The Hit List (20 page)

The first notes of the music start and I do my best to look like I’m waiting on a park bench for the love of my life. It’s not a stretch to be attracted to Luke. He walks toward me and I launch myself off the chair, running full speed at him, jumping into his arms at the last possible second. His touch is warm against my leg and back. He holds me tight, tighter than he’s held me in rehearsal before. I want to believe it’s because he might like me as more than a partner, but really it’s probably so he won’t drop me.

He spins me around once and tries to disentangle my limbs from his body. I don’t want to let go. He sets me back down on the ground and he keeps me at arm’s length while I attempt to grab his hand. He pulls it away effortlessly every time.

This is supposed to be the part when he breaks up with me. But I can see him working hard to hide his emotions. Like maybe he doesn’t want to let me go, either. But that’s not part of the dance.

He stops dancing. “What’s wrong?”

“I could ask you the same thing. You don’t really look like you’re about to break up with me.”

He stops the music and crosses his arms over his chest. “Well, you don’t really look like you’re in love, so we’re even.”

I sigh and sit down in the chair. “This is useless. We’re never going to make this work.”

“Gee, thanks. Nice to know I’m so hard to love.” The tone of his voice surprises me. He sounds like he actually believes that’s what I meant by it.

“That’s not what I meant. This isn’t easy for me, Luke.” It’s surprisingly easy to care about him, but I’m not supposed to care as much as I do.

“And it’s so easy for me?” He’s borderline yelling at me.

I cross my arms over my chest. “This is insane. Now we’re just pissed at each other. It’s harder to pretend I love you when you act like this.”

He bursts out laughing and runs his hands through his hair, looking up at the ceiling. “You’re so frustrating.”

I glare at him. Why is this funny? He won’t think it’s funny when our names aren’t on the list for Fall Showcase. “Yeah, well, you’re equally as frustrating, so clearly I learned from the best.”

He looks at me with affection. I don’t understand why he can’t look at me that way when he dances. It should be the other way around.

I sit down on the bench and wait for him to press play. Instead, he pulls me off the bench. “What are you doing? This is where I start.”

“We’re not dancing anymore today. We’re going out.”

With tryouts less than a week away, we need all the practice we can get. We can’t afford to go out anywhere, even if I smile just thinking about the idea. “Going out where? I’m not dressed to go out anywhere,” I say, looking down at my spandex shorts and folded-under tank top.

He pushes me in the direction of the dorms. “Fine.”

My heart picks up at the thought of spending another day with Luke. The last time had ended on a bad note, but there’s no way I’m letting that happen this time. We’re going to have a good day.

We pass a couple girls in the hallway. They whisper and stare at us as we pass.

“Looks like she won’t be on the list for very long.”

Luke stops walking and turns back toward them. “We’re not having sex. And even if we were, it wouldn’t be for that game and it wouldn’t be any of your business.”

The girl’s mouth drops like he’s offended her, but she recovers quickly. “That’s not what I hear.”

“If you spent half as much time studying as you do obsessing over this game, you probably wouldn’t be failing History of Theater right now.”

She glares at him, but doesn’t say anything more. Luke walks back toward me, placing his hand on my lower back when he gets close enough. I choose to believe he said those things for me and not for him. He wouldn’t have anything to gain by saying it.

“I’ll meet you back here,” he says when we reach my room.

“Okay.”

I watch him walk partway down the hallway before I unlock my door.

The white board in front of me has a new message on it.

Went out with Adam. Be back later. But you’ll
probably still be rehearsing. Have fun!
Brielle

I smile at the board and walk into the room. It takes me longer than I expect to find my favorite jeans and a hot pink racer-back tank top. The pink looks great against my tan skin. In my rush this morning, I’d put my hair up in a ponytail, but now there’s a crease from the ponytail holder and it looks weird when my hair is down. I run a brush through it, squirt some water onto it, and scrunch it with my fingers to give it some waves. When I’m done, I can barely see the crease.

I’m looking for my purse when someone knocks at the door. “Come in.”

