The Opposite of Love (4 page)

8

ROSE

Thursday's lunch with Chase: The temperature dipped to the low seventies, and it seemed as though the trees all lost their leaves overnight. Rose settled herself into her favorite spot in the grass, close enough to Chase that her bare legs rubbed against his. She'd shaved (and moisturized) that morning on purpose.

“If I hadn't given you my word, I'd be
so
done with you for lunch.” Rose turned to Chase. “Only one day left.”

“Oh,
come on
. I'm almost as cute as Becca.” Chase said, then bit into an apple, chewing like he was deep in thought.

“You wish.” She knew the second she'd said it that she'd jumped in too quick. “You're no match for Becca.” Rose watched his face for a minute, trying to decide if he knew she was kidding. She wanted to touch his arm, but she didn't. “Besides, you don't taste like grape.”

“Nope.” Chase sunk his teeth into the apple slowly and ripped off a big chunk. He pushed the bite to the left side of his mouth, in his cheek, like a lopsided chipmunk. Then Chase just looked at Rose for a moment, studying her like he was trying to decide what to do next, before he pulled her in close to him. “I taste like apple,” he pronounced.

And then he kissed her. A real kiss. Long and deep. The kind that sent goose bumps racing down her arms and legs. She could taste the apple wedged in his cheek. Sweet with a slightly tangy kick.

It felt so good that Rose got lost in it for a moment, but then she pushed him away. “Back off! Do you want to ruin it?”

Chase seemed confused. “What are you talking about?”

“I thought you weren't gonna make a move!” Rose stood up, shaky. She could still taste apple when she brought her fingers to her lips. She wasn't sure whether she wanted to lean in for another kiss or give him a good kick in the balls.

“What do you mean? You're the one sending me mating signals like you're in heat!”

“Go to hell,” Rose said, though this time without as much conviction. “And never mind besides.”

“Never mind what?”

“Never mind getting a job with me.”

“
What
are you talking about?”

Rose looked up at the overcast sky, like she was explaining the obvious. “I was
gonna
ask you to apply with me—to get a job together so we could hang out without the parent police breathing down our necks. But never mind.”

“You are a piece of work, Rose Parsimmon.” Chase ripped into the apple again. He talked around his bite. “But I like you anyway.”

Rose felt a sudden, unexplainable urge to giggle. “Why do you take such big bites? You look like a cow.” She did sort of want to kiss him again, but thankfully, she did not.

“And you know what?” Chase said casually. “The next move is yours to make. If you want it. Because you are
way
too complicated for me to figure out.” He studied her for a moment. “I'll tell you what. You're in charge of lunch tomorrow.”

Rose just grinned. “I think I can handle that. The question is, can you?”

Friday: Rose crept past a cluster of sophomores in navy-blue cheerleading skirts (cut way higher than dress code was supposed to allow) and up to Chase's mess of a locker.

She poked her head around the open metal door. “
Pssst!
”

“Shit.” Chase looked away from the books, balled-up pieces of paper, and scrunched lunch bags he'd been shoving in there. “What're you trying to do, give me a heart attack? It's not lunch yet. It's only second period.”

“Locker patrol,” Rose announced, straightening her posture and faking a military voice. “Checking for any, uh, contraband that would be better served in other hands.”

“The only contraband I had was for you. Otherwise I'm a law-abiding citizen.” Chase wedged another book inside. He wore a short-sleeved T-shirt that made the circumference of his arms look huge. Not fat huge, just so totally solid. That boy needed to go out for football. Or wrestling. Or bodybuilding.

“Time for your first lesson.” Rose curled her fingers around the locker door and tapped her short fingernails on the dingy metal.

“Lesson in what, exactly?” Chase grinned, showing all his teeth. “This might be fun.”

“You
wish
. Not that kind of fun. Get your mind out of the gutter.” Rose swatted at him, and he ducked. “Lesson in delinquency. We're cutting class. I'm in charge for lunch, remember? I'm taking you out.”

The hesitation scrawled across his forehead immediately. “Uh … ”

He made this way too easy. Rose decided to have fun with it. “Come, on, Chase. I know you want to.” She edged up close to him and wound her leg around his, linking her ankle with his and causing her entire thigh to rest on his jeans.

