Life in the Lucky Zone (The Zone #2)

by Patricia B Tighe

  ***

  Nick pulled into my driveway and put his SUV in park. This was always the awkward part. I hadn’t been in this situation in forever. Was he going to try to kiss me? I couldn’t decide how I felt about that. He was hot and everything, but there was no spark between us at all. At least not for me.

  I started to put my hand on the door handle, but he said, “Wait.”

  I slowly brought my arm back to my side. “Yeah?”

  “I know I should walk you to the door now, but I really want to kiss you and it’s freakin’ cold outside.”

  Seriously? I laughed. He hated the cold that much? An image of Berger standing outside the theater building with his hoodie wide open to the frigid air bloomed in my mind. He’d inhaled deeply, as though he couldn’t get enough, as though the cold made him feel alive.

  “You really think it’s that cold?” I asked in a teasing voice.

  “Maybe not,” Nick said, with a crooked smile, “but it’s really warm in here.”

  True enough. The heater was blasting hot air through every available vent.

  He ran a finger along my jaw and leaned closer. Well, why not? First kisses always said a lot about a guy, and since I still needed to decide about him, I might as well let him kiss me. I lifted my face, and his lips met mine.

  At first, everything went really well. After two seconds of contact, he brushed his mouth back and forth across mine, keeping everything light. Playful, almost. But then he wove his fingers into my hair and pressed a little harder. Which was okay. But when his tongue came flying in like a superhero doing twists and turns in the air, things got real sloppy, real fast. Ugh.

  He moved the hand he had on my back to my side and started inching it up. Uh-uh, buddy. Time to get off this train. I pulled my face away, trailing my hand all the way down his arm until I stopped at his wrist. “I need to go in,” I whispered. “My dad will have noticed your car.”

  He jerked like I’d slapped him and let go of me. “Oh. Okay.”

  That seemed a little extreme. “Thanks, Nick. I had a nice time.” I bent over to pick up my purse, surreptitiously wiping the wetness off the outside of my mouth.

  “Me too,” he said. “Hey, before you go, do you know if your dad is hiring interns at the golf club this summer?”

  My mind went blank. “What?”

  “Um, like, golf resort interns. Sometimes golf clubs have—”

  “My dad is an investment banker, Nick. He doesn’t work for the club; he’s on the board.”

  He chuckled, the yellow light from our porch showing only half his face. “Yeah, I know. I just thought maybe he could put in a word for me …”

  Anger bubbled up inside, making my throat tighten. “Are you serious?” I waved my hand between us. “Has this been all about my dad? And the golf club?”

  He looked out the front windshield. “Of course not. I’ve been wanting to go out with you for a long time.”

  He was lying. He had to be. If he wasn’t, he would at least make some attempt to look me in the eye. I gripped my purse like I was about to fling it at him. “Thanks for nothing.”

  “Come on, Lindsey. You’re overreacting. It was just a question.”

  Oh, how I hated to hear a guy tell me I was overreacting. My hand shook as I pulled the door handle. “See you around, Nick.” I got out and managed to shut the door without slamming it. Go me!

  Nick’s muffled voice echoed inside the car. “Lindsey, come on.”

  I shook my head and walked toward the front door. It spoke volumes that he didn’t even roll down his window to call out to me.

  Twenty-Eight

  Berger

  The next afternoon, Claire brought in a two-liter bottle of soda and set it on the coffee table in the so-called sunroom of her house. “Help yourselves,” she said, then sank onto the couch beside Gray.

  Sam poured the drink and offered some to Rose, who shook her head. Lindsey was chewing, so she lifted a finger toward him and he filled her cup. She’d been unusually quiet since she’d arrived. What was the problem? Had her date last night ended bad?

  “Anyone else?” Sam asked.

  I sat near Lindsey on the floor across the table from him, so I just said, “Pass it here.” I refilled my cup and then bit into my slice of pepperoni and sausage pizza, letting the spicy flavors distract me from thinking about her.

