even though I knew it would piss
off Hailey, I leaned against my locker and glanced back over at Ally. She looked
sad. She was with her friends, but she kept sneaking looks at Poser and Fauna
as they held hands and snuggled and kissed at his locker. She had a sad little
frown on her face. I couldn’t take it. I looked away and let myself be
distracted by this girl,
Rita, that
was all about
tongue-hockey, and didn’t seem to realize we weren’t supposed to play it at
school.

Hailey didn’t seem to mind
that—me with Rita. In fact, she seemed relieved. Though she rolled her
eyes and said, “Get a room.”

Then she trotted over to one of her
friends that had a logo on her shirt that said,
‘Don’t mess with me.’
Then under that, in small print, it said,
‘ … Unless you’re cute.’

That wasn’t a shirt for Hailey.
Hailey’s would say,
‘… Unless you hate
Ally
Grange and other nice people … or you’re the devil.’

I only kissed Rita a little after
Hailey left.
I mean, the kiss was heated.
Rita was
definitely into it. But I wasn’t. Unfortunately. I was just using the kiss as a
distraction and it wasn’t really working. My eyes kept wondering over to Ally
and her sad little frown.

My mood sucked when she frowned.

I still wanted to smack-up Poser.
Now more than ever.

CHAPTER 25

Friday afternoon I had my head on
my desk waiting for class to start. I was kind of not happy since the doctor
had changed my mom’s medication, and it wasn’t for the better. Last night I’d
been up with her half the night showing her no one was knocking at our door. I
mean, I’d just get to sleep, and then I’d have to do it again … open the front
door for her so she could see no one was there. (She has a thing about our
front door. It’s trippy.)

 
“Hey dude, here,” Mason said, waking me out of my sleepy
head-case. He handed me a baggie with an enchilada in it. (An
enchilada
!
!
—
score
!!!)

“Oh, and this came with it.” With a
grin, he handed me a plastic fork.

I blinked at the gift and laughed,
then started digging in.

Oh
my gosh
!
I was in heaven—and not just because the gift had obviously come from
Heaven, but because hey, I love enchiladas. And I got to
say,
Heaven’s was the best I ever had. Ever. Okay, it was possible that it was just
because it was from her.
But whatever.
It was
delicious and made me all kinds of happy.

Mason sat on the desk next to me.
He wasn’t even in my class, he just dropped by to hand me my tasty Heaven-ly
treat. (Yeah, I dug puns.)

“The baggie was taped to your
locker,” he said, like I couldn’t figure that out on my own. (This had been
going on a while now, Ally trying to divert her heartbreak—or whatever
she was doing.)

 
For a distracted moment, Mason eyed my English teacher, Ms.
Sharp (all guys do), he shook his head like telling his mind:
‘Don’t go there.’
He shook it again,
then
his gaze flickered back to me and my disappearing
enchilada. He quickly got back on track—why he was here in the first
place, which wasn’t to ogle my teacher (though everyone does). It was to give
me my latest Ally treat—and maybe razz me a little about it, depending on
his mood. And mine.

“Hailey was eyeing it,” he said. “I
think she was going to do it damage.”

Probably not—but I’d have to
hear her complain. Some more. “Thanks, man.”

“Sure,” he hopped off the desk,
“I’ve got your back.”

He started to leave, but then
turned back to me and tilted his head. “You know, they’re broken up.”

Those were his words, but what he
was really saying was:
‘Why don’t you go
for it?’

Meaning, Ally.

Me, go for Ally.
The
Church Girl.

Me, The Devil, go for The Church
Girl.

I glanced up at him, deadpan.
“Really? They broke up?”

He groaned, like I wasn’t
hilarious. “Look, she obviously has some hot twisted thing for you—and
you have one for her. You must. You saved Poser for her.” He did a shudder,
like it had been as revolting for him to witness as it had been for me to do.
Which couldn’t possibly be even remotely (
remotely
!!
)
true. I mean, I still had nightmares about it, woke up shrieking. (Well, okay,
maybe not, but man.)

Mason started again, like he’d been
planning in his head what to say, “Look, I know she’s shy or whatever … but
you’re
not.”

I waited for him to go on, but
apparently that was his big speech—to tell me what I already knew. I’m
not a shy guy. I’ve been around. I know how to get a girl to let me stick my
tongue down her throat in less than five minutes.

But I swear, I had no idea how to
get Ally. I mean, yeah, lately she gave me things—lots of yummy, sweet
things—but, surprisingly, that didn’t make things any different than they
were when she was still with Poser. She still wouldn’t let me near her.

I guess it was because she went to
church … and
I
went to
mandated psychotherapy (like, constantly). And I was the devil. Not only that,
I was an actual guy—with actual guy thoughts (ew). Plus, I guess it
didn’t help that I had the nickname, “Griff the Grief-Master.” (But I swear
,
that was only on the ice. I caused grief—to the other
team.)

Whatever the reason (and I bet she
had a bunch in her pretty head)—whatever—she wasn’t going to go for
me.

The bell rang for class to start.
Ms. Sharp turned to
Mason
with an arched eyebrow.
“Mason, don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

A lazy grin flashed on his lips,
like he wanted to be someplace with her. “Where do you want me, Ms. Sharp?”

“In your own class?” she said,
acting like she didn’t get his innuendo. Which she probably
did.
She had to put up with crap like that all day. Though, of course, Mason was
used to getting older girls. He liked a challenge, plus he looked
older—but mostly it was just that
Summer
looked older, and he went after girls that looked
like Summer.

So, although Ms. Sharp was hot, she
didn’t look anything like Summer, which meant Mason wasn’t going to bother with
an inappropriate come-back. Instead, his eyes flickered back to me. “Later,
man.”

Then he was out the door, but only
a minute later I got a text from him. I guess it was what he had wanted to say
about that ‘you’re not shy’ stuff.

He wrote:
“The girl makes you smile, man.”
Then he added,
“No one else can do that—I mean, when you’re dealing with your
mom.”

I ran a hand over my face. Oh. He
knew about my mom—that she was having troubles again. Awesome.

I laid my head back on my desk,
figuring he must have heard me talking in my sleep. Again. I do that during
study hall sometimes. I give away all my secrets.