The Promise of Amazing (22 page)

“And what is it?”

He put his hands up to his face, covering his eyes, praying, maybe, for an answer that would help me not feel so shitty.

His head tilted back as he ran his fingers down his face and heaved an exasperated sigh.

“I’m doing a favor for Luke.”

“Luke? Really? Because he has trouble talking to girls.”

“I
am
here because of Luke, but I can’t . . . I can’t go into it right now.”

“You touched her hair,” I said, stepping back. “The way she looked at you—”

“No, Wren . . . I’m sorry. I wasn’t . . . I didn’t . . . I’m a total jackass, okay? Don’t—”

“Grayson, I need to go. My sister’s waiting for me, and I came here to . . .” I couldn’t even finish.

He reached for me then, his eyes soft, remorseful. I wanted to believe him, to forget that any of this happened.

“Wren, last night was amazing,” he said, touching his forehead to mine, closing his eyes. His hands were around my waist, drawing me in to him. And there was that scent, that earthy, spicy shower-gel thing that took me back to the night before, the way my body had felt underneath his. “You have to know there’s nothing I would do to screw that up. Nothing.”

I put my forehead on his shoulder. I wanted to believe him. Knew somehow that I could. He relaxed into me, breathing out, pulling me closer. My hands snaked around him. Our mouths found each other, becoming more insistent as neither of us pulled away. We moved until we hit the wall of the dressing room, bodies pressing together, like no time had passed since our after-work tryst. I never thought I’d be the kind of girl who made out in the Hollister dressing room, but there I was, sliding my hands into Grayson’s back pockets, pulling him as close as he could get.

“Everything okay in there?” Allegra called.

“Mmm-hmm,”
I answered, my mouth still on Grayson’s.

I heard her flip-flop away. We stopped, straightening up.

“Now what?” I asked.

“I’m going home,” he said.

“And your favor?” I asked, not wanting to bring the jeggings-clad Hollister goddess back into it but not wanting to be a complete love-starved doormat either.

“Screw Luke,” he whispered, kissing me again. “We’re still on for tonight?”

“You
will
explain all of this to me, right?” I asked.

“It’s complicated, but, yeah I’ll, um, try.”

Complicated
. . . was this what he was talking about at the cottage?

“See you later then,” I said, motioning for him to leave. The thought that he might go back out and continue his conversation with . . . that girl . . . crossed my mind, but I decided to trust him for the moment.

“Later,” he said, kissing me. He tugged on his jacket, straightened himself up, and walked out, closing the door behind him.

I turned toward the shirts I’d picked out, catching my reflection in the mirror. My chest was flushed, the echo of Grayson’s kiss still making my lips tingle. I took a breath to compose myself and left the dressing room.

Brooke was on a bench out front, sucking down a ginormous cup of lemonade, apparently one of the few things that didn’t make her nauseous, Pandora shopping bag next to her.

“Hey, let’s go,” I said, joining her. When she saw I was empty-handed, she frowned.

“You were in there for half an hour and found
nothing
?” she asked. Another lovely side effect of pregnancy was that she’d transformed into a total bitch. My mother, who, even if she hadn’t accepted the fact that she was going to be a grandmother, had at least softened to it, gave Brooke a wide berth and expected me to do the same.

“Wait until you come visit me in January. The shopping in DC is so much better.”

“I thought I was coming for a college visit,” I said, sitting down next to her. This brilliant idea had been discussed during her and Pete’s dinner with the parents. I had the sinking suspicion Brooke was gunning for me to go to Georgetown more for babysitting purposes than higher education, but the thought of an actual college visit—even if it was to a reach school—made me excited. At least I’d have something to tell Mrs. Fiore in our second strategy meeting.

“The college visit will take an hour, two at most; then we’ll have fun.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I slid it out, checked my messages. Grayson.

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry
.

For someone who claimed to be doing a favor for someone else, he was awfully regretful. I promised myself I wouldn’t get so caught up in his kiss that I let him get away with not telling me what this supposed favor was about.