  “I’m glad you suggested this, Gray,” Rose said. “It’s been so long since we’ve gotten together.”

  “Well, that’s Sam’s fault,” I said, mumbling around my food.

  One corner of his mouth lifted. “Oh, yeah?”

  I swallowed. “Yeah. If you weren’t so busy being pampered at home with your online classes, you could be in school with us.”

  “You want me to commute an hour every morning and afternoon?”

  I laughed. “What a whiner.”

  He tossed a wadded-up napkin at me, which hit my shoulder and dropped to the floor beside Lindsey’s leg. Yeah, better let her pick it up. I didn’t want her to think I was trying to grab her or something. The awkwardness that had sprung up between us really sucked. It was like seeing some girl you used to really like and realizing you had nothing to say to each other. Or worse, that you had too much to say and didn’t know where to start.

  Anyway, talking to Lindsey couldn’t happen while sitting here with everybody else. After running into her and Golfer Dude last night, Gray had laughed himself silly, so convinced I had a crush on her that I gave up arguing about it. And now he was watching with a look that said, Please throw yourself at her feet and beg her to love you forever.

  Yeah, that would happen.

  “So,” Gray said, “how was your date last night, Lindsey?” Claire gave him a surprised look, but he missed it, his gaze intent on Lindsey.

  “Two good things happened,” Lindsey said, wiping her mouth on a napkin. Then she proceeded to dust her fingers off longer than was necessary.

  We all stared at her. That was all we got? But hey, this was Lindsey. She really did love to string an audience along. I sipped my soda and waited.

  “And those were?” Rose finally asked.

  She met our collective gaze. “The movie, since we didn’t have to talk to each other, and getting out of the car to go into my house.”

  A sense of relief flowed through me, immediately followed by guilt. Why was I happy she’d had a bad time?

  “Ouch,” Sam said. “Sounds rough.”

  Lindsey shrugged with one shoulder. “Oh, well. Par for the course, as Nick would say.”

  We laughed.

  “What?” Sam asked.

  “The guy she went out with is on the golf team,” Rose told him.

  “Oh,” he said, giving her a half smile.

  Claire leaned forward. “You know, I’m still not clear on why you went out with him. I mean, wasn’t he the same when you had coffee with him on Wednesday?”

  Lindsey hesitated like she was deciding what to say. “Well, he was a little less golfy, so I thought I should give him a chance.”

  “Oops,” I said. “Wrong choice there.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew I was screwed. I’d been going for a laugh. And I got it. A couple of people chuckled.

  But Lindsey’s cheeks turned dark red. “If you didn’t think I should go out with him, why did you tell him where to sit in the auditorium?”

  A sudden rush of defensiveness burned through me. “He was going the wrong way!”

  Her lower jaw jutted forward. “So it was you!”

  Oh, perfect. I’d done it this time. “Calm down. I—”

  “Calm down?” She struggled to her feet. “Calm down? You do not get to tell me to calm down. Not when you’re the one messing with my life.”

  “Could someone please tell me what’s going on?” Sam asked.

  Rose jumped up and tugged on his arm. “Come on.”

  “But … okay,” Sam said, standing. He followed her from the room.

  Lindsey loomed over me,
her fisted hands barely poking out from the sleeves of her over-large sweater. Should I stay on the floor? Play the docile friend until she let out all her steam? I wiped my hands on my jeans. Screw that. I was her friend, and she was going to hear what I had to say.

  I got up while Claire was pulling Gray toward the door. “But it’s just getting good,” he said. Seconds later, the glass door shut behind them. I glanced over. They were walking down the hall, not staring in at us. Thank you, Claire.

  “Well?” Lindsey asked, her voice wavering.

  “I’m sorry. I thought I was helping you.”

  “Helping me?” Her voice went up at least two octaves. She wheeled toward the windows that overlooked Claire’s backyard. The sun had set, the light outside softening to a pearly gray. She started to pace. “How could you even think that interfering with my test would help me? I need to know how you figured that out, by the way, but not right now. The reason I even came up with the test is to see who might bring me more luck. And you screwed it up.”

