Troy is heading home Saturday but tonight he’s out on a date. The first since his split with what’s her name and so far I’ve made no plans of my own. Midterms are over. With no classes for a lot of students on Fridays, eight o’clock on a Thursday night is early in a college town. I’ve got the numbers of at least a half-dozen girls I can call if I’m looking to score, but for some reason the thought doesn’t have the same pull it normally would.
But it still doesn’t mean I can’t go out and have some harmless fun before I leave. I’m thinking I’ll take Lisa—a girl in my poly sci class—up on her invitation to stop by her and her roommate’s party tonight. Pretty, brunette and brown-eyed, she’s definitely more my type. Maybe I’ll have a nice memory to take with me since I’m pretty sure I won’t be making any of those in Paris.
Barefoot, I go to the kitchen and open the fridge. For dinner, I grilled a steak on the George Foreman grill thing. Not exactly something that tasted like it had been grilled on a barbeque, but it hadn’t been bad. But that was hours ago, and now I’m hungry for something, I just don’t know what.
As I’m debating my choice of mint ice cream, the last piece of apple pie and grapes—yeah right—there’s a knock on the door.
There’s a couple of girls—both juniors—who live a few doors down. The one with the short dark hair and nice ass has been dropping hints to me the size of an atomic bomb blast. She’s cute and clearly willing but I’m not about to hook up with a girl who lives practically next door. I’d feel weird bringing another girl to my apartment knowing she’s that close by and potentially watching. No, there are definite situations I actively avoid no matter how convenient it or she may be at the time.
I open the door without checking the peephole and am surprised to see April standing on the other side. As usual, she’s all dressed to the nines and looks stunning. Her green eyes, I’m damn sure, have stopped more male hearts than I can count.
She flashes me a smile, but her gaze is busy scanning the area behind me. “Hey, Zach. Is Troy home?”
Opening the door, I take a couple steps back to let her in. She follows. “No, Troy’s out,” I reply, stopping and turning to face her.
“Crap. I just got off the phone with Liv. She’s stuck on the other side of town with a flat tire. I told her I’d call Troy to see if he could run out there and give her a hand but he’s not answering his phone.”
One thing April is not is subtle and if I were the type of guy Olivia obviously thinks I am, I’d smile politely and tell her I’ll give Troy the message when he gets home. But I’m not that guy even though tonight, I sorely wish I was.
I give a sigh and run a hand through my hair. She doesn’t deserve it but how the hell can I go to Lisa’s party knowing Olivia is stuck on some road at night. But it shouldn’t take me long to change her tire and jet over to the party.
“I’ll go. Where is she?”
April’s face lights up and she gives me an enthusiastic and grateful hug. “You’re the best.”
After vowing that she and Olivia will enroll in AAA, she gives me the name of the two cross streets Olivia is closest to and promises to call her to let her know I’m on my way.
It takes me twenty minutes to get there. I can see Olivia’s car on the side of the road—which is really a cross between a route and a highway—and the closest stop lights are about two miles down. There’s a car pulled up behind her and I see a guy approaching on the driver side as I slow down and pull over onto the shoulder in front of her.
Quickly, I get out of the truck and walk back toward her car. The guy who stopped is an older guy. He looks like he's in his late forties with his own spare tire around his middle and his hair tamed in that balding-on-top ridiculous comb-over.
With a nod at me, he motions me back to my truck, saying, “I got this. Just a flat tire.”
Yeah, right. I clench my jaw. I don’t like this guy. Who the fuck turns down help changing a tire? Especially an old guy in a wool dress coat, a suit and tie and wearing black polished dress shoes?
I tip my chin toward Olivia who is watching the interplay from where she’s sitting in the front seat, hands fisted around the steering wheel. “S’okay, I’m her friend, she called me.”
I’ve never seen a smile fall faster than the one he’d just been wearing. And let’s face facts, the only reason he’s offering is because he obviously got a look at Olivia. The guy probably hoped he’d get lucky tonight. My throat tightens at the thought. He’s old enough to be her father for crissake.
He turns and looks at Olivia. “Are you sure?”
Her response is a vigorous nod as she eases the automatic window down halfway. “Yes. I called him.”
Clearly disappointed, the man nods, turns and stalks back to his four-door sedan, a family car if I’ve ever seen one. Creep.
“But thanks for the offer,” she calls out belatedly.
I wait and watch the guy until he drives off into the night.
“Zach, you didn’t have to come.” Her voice is soft and tentative, a far cry different from when she was railing at me in her room two weeks ago.
“Yeah, I know I didn’t have to but I did. Why don’t you pop the trunk.” I head to the back of her car. A second later, the trunk opens. As I’m peering inside, I hear the car door open and then close, then she’s standing a couple feet from me, her arms wrapped around herself, warding off the cold as wisps of blonde hair flutter gently around her face.