He laughed under his breath, like he felt uncomfortable but was trying to hide it. “I want to.” He shifted his weight under her leg, but just barely. “I just don't want to deal with the automated call home, reporting my absence.”

“Holy shit, you've got a lot to learn.” Rose snapped her gum, blowing a bubble toward his face for emphasis. It popped too early and sagged down, deflated. She unwound her leg from his and stepped back. “I don't need the parent police breathing down my neck any more than you do.
Think
. What's today?”

“Friday.”

“Think harder.”

“Uh, November the seventeenth?”

“It's the eighteenth, Einstein.” As much as she tried to hold it down, she could feel her own smile break through. This was fun. “But no. Think
harder
.”

“Uh. Your birthday?”

Something caught in her throat, and it wasn't the bubblegum. Because he was getting closer. It
was
someone's birthday, just not hers. One of the cheerleaders turned halfway to peek at her from under a silky fan of totally blond hair. Then Blondie whispered something to the pixie-like cheerleader on her right.

“Harder, Chase, harder!” Rose moaned with theatrics, just loud enough to cause the circle of girls to turn and snicker. She winked at him. “And yes, I
did
just say that. Gotta give the cheer squad more ammunition for those bathroom walls. They need new material. God knows they're not capable of thinking of anything creative themselves.”

Chase fumbled.

“Come on, Chase.” Rose stepped close again, so she could whisper. She tugged on his broad shoulder and pulled his earlobe down to her level. He smelled good, kind of a mix of hair gel and fabric softener. “It's the rally. Today's the rally between fourth and fifth period. And what happens at rallies?” Rose released his shoulder, and he straightened.

As the meaning of her words hit home, Chase's eyes lit up like Fourth of July sparklers. “Nobody takes attendance.”

“Right on! And lunch period's after. That means we can slip out for a whole hour and a half.” Rose patted his chest with two hands, satisfied. The boy was rock solid. “Your mission, should you choose to accept it: meet me outside the girls' locker room after fourth period lets out. We have an errand to run, and then I'll buy you lunch.”

“You're persuasive. How could I say no?” His eyes crinkled up in the corners, in that way that made him seem so gentle. His kindness frightened her for a split second, although who the hell knew why.

But there was also something about him that pulled her in. That made her want to be honest with him. To let him really
know
her. She couldn't put her finger on what it was about him. He was cute, sure, in a teddy-bear-on-steroids sort of way. But lots of guys were cute. She guessed it was this—he seemed like the kind of guy who might really “get” her. And if that happened, it'd either be the best thing in the world for her, or the worst.

Rose called back over her shoulder to him, “And they say peer pressure is dead.” Then she walked away, feeling the heat of eyes against her back. Not sure, of course, whether those eyes were his or whether they came from the group of gossip girls in short-short skirts with calves made of steel.

9

CHASE

“Give me a boost,” Rose ordered, standing knee-deep in the overgrown outer yard past the baseball field.

“Couldn't we just go through the student parking lot?” Chase asked. The campus supervisors were all about seventy-five years old, and they spent more time working things out in the bathroom than they did standing their posts.

“Adventure, Chase. Have you never heard of adventure?” Rose whirled toward him, and her eyes shone like a wild animal's. “God, you got a shitload to learn here. Give me a boost.” Chase kneeled in the grass by the far field so that Rose could step on his knee and scale the fence.

“Not that way.” She turned and held his hands in her own. “You're impossible. I hereby give you formal permission to touch my butt.”

And now it was Chase's turn to feel like a wild animal. His heart skittered about in his chest. He placed his palms on each of Rose's butt cheeks. They felt firm under his hands. He'd never touched a girl's butt before, and it sent goose bumps tickling across his skin. He boosted her up, and she swung a leg over the top of the fence. Chase followed shortly after, self-conscious about how the fence curved under his polar-bear bulk.

Once off campus, something changed. Chase couldn't have defined the change, but he felt it. Silence weighed down the air. Not the peaceful, wilderness kind of quiet that he felt sometimes walking alone. But a heavy silence. Like something was bothering Rose. Like this wasn't just a pleasure trip.

