This might go down as one of the strangest conversations she’d ever had, and considering the colorful personalities that drifted in and out of her mother’s life (and thereby her life), that was saying something.
She was about to say goodbye and end it when—
“Emmaline!”
At the sound of her name, the girl on the ground groaned. “Great. He found me.”
From her position, Hayden could still see around the fountain to the house. The king of Travis High himself stood there, hands propped on his hips like he was squared off on the prow of a ship. She’d seen him in the garage when she first arrived, playing Ping-Pong with Dorian like a man possessed. His face had been intense, his body a thing of beauty in motion.
Of course she knew who he was. You couldn’t attend Travis and not know. He was always on the morning news—either for sports or as homecoming king or as a featured member of some club.
He hadn’t given her so much as a glance in the garage earlier tonight or any time before then, but of course she had noticed him. Her pulse always picked up at the sight of him. Her body betrayed her in that regard. Apparently she responded to guys who looked like the lead of some cheesy teen movie. Ugh. She was such a cliché.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, with lush thick hair, smoldering eyes, and a square jaw. That damn square jaw.
Girls drooled over him, and it was entirely justifiable, but she kept her admiration secret. She wadded it up into a ball and stuffed it way down deep. A guy like him would never go for a girl like her. Not that she wanted him to like her.
She forced her gaze off him and looked back to Emmaline. Suddenly it clicked.
Nolan Martin. Emmaline Martin. They were related. As in, siblings.
Hayden stared down at Emmaline again, noting the slight similarities. The rich brown hair. The shape and position of their eyes. The contour of their eyebrows.
Emmaline was looking up at her with a near-panicked expression on her face. “Is he coming this way?”
No doubt he was her brother.
Hayden looked up again. He was staring directly at her now, his head cocked at an angle. She realized he probably saw her talking to the ground.
Still staring at him, she answered Emmaline, “Yeah. Um. He’s looking right at me and . . . yeah, now he’s headed over here.”
His long strides ate up the ground. She crossed her arms and watched him advance, only mildly affected over the display of hotness headed her way. She’d been around plenty of good-looking guys before. Dorian, with his two-percent-body-fat tennis bod, was in the house right now waiting for her. True, Dorian was not Nolan Martin hot, but he was hot, nonetheless.
Emmaline groaned again, dropping her face into her hands. “Tell him to go away.”
He stopped beside Hayden, giving her a terse nod of acknowledgment before focusing his attention on his sister.
“Emmaline, we’re going to Whataburger.” He stared down at his sister expectantly. When she made no move to get up, he added, “Everybody is ready and waiting.”
She huffed out a breath. “Fiiiiine.” She clambered to her feet, shooting Hayden an apologetic look. “It was nice talking with you, Hayden. Maybe I’ll see you around at school.”
Hayden smiled and nodded, even though she doubted they would be seeing each other around. It was a big school, and they didn’t travel in the same circles. A five-minute conversation wasn’t suddenly going to change that.
Emmaline headed back inside.
Nolan hung behind, looking at Hayden as though he wanted to say something. He’d never said anything to her before, so she couldn’t imagine what he had to say now.
Arms still crossed over her chest, Hayden arched both eyebrows at him. “Yes?”
“I think Dorian is inside looking for you.”
Ah. He was looking out for his boy. He probably thought his buddy was going to get laid tonight and he wanted to help him along. “Well, aren’t you helpful?”
He blinked, clearly picking up on her sarcastic tone and not knowing what to make of her.
“Nolan?”
They both turned at the sound of his name.
There, standing framed in the light of the patio, was the captain of the cheerleading team and this year’s homecoming queen.
She and Nolan Martin were together often. On the morning announcements. In the halls at school. Hayden had never cared enough to gain confirmation on their status before. It was none of her business. She had her own life. Her own problems.
But she now knew. One look at the girl’s face, at the impatience of her body language, and she knew. Of course they were a real-life couple. The queen and the king. Hayden laughed lightly.
“What’s so funny?” Nolan looked back at her, his expression unreadable. Those deep-set eyes fixed on her, staring intently. She stopped laughing, uncomfortable under his scrutiny.
Butterflies took flight in her stomach.
Her body failed her. Again. She hated that. It reminded her of her mother. How often did Mom talk about some guy with beautiful eyes and magic hands only to end up wrecked by him weeks later?
“Is that your girlfriend?” Hayden asked what she already knew.
He looked back to where the homecoming queen stood near the house. “Yeah.”
“I thought so.” She gave another snort of laughter. “Well, she’s waiting.” Hayden waved toward the house. “You better get going.”
He didn’t move. “What’s so funny?”
“It’s kind of amusing.”
“What is?”
She looked back and forth between him and his girlfriend. “It’s just typical.”
“Typical how?” he pressed, looking so serious she regretted ever saying anything to him. She didn’t want to get into it with this guy. If he didn’t know he was a walking cliché, then who was she to inform him?
“You’re the homecoming king and queen. Both beautiful. Both popular. You’re like the leads of a predictable teen movie.”
He looked puzzled. “Are we? We’re pretty rare, I would think.”