  I shoved my hands in my pockets, more out of protection than anything. Because I knew what I had to say. “That’s a bunch of crap. No one can bring you more luck. And no one could ever pass that stupid test. Deep down, you know I’m right.”

  She planted her feet and glared, her chest heaving. “Someone who is lucky would pass the test! Why can’t you get that through your thick skull?”

  “Probably because it’s thick.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t try to laugh this off. You messed everything up, and I need to know why.”

  Words lodged in my throat. I stepped closer. “Because things have been really hard for you lately. Just one disappointment after another.”

  She sneered. “Disappointment? That’s a weird way to describe having your heart ripped out of your chest.”

  “Exactly. Which is why I thought you needed something to go right for a change.”

  She shook her hands in front of her face. “You just don’t get it! The only way for the test to go right would be if it really worked. Not having somebody interfere. Agh!” She started pacing again. “All of this is your fault. I had—”

  “No, it isn’t. At least not all of it. You should’ve realized on your coffee date that he was a douche.”

  The look she gave me practically singed my eyebrows off. “I had to live through the most boring date in history with a groping, slobbering guy who I plan to never talk to again. And it was all your fault.”

  Ice ran up my spine. “What do you mean ‘groping’?”

  She waved a hand like that made no difference at all. She faced the windows again. “And you want to know the worst part?”

  I came up right behind her. “What do you mean by ‘groping’?”

  “Forget it, all right?”

  “No.” I placed my hands on her tight shoulders. “I need to know,” I whispered.

  She twisted out of my grip and faced me. “It was nothing. He tried, and I stopped him. That’s all.”

  I wanted to hit something. “I’m sorry.”

  She stepped back, tears glittering in her eyes. “That wasn’t the worst part. You ready for this? Nick Somerset isn’t interested in me. He just wanted my dad to help him get a summer internship at the golf club.”

  What the— “He said that?”

  “Not in so many words, but yeah.”

  “He’s an idiot.” What a disaster. Which you helped cause. Next time, stay out of Lindsey’s love life. “But hey, so am I.”

  She sniffed and ran a hand underneath her nose, not looking at me. I couldn’t take it anymore. I pulled her into a hug, pressing her head against my chest. She relaxed for ten seconds before pushing away. “I gotta go.” She grabbed her purse from a chair and headed for the door.

  “Wait. We’re not finished.”

  She shook her head. “Not now.”

  “Lindsey, could you just wait—” But she was already out the door, her boots clomping down the hall.

  Should I go after her? But why? To apologize again? I’d already done that more than once. We did need to talk, but she was probably right. Not now. It was better to give her time to decide if she could forgive me or if she was going to spend the rest of the semester pissed off.

  That would be fun.

  An edgy sensation came over me. I drummed my fingers on the sunroom window. What if she didn’t forgive me? What if she never let me make it up to her? I shook my head. She had to. We were friends. And friends worked things out. I didn’t know any other way to operate.

  Twenty-Nine

  Lindsey

  Thank goodness I made it out the door with only a quick goodbye to Claire and a promise to talk later. There was no way I could’ve lasted through any questions without letting the tears come. And if I wasn’t going to cry all over Berger again, I certainly wasn’t going to cry in front of everyone else. Why couldn’t I keep it together for even one freaking day?

  In the car, I inhaled deeply and steadied my hands on the steering wheel. You can do this. You can get all the way home without blubbering everywhere. And then you can find some way to get the pain out. Or dull it. Hopefully Mom and Dad would be so busy they wouldn’t even notice I was home.

  I started the car and pulled away from the curb in front of Claire’s house. I didn’t even know why I was so upset. Nick Somerset was a jerk—nothing new there. I never really wanted to go out with him in the first place. I shouldn’t care that he only wanted something from my dad. But I did.