Luke opens the door and sits down on Brielle’s bed. I find my purse shoved into my dance bag and pull it out. The smell of Luke’s cologne spreads through the room.

“Ready?” he asks.

Butterflies dance in my stomach. “Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise.”

The morning sun has already heated L. A. into the seventies, the breeze warm against my skin. Luke grabs my hand as we walk down the steps. I look up at him, but he watches the sidewalk in front of us. The touch is unexpected and I can’t help my smile. It feels right.

People fill the lawn outside the school. Most are students looking for a little bit of sun before they have to spend another week busy with rehearsals. Adam leans against a tree, Brielle’s head in his lap. Adam looks down at her and points in my direction. Brielle lifts her sunglasses and waves to me. I wave back.

Luke leads me to a truck parked at the curb and opens the passenger door.

I frown up at him. It makes me a little nervous that we aren’t walking or taking a cab. “We’re driving?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to walk.”

I get in and he shuts the door behind me. His truck is nice and it makes me wonder if it’s his or if it belongs to his parents. It looks new.

He gets in, starts the engine, and plugs his iPod into the stereo system. “It’s going to take us a little bit to get there.”

I watch him, taking in his shorts and T-shirt, trying to get a hint of where we’re headed. “You’re still not going to tell me where we’re going?”

“Nope.”

We wind through the busy streets and pull out onto the freeway. It doesn’t take us long to get out of the city and soon we’re heading north, no longer surrounded by businesses and chaos, but rolling hills and trees. Every once in a while the coast shows through the landscape.

I glance over at Luke. He looks at ease, one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the ledge in front of the window. A breeze from the slightly open window blows his hair back. This is the most relaxed I’ve seen him since school started. He catches me watching and I stick my bottom lip out in a pout.

“You can stop looking at me like that. I’m not telling you where we’re going.”

I cross my arms over my chest and lean back farther in the seat. “I just assumed we were going somewhere in the city.”

“You know what they say about assuming…”

I stare out the window, fascinated by the green hills and clear sky. I’ve never seen this part of California.

He plays with his iPod until he finds the song he wants. He punches play and sets it back on its holder.

The opening notes sound familiar, but I can’t place it. It isn’t until I hear the first chorus that I recognize it. The band sings about playing games and making the same mistakes while expecting things to be different in the end. I glance at him, wondering if he knew the song when we danced at the fundraiser together or if he had to track it down.

A smile plays at the corner of his mouth, but he doesn’t look at me. Was this his plan all along? To take me back to that first night? To prove that we can have good times even with the bad swirling around us?

If it is, I think I’m okay with it. Honestly, it’s better than being confused about how he feels all the time.

The song ends and I yawn, my exhaustion finally hitting me.

Luke looks over at me. “Sorry I woke you up so early, but I wanted to take you out here today.”

“So you really had no intention of rehearsing at all?” I’m not upset by his ulterior motives. Rehearsal gets old after a while. No matter how much we need it, we need this, too. Whatever this is.

“No, I really did want to rehearse and I thought we’d get more in than we did. But oh well. We know the steps. That’s not what we need to be practicing anyway.”

“Are we going somewhere to rehearse?” I turn to look at him, hoping the answer is no.

“Not exactly.” His hand slides against the steering wheel as we come out of a turn.

I narrow my eyes. His vague answers aren’t any help. “How far are we going?”

“A little ways.”

“How far is a little ways?” I ask, yawning again.

“A couple hours.”

A twinge of fear settles in my stomach at being so far away from everything that’s become familiar with a boy with whom I have a history of fighting I have no other way home. If he gets so pissed at me that he drives off, there’s nothing I can do. He wouldn’t do that, would he?

“What am I supposed to do for a couple hours?”

“Oh, I don’t know. We could talk.” He glances at me, a smile pulling at his mouth.

“What do you want to talk about?” I’m afraid this conversation will end in a fight like so many of our others. But I’m willing to take that chance.

“What was your favorite thing about New York?” He taps his thumb against the steering wheel to the beat of the music.