Clearly he didn’t like being called typical. He thought he was rare? That was funny. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Well, it doesn’t feel like you’re complimenting me.”
She guessed she wasn’t.
He continued, “Wouldn’t we have to be opposites for us to be typical for a teen movie? You know . . . the school nerd and head cheerleader?”
“Can’t Buy Me Love,” she cited. “You know your teen rom-coms.”
“I have a sister, remember?”
Emmaline Martin seemed like the kind of girl who would know her vintage adolescent rom-coms. “Yes. I know.”
His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “I didn’t realize you two knew each other.”
Maybe she was reading too much into it, but she got the impression that he didn’t approve of her knowing his sister. Rather than explain that they had just met, she said, “Maybe you’re right. You don’t exactly fit the role.”
“Nolan!” The girlfriend’s voice lifted in a whine.
He glanced at her and then looked back to Hayden, seemingly in no hurry.
“And what’s your role?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not the school nerd. Not the head cheerleader.”
“Oh.” She shrugged. “I don’t have one.”
“You don’t play a role?” he asked, an edge of challenge to his voice.
“No. No role here. Guess that makes me atypical.”
“You sound . . . proud of that.”
It was just a fact. She knew herself. She didn’t have a group. She didn’t fit into any cliques. She didn’t play roles. She was too busy surviving.
“I’ll meet you at the car,” Girlfriend called out, her voice the height of exasperation. She marched back inside.
For some reason Nolan remained behind.
He was still looking at her and waiting for her answer. “Pride has nothin
g to do with it,” she replied at last, wondering if she sounded defensive and why she should.
“You play a role,” he pointed out calmly, but she detected an undercurrent of judgment in his voice. “We all do.”
Judgment was something she was very familiar with. She’d learned how to detect it in others at an early age . . . when someone from the state started dropping by for home visits because a well-meaning teacher reported her—or because she missed one too many days of school because Mom couldn’t get her on the bus and she was reported for truancy. The state hadn’t been by to check on her in years. Not since Hayden started taking care of herself.
He looked her up and down and she resisted fidgeting, but his eyes were scouring, reminding her of the ladies with their clipboards as they assessed her, scribbling notes as they walked through her house.
She shoved the memory away. “Then what’s my role?” She stared at him, tensing all over, hating that she had asked, regretting it instantly because it made it seem like she cared.
He stared back at her, not answering. His silence was telling. Deafening.
It told her everything she needed to know.
She knew what he thought of her. How little he thought of her. She’d sensed it from him the moment he walked up on her talking with his sister.
He wouldn’t put it into words. He wouldn’t be impolite enough to say it, but he thought she was wild. A bad influence. A bad girl.
A slut.
That was her role, as far as he was concerned.
She’d heard it all before. Every ugly word. She had never cared. They were just labels and usually uttered by people whose opinion she did not value.
So why did it sting a little right now? He was a stranger. His opinion meant nothing.
“You think you know me?” She stepped forward and stretched out a hand toward his chest, determined to shake his composure, to deflect. She brushed an invisible speck of lint away from his long-sleeved henley. Damn, his chest was solid. His pecs were outlined against the fitted fabric.
He grabbed her wrist, his fingers loose around her bones, but the contact made her breath hiss . . . and those butterflies. They were back with a vengeance.
She could easily twist free, but she felt frozen as she looked up at his dark eyes. “You like playing guys,” he said, his voice whisper soft.
She liked playing guys? Is that what he thought? That was laughable.
Ever since she started high school, guys had been trying to play her. They looked at her mom, her house, her secondhand clothes, and thought they could use her. That she mattered less somehow.
“Is that what you’ve heard?” she asked.
“No.” There was no crack in his expression as he uttered this.
“No?” she echoed, crossing her arms. “Fascinating. Tell me. How did you come to know this about me then?”
“I have eyes . . .” His voice trailed off.
Meaning he’d noticed her before? He never gave any indication of that. Whenever she’d observed him, he had never been looking her way.
She smiled thinly, letting it mask her turbulent feelings. “You think you know me because I wear a lot of makeup, because of the way I dress, because I have a tattoo . . . because I live in Peasant Ranch.”
He jerked as though her words were a physical slap.
Hayden lived in Pleasant Ranch, but the joke around town was that it was really Peasant Ranch.
Once affordable housing in the 1970s, it was now a poorly maintained neighborhood full of dead lawns and houses with bars on the windows. Cops often patrolled the streets, giving in to the inevitability that they would be called into the neighborhood sometime during their shift—pulled in on some call or another. Domestic disturbance. Drugs. Truancy checks.
“Oh,” she added. “And your friends want to fuck me.” Hayden held her smile, fighting down a tremor of emotion. “And, yeah, I swear when I feel like it, too.”
Nolan exhaled and glanced away, color rising in his cheeks. She’d embarrassed him.
Good.
She laughed harshly. “What’s the matter?” Clearly he wasn’t used to girls like her who talked so bluntly. “Does my language offend you . . . or is it because I’m aware that guys want to get in my pants? Am I not supposed to notice that?”
He shook his head, looking a little stunned.
