Solving for Ex (2 page)

Brendan had been walking his Great Dane and had come and sat next to me, made the dog sit next to him, and handed me a tissue. We’d sat there together, watching cars go by, for a couple minutes. And then, still looking out across the street, he’d said, “Why did the cookie cry?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why did the cookie cry?”

“Um…”

“Because his best friend was away for so long.” He snorted.

“I’m sorry, I don’t…”

“Get it? A wafer so long?”

I turned to look at him then, and he was already looking at me, with a goofy grin on his face, flashing impossibly white teeth. He had a square face, floppy hair, a solid jaw, and the biggest, most unreal deep blue-green eyes I’d ever seen. As upset as I’d been a few minutes earlier—pretty damn upset—I started giggling, then full-on laughing. He’d laughed too, and then I found I couldn’t stop until I started crying again.

“Hey, hey. Don’t do that. This is Pittsburgh. Your tears’ll freeze on your face. Do you think breakfast would help?”

“Actually…maybe.” I don’t know what made me think that having breakfast with a total stranger was okay, but I was pretty sure it had something to do with the fact that he was the only person who’d been able to make me laugh in the last four months.

That first Saturday morning breakfast with Brendan, I’d finally started to pull myself out of the black hole of depression that had been my life, and it was his hand that dangled over the edge, waiting for me to grab onto it.

The diner hadn’t changed a bit since that freezing January morning, but I had. I could laugh and smile again, and I mostly owed it to him. As I settled into my seat in our usual booth and let my mug of hot coffee warm my hands, I knew I was exactly where I belonged. Brendan doused his pancakes with half the pitcher of syrup and spoke through a half-full mouth. “So, are you ready for your second first day at Mansfield?”

“Way more ready than I was last year. Yeah. And you can swallow before you speak, you know. That’s gross.” Even with his stunning lack of table manners, I couldn’t keep the smile off my face.

He rolled his eyes and gulped down the pancakes, never missing a beat. “To be fair, you weren’t ready for anything last winter.”

He was right. Last Christmas, I was nothing but pissed about moving in with Aunt Kristin and Uncle Bruce. But there was no way I would have been able to go out for breakfast back home. In such a small town, when a girl is the cause of such a big high school scandal—sleeping with the lacrosse captain when he was going out with the captain of the cheer squad—that girl can barely show her face outside of her car to pump gas. I would have owned up to it, taken the social knocks for breaking up the prom king and queen like a champ. If I had actually slept with Carson Barret. But I hadn’t. What I had done was refuse to do his math homework for his girlfriend’s best friend. She’d done the initial rumor-spreading herself, and the cheer squad had gleefully taken care of the rest.

In the space of a week, I couldn’t set foot inside the school without getting something messy and rotting thrown at me, or having my stuff vandalized. It was when my tires got slashed and my car got spray-painted with the “Ashley is a Whore” in angry red letters that my parents finally let me stay home for the rest of the year. My grades were good enough that I could quietly finish the rest of my homework and exams after Thanksgiving break in the safety of my own bedroom.

I snorted. “Yeah, that’s true. I wasn’t even ready to talk to anyone, let alone make friends. But,” I said, raising my eyes, “I’m glad you came over and said hi. Really glad. No matter how hideous the angsty sobbing made me.” My heart tripped and stuttered as I waited for his response.

“Me too. Besides, it’s not like I minded having an excuse to have breakfast here every week. You’re just party to my Pamela’s pancake addiction.” He grinned at me, and my heart completely stopped for exactly two point one five seconds. “And you could never look hideous, Ash.”

I took a deep breath, smiled, and struggled to compose myself.

If he had an idea how much those breakfast dates helped me, he never showed it. A week and a half before Christmas, Kristin and Bruce had invited me to live with them in Squirrel Hill, a sweet suburb on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. But they had been the only people I knew here. Breakfast dates with Brendan were literally the only reason I ever left the house for non-school reasons, especially considering that it had taken a Spartan regimen of Xanax and Lexapro to get me to agree to getting out of bed every morning.

