I'll Be Waiting (San Juan Island Stories Book 6) (2 page)

The jolt came again, harder this time, and tingled like stardust all the way down to Skylar’s toes. Ellie let go of her arm and released the pressure on the line, and the Bowflex threw them both forward into the weight room.

Skylar toppled, flat on the ground, and Ellie landed on her with an, “Oof.”

The boys stared at them, eyes wide.

Caught! Skylar burst out laughing. What else could she do?

The boys reddened.

Ellie giggled and waved. “Hi there! We heard
everything
.”

The track guy threw down his towel and lunged at them, roaring. The girls scrambled to their feet and shrieked down the hall to the girls’ changing room, but for the rest of practice and the rest of the day, Skylar could not get Luke’s confession out of her head. Had he ever really looked at her before? They shared English, but he sat across the room, a singular “normal guy” amidst a nerd herd, his plain T-shirt and jeans swimming in a sea of camo, trench coats, arrogance and acne.

She’d noticed him long ago, on the weight bench as his pectorals flexed and his nostrils flared and his jaw gritted with every endurance-straining rep. Why had they never talked? He was truly a fine specimen of a human boy.

And he was
still
a fine specimen, locked in the gym storage closet with her.

She tucked her legs up under her. “Are you really friends with those camo guys you sit next to?”

He paused. A swift, dark glance. Unreadable.

Her heart thumped. She twisted a long strand of brown hair around her finger. “I’m just asking. They’re always talking, but you only listen.”

His mouth relaxed into a mute grin. He leaned back, hand around the back of his neck. “Yeah, we’re friends. They’re helping me memorize helicopter specifications.”

“Oh,” Skylar said. “My cousin works on helicopters.”

Luke dropped his hand. “He’s a pilot?”

“He repairs them in the army. It’s a super-good job. His family has to move every couple years, but their living expenses are all subsidized, so even though they’ve got four kids they’re always going on tropical vacations and buying new cars. He’s crazy smart.”

Luke picked a piece of lint off his striped tube socks. His calves, covered in fine dark hair, flexed by muscle group. “Some people tried to talk me out of a military career.”

She felt his words as though “some people” had attacked her cousin, and she straightened and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “My grandfather was a veteran. I think the military is an honorable career.”

He fixed his impenetrable gaze on her again but said nothing.

“I mean, you might kill people, but not because you want to. You’re serving your country. So, it’s noble. You know.”

He nodded.

She liked that he didn’t fill the conversation with chatter about himself. She liked that he listened to her as if she had something important to say. She liked his studious aura, like he weighed out every thought before speaking. She wanted to believe if Luke said he liked a person, it wasn’t a helter-skelter feeling. It meant something.

An unasked question knotted up her tongue, but no one had ever accused Skylar Robinson of being a coward. “Um, so, about what you said yesterday—”

The doors rattled and swung open. Renee, Ellie, the track guy and the coach stood outside, all looking harassed.

Skylar slid off the mat. “You saved us!”

“Robinson,” the coach said with a rising inflection.

“It wasn’t my fault,” she protested. “The door shut by itself or something.”

The coach just shook her head and headed back to her office. Ellie hung on Renee’s arm and whispered secrets in her ear.

The track guy stepped forward and set his feet in front of Skylar. “You want to come see a movie with us tonight?”

She felt her heart rise. “Who’s us?”

He glanced at Luke. “Just some of the guys. Plus, you know.” He jerked his chin at Ellie and Renee.

Ooh, so, another chance with Luke? “Um, sure.”

The track guy listed off the time and place to meet as Luke trudged off to the boys’ changing room, and Skylar’s heart dropped at about the same rate until he disappeared from her sight.

The track guy snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “So, see you there?”

“Yeah.” She tucked her hair behind her ear. “What was your name again?”

He reddened. “Brendan.”

“Right.” She took a step back. “Brendan. See you guys.”

Brendan trotted off after Luke, whistling and pumping his fist at the ceiling, and Ellie glommed on to Skylar and loudly whispered, “So, did you guys do it?”

Skylar laughed—because she felt great. “In ten minutes?”

“That’s long enough.”

“As if you even know.”

“I totally know.”