“I loved the chaos. There was always something going on all the time. I loved that I could get out of rehearsal at ten o’clock at night on a Tuesday and this amazing little Italian place right up the block would still be open. I loved seeing all the different people all the time.” Talking about New York brings some sadness.

He smiles at the windshield. “Do you miss it?”

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. But I couldn’t stay in that city anymore knowing I could run into Patrick at any moment. The city may be huge, but we had a knack for being in the same places at the same times. The dance world is a small one.

“Sometimes. But I chose to come here, so I can’t really complain.”

He shrugs. “It’s okay to miss home. Even if you had to get away for a while.”

I glance over at him, worried he’s going to expand on his thought, but he doesn’t. I change the subject before he thinks twice about it. “What about you? What do you love about L. A.?”

“I love everything about L. A. It’s so laid back all the time. I love the beach and never really having a winter.” He looks over at me. “Plus, all my favorite people are here.”

My face heats up under his look. He doesn’t notice because his eyes are back on the road.

“If you had to pick between either city, which would you choose?” He pulls his sunglasses out of the collar of his shirt and throws them up on the dashboard.

It’s no contest. L. A. would win every time. But the reasons are changing. When I left New York to get away from my old life, I didn’t anticipate creating a new life in L. A. that I would miss.

L. A. was a means to an end. A way to find a job and make a living as a dancer. But I have friends here. And I have Luke.

“L. A.”

He smirks at me. “Interesting answer.”

We spend the next couple of hours comparing the differences between L. A. and New York. I laugh at his impression of a New York accent, which sounds more like he’s in an Italian mob, but mostly I just enjoy the side of Luke I rarely get to see. The side he reveals when he’s outside of the studio and more carefree.

“We’re almost there,” Luke says.

We pull off the freeway into a town. Small shops line the street. The beach sits a few hundred feet behind the road and the shops. A long pier in the middle of the beach stretches out into the ocean.

Luke parks the truck. I stare around me in awe. Wherever we are, it’s beautiful. The coast stretches through town and out onto the horizon. A couple swimmers bob in the water. A marina sits further back at the edge of the town. It’s filled with sailboats. People walk around here and there, looking in shop windows, eating ice cream at the tables outside, fishing on the pier.

“Where are we?” I ask.

He smiles. “Avila Beach. Do you like it?”

It reminds me of the small towns in upstate New York I used to visit with my parents in the summer. I smile at the memory. My parents were both happy then. My dad was still alive and my mom wasn’t bitter. “It’s beautiful.”

“I come up here sometimes when I need to get out of the city. It’s usually really busy, but there’s a huge music festival going on in the next town over so there shouldn’t be too many people.”

Luke gets out of the truck and opens the back door. He grabs a backpack and what looks like a blanket. “You coming?”

I grin at him and jump out of the truck. The air is cooler here and I can smell the salt on the breeze. A gust of wind whips my hair around my face and I sweep it up into a ponytail, using the hair tie around my wrist to fasten it.

We walk to the pier. Tables are set up along the edge. Some are occupied with people playing games or enjoying a cup of coffee. Luke spreads the blanket down at the end of the pier and sits down.

My stomach twists and turns against itself in nerves. Something about this whole thing feels off and it suddenly clicks why. “This feels a lot like a date, Luke.”

He laughs. “Sit down. If I wanted to go on a date with you, I’d ask first.”

Which means this isn’t a date. Then what is it? I don’t know what the point of this whole thing is. We don’t need to get to know each other better at this point.

He pulls a couple of sandwiches out of the bag and hands me one.

“You thought of everything, didn’t you?”

He nods, swallowing a bite of his sandwich. “I even brought a sweatshirt for you for when you get cold later.”

I scoff at him. “What makes you think I’m going to get cold?”

“Because it gets cool when the sun goes down.”

He must be planning to stay for a while if he’s worried about the temperature after dark. I don’t let myself dwell on it. This day is about relaxing and being away from the dance world for a while. I stare out at the crisp blue ocean and work hard to forget that tryouts are next week.