  I rubbed at the stinging sensation that radiated along my breastbone. And Berger. Why did it bug me so much that he’d gone behind my back? He said he was only trying to help. Right. He really didn’t trust that I knew what I was doing—with the charms, with believing in luck. Neither did Claire or Rose, for that matter. They all just harped on about me needing time. Time to get over Adam. Time to get over losing the part in the play. Time to get back to the way I used to be.

  I drove on, the headlights of other cars becoming one long stream in my peripheral vision. Everyone moved along, pretending we were going somewhere, but instead we were just stuck in that flow without the ability to change course. I tightened my fingers on the steering wheel. See, that was the thing my friends didn’t understand. I couldn’t wait for time to let me out of the stream. I had to do it myself. If I didn’t, I might never be the old Lindsey again.

  And I needed her. I needed the strong Lindsey, the confident Lindsey, the Lindsey who laughed when people tried to give her crap. The perfect Lindsey, because that’s when people loved her best. When she was perfect. Or at least, when she had it all together.

  And what would perfect Lindsey do? She’d look for a new lucky boy. And she wouldn’t wait for him to sit in the right seat, either. After all, that wasn’t the way she and Adam had started dating. All it had taken were a few looks and smiles, and she’d walked right up to him and asked him out. So why had she been standing around, waiting for a guy to come to her? She was so done with that.

  Time for strong Lindsey to take charge. To reinvent herself in drama club and find something that would make people depend on her again. Like helping Mrs. Mac direct the play.

  It was a long shot, but it couldn’t hurt to ask.

  ***

  I spent most of the Martin Luther King holiday deciding how best to approach Mrs. Mac—oh, and making a list of possible lucky boys—and figured the straight-up method was the best. So, on Tuesday afternoon, I caught Mrs. Mac while she was waiting for everyone to arrive for rehearsal. “Yes, Lindsey?” she asked, three pencils hanging precariously out of her hair and one in between her teeth.

  Hmm. A plethora of pencils usually meant she was frazzled. But I couldn’t put it off. I had to ask for what I wanted now or I just might go nuts. I fingered the soft fur of the rabbit’s foot in my jacket pocket. “Mrs. Mac, I’ve been thinking. Since I don’t have a role in the play, I was wondering if I could help direct it. Be your assistant or whatever.”

  She removed the pencil
from her mouth. “You pretty much already are.”

  News to me. “Oh.”

  She smiled. “I’ve thought of you that way for a long time. You help me with whatever I need you to do, and for the most part, the other students respect your opinion.”

  I couldn’t hold back a smirk at that last part. “So I can be the assistant director?”

  “You need a title?”

  “Um, yes?”

  She laughed. “I don’t think the competition rules allow us to do that. But I certainly don’t mind your help.”

  “I’m ready to do whatever I can, Mrs. Mac.”

  “Well, good.” She fixated on some distant point for several seconds. “And I’ll get Kara to run lines with Trey.”

  Kara Chiu, of the sleek black hair and intense stare. Why did I suddenly want to convince Mrs. Mac not to do that? I couldn’t see Kara teaching Berger anything other than how to add a lilt to your voice at the end of every sentence. Besides, I was teaching him. I worked to keep my voice casual. “Kara?”

  “Yes, Kara Chiu,” she said, as if I didn’t know the girl. “Since she’s playing Beulah, who we don’t see until the end of the play, she’ll have plenty of time to rehearse with him.” I chewed on the inside of my cheek, and Mrs. Mac tilted her head. “Unless you’d rather work with him after we’re done with rehearsals for the day.”

  On the other side of the stage, Lainey Garza laughed at something Berger said and swatted at him. He rewarded her with a grin. I shoved away the spurt of irritation at the sight of them together. “No, no, that’s okay. He can work with Kara.”

  “Good. Why don’t you get rehearsal started while I talk to him?”

  Nothing like throwing me right to the wolves. But this was what I wanted, wasn’t it? Old Lindsey wouldn’t have thought twice. I swallowed hard. “Sure.”

  Mrs. Mac clapped her hands. “All right, folks, gather over here, please. Lindsey will be starting us out today.” She crossed the stage to intercept Berger as he approached.