She actually felt a little stunned, too. How had she ended up in this conversation with him?
“Nolan!” His girlfriend was back. Guess she decided not to wait at the car, after all. Hayden hid a smirk. Naturally she wouldn’t like leaving him alone with the likes of her.
Hayden nodded in her direction. “You better go. You’re being summoned.”
His lips flattened into a thin line. He didn’t like that.
Nolan didn’t glance back to his waiting princess. No, sorry, she mentally amended, his waiting queen.
His stare was fixed steadily on Hayden, and she couldn’t help marveling that this was the first time he had ever really looked at her. Really looked at her.
This was their first conversation. Now he would have a memory, an experience to go with her when he did see her in the halls. For some reason she thought he would definitely notice her now. This, weirdly, maybe wrongly, gave her some sense of satisfaction.
“Well, uh. Good night,” he said.
Such manners, and after their borderline uncivil conversation, no less.
She didn’t say anything as he turned away, but she couldn’t help admiring his solid length, the way his henley stretched across the back of his broad shoulders. He really was a rare specimen. Fit and strong. The kind of guy who would do well in a zombie apocalypse. She nodded. Yeah. She thought about such things. She watched anything and everything zombie. Not just the obvious, like The Walking Dead. The classics, too. Night of the Living Dead. Dawn of the Dead. And her personal favorite, Land of the Dead.
It was normal behavior for her to walk around considering the nearest and most convenient escape route. She even had a go bag in the back of her closet. A zombie breakout wasn’t the only thing that could happen, after all. There were things like angry ex-boyfriends of Mom. Or friends of Mom that suddenly weren’t friends anymore. Angry individuals in general. Mom managed to piss off a lot of people.
The door shut behind Nolan and his cheerleader girlfriend. Hayden stood alone outside in the dark and cold, the sounds of the party a dim hum on the air.
She liked being alone. She was comfortable with it. It was safe. When you were alone, there was no one around to hurt you.
Wrapping her arms around her middle, she squeezed, hugging herself against the chilly night. Right now, she was hard-pressed to even remember why she had wanted to come here tonight. A Netflix marathon and some microwave popcorn sounded far more tempting than this. Then again, Mom was at home with her friends. Hayden would only be alone as long as no one invaded her space. Unfortunately, Mom’s get-togethers usually got rowdy, so that was unlikely. The thin barrier of her bedroom door offered little protection.
She studied the fountain for a moment, enjoying the soft sound of burbling water. It had a calming influence. She understood it now. She understood why rich people had them. If she had money, a fountain wouldn’t have made it to the top of her list before, but she might have to readjust that list now.
That’s the way of it for people who had nothing, she supposed. They always fantasized and played the what if game.
She turned and exited out the back gate, walking down the street until she reached her car, an old clunker. Her manager at the Tasty Freeze sold it to her last year dirt cheap, claiming it wouldn’t bring her much money. Hayden knew the truth, though. Leticia had done it out of generosity.
At the time, Hayden had teased Leticia that she had done it so Hayden would stop being late to work. Hayden was always on time now, but before, she had to beg a ride off someone—her mother couldn’t be relied on—or walk the three miles to the Tasty Freeze. More often than not, she walked. In he
at. In cold. In rain. It didn’t matter.
Hayden slid behind her steering wheel and turned the ignition. It sputtered and choked before coming to life. One day, it was going to quit on her for good. She knew it was inevitable. She didn’t worry about it though.
Everything quit on her eventually, and she still found a way to go on.
Lesson #4
Know your limits and set reasonable goals.
x Emmaline x
Emmaline sat in mute frustration as they headed to Whataburger.
Frustration with her brother.
Frustration with her friends, who were too in awe of Nolan to stand up to him and side with her when she wanted to stay at the party. They were glad Nolan had called it quits for the night. Maybe a part of her had been glad, too. It’s not like she was having a good time. The highlight of her night had been her conversation with Hayden Vargas.
Mostly, though, she was frustrated with herself. Because why couldn’t she have a good time at a party? Why couldn’t she be like everyone else?
When she’d walked into that media room where an adult film had been playing, she’d lost her composure. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if Beau hadn’t been standing beside her—Beau, who she’d had a crazy stupid crush on since she was thirteen.
Maybe then she wouldn’t have blushed like a schoolgirl.
It had been so awkward. For a moment she had thought Beau looked from the naked, writhing bodies on the screen to her boobs. Not that she had been flaunting them or anything in her simple sweater.
Of course, she had to be wrong. He hadn’t looked there. Not at her. He would never do that. She was Nolan’s kid sister. She couldn’t get any unsexier than that.
Beau had not been checking her out. Guys did not check her out in general.
When they got to Whataburger they all lined up at the counter, placed their orders, and then went their separate ways. Emmaline with her friends. Nolan with his.
There was never any question of this. They slid into different booths. It was the usual way of things. It was like Thanksgiving, when she was stuck at the kiddie table with her little cousins. Not that she wanted to sit with Nolan and his friends. He only made her feel small and insignificant, just like a child not yet ready for the grown-up table.
Kissing Lessons Page 3