She walked with a purpose and at a quick pace along the dirt road behind the school, and then onto the tree-shaded sidewalk. Chase followed. “So, uh, Rose? We've been walking for ten minutes, and you haven't said a word.”

Rose stopped cold, turning to face him. She met his eyes with her own, but the wild animal had melted away.

“So much for meditative quiet.” Rose sighed an exasperated sigh. “I'm not talking because I'm busy working myself into a royal funk.”

“On purpose?” Chase digested this. “Why?”

Rose faced forward again and kept walking. “Do you seriously want to get in the way of my royal funkdom?” She pushed ahead toward a shopping complex with eight to ten stores. “I'm warning you, it could be hazardous to your health.”

“So is smoking. And running away from home.”

Rose half smiled at that. “Point taken.” She smoothed her hair back away from her face, but the strands slipped right back. “Nah. I just gotta get my mom a present. It's her birthday.”

“Today? The seventeenth?” Chase shoved his hands in his pockets. Girls were so totally confusing. Or maybe
Rose
was just so totally confusing. In a royal funk because she needed to buy her mom a gift?

“It's the eighteenth!” Rose fake-shoved him. “And yes, I think so.”

“What do you mean, you think so?” Chase countered.

“I mean I can't remember exactly. I just know we used to celebrate her birthday about a week before Thanksgiving. You know how it is when you're a little kid. Time sort of mushes together, and I don't think I have it totally right. A few years ago, I settled on November eighteenth.”

“Oh, you're talking about your, uh, your … ” Chase said.

“My bio mom. My
only
mom.” Rose stepped in front of him just then, blocking his path. He hadn't been expecting that, and he bumped into her. “Clumsy, much?” she sassed in a teasing way. “If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to cop a feel.”

“Me thinks the funk is evaporating.”

“Me thinks you're right. Me glad I brought you.” Rose grabbed on to his arm and dragged him into a boutique store, the kind of place that sold overpriced chocolates in cute little shapes, T-shirts with sappy sayings, and mini novelty books with sappy-ass titles like “Friends Forever.”

Rose ran her fingertips along the counter. In front of her stood a row of carved figurines made entirely out of wood. The figures had no faces, but not in a creepy way. Whoever had carved them had flecked off enough curves from their faces to give them a human look. Maybe even a gentle look. Rose picked up a slender figurine of a woman holding a small child. She brushed her finger across the woman's blank face. “This one,” she whispered.

Chase mutely trailed Rose's steps as she slipped in and out of aisles. Along with the faceless figurine, she selected a plastic bag filled with dark chocolate almonds and an oven mitt decorated with a rooster. She placed two crisp twenty dollar bills next to the cash register.

“Want to become a valued member?” the perky cashier asked, folding her hands in front of her cheery green apron. Chase wondered how many times a day she asked that question.

“Nah. I'm good.” Rose tapped her fingernails on the counter as the cashier wrapped the items in tissue paper. Then she folded up the leftover cash—fourteen dollars and twenty-seven cents—and shoved it in her pocket.

The sunlight accosted them as they stepped outside. Chase glanced at his watch. Nearly thirty minutes until they were supposed to be seated in fifth-period class. “You buy your mom a present every year?”

“Yep. Started when I was about ten.” Rose shuffled everything around in her paper bag, like she was trying to make order of it all. “Before that, I hadn't figured out how to get my hands on cash.”

Chase had a sinking feeling that he knew exactly how she did get cash, but he decided not to ask. He knew Rose was still looking for a job. “And then you send it to her?”

The funk settled back onto Rose's shoulders and seeped into her eyes. “Would if I could. Don't know where she's at,” she said. “Nah. I just save them up. Got a box under my bed. When I find her, I'll give her the whole bunch. And she'll know I've been thinking of her all these years. That I never forgot.”

“Makes sense,” Chase said softly, moving into the center of the sidewalk so that he wouldn't step on Homeless Hillary, one of the two noticeably homeless people in Simi Valley. No one knew if her name was really Hillary, but that's what everyone called her. She'd been around since he was a kid.

Rose yanked the chocolate almonds out of the bag. “Happy Birthday, Myrtle!” She whispered, placing the bag of chocolates into the woman's sleepy lap.

“Wait—” Chase froze. Confusion. “That's—that's not your mom, is it?”

Rose just crossed her arms and stared at Chase. “Oh yeah, real strong family resemblance.”

“I didn't think so. But it's her birthday too?”

“No, you idiot. I don't know her birthday, just like I don't know her name. But she's got a birthday one day a year. I'm either early or late.”

“You give her a gift every year?”

“Yeah. She's probably
someone's
mom. Just not mine. Hopefully someone out there is giving my mom a gift on her birthday too.”

“That's so … ” Chase searched for the right word. It just seemed so out of character for Rose, harsh as that sounded. But maybe she had more layers than he knew.

“So what?”

“So …
nice
.”

She laughed, and it seemed a pure laugh. Not sarcastic or sad or anything else. “Yeah. I
can
be nice. Once in a blue moon. Then I give myself permission to be a bitch the rest of the year.” She pulled the rooster oven mitt out too. “Guess who this is for?”

“Our other resident homeless person?”

“Nah. It's an oven mitt, you moron. You kind of got to have a home to have an oven.”

Chase felt his cheeks redden. “Who's it for, then?”

“Mrs. P.” Rose looked away from Chase for a moment. Then she slid her eyes up to his. There was no hint of joking. “For putting up with me. I'll save it for Christmas.” And then the sparkle in her eyes returned. “Or Kwanzaa. I almost got her one that says ‘Happy Holidays,' because she hates those non-Christmassy holiday-neutral sayings. She thinks they're offensive.”

Chase laughed. “You are hilarious, Rose Parsimmon. And full of surprises.” He wrapped his arm around her small frame.

She leaned into him, resting her head against his chest. “That's me. One big surprise.”

And since it seemed like her guard was down, he asked what he really wanted to know. “You got plans to find your mom?”

“That's highly confidential.” She lifted her head, then twirled out from under his arm, a full three-sixty, so that she faced him head on.

He grinned.

“Just know this. I'm not sitting around all day throwing a pity party. I've got ideas. Three years till I'm eighteen and I can go where I want.” She linked her fingers through his and started walking back toward school. “I've been coming here to buy my mom a present every year for the last five years. This is the first time I brought anyone with me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Not even Becca.”

They walked in silence for a long time. Chase listened to the scuffing of their shoes against the pavement. And the swoosh of passing cars. Once they left the sidewalk and looped onto the dirt path behind the school, he could hear their breaths. Chase's stomach growled.

Rose stopped in her tracks. “Shit. I forgot to buy you lunch.”

“That's okay,” Chase waved it away, hoping she couldn't hear the churning in his gut. “There are only a couple periods left.”

“No.” Rose dumped her backpack on the dirt and dug through it. “Wallah.” She produced a Snickers Bar. “It's got peanuts. So that's protein.”

Chase grinned. “Practically a balanced meal. Want to share?” Chase ripped it open and took a bite, then held out the bar to her.

Rose ignored Chase's outstretched hand. “Nah. I'll just have a taste.” She stood on her tippy-toes, slipped her cool hands behind Chase's neck, and kissed him.

Chase nearly laughed. There he was, kissing the hottest girl in school, with food in his mouth for the second day in a row. This kiss felt different, though. Yesterday he'd been nervous, so it had a tentative, gentle feel. This time the kiss felt almost aggressive. Long and deep, like she was trying to swallow him whole. When she finally pulled away, he had no idea how much time had passed.

“Thanks for the taste,” Rose whispered, unwrapping herself from him and wiping the chocolate from her lips. Chase self-consciously did the same.

He tried to say, “You're welcome,” but looking back he wasn't sure if he'd even moved his mouth.

“Shit.” Rose strapped on her backpack and grabbed his hand. “Let's hurry. I don't want to taint your perfect record with a tardy.” They ran together, breathless, until they came to the school fence. “Here, give me a boost.” She placed both hands on the chain links. “And yes, you may touch my butt.”

Chase didn't complain.