“Sure. Gotta get used to this anyway, right?”
I get the feeling she knows exactly where my thoughts are because her cheeks get flushed and she nods in agreement while avoiding eye contact.
The next hour goes faster than I thought it would. It’s easy when there’s an objective in mind. And yeah, maybe Olivia has a lot to do with that too.
She shows me how to select the best vegetables and advises against getting bananas too ripe. Christ, there’s even a trick to buying lemons. I never thought about lemons being too ripe or not ripe enough. But if I’m going to need to learn about the ripeness of fruit, there’s no one I’d rather teach me than Olivia. Hell, I’m actually having a good time. And I’m not totally clueless. I know a choice porterhouse and tenderloin cut when I see one.
It’s getting pretty dark by the time we load the grocery bags into the back of the truck. I know I’m inviting trouble the next time I open my mouth to speak, but it’s like I can’t stop myself.
“You eaten dinner yet?” I ask after I climb into the driver’s seat.
“No, I’m supposed to meet April at the cafe in fifteen minutes. She just texted that she’s waiting for me.”
I’d seen her fiddling with her cell in the store and wondered who she was texting. I get the impression she’s not seeing Jeff anymore. Which means she’s available.
Yeah, but available for what?
“Gotcha.”
I asked. She answered. We’re good. I’m just going to drop her off and see her in class tomorrow. Oh, there’s definitely something between us but I’m not sure she’s willing to act on it.
“You don’t talk about your brother much, do you?”
Okay, where did that come from? I slant a glance at her. From her expression and what I’ve learned about her, it doesn’t look like she’s asking for the usual reasons girls ask me about Brett. Which is why I rarely talk about him and when I do, it’s in a way that doesn’t encourage other questions. That had sure stopped the autograph hounds, the guys looking to score tickets and those who wanted a connection to his high-profile life.
“There’s not much to say.” I reverse out of the parking spot.
“Do the two of you get along?”
I laugh. “Okay, what is it you really want to know?”
“It’s just that I think most guys would never let people forget that their brother is the quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys.”
“I guess I’m not like most guys, am I?”
She begins running the leather strap of her handbag between her thumb and index finger. Back and forth, back and forth, like a nervous twitch. She shoots me a look from the corner of her eye and laughs lightly. “Was that a question?”
“No, just wanted to see how long it’d take for you to look me in the eye. Do I make you nervous or something?” I’m more interested in the or something. Whether she’ll admit to it or not is a whole other thing.
Instantly, her head comes up and she turns toward me. “Of course not. Why would I be?”
“I don’t know, maybe because in high school I’d catch you looking at me.”
If I were a nicer guy, I probably wouldn’t mess with her so much but I have to get points for not bringing up the breast exam she’d made me give her. No, I haven’t said a word about that but I certainly haven’t forgotten it. Never will.
For a second she gives herself away as panic, horror, embarrassment, and then a combination of all three flare in her eyes.
“I did not.”
As expected, an unequivocal denial. All I know is I love it when she gets all pink and flustered.
I return my attention to the road. “Olivia,” I warn teasingly, “don’t lie or your nose will grow.”
Crickets chirp in the half minute of silence it takes me to turn into the parking lot of her dorm and pull into the first available spot near the doors. After I shut off the engine, I look over and find her yanking on the handle of the door, clearly desperate to get out.
“The door’s locked.”
She stops and slowly turns her head toward me, her eyes finally meeting mine.
“Um, can you unlock it?”
I can’t help but smile. “Hey, I used to stare at you too.”
Her eyes go wide as if that’s the last thing she expected to come out of my mouth. “Why? You didn’t like me.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to look at a beautiful girl?”
She blinks three times in quick succession and swallows hard. I’m familiar with that look, that look of awareness because damn if I haven’t felt it a million times over the last four years.
“Zach, I thought we agreed we were going to be friends.”
“And we are.” Grocery shopping together is friendly. And what I want to do to her definitely falls under the friendlier category.
“And you think these are the kind of things friends say to each other?”
Her voice is soft and sweet and I’m getting turned on. Okay, so I’ve been halfway there since I saw her down by the commons. But she’s a fine one to talk about boundaries. She didn’t seem to mind blurring the lines back in high school—and at a time when we weren’t even speaking to each other. A little fact she obviously needs to be reminded of now.
“I guess it depends on whether one friend ever snuck into the locker room of the other and watched him shower. What’d ya think, Olivia, is it okay for friends to do that?”
***
OLIVIA
Stricken, I give a loud gasp, my hand flies to cover my mouth and my eyes feel like they’re bulging out of their sockets. And if I thought my fair skin was my enemy before, I’m fairly certain I’ve now given a new shade to the color of embarrassment.
“What are you talking about?” I barely manage to squeak the words past my lips…when I can finally bring myself to speak at all.
“I’m talking about you in the boys’ locker room senior year.”
Oh my god oh my god oh my god, he knows! After my mental freak-out, I abruptly shift into self-preservation mode, which is screaming at me to deny, deny, deny. How can he know, my mind protests. He must be guessing. An accurate one but still a guess.