The jack she has is one of the flimsy ones. I prefer mine. But I grab the donut that’s located below the trunk floor.
“I-I-I don’t know what to say.” She hovers over my shoulder as I drop the donut on the ground and give it a once-over.
“Don’t sweat it, it’s nothing.” I couldn’t be more aware of her than if she were sitting in my lap, and that bugs the crap out of me. I do not want to be this aware of her.
“No, it’s not nothing. After everything that’s gone on between us…”
“Just drop it, alright? You needed some help. Troy wasn’t home so I volunteered. Don’t make a big deal out of it.” I lift my gaze and meet hers. “I’m going to get my jack from the truck. This shouldn’t take more than ten minutes.”
***
OLIVIA
My heart is hammering. Zach. Why did it have to be him? But here he is. Despite everything, he’s playing my knight in shining armor. Although not at all pleased about the role he’s chosen to take on.
What was intended to be a quick trip to the Gap outlet store to pick a couple more outfits for the trip in two days, has now turned into a two-hour ordeal when I realized one of my back tires was riding on little more than its rim.
My first call to April produced immediate results. She’d been on her way out, claiming a hot date, and had said she’d get in touch with Troy and send him over. Ten minutes later, she called to say Troy is out but Zach is on his way. At that point it’d been useless to chew her out. So I’d sat in the car—unwilling to stand outside playing the damsel in distress—but that hadn’t stopped the guy in the blue Oldsmobile from offering his help. I’d tried to explain my friend was on the way but he’d glanced around and pointed out the obvious, But he’s not here yet.
I breathe deeply. Thank God he’s gone. The way he’d looked at me before he’d gone to check the tire had made me uneasy. Sometimes older guys can be so gross.
I watch as Zach returns from his truck with a jack that looks a heck of a lot sturdier than mine. The flat tire is on the back passenger side so I remain at the rear on the driver’s side—well out of his way—and watch him work.
He’s wearing a pair of faded blue jeans and a dark-gray long-sleeved tee, the sleeves of his open jacket pushed up to his elbows. And with every pump of the lever, I see the defined muscles of his thighs and forearms. After half a minute, I have to remind myself to swallow or look away. I swallow.
As promised, it takes him less than ten minutes, and soon he’s wiping his hands on the clean rag he brought from his
truck. Neither of us has said a word the whole time he worked but as he’s hoisting the old tire into my truck, I have to say something.
“Zach, I don’t know how to thank you,” I begin, meaning to say more. Hoping to clear the air between us and get us back on a better footing. Because right now I’m assailed with doubts. I find it hard to believe that a guy who would lie and tell his friends I’m easy—the high school slut—is the same guy who would spend part of his Friday night helping the same girl who accused him of just that.
“Olivia,” he says in that smooth, low voice that sends shivers through me, “it’s no big deal. I would have done the same for any girl I know.”
In other words, I’m nobody special. I get that but that doesn’t make what he did any less kind and I want him to know that.
Once everything is stowed in my trunk, he slams it shut, grabs his jack off the ground and starts toward his truck.
“Zach.”
He stops a couple feet in front of me, between our respective vehicles.
“What Olivia?” he asks, a strained note in his voice. He doesn’t turn around, leaving me staring at his back.
It takes me a few seconds for the right words to form in my mind. This is something I hadn’t expected to do, not just tonight, but ever. Logically I’d thought I couldn’t be wrong about this. But my heart is telling me the opposite. My gut is telling me I was wrong.
“Did you start that rumor about me?” My voice catches in my throat and drifts across to him as soft as the night wind is blowing.
Turning around, he faces me, his expression hard and closed off. “No.”
Just a flat-out denial and nothing else. And I believe him, unequivocally. I don’t know how the rumor got started but I’m now positive Zach hadn’t been the origin.
Guilt, in its most basic form, begins to eat at me.
Zach turns and heads for his truck.
“I’m sorry,” I call out to his retreating back.
“When you get a new tire put on, you’ll want to get your wheels aligned. Now get in the car, Olivia, and go home.” He throws the command over his shoulder as he climbs into his truck.
Slowly, I pivot and make my way back to my car. Inside, I start the engine and notice that Zach hasn’t driven away, his truck idling, lights on in front of mine. Once I pull out onto the road, in my rearview mirror I see him pulling out seconds behind me.
The fact that he waited to make sure I was safely on my way causes tears to sting the backs of my eyes. I think back to how I tore into him that day in my room weeks ago. How I ignored him, castigated him to April and Rebecca for something I now know he hadn’t done. I’d consider myself a giant if I say I feel all of two feet tall.
Now he’s doesn’t want anything to do with me, not that I blame him. I messed up, I messed up.