If he had any idea how much not being able to tell him how I felt killed me, he never showed that, either. But Brendan was the only reason being the new kid at snobby Mansfield Prep in the middle of sophomore year hadn’t dragged me even further into the horrible cycle of depression. Even though I would have much preferred holding hands as we walked down the hallway instead of bumping shoulders, and sharing kisses during movies instead of just popcorn, I was happier being his best friend than I’d been in years. Given that, the status quo of our relationship was just fine with me.

Until it suddenly, horribly, wasn’t anymore.

motives of vanity

It was our first day back at Mansfield Prep, and I hadn’t seen Brendan at all since we’d gone our separate ways at the front door. Still, everything was going as well as could be expected for a first day—classes interesting enough for the most part, and at least the ones that weren’t had teachers that would leave me alone. I was headed to Brendan’s locker before lunch when everything turned upside down.

The freaking goddess Aphrodite walked down the hallway, right toward me.

There were plenty of pretty girls in our school. It was easy enough when everyone was rich, and when almost every girl had a ton of cash to get a professional makeup consult, wardrobe designer, even a diet plan or nose job, to fit into this school’s image of “pretty.” Big, bouncy hair, petite nose, big eyes and lips. Exactly the right shoes, bag, and watch to go along with the school uniform. So, yeah, I saw pretty all around me every day.

But this girl? Was beautiful. She had bouncing waves of chestnut-brown hair, sky-blue eyes, and a dimple that could kill anyone on sight. Flawless skin, and toned legs that stretched to eternity. When she walked down the hallway, you could see the guys stop, gawk, and drool in a wave of patheticness.

When she passed me, I discovered the worst part of her—the way she smelled. God, she smelled amazing. Like she rolled in a field of flowers every morning and stuffed her bra with them in the process, so that the perfume followed her everywhere. I bet she even smelled good when she jogged. Because she definitely jogged. No way she didn’t with a body like that.

A guy about four inches taller than she was walked next to her. I almost gasped when he turned back and looked at me. With his high cheekbones and solid, chiseled jaw, pouty lips and rich deep brown eyes all topped off with a mop of golden-brown curls, he was literally stunning.

Thankfully, Brendan’s sister Julia, who was also one of my only other friends at Mansfield, didn’t notice my own patheticness when I stopped for a second, just to take a longer look. When I turned to her, I realized it was because she was staring, too. “Hey,” I tugged on Julia’s sleeve, “Do you know who the new kids are? Did she bring her own boyfriend?”

“Nope! That’s her brother. Twins.” She stopped in her tracks, too, but she stared at the guy instead of the girl. “Isn’t he incredible?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met him.”

Julia rolled her eyes, still smiling that same stupid smile. “You know what I mean. Gorgeous. Absolutely…”

“Oh my God, is that all you ever think about? You’re a freshman, it’s your first day, and you have a boyfriend. Try to control your drool, okay?” I smiled and nudged her side with my elbow. I hoped it didn’t come out sounding as annoyed as I felt. She did have a boyfriend, though. Captain of the lacrosse team. Probably why I watched him so closely around her. “But seriously. How do you know him?”

“That’s Vincent. He was on our cruise this summer. We almost hooked up.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Clarify, for the non-native?” I asked.

“We danced once after dinner, and he could barely keep his hands off of me. He asked me on a moonlight walk, and I know he would have at least made out with me. Seriously, he was this close to making a move, until Brendan ‘happened to run into us’ and told him I was only a freshman.” Her voice was a cross between a whine and a groan. Lovely.

“And he’s a…?”

“Junior,” she sighed.

“And did Brendan also tell this guy that you have a boyfriend?”

She waved me off, still staring at the guy. “We were on a break this summer.”

Hearing Julia talk about Rush like that, I wondered why she was even with him in the first place.

“That’s random that Vincent and….”

“Sofia,” she said.

“…Sofia were on the same cruise as you guys.” I tried to hide my annoyance that Brendan hadn’t mentioned any drop-dead gorgeous new-kid sibs with annoying names like Vincent and Sofia when he gave me the rundown of the cruise.

“Not really. Their dad just started working with ours.” She waved her hand, then smiled briefly at me before continuing to stare at Vincent. “Or something.”

Halfway down the hallway, the new girl—Sofia—stopped at a locker. No. Oh, no. My heart stopped. No way her locker was right next to Brendan’s.

Of course, half a second later, Brendan stopped there too. The second he saw her, like every other guy at this school, his jaw fell open. Drool might as well have been pouring out of his mouth. I’d never thought of Brendan as an imbecile that could be distracted by a stupid drop-dead gorgeous girl.

Guess he was.

But then something even worse happened. The girl leaned against the locker, popped her hip out to the side, tucked a tendril behind her ear, and flashed Brendan the biggest damn smile I’d seen on anyone all day. I recognized that smile. She was flirting.

Brendan smiled back and, finally, Vincent stuck his hand out and shook hands with Brendan. Brendan’s face looked wary for a second, but then he relaxed and smiled.

Julia was still buzzing as she watched them. I assumed that she hadn’t dashed over there yet because she wanted to stick by me. I couldn’t deny that I was grateful. “He’s obviously going to be best friends with Brendan. So he’ll be at the house all the time.”

“So?” I grumbled.

“So at least I get to look at him,” Julia giggled. “I’ll see you after school.”

“See ya.” I squeezed her shoulder and she was off.

I walked toward my next class, slowing down a little as I neared Brendan. He always walked me to class when he saw me. But as I got near him, the smell of that girl’s perfume overwhelmed me. Apparently it was putting him under some kind of spell—he didn’t even look at me. So I sped up instead of stopping.

When I looked back over my shoulder one last time, Vincent’s eyes met mine. I didn’t want to—I swore I didn’t—but I full-on smiled, letting it reach my eyes. And, oh God, he smiled back and flashed the most perfect dimple I’d ever seen.

Whoa. Suddenly, the hallway felt scorching hot.

I couldn’t stop, so I turned back toward my class, trained my eyes on the black and white tile floor, and sped the hell up.

Ω

For all of American History class, I tried to focus on our teacher’s lecture. History wasn’t normally that bad, and I reasoned that American History could be fun if I got Brendan to watch movies about the events with me. The Crucible, Gone with the Wind, Tombstone, The Grapes of Wrath. He loved that stuff. I mostly tolerated movies—hardly any attention span to sit through the two hours or more—but even I had a soft spot for Wyatt and Josephine’s love story.

I sat there, flipping through the pages of the textbook and adding. Four hundred and thirty-six days from when Japan joined the Axis to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Nine hundred and twelve days from Pearl Harbor to D-Day. Four hundred and twenty-six days from D-Day to Hiroshima. And twenty-five thousand, two hundred and twenty-eight days from Hiroshima to my own personal atom bomb arriving at Mansfield.

A cloud of cologne greeted me as soon as I stepped out of the classroom. I looked up, and there was Vincent, fiddling with a locker handle. He was having trouble with the thing, and I remembered how tricky the ones at Mansfield had seemed when I started here last winter. I paused for the briefest second, and then his eyes met mine. They were milk chocolaty brown with flecks of green, and had the thickest, darkest eyelashes I’d ever seen on a guy. They seemed to nearly touch his eyebrows when he looked at me.

Wow.

“Do you need some help with that?” I asked, my voice sounding way breathier than I intended.

“There’s a trick to them, isn’t there?” He grinned, and that dimple was…

Wow.

I reached over to grab the handle. He didn’t move at all, so now I was about half an inch from being pressed up next to him. I wiggled the handle side to side quickly, then wrenched it upward. Like clockwork, it popped open.

“Thanks,” he said, smiling down at me. I forced myself to break my gaze with him, and when he swung his bag up to rest it on the edge of the locker and started to stack his books inside, I saw it. A lacrosse patch, right there on his bag.