I thought about what Ava had said to me in the hallway at school, how she and Luke just gravitated to each other when they were in the same place. Was that what Grayson and I were doing? Gravitating? Could I handle this relationship if it was just a physical thing?

“You realize that about one percent of the population can wear pants like that,” Brooke said, wrinkling her nose and
motioning toward the store in front of us.

No surprise, she was talking about
her
. The Hollister girl stood on the porch of the store. She had one of those see-through purses that shop employees needed to carry and kept searching up and down the length of the mall, frowning. The hollow feeling in my gut told me this had something to do with Grayson, and I felt a momentary obligation to tell her that he’d left.

But it was only momentary.

“I hate that store,” I said, standing up. “Can we get out of here now?”

Brooke finished the rest of her lemonade with a loud slurp, tossed it in the trash, and we left.

“So let me guess. You’re some skating genius too,” I said, surprised by Grayson’s choice of evening entertainment. I was also secretly excited because, well, I
could
skate. I’d had five years of basic-level training when, once upon a time, I had wanted to be the next Sasha Cohen. And while I’d pretty much quit after my body, as my mother politely put it, filled out, I thought I could pull out a decent scratch spin or something that might at least be a little impressive.

He stood up, the ice skates giving him another three inches of height that made him wobble.

“I think I was about a foot shorter the last time I did this.”

“It’ll come back,” I said as I finished lacing up the rentals.
I hopped to standing, a move that surprised him. “C’mon, let’s see what you got.”

It was painful. Not inching-along-the-rink-wall painful, but painful. We glided along the ice. Well, I glided. Gray shuffled unsteadily. It was the first time I felt like I had the upper hand, and I wasn’t going to let that get away from me. After our third trip around the rink, I crossed in front of him and skated backward, holding both of his hands in mine.

“So about that favor for Luke,” I said, trying to playfully bring up the subject. I’d spent the afternoon on the phone with Jazz and Maddie, getting their opinions on Grayson’s mall scene. Maddie, who was head cheerleader for Team Grayson since he’d invited us to Andy’s party, told me to let it go. Grayson was the kind of guy who girls noticed, and we weren’t officially
together
, so for now it was okay. Her take on it made me feel hopeful.

Jazz had the opposite opinion. Suddenly Grayson sounded like the sleazy boyfriend in
Adventures in Babysitting
, the one who cancels his date with sweet Chris Parker in order to date the sexy girl who puts out. I was starting to agree with Mads’s opinion that Jazz needed to enter the new millennium and stop living her life according to eighties movies. Even if what she said haunted me a little.

I was somewhere in between, because right there, in that moment, I was holding hands with a dark-haired, brown-eyed boy who looked so deliciously vulnerable, he was worlds away
from the slick guy who was doing a favor for Luke in the store this morning. This was the Grayson I knew. The Grayson I wanted to be around. I tugged on his hands to propel him, and he lost his footing.

“We have to talk about this now?” he asked, scrambling to stay upright.

“That’s why we’re here, is it?” I asked, leading us around a turn. “To completely avoid talking about what you were doing at the mall?”

“Why does anyone go to the mall?”

“You know what I mean,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him and speeding us up slightly.

“This is a side of you I’ve never seen. Very sexy, devious,” he said, narrowing his eyes back at me and flipping his bangs away from his face.

I let go of his hands. He was not going to get away with not telling me. No matter how hot he looked when he pulled that bang-flipping move.

“Wren,” he said, shuffling a little to get his balance.

I sped away from him, weaving my way through other skaters to put some distance between us. When I caught up to him again, he nearly knocked into a little girl in a sparkly, aqua skate outfit who scrunched her face at him.

“Ready to talk?” I asked, adjusting my speed and grabbing his hand. His fingers tightened around mine.

“Okay, but there’s really not much to talk about; I already
told you I was doing a favor for Luke.”

“Right, Luke who has trouble talking to girls . . . go on.” He scowled. “I’m serious. He’s interested in that girl and just wanted me to talk to her to see if she was, you know, available.”