Before I can issue it, my flat-out denial, Zach cuts me off at the knees with, “Olivia, I saw you.” Not smug or amused, almost gentle. Which makes it even worse.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
Now I know how a cornered animal feels. My mind is whirling, searching, trying to come up with something to say that will make him believe that despite appearances, this isn’t what it looks like. God, how clichéd is that. I guess the truth will have to suffice.
“Going into the locker room had nothing to do with you. I didn’t even know you’d be there.”
I raise my gaze to his. He’s not smiling, laughing or frowning, he’s just watching me with those mesmerizing eyes of his. I tear my gaze from his and stare ahead at the large maple tree in front of the dorm with half its branches stripped bare by the cooling season.
“Obviously, it was something I didn’t think through that well.” I give a short self-deprecating laugh. “I started getting crank calls soon after school started back and I found out my number was written on one of the stalls in the boys’ locker room. This went on almost three months and every time I changed my number, somehow it would get out and the calls would start again. The night you were there, I’d just gotten a new number and I’d only given it to one person.”
From the corner of my eye, I see his hand tighten on the gear but other than that, he sits motionless, listening.
“The thought hadn’t occurred to me to go in and see if my number was anywhere in there until I was walking by. I mean it was late, no one was in the halls. I knew that football had been over for more than an hour. The locker room was empty. If it was there, I was going to scratch it out and I’d also know who was leaking it.”
I can still remember my heart hammering away as I’d snuck in, a black Sharpie in my hand ready to eviscerate all traces of my number should I
find it there. I’d thought about transposing a couple of the numbers but then I’d just be creating a crank nuisance for someone else.
But when I’d heard someone come in, I panicked and gently closed the stall door and scampered up onto the toilet. My heart had been racing at what felt like five hundred beats a minute but when I peeked between the opening in the stall doors and saw Zach standing almost directly in front of me taking off his clothes, my heart had stopped beating at all. At least it had felt that way. I’d slammed my eyes shut and jerked back when he’d started taking off his pants. Of course they hadn’t stayed shut.
I give an involuntary shake of my head in an effort to get the image of his smooth, naked back and his to-die-for butt out of my head.
Once I’d finished my confession, I expected Zach to say something. Anything. I get nothing. Seconds tick by and I begin to feel the coolness from outside penetrating the interior of the truck. When I can’t stand the silence anymore, I turn and look at him.
“And here I thought I was the draw,” he says, ending the silence.
I don’t know whether to be relieved that he’s making a joke of it or disappointed to tell him that his initial impression wasn’t right. One thing is for certain, he was and still is a draw as far as I’m concerned.
“So was it there?” he asks, his expression and tone more sober.
I stare down at my lap, my fingers tracing the strap of my purse. I breathe out a sigh and reply, “Yeah, it was there.”
Worse than being absolutely terrified of being caught in the boys’ bathroom stall by Zach, had been the knowledge that my best friend had betrayed me. Not even the rumors had had that effect on me.
“It was my friend Jennie—at least I thought she was my friend.” Apart from April, Jennie had known me better than anyone. She’d stood up for me when the rumors about me getting implants had started flying around. We’d slept over at each other’s houses and I’d even taken care of her dog when her family went to Hawaii on vacation the year before.
“Jennie McGregor?”
“Yep. So that was that,” I say with a shrug.
“So why’d she do it?”
“What, give out my number to a bunch of pervy boys? I guess so everybody would think I was a slut.”
What I didn’t know then was that Jennie liked Jeff. Had apparently always liked him. When he’d started paying attention to me and asking me out, she’d started telling some of the guys I put out but only for college guys. Of course it’d been a total lie but I’d been swimming against the tide of stereotypes—I was blonde, pretty, had sprouted a C cup out of nowhere and wasn’t dating any of the guys at my school, which according to the rules meant I had to be a slut.
***
ZACH
“No one thought you were a slut.” At least, I hadn’t.
Until she’d started going out with Jeff senior year, most of the guys just assumed she thought she was too good for high-school guys. Tanner Bryant swore she had to be banging college guys. He said she looked the type. I’d thought Tanner was full of shit. He’d just been jealous because she’d shot him down about a half-dozen times.
And yeah, maybe in high school she had come across as kind of snooty but once you talked to her a bit, you could tell her reserve hides her shyness. God, how different she must be from her mother—any mention of whom can still send my aunt to her bed in tears. And she and my uncle have been divorced for four years.
“Some of them did.”
“Okay, but that’s cause they were jealous of you.”
“Yeah, like there was anything to be jealous of.”
If she really believes that, she can’t see what me and half the population sees. “So what happened to you and Jeff?”
“We decided not to do the long-distance thing. They never work out, you know. Anyway he’s all the way over at U of H.”
“Right, I hear you there,” I reply in complete and total agreement.
“Same with you and Ashley?” she asks with what sounds to me like more than a little friendly interest.
God, Ashley is a whole different matter altogether. But I don’t want to talk about her—especially with Olivia.
“Yeah, we’re done.” Of course, not as over as I want us to be but that’s nothing I’ll share. I decide a change of subject is called for. Something lighter. Something that will hopefully remove that hint of sadness from her beautiful eyes.
“Come on, let’s grab your stuff and I’ll walk you to your dorm.” My sentence is barely finished when she’s refusing, her blonde hair swirling about her shoulders.
“You’re wasting your breath,” I continue in a tone that brooks no refusal. “My father would have my head if he ever heard I’d just dropped off a girl in the parking lot.”
She smiles and says, “It’s not like we were out on a date.”
“Is that the only time a guy can he chivalrous, as my dad would say?”
“Okay, okay. Walk me to my door.”
I think of the ice cream in one of the shopping bags before deciding it can wait. Anyway, I won’t be—what—no more than a minute or two.
We get out and I grab her two bags, making sure our stuff didn’t accidentally get mixed together. As we approach the double doors of the dorm, Olivia starts searching through her purse. Seconds later, she pulls out the pass. One swipe and we’re in. She turns and looks up expectantly at me, her hands out for her bags.
Holding them out of her reach, I say, “Where’s your room?”
With a heavy sigh, she presses her lips together. “Zach, I’m perfectly fine here. There’s no need for you to walk me to my room.”
It’s not my father’s voice in my ear urging me to play the total gentleman. Even he would say I’ve done my part.
“Where’s your room?” I repeat in a tone that states I’m not going anywhere.
“God, you’re impossible,” she says with a huff as her eyes go heavenward, but I can tell she’s more pleased than she’s letting on.
Where she leads—past the lounge where I can hear the blare of the TV and the low rumble of voices—I follow. She’s only a couple steps in front of me, but I’m so busy enjoying the view of her rear, I couldn’t care less where we’re going.
After we climb the stairs—the view is even better now—we turn the corner and we’re standing in front of her door. I make a mental note of the number—2C.
Olivia holds out her arms for the bags, but I’m still reluctant to leave her even though I haven’t eaten since lunch and my stomach is devouring itself.
“So you and April are really looking forward to going to Paris, huh? By the way, where’s she been the last couple weeks? She drop the class?”
Instead of the excitement I thought I’d see in her face, her expression is more subdued.
“April’s not going to be able to go so as you can imagine, she has little use for a class that calls for the conjugation of verbs.” She smiles wanly.
“That’s too bad. I was looking forward to hanging out with you two. I guess it’ll just be us.”
That’s when her delicate little chin drops and practically hits the floor.
CHAPTER NINE
OLIVIA
God, where is April when I need her?
That’s what I’m thinking the next day in French class while I’m sitting at my desk, steeling myself for Zach’s arrival. I’m still flustered—yes flustered over the bomb he dropped last night before wishing me goodnight and sauntering off.
And he knew exactly what his announcement would do to me. It had kept me up half the night, my thoughts chaotic, my nerves shot straight to hell.
Me and Zach in Paris together.
The two of us hanging out as “friends” would.
If the thought didn’t make my stomach pitch like I was on a roller-coaster, it would be laughable.
Why had he changed his mind and decided to go? My brain had to rein in my thoughts because it had been going in so many different directions and crying, me me me me
me all the way home.
I didn’t say anything to April, why I don’t know. It’s not like it’s a secret but…I knew she’d make a bigger thing of it than it was—is. I don’t need her to get me going because then I might make a bigger deal about it than I had already been doing.
The first time I hear the distinct buzz of a cell phone vibrating, I immediately glance at the other two girls in the class—one behind me, the other beside me. They’re both looking at me, which is when I realize it’s my cell. Quickly, I grab it out of my backpack. The number lighting up on the screen isn’t one I recognize so I click ignore and let it go into voicemail and shove it in my purse.
Over the next few minutes, students filter in and with every appearance, my pulse is racing, wondering when Zach is going to show up.
When he finally does, his eyes go immediately to where I’m sitting like some lovesick girl waiting for the guy she’s crushing on to call. The corner of his mouth tips up in a half smile and he looks at me as if we share more than just space in the same class. My breath catches and it takes long seconds before I can release it.
After he succeeds in leaving me thoroughly rattled, he goes to the back row and folds his tall frame into the desk.
“I asked around and he’s a football player. Second string quarterback.”
Twisting sharply in my seat, I see the girl who asked about Zach the first class, watching me watching him.
“I went to high school with him, remember?” She thinks I’m interested.
Her blue eyes cloud over for a second and then clear. “Oh yeah. Right. I remember now. Sometimes it’s hard to remember which face goes with which class. It’s just that I saw you checking him out and thought I’d—”
“Give me the scoop? No I got it. And I wasn’t checking him out. We’re friends.” And friends frequently check each other out.
Today, Eagle Eyes is wearing stylish brown jeans and a tan raglan sweater that looks great with her dark hair. Her gaze narrows. “I thought you weren’t particularly close?” she asks, a knowing look on her face.
When in Paris... (Language of Love) Page 9