Ellie skipped down the hall while Skylar and Renee rolled their one-year-older-and-way-more-mature eyes at each other. Then Ellie turned back. “And, just so you know, I think he likes you, too.”

Skylar laughed with the other girls because maybe Luke did like her; and maybe, just maybe, she liked him back.

Except, Luke stayed home from the movie. Skylar enjoyed herself anyway, and afterwards, at the soda shop, Brendan asked her to Winter Formal. Well, first he asked her to the Friday Dance and then he asked her to Winter Fling, but she already had dates to those, so she said yes to Winter Formal unless she got a boyfriend. The answer seemed to make him both happy and bummed at the same time, but she was honest and always warned boys about the promises she might have to break.

She presented herself at Luke’s desk in English class the next day, and Luke looked up expectantly. Skylar clenched an origami heart folded from her nicest pink notepaper.

Luke’s friend, who rested his forearms on Luke’s desk, carried right on talking about how it was “so boss” to see the AH-64A helicopter appear above the horizon and the dawn’s streaks through its rotor mast, and wait, wait,
wait
, the enemies aimed their RPGs, and without any warning it took sweet evasive action, so it was, like,
wait
—

Skylar cleared her throat. The friend kept talking.

Luke’s eyes widened very slightly, like he couldn’t do anything because his friend didn’t possess a pause button, and Skylar started giggling, and he started grinning, and she covered her mouth and he finally put his hand on his friend’s arm, and only then did his friend stop and squint up at her in annoyance.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she said, the giggle still in her throat. “Is that from a movie? It sounds intense.”

The friend curled his lip. “It’s
Apache Havoc
.”

So…maybe a movie? Well, whatever. She turned to Luke and held out the origami heart. “For you.”

He fixed on it.

“Are you kidding?” the friend asked. “That couldn’t wait?”

Skylar laughed. “Um, it’s my cousin’s number. You can ask him for advice on enlisting and helicopters and stuff.”

Luke’s fingers closed over the paper, nearly brushing hers. He opened the note to see the purple glitter pen strokes, and Skylar busied herself by tucking her long hair behind her ears.

“Which models does he work on?” Luke’s friend asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. All of them, I guess.”

Luke folded the paper closed. In half, not along her lines. “Thanks.”

She linked her fingers in front of her. “You bet.”

He looked up, and Skylar looked down, and her chest lifted and lifted and lifted in a strange sensation like a helicopter slowly taking off. Luke’s friend also stared at her, waiting for her to go away, like you’d watch an enemy with a rocket launcher.

She touched the corner of Luke’s desk as though wiping off a bit of pencil mark. “Did you turn in your paper okay?”

He nodded. “How about you?”

She laughed and made a forget-about-it noise. “I’ll probably fail. But who cares, right?”

The bell rang, and people started taking their seats. Skylar turned to go to hers.

“Hey,” Luke said.

Her heart thumped. She paused and looked over her shoulder.

“Is it true you’re going to Winter Formal with Brendan Hayes?”

She twisted all the way back, her chest lift-lifting with that same sensation. “Are you asking me out?”

He regarded her steadily, brown eyes penetrating deep into the question, as though seeking something specific.

“Skylar, class is starting,” her teacher said.

But she couldn’t look away from Luke. Because something about his gaze told her—

He slowly shook his head.

Aw.

“Skylar, sit down,” her teacher said.

She rocked back on her heels. “Then, yes—we’re going as friends.”

“Please flirt after class,” the teacher said, and Skylar tripped back to her seat while the rest of the class laughed, even though she wasn’t flirting, she wasn’t. Especially since it hadn’t been successful.

Volleyball ended, and wrestling ended, and Winter Formal passed, and so did her belief that Luke actually liked her. He never contacted her cousin, he never stopped by her desk to talk to her even though she went to his desk all the time, and he never seemed to be glancing at her; never. And she checked, a lot. And thanks to her obsession, she also knew that he always advanced his mechanical pencil in three decisive clicks and tapped his eraser on his pointed chin when he was thinking, and he curled his powerful left hand around the top of his neat notebook to write.

What was she checking for? When he’d said he liked her in the weight room, he must have meant something different from
like
-like. He must have just meant what he’d said. He thought she was nice.

When tickets finally went on sale for Sadie Hawkins, she bought two. Then she chased Luke down after school in the busy parking lot. Her face burned from her speed across the asphalt and she interrupted his friend’s stream of military facts in one frantic burst. “Will you go with me to the dance on Friday?”

Luke stumbled and whirled to face her, his dark eyes rimmed with shocked white.

Oh God.
The whole day blew up. Orange sky, black ground, green school bus… Total miscalculation. So she attempted a grin. “You know. As friends?”

He blinked.

“No.” Luke’s friend frowned. “He can’t.”

Skylar bit a hangnail, trying not to show how she felt. “Someone else already asked you?”

“We’re going to a recruitment weekend at Fort Lewis,” the friend said. “We’ll see Apaches and Black Hawks, and they’re actually going to let us fly.”

Luke cleared his throat. “In a simulator.”

“But a real simulator, okay, with all the dials—”

So, Skylar didn’t sicken him on sight. He had prior plans. Okay. The day slowly eased to normal.

“That sounds like fun.” She shifted in her tennis shoes. “Is it open to anyone?”

Luke’s friend recoiled. “Only those who score above ninety on the AFQT.”

Ha. Crash and burn. She had no idea what the AFQT even was. Skylar took a step backward…and nearly got run over by a car.

Luke frowned at his friend and then faced her again. He seemed calmer. And interested. Focused on her with a laser-hot intensity he’d not shown since they’d gotten locked together in that storage closet months ago. “Another time.”

“You’re on.” But she didn’t want to let Luke’s dark eyes go. “What kind of cookies do you like? I’ll send you a care package.”

His expressive lips started to curve. He put a hand to the back of his neck, thinking, but his friend’s face squeezed in irritation.

“We’re only gone for three days.”

Skylar grinned. “I know.”

“Peanut butter,” Luke said. Skylar’s chest lifted again, just a little.

“Got it,” she said.

The friend checked his watch. “This is so dumb.”

Skylar skipped away across the parking lot to her car where her younger sister was waiting.

All week she gathered ingredients and chatted with her family about the perfect recipe to make a boy fall in love with you. Everyone, all of her aunts and uncles and her grandma, thoroughly approved of her plan.

On Thursday, she carried the neat pink package into class and set it on Luke’s desk. He looked up at her with amazement.

The friend wrinkled his nose. “You actually did it? You know how dumb that is, right?”

She did not tell Luke’s friend that he couldn’t have any, although a meaner person might have said so. Instead, she saluted Luke. “Good luck, soldier.”

Luke’s shoulders moved. Laughter. He put both hands over the pink box. “Thanks.”

Skylar wanted to say more, but Dennis, Renee’s twin, called out to her at the doorway. “Hey, Skylar, what time do you want me to pick you up for Sadie Hawkins tomorrow?”

Luke tapped his fingers on the pink box.

Jeesh, of all the timing.
She waved Dennis away. “I’ll call you later, okay? See you, bye!”

Dennis glanced at the teacher, who was writing on the board, pushed his glasses up his nose and retreated back into the crowd and the busy hall.

Luke squinted sideways up at her. “You’re going out with him?”

“Just to the dance. As friends.” She squeezed her messenger bag to her chest to keep from clutching his arm and wailing that he was the one she wanted to be going out with. “Why?”

“Skylar.” Her teacher’s voice floated over the bell. “I thought I told you no flirting in class.”

Luke looked away.

“It’s not flirting.” Skylar marched back to her seat. “I’m supporting our troops.”

The whole class cracked up.

Even better, Luke waited at her car after school. He set his feet and stood tall. Unlike the boys who slouched and slacked, he seemed more an adult, more a man, than even their teachers. More a man, and definitely mouthwatering. “Do you already have a date for Senior Prom?”

Argh. She squeezed her bag tighter. “Kind of. But just as friends.” Because, if he wanted to ask her out, she would totally break her date for him.

He said nothing.

Double argh.

She bent her knees and then straightened, diving into an imaginary ball to set up a spike for him. “Um, ah, if you wanted to hang out on a weekend sometime, just let me know.”

He sucked in a breath and squinted one eye at her worn tires. “Things are starting to get busy for me.”