Rolling Dice (36 page)

He reaches over and makes to cup his hands around mine, but I let go of my mug and quickly put my hands in my lap, looking down.

“Dice, you remember what you said to me when you made me go up to the tree house?”

I shrug.

“You told me that there are always people who will help you out even if you don’t want to notice that they’re there to help you. And you just have to let them help you.”

I roll my eyes and sigh dramatically. “Well, make me eat my own words, why don’t you. Jeez. Have you no pity, Ike Butler?”

But there’s a laugh in my voice, and he laughs too, and it’s just a nice feeling.

“I’m serious, though,” he says. And he reaches a hand up to touch my chin and make me look at him again. I push his hand away.

“Dice …”

“How’s your vacation been going?” I ask him. “And Andy and Carter, are they okay?”

“Sure, they’re all right. And it’s been fine.” He smiles a little, and I start to pick up my mug again. Dwight’s fingers extend across the table toward me, and as they brush mine, I flinch, almost knocking the mug over.

But he catches me and holds my fingers tight. I forget how deceptively strong he can be.

“Let go of me,” I tell him sharply, trying to tug my hand out of his grip.

“Dice, look at me,” he says, and with his other hand he pulls my chin up so I have to look him in the eye. I’m scowling, but that slowly subsides when I see the crease in his forehead that shadows his eyes, and the hurt in his face. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s—it’s just …”

Maybe he doesn’t think about me in a romantic way. I know we kissed that one time, and it seemed like he was making little romantic gestures, but maybe I’m wrong. Probably. The time we kissed was just sympathy—him being friendly and me reading them incorrectly.

I don’t want to say it and make a fool of myself.

I owe him an explanation, though. And if I make a fool of myself … well, I know that with Dwight, at least, I can laugh it off.

“It’s just—all the little intimate gestures! I don’t know if you’re just being nice or if—if they’re because you like me or what, but it doesn’t matter, because you don’t want me around, okay, I just—I don’t think I’m good to be with, in that way. Right now, I just want to focus on schoolwork. And—and maybe we shouldn’t be friends anymore.”

I blurt the words out before I can stop myself. I’m struggling to put it into words for him, but it feels like it makes sense to distance myself from him. I like Dwight, I honestly do, and I’ve missed him so much these past weeks. It just wouldn’t be fair to him to have me around when I’m so … so … scattered.

I stand up, and my chair scrapes noisily. “I should get going. I just wanted to say hi before I go back to school, is all. I owed you that much.”

“Hang on,” he calls after me, and I hear him follow as I make my way to the door. I jerk my hood up over my head. I don’t have an umbrella; it wasn’t raining this bad when Mom dropped me off on her way grocery shopping.

“Dice, hang on. Madison!”

He catches my shoulder as I step out of the door. “What, so that’s it? Just, ‘Hey, I’m back, but we can’t be friends anymore!’ That’s it? That’s all I get? You just turn up here out of the blue after ignoring all my texts and calls and emails for weeks, and everything’s normal until we can’t be friends anymore?”

I flounder for a response for a moment.

“You told Summer what was going on. Where you were, how things were going.”

My eyes narrow at him. “How would you know?”

He stares me down, unfaltering. “She told me. Marched up to me in the corridor at lunch one day and asked if I knew what was going on with you. I said not really. She met up with me after school and told me the whole story. She was almost as worried about you as I was. She was the one keeping me updated whenever you returned her calls, but not mine.”

I don’t reply. I can’t. I have no idea what to say, or even what he wants to hear from me at this stage.

Summer left me several voice mails that bordered on hysterical, telling me to call her because she was worried about me, and so I got back in touch. I kept her up to date, but I didn’t realize she’s been feeding this information back to Dwight.

I thought I was doing him a favor.

“After everything that happened, everything you went through, and I tried being there
for you, and now you’re just—”

“I’m a mess, Dwight, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear? I’m still trying to figure out who I am. You don’t need to feel responsible for me. And I don’t want to have to look at you and see the same expression I catch on my parents’ faces when they don’t think I’m looking, all right? Worried that I’m still upset. Because I like you, Dwight, I really do, and I don’t want to mess it all up again, so it’s just best if—if I’m not around you …”

I trail off because … because … well, I don’t know why.

It’s partly because I’m crying—because I know this is best but I just really don’t want to lose him, and my saltwater tears are mingling with the rain that’s falling on my face even though we’re stood under the awning outside the café. It’s partly because I don’t know how to finish. And it’s partly because of that look he’s giving me that’s so terribly sad.

We stare at each other for a long time. A car drives past, and then another soon after, but going the other way.

“Dice …”

He says my name so softly, so gently, that this time I let him pull me into his arms, and he wraps them around me like he’s never going to let me go again, which is an exceptionally nice feeling. I bury my face in his chest, because in my sneakers I don’t reach much higher on him. He smells so familiar. It’s nice.

He loosens his hold on me slightly, and I look up at him questioningly. Up close like this, I think how unconventionally cute he is, in his nerdy way, especially with all those freckles. And I think how nice it is being held by him, and I can’t help the small smile that spreads over my face. And suddenly it doesn’t matter what I think might be best for him, because everything he’s doing tells me he doesn’t want to lose me either. And I’m happy.

He smiles back and kisses my forehead.

But that’s not what I want him to do.

So I tilt my head up and go on my tiptoes to kiss him full on the mouth.

Just gently at first, because I don’t know if he really wants me to. But after the split second of shock and hesitation passes, he kisses me back with such force it knocks out every bit of doubt I ever had from that first day we met that he might ever like me.

I kiss him back and he wraps his arms tight around me, leaning back so I’m literally swept off my feet. I giggle against his lips, and when he sets me down again, we’re in the rain, and it’s running down our faces but it doesn’t even matter.

School will probably be a nightmare tomorrow; it will probably stay that way for a little while. My reappearance will be a wonderful new topic for everybody to talk about, and
I’m sure it’ll dredge up the gossip about what happened after the Winter Dance.

Although—if I don’t care about them and what they think, then they can’t hurt me so much. It worked okay back in Pineford, and I’ll have to manage somehow here.

This time, it’s better, I think. I was so determined to push Dwight away because I thought that was best, but with his arms around me and his lips on mine, I realize how wrong I was.

I’m not alone, not this time.

I’m not
lonely
.

When we finally break apart for air, Dwight and I just look at each other.

And he says, “I wouldn’t have let you go anyway. I still owe you a surfing lesson.”

He brings his hands up to my face to wipe away the rain, which is a useless gesture, but sweet all the same, and I laugh again, happy—truly happy.

Turn the page for a preview of Beth Reekles’s debut novel!

The story of one girl’s first kiss, the intoxicating aftermath, and the classic struggle between the head and the heart.

Excerpt © 2012 by Beth Reeks. All rights reserved. Published by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, New York.

‘Do you want a drink?’ Lee called from the kitchen as I shut the front door.

‘No, thanks,’ I called back. ‘I’ll head on up to your room.’

‘Sure thing.’

I’d never stop wondering at how big Lee Flynn’s house was; it was practically a mansion. There was a room downstairs complete with a fifty-inch TV and surround sound, not to mention the pool table, and the (heated) pool outside.

Even though I treated it like a second home the only place I felt really, really comfortable was in Lee’s bedroom.

I opened the door and saw the sunlight spilling in through the open doors leading to his small balcony. Posters of bands covered the walls, his drum kit sat in the corner next to a guitar, and his Apple Mac was proudly displayed on a smart mahogany desk that matched the rest of the furniture.

But, just like any other sixteen-year-old boy’s room, the floor was littered with T-shirts and underpants and stinky socks; a half-eaten sandwich festered next to the Apple Mac, and empty cans were strewn over almost every surface.

I launched myself onto Lee’s bed, loving the way it bounced.

We’d been best friends since we were born. Our moms both knew each other from college and I only lived a ten-minute walk away now. Lee and I had grown up together. We might as well have been twins: freakishly, we were born on the same day.

He was my best friend. Always had been and always will be. Even if he did annoy the hell out of me sometimes.

He turned up just at that moment, holding two opened bottles of orange soda, knowing I’d have drunk his at some point anyway.

‘We need to decide what we’re doing for the carnival,’ I said.

‘I know,’ he sighed, messing up his dark brown hair and scrunching up his freckled face. ‘Can’t we just do a coconut thing? You know, when they throw balls and try to knock the coconuts off?’

I shook my head in wonder. ‘That’s what I was thinking …’

‘Of course it is.’

I smirked a little. ‘But we can’t. It’s already taken.’

‘Why do we have to come up with a booth anyway? Can’t we just manage the whole event and make other people come up with the booths?’

‘Hey, you’re the one who said being on the school council would look good on our college applications.’

‘You’re the one who agreed to it.’

‘Because I wanted to be on the dance committee,’ I pointed out. ‘I didn’t realize we had to work on the carnival too.’

‘This sucks.’

‘I know. Oh, hey, what about if we hired one of those, um … you know’ – I made a swinging gesture with my hands – ‘those things with the hammer.’

‘Where they test your strength?’

‘Yeah. That thing.’

‘No, they already ordered one of those.’

I sighed. ‘I don’t know then. There’s not much left –everything’s already taken.’

We looked at each other and both said, ‘I told you we should’ve started planning this earlier.’

We laughed, and Lee sat at his computer, spinning around on the chair slowly.

‘Haunted house?’

I gave him a deadpan look – well, I tried. It wasn’t easy to catch his eye when he was spinning around like that.

‘It’s
spring
, Lee. Not Halloween.’

‘Yeah, so?’

‘No. No haunted house.’

‘Fine,’ he grumbled. ‘Then what do you suggest?’

I shrugged. Truth was, I had no idea. We were pretty much screwed. If we didn’t come up with a booth, then we’d end up being booted off the council, which would mean we couldn’t put it on our college applications next year.

‘I don’t know. I can’t think when it’s this hot.’

‘Then take off your sweater and come up with something.’

I rolled my eyes, and Lee started surfing Google for ideas for a booth for the Spring Carnival. I tugged my sweater off over my head, and felt the sun on my bare stomach. I tried to wriggle my arms back through so I could pull down the tank top I was wearing underneath …

‘Lee,’ I said, my voice muffled. ‘A little help?’

He sniggered at me, and I heard him get up. At that moment the bedroom door was pushed open, and I thought for a minute he’d left me in a tangle, but the next second I heard a different voice.

‘Jeez, at least lock the door if you guys are going to do that.’

I froze, my cheeks going bright pink as Lee tugged down my tank top and yanked the sweater off my head, leaving my hair static.

I looked up to see his older brother leaning against the door frame, smirking at me.

‘Hey, Shelly,’ he greeted me. He knew I hate being called Shelly. I let Lee get away with it, but Noah was another matter entirely. He did it solely to annoy me. Nobody else dared call me ‘Shelly’, not after I had yelled at Cam for it in the fourth grade. Now everybody called me Elle, short for Rochelle. Just like nobody else dared call him ‘Noah’, except for Lee and his parents; everyone else called him by his surname, Flynn.

‘Hi, Noah,’ I shot back with a sweet smile.

His jaw clenched and his dark eyebrows rose a little, like he was daring me to carry on calling him that. I just smiled back and the sexy smirk returned to his face.