Our flight to Paris is only two days away. Where once I told myself I didn’t care that he was coming because I’d simply ignore him, now I don’t want this distance between us to continue. Our situation now is worse than before. In high school we’d never had a friendship—no matter how tentative and new—so there was nothing to lose back then.
More than anything, I’d like us to get back to where we were in that first month of school. Before I screwed things up.
That night, it’s hard to sleep as I turn the facts over again and again in my head. The Zach from high school, the boy I thought I had pegged pretty well is not the guy who fixed my tire. He’s more like the guy I got to know over the weeks before our fight. Somehow my wires got crossed and even though I don’t know who started the new rumor—and may never know—one thing is for sure, Zach isn’t the one.
I finally fall into a fitful sleep in the early hours of the morning knowing somehow, someway, I have to make it right.
When sleep finally comes, it must really take me out because the next morning I wake to the glare of the autumn sun blaring through the window. I become aware of two things right away—it’s later than I usually wake up and a miracle has occurred, April is already up.
Dragging my still-weary body up into a sitting position while rubbing sleep from my eyes, I blink owlishly over at her.
“Why are you up so early? It’s only—” I glance at the digital clock on my bookshelf “—eight o’clock.” It’s Friday and neither of us have Friday classes. And as it’s the Friday before break, the campus is emptying fast and will probably be deserted by tonight.
“I decided to drive down to Manhattan today instead of tomorrow. Tori’s free this weekend and she wants to hang out, ya know, just us girls.” April turns from her closet and flashes me a smile, clearly excited at the prospect of spending some girl time with her older sister.
Her suitcase is open on the bed already half-filled. She takes another armful of clothes and places them inside.
Curling my legs under me, I sit and watch her as she packs. “Why did you ask Zach to come last night?” I’m not mad at her—at least not anymore—I just want to know if she was deliberately trying to throw me and Zach together.
In the midst of closing her drawer, April looks over her shoulder at me. “Because Troy wasn’t home and he was there. Plus, I knew he’d do it and not make up some dumb excuse to get out of helping a damsel in distress like some other weak-ass guys would’ve.”
“I’m not mad, it was just really awkward. You know, April, I don’t think he—”
“Listen, Liv, I think there’s something you should know,” she breaks in, turning abruptly to face me, her favorite cashmere sweater in her hand. “I talked to Troy last night and—God, he will kill me if he finds out I told you, so you have to promise not to say a word.”
More than a little curious, she extracts a promise of silence from me.
“Zach wasn’t the one who started the rumor. It was some guy named Craig who goes to Purdue. He’s on their football team and apparently he started shooting his mouth off during some pre-game thing they had at one of the other player’s apartment. Zach actually told him off for talking crap about you. But you can’t say anything to anyone. Zach made Troy promise after you accused him of starting it.”
Craig? My mind draws a blank at his name. It takes another couple seconds before the stocky image of Craig Milton forms in my head. Tall with dirty-blond hair and deep-set dark-brown eyes, Craig had made a minor nuisance of himself in junior and senior year. He’d asked me out at least once every few months knowing full well I was dating Jeff. But my refusal did nothing to dampen his resolve. But he’d been flirtatious and harmless, or so I’d thought. This little tidbit threw him into a whole new light—in that of a complete and utter jerk!
“After last night, I knew Zach hadn’t done it,” I confess softly. “I was so wrong.”
April gives me one of those chagrined half smiles, her eyes filled with sympathy. “Yeah, so wrong as in you really fucked this one up. I’d hate to be you right now because you’re going to have to do some major groveling.”
Upon closer inspection, she doesn’t appear as sympathetic as I’d originally thought. “Thanks for the heartfelt words of sympathy,” I say, making no attempt to tamp down the sarcasm.
“Hey, remember, I was the one who told you to ask him first. You know what they say about assuming. But remember, you can’t act like you know what really went down, capisce?” she asks, going all Godfather on me, arms akimbo, brows raised.
Of course she’s right, I see some major groveling in my future. My parents raised me and my brother to own our mistakes and to rectify them when possible.
“Oh don’t look so glum. Tomorrow you’ll be stuck on the same plane for, what, seven, eight hours? It’s not like he can avoid you at fifty thousand feet in the air, right?”
Why doesn’t April’s bright side look so bright from where I’m standing?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
OLIVIA
The following morning, after spending the previous day packing and hanging out with Rebecca in her room, we take the shuttle bus from the school parking lot
to Buffalo. Zach isn’t on it and I start wondering if maybe he’s not coming after all. But mademoiselle Dubois mentions that we’d be meeting three members of the traveling party at the airport. Zach, I figure, is one of them.
At the airport, after we’ve checked our bags and gone through a rigorous security check, we all trek to our gate, where we scatter around the waiting area, most of my classmates pulling out their tablets, cell phones and whatnots to await boarding call.
Rebecca and I find two seats near the door, plop our carry-ons on the floor and our purses in our laps. I look around. Still no Zