Solving for Ex (9 page)

Even though they were warm, and he smelled so, so good, I stiffened. “It’s…it’s okay,” I said, standing up and hastily wiping my eyes with my shirt sleeve. “It’s just that…I don’t know. I already don’t have a lot of friends here, you know? And I have a lot going for me here, academically. Mathletes, and a few friends at least. And really nowhere else to go if I screw this up. So…I appreciate you saving me in there. Really. I do.”

“What,” he said, “you didn’t mean to get me that geeky math shirt?”

The smile on his face betrayed him. He knew that I’d really wanted to ask Brendan.

“Look,” he continued. “I know it wasn’t meant for me. But I think you’re great. Okay? And I don’t want you to miss out on the fun. And I really don’t want to miss out on a night with you.” He reached down and picked up my hand.

I smiled, and sniffled. I should have felt completely embarrassed, but for some reason, I didn’t. Why was I spilling everything to this total stranger? Was it those eyes? That dimple? The way he smiled at me?

Whatever it was, I was in trouble.

“So I promise you,” he said, “that for the next two weeks, until Sadie Hawkins, I won’t so much as look at another girl, if that’s what worries you. No sitting next to them at lunch, no driving them home, and absolutely no carrying their books.” He looked at my bag, still slung over his shoulder. “Do you think that’ll avert the vitriol?”

I sniffed again. Vincent reached out one finger and touched my chin, lifting it up so that I looked at him, then dropping his hand. I nodded gratefully. “Yeah.” I said. “Yes. That’s…you don’t have to. But thank you. I mean…it’s just a few weeks, and then you can…”

“Hey. Hey. If there’s one thing you should know about me, Ashley Price, it’s that I don’t believe in playing by the rules. Besides, do you think I’d offer if I didn’t care about you? Or if I really wanted to date anyone else?”

Oh, God. Did this mean we were dating now? “You mean, go on a date,” I said, immediately biting my tongue.

He shrugged, and smiled again. “Sure. Whatever. Go on a date. Or another one after it. Or a lot of them.” Then he turned and walked to his car.

I didn’t know what to say. “Thank you,” felt weird, and “see ya” felt too casual. So all I managed to choke out before he disappeared behind the flashing windows was, “Uh…”

And he just smiled back at me, not seeming to mind at all.

‘never’ is a black word

Somehow, I arrived home without ever remembering driving along the roads or stopping at the lights.

There were two things my brain was having serious amounts of trouble computing. First, that the drop-dead gorgeous new girl was literally all over Brendan. There were two options; either someone else had finally realized how amazing Brendan was and gone for it, or there was something else going on.

Second, that her equally drop-dead gorgeous brother was trying so hard just to go out with me, once, two weeks from now.

The whole drive home, the conversation with Vincent repeated itself in my mind. He had saved my ass in there. And he looked at me, in my eyes and not down my shirt, like no other guy besides Brendan had ever done. He was decent. He was very cute. And it was only a little weird that he wanted to go out with me. Maybe he didn’t even like sitting at the popular kids’ lunch table. Maybe he liked someone a little quieter. Someone like me.

The only question was, did I like someone like him?

Really, I didn’t know much about him. Hardly anything at all. I knew I liked Brendan—I knew I liked his easy, oblivious smile, the way we were together, the way he smelled. But how much of him did I like because he was familiar? Because he’d rescued me? Because he’d been the lives-next-door best friend that I’d never had living in farm country, because he’d been my ticket to everyone liking me at Mansfield? Brendan was the person who helped me start over.

He also happened to be perfect for me.

“It’s just a dance,” I said under my breath. I trudged up the front steps and into the house, which was cluttered but not dirty, like always. A problem of people with too much money and too much time on their hands—shopping. The living room was full of random department-store bags containing things like brand-new comforters and napkin rings, and yet another black cardigan or pair of silver earrings for Kristin.

I stopped in the kitchen to grab a soda, and a note waited for me on the kitchen counter. It was in Kristin’s scrawling handwriting: “Out late. Frozen pizza in freezer.” I wrinkled my nose. Pizza was okay, but the cardboard crust made the frozen stuff completely inedible for me. Kristin meant well, but she never paid much attention to things like that.

I traipsed through the open living room area, pulling out my phone and checking the texts for the homework questions from Brendan I knew would be there. Every day last year I’d had to field his questions clarifying the assignment. Nothing. I scrolled through to make sure. Nope. Seriously? Nothing? It must just be that he didn’t want to bother with it the first few days—even though he was a little bit of a slacker, he was smart as hell, and always caught up.

My limbs buzzed with some weird feeling I couldn’t name. Antsiness, annoyance, I didn’t know. I just knew I didn’t want to sit still.

I dropped my backpack with a thud at the doorway to my room, and kept walking toward the bathroom. Without even pulling up my hair, I cranked on the cold water, bent down, and splashed my face with it. When had it gotten so hot in the house? Or was it just a weird bubble of heat around my whole body?

Either way, that water felt good. I leaned forward, planting my hands on the sink and staring in the mirror. Water dripped off my eyelashes, my nose, and my bottom lip. I wiped the water from my lids and leaned in even more.

I’d always thought of my hazel eyes as a mess of colors that couldn’t make up their minds to be one thing or another, but now that I really paid attention, the light brown flecked with green and a little blue and ringed with dark brown on the outside was mesmerizing. Like a kaleidoscope. My lashes were dark, thick and pretty, and combined with the careful makeup I’d applied there, they looked mysterious. Like something a guy might want to lose himself in. Suddenly, I could see why Vincent looked at my face, instead of scoping out my chest.

I leaned back a little then and pressed my fingertips to my cheeks. They had thinned out over the summer, I realized now that I really looked at them, leaving what appeared to be a higher cheekbone. Even though my face was tanned golden and sprayed with freckles by my summer in the sun, I definitely looked more grown-up than I had the last time I stared in this mirror. The summer had changed me.

I mean, hell. I was pretty. Pretty enough for a guy like Vincent to really, really notice me. To be excited, instead of annoyed, when he got stuck going to Sadie with me.

Pretty enough for a guy like him to pursue, even.

Staring in that mirror, imagining how Vincent had been looking at me in the hallway, my eyes trailed down my neck, which I stroked with my fingers, and down to my shoulder. My bra peeked out of my tank top strap a little. It was actually a little sexy.

If I was Vincent, would I really want to go to Sadie with me? If I didn’t know about my crazy crush on Brendan Thomas? Or even if I did know about it?

Probably.

Would I want to kiss me?

Hell yeah.

I caught my bottom lip between my teeth. I was ready to laugh at myself for even trying to pull a purposefully sexy look, but it actually worked. I really did look sexy. A totally new feeling for me. I kind of liked it.

But how would it look if I actually tried to kiss the guy? You know, give him the signal, lean in, or maybe even grab him to make out in the hallway?

Something in my stomach quivered. I leaned forward and let my eyes flutter closed. I tried to imagine Vincent’s deep brown eyes looking into mine, communicating something that would be just for the two of us. Something that told me he knew me in a way no one else did.

I got closer and closer to the mirror, watched my own lips part in anticipation. I closed my eyes all the way…

…my breath pushed back on my face from the cold glass…

And there, before my daydreaming eyes, I could only see the flop of Brendan’s hair, could only feel his thin fingers brushing down my neck.

I leaned back and slammed my hands on the sink, throwing my head back and growling in exasperation.

“Get the hell out of my head, Brendan.” I wiped my face with the towel, leaving a trace of lipstick that I knew Kristin would be pissed about. I dried my hands on it, too, then chucked it in the laundry bin.

One last check of my phone. Zero messages.

“Or at least send me a text, and give me a good reason I should keep you in my head at all.”

I crossed the hall to my room in a huff, fished out my calculus textbook, and worked the problems at the back of it until my brain felt numb.

as fearful of notice and praise

I went through a week and a half of walking through the halls of Mansfield Prep being Vincent Cole’s Date to Sadie Hawkins. I couldn’t stop rolling my own eyes at how ridiculous that was. Instead of envying me, those girls should have all been holding me up as a role model for how to be more assertive. Even though I technically hadn’t asked Vincent—he’d accepted my sloppy invitation to someone else. My invitation that was too late.

Every time I saw Brendan in the halls, in fact, my footsteps echoed off the shining tile—too late, too late, too late. It was a refrain that didn’t make any sense. Just weeks ago, we’d been so close to being together. That morning on the water tower, the way he looked at me through the brightening fog…

Too late, though. Because even then, when I’d been imagining feelings in his eyes, he already knew Sofia existed. Had already spent that whole damn cruise with her. Had probably been thinking about her while he was looking at me like that. What exactly had they done under those stars together?

Vincent, on the other hand, was thinking about me. Only me. Just like he’d promised. A promise I hadn’t even asked for, but he upheld it like his life depended on it. Not only did he not carry any other girls’ books, or lunch trays, or backpacks. He didn’t make eyes at any other girls, talk to any other girls, or walk beside any other girls.