“Did he want to know if her hair was soft too?”

“Wren.”

“Isn’t he
with
Ava?”

Grayson snickered. “Luke has a pretty wide definition of being ‘with’ someone.”

I let that one sit a minute as our blades scratched across the ice. “Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Have a wide definition of being with someone?” His eyebrows rose at the question, but he didn’t answer right away.

After a pass around the rink, he spoke. “I’ve never really been
with
anyone.”

“No way!” I said, so loud that a couple skating by turned to see the commotion. After they faced forward again, I spoke. “Really, that can’t be possible.”

“Skate in front of me again.”

I waited until we rounded the edge of the rink to cross over and switch my direction. Grayson’s eyes were serious.

“I’ve been with girls, but it’s always been . . . more physical. Short-term.”

Physical and short-term
. I stumbled. “Okay, you don’t have to go into it.”

“That’s just it. With you? I want to go into it. I want you to know me, but I don’t know where to start. Wren, you’re so . . . honest and funny and . . . I haven’t stopped thinking about you since we met.”

I stopped pumping my legs. “Really?”

“Yes. So I’d say my definition of being with someone is tiny. Miniscule, really.”

We slowed down. I held on to his hands and broadened my footing as we hit the straightaway. He inhaled, keeping his eyes steady on mine. “I want to be with you. Period.”

I bit my lip, aware that we’d come to a full stop as others scratched by on their skates. He kissed me, soft and light, just a whisper on the mouth that left me wanting more. If he was playing me, he was damn good at it.

“I think I like that definition,” I said.

“Why don’t we get out of here before I crack my skull?” he asked, teetering as someone sped by us.

We returned the rentals, and I made a quick stop to the ladies’ room, mostly for damage control, as skating always had the lovely side effects of a runny nose and a glaze of sweat. I took lip gloss from my pocket and freshened up, wondering what the rest of the night held. I tried to focus on the sweet things Grayson had said and not on what he meant by short-term and physical when describing his past relationships.

I left the ladies’ room and saw Gray across the lobby. He was leaning against a column and talking to a girl. I’d been gone for
five freakin’ minutes
. I ran a hand through my hair, stood up straighter. Talking to a girl or not, he was with me. And I wanted to be with Gray. And it was time to go after something I wanted. This was something—Gray and girls—I was going to have to get used to. As I got closer, I noticed she was a bit older, maybe Brooke’s age, and was vaguely familiar. He pointed in my direction. The girl peeked over her shoulder at me.

“Hey,” I said.

“See you ’round, Mike,” she said, carrying her skates toward a bench.

“Who was that?”

“Waitress at Leaning Tower,” he said. “She never remembers my name.”

For some reason that made me feel better.

“So where to?” I asked. “Or was that our big date?”

“You can still hang out, right?”

“I’m all yours.”

“Great. Feel like going to my house?”

Alone. With him?

“Yes.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

EIGHTEEN

GRAYSON

MY HEART HAMMERED IN MY CHEST AS I SAT AT
the foot of my bed.

I’d never had a girl in my house before.

I’d left Wren and her chai latte downstairs, making up some excuse about wanting to get my iPod so she could hear my favorite song from the latest Coldplay album. In reality I was picking up in my room and figuring out how I could get her to come upstairs, since I pretty much wanted to devour her whole. Pop and Tiff were at a couples bunco night, which proved how desperate my father was to get out. They would be gone for at least a few more hours. And a few more hours alone with Wren sounded like the kind of way I wanted to spend my night.

Only . . . I didn’t want to blow it the way I’d blown it that
morning at the mall when Wren caught me in Hollister. If that hadn’t been a
Grayson Barrett, you’ve got to stop screwing up your life
kind of wake-up call, I didn’t know what was. I thought, or hoped, she bought my explanation, which I worded carefully so I wasn’t exactly bullshitting her. Going to see Allegra
was
a favor to Luke. He
was
interested in her . . . or her father’s house, but I didn’t need to get into that. And I wouldn’t. That part of my life was over. Done. Luke and the guys would realize that soon enough.