How to Seduce a Band Geek (17 page)

“I like you,” he blurts, and his cheeks blossom red.

“I like you, too,” I manage to croak out, my lips ready to jump off my face and glue themselves to his.

He smiles, and I reach up to try this again.

“I like you, Sierra, a lot…but—”

“But?” I fall back on my heels. “There’s a but?” Why is there a but? I step back, and he gives me this sorry look, and I want to kill the word “but.” It’s the worst word in the history of words. I close my eyes and start rubbing my temples, knowing he’s about to tell me I’m not band geeky enough, or I’m a dink who can’t form sentences around him, or he doesn’t like me
that way
, or whatever it is. And after last night, after everything he did, I don’t want to think about the “but,” I want to think about the “I like you.”

He opens his mouth, and I stop him before he gets into it.

“Can you not tell me the rest? Can we just leave it at I like you and you like me? I know it doesn’t make sense, but I don’t think I want to hear the rest right now. I’m not self-conscious or anything,”—
Big fat lie
—“but I’m tired and you’re tired and after everything that happened last night, I just want to leave it like this. For a little bit. If that’s okay. I mean, if you want to tell me, I guess that’s fine, but I’d really just like to fake it for a while.”

The corner of his mouth quirks up. He shakes his head as quiet chuckles creep out his lips. “I like your rambling, too.” He removes the distance I put between us, and my cheeks warm. “And I don’t have to fake it. I
do
like you. And if you want, I’ll leave the ‘but’ out for now,
but
we probably should talk about it at some point.”

“Okay.”

He hugs me tight again, swinging wildly away from my face. I pout over his shoulder, lips tingling with rejection. Is it because I’m sixteen? Or maybe because he’s a senior, and he’ll be off to college soon. Or maybe I have a huge zit I haven’t seen yet. Or he hates morning breath and doesn’t want our first kiss to be riddled with the stuff. Or maybe he has an incurable disease, and he doesn’t want to get attached to anyone. Or he likes Blinky. He could hate the way I snort, or he saw my scrawled love notes and wants to bolt. What if I’m too skinny? Too fat? Too dorky? Too quiet? Too loud? Maybe he likes blonds. Or redheads like Zoe. Maybe he
likes
Zoe. I’m just the kid sister.

Holy heavens, maybe I should’ve heard the “but.”

He pulls away and puts a ton of space between us. Like a zillion miles. “I gotta go. I’m already late. My boss is gonna chew my a—”

“Levi?”

I whip around to Zoe barreling down the stairs. She gives Levi a once over in his uniform, and her brow furrows. “Are you heading to work? Or just getting off?”

Levi keeps his gaze over my head. I feel like I could shrink into the door frame and no one would notice.

“Both.” He tries to laugh. “I was just telling your sister that I gotta run.”

Sister? I’ve lost my name.

Zoe crosses her arms over her waist, trying to raise an eyebrow, but since she can’t her head cocks to the side instead. “I can take your shift if you want. You look dead on your feet.”

“Nah, I need it.”

They share this look like they know something I don’t. Zoe nods and offers an apologetic smile. My shoulders slump as I lean against the door, twisting the handle as if it’ll teleport me back to last night when Levi was holding me in my bed and not sharing meaningful looks with my sister.

“Well, I’ll see ya later.” Levi’s eyes go to me for a second, then they dart to his scooter, along with the rest of him. I watch him buzz off down the road, wondering what it is about me that’s so big that it trumps the fact he likes me.

“You okay?” Zoe asks, leaning against the other side of the door frame.

I nod, still looking at where Levi rounded the corner.

“Did he say something to you?”

Yes. He said a lot. He spent the night in my room. He pulled me from a drug party. There’s so much that went on, but I suddenly feel like I’m on the Ambien, or whatever sedative it was, and I don’t have the energy to talk about it. Zoe sighs, her patience level about as high as a toothpick.

I look at my bare feet and mutter the only thing I want to mention or remember. “He said he liked me.”

***

The grass in Adam’s front lawn is going brown. There’s a big pile of leaves in the corner, but it rained last night or something, because it’s not fluffy but soggy and matted into the grass. I hop up the two steps it takes to get to his door and ring the doorbell. I really hope he’s taken Sydney home, because I don’t want to see or talk with her for probably the rest of my life.

Adam creaks the door open, adjusting his white pocket tee. He lets out a whoosh of air when I barrel into him, squeezing him tight and knocking his glasses askew with my shoulder. “Thank you,” I say into his neck, then the tears I didn’t think were still in there fall out, and he wraps his arms around my waist and holds me till I’m dry.

When we drop arms, he gets us drinks and leads us to his room. I take my normal spot on the plaid-covered bed while he sits at his desk. He grabs a pen and clicks until there’s a steady background beat to our conversation.

I toy with the bedspread, noticing the rumpled sheets. “Sydney slept here?” I ask, my voice tight.

“Yeah.”
Click, click, click.
“She left about an hour ago.”

I pop the top on my Coke. I don’t think I’ll drink Pepsi again for the rest of my life. “Did she tell you—?”

“What she gave those guys as ‘payment?’” He stops clicking to highlight something in the open textbook on his desk. “No. But I have a few guesses.”

I tuck my knees under my chin. “And they are?”

His face tilts up from whatever he’s writing, offering me a half-hearted smile. “Would it make you feel better or worse if we went into this? Because honestly, I’m ready to forget what happened and just bask in the fact that you’re okay.”

I have no clue if I’ll feel better or worse, but he gives me the begging puppy face, taking his glasses off and batting his eyes as he pouts.

“Can you even see me?” I laugh.

“Of course I can see you.” He squints. “But when did you start growing fuzz?”

I stick my leg out and kick his rolly chair. He has to grip the edge of his desk to keep from flying across the floor. When he stabilizes himself, he slides his glasses back on.

“There is one thing I think we should talk about.”

“Okay…” One thing? There are a million things.

“Sydney.”

My heart seriously stops beating. “Yeah…”

He grabs his pen and goes at the clicker like it will erase everything that’s bugging him with every click. “I-I don’t think I can… Not after what she did to you. I can’t be around her anymore. Before, when she just hurt me, I could handle it. I could try to get back to the way things were. But now… shit. She’s a different person. I can’t believe she’d even think to… Yeah, so I know she’s your best friend, and I don’t want to make you choose between the two of us, but I can’t—”

“Adam,” I say, stopping him. Does he really think after last night I’d ever choose her over him? “You’re right. She
is
a different person. And I want to forgive her. I want to forget it and go on like nothing happened, but you know what? I can’t. At least not right now.”

He sighs, tossing his pen across the desktop. “You have no idea how relieved that makes me.”

“Relieved?”

His fingers twitch, and I’m betting he wishes he hadn’t tossed that pen. “You deserve a better friend than that.”

I lean across the space between the bed and the chair to poke his shoulder. “Like you?” I smile.

He laughs and rolls his eyes, then pokes me back. “And Levi.”

A really girly and blissed out sigh leaks from my mouth, and I fall back into his plaid sheets, holding my drink up so I don’t spill. “Isn’t he wonderful?”

Adam groans. “Please no. No ‘he’s hot’ talk. I don’t want to look at the guy like that.”

“But he is wonderful. I mean, that’s why you called him, right? And why you let him stay with me.”

“‘Wonderful’ isn’t the adjective I’d use, but yeah. I knew those guys would listen to him, and plus, well, you like him and stuff, so he can’t be that bad.”

He’s not bad at all. He’s near perfect, and he likes me too! But… but…
ugh
. I don’t understand why he’d say he likes me then tack on that stupid word. My brow furrows, and I shoot upright, pointing right at Adam. He jumps back like I static shocked him.

“You’re a guy.”

“Yes…” He snorts.

“Maybe you can help me with something.”

“If you’re about to ask me to talk to Levi about you, forget it.”

I shake my head, but can’t help the laugh that barrels from my lips just thinking about how that conversation would go. “I need help deciphering the male psyche.”

“That’s probably going to be as effective as me asking you about female mood swings.” He scoots his chair closer to the bed and rests his wrists on the edge. “But I’m willing to give whatever insight I can.”

My cheeks pump up with air as I search my head for that exact moment when Levi said he liked me. How his eyes looked, his cheeks, where his hands were and the small space between our mouths, but it’s coming back fuzzy. I really thought his body language was the same as mine in that moment.

“So, when a guy says he likes a girl, but he won’t kiss her, what does that mean?”

“He’s got a girlfriend,” Adam shoots out like he’s in a lightning round of a game show. My heart plops out my bellybutton.

“Really?”

“That would be my first guess.” He stops, studying my face which I know is reflecting that little girl who dropped her ice cream once on the sidewalk in front of my house. “But… if you’re talking about Levi, I know he doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

“You know? Like for sure, for sure?” Because now that I think about it, he could. I mean, he’s a senior. He could be dating someone at the movie theater, or someone older or not in our school. Maybe that’s why he likes to go to work so much. And maybe that’s why he wanted to be friends, not more than friends. “Ugh!” I throw my hand over my face. “He’s totally got a girlfriend.”

“Knock it off, Livingston. Instead of being cryptic with questions, just tell me what happened.”

I feel the spewage rise on my tongue, and I fly back again, spilling some Coke on my chest. I growl at the ceiling. “So, he stayed over, right? And it was romantic and sweet even though the situation was scary as hell, and so we’re hugging and stuff on the porch, and I totally go in for it. I swear, I thought he wanted me to, but then he stops me, but it’s not like a bad stop. He said he liked me—”

“And you said?”

Adam’s used to my babbles, so I’m grateful for the interruption. “I said I liked him, too.”

“And then you kissed?”

I sit up. “No. He said but.”

“Come again?”

“But. He said the word but.”

“He likes your butt?”

“No.” Well, I
hope
he likes my butt. I grab my toes and put my chin on my knees again. “He said, ‘I like you, but…’”

“But what?” Adam pushes the bridge of his glasses up his nose and taps the comforter by my feet.

“That’s the thing, I didn’t let him finish.”

He shakes his head, flicking my big toe. “Well, that’s your problem. You gotta find out the rest. Let the guy explain himself before you drive yourself nuts. Could be nothing.”

“Or it could be something.”

“Well, you don’t know because you didn’t let him finish.” He smiles and slides his chair back till it hits the desk. “So chill out and talk to him.”

“How do I even bring it up? I told him I wasn’t ready to hear it.”

He shrugs and grabs his pen. “I’m not the best with romantic advice. But I’d just be honest. Tell him you’re ready now.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“It’s not.” The pen goes crazy in his hand as he takes a big gulp of his own Coke before putting it back on the desk. “Last time I told a girl I liked her, she said the same thing.” His neck gets really red. “The ‘but’ was bad. At the time, I thought things couldn’t get worse. Then she drugs my best friend at a party.”

My eyes start filling up again. I thought we were done talking about that, done thinking about it… about her. Adam’s redness has moved up to his ears. He clears his throat and rubs his eyes under his glasses with one hand while the other is still trying to break a clicking record with the pen. “Sorry,” he says, but it comes out like he’s really trying to keep everything in when it wants to come rushing out.

I slide off the bed and kneel in front of him, setting my drink on the floor. I pull his hand from his eyes and chuck the pen across the room. This guy is like my big brother, always there, and always protects me. It sucks that the happy ending I pictured just weeks ago with him and Sydney is long gone. He deserves to be happy.

“Adam, I have something very important to tell you.”

He flicks his watery eyes to mine. After several breaths, I let out a large belch. He breaks, a few tears falling free, but at least he’s laughing. He drops to the floor next to me and pulls me in for a hug.

“Thank you.”

It’s his turn to burp, right in my ear. I shove him off, laughing and crying and hoping Adam and I get past losing one of our best friends.

Chapter 18

I can’t believe I said no
.

There should be a time limit to how long someone can talk about their own wedding. Their voice just snaps off like they do on the Oscars. I try to use my facial expressions to tell Zoe, “Okay, you’re done now. I don’t care that you want your cake half blue, half red to represent some dark force versus Jedi force thing.” Then she goes on to tell me that their date is
two years away.
Two years! Why the heck is she talking so much about it?

Zak is typing up a list as Zoe chatters away. His tongue is sticking out the side of his mouth, and he’s nodding, fingers flying over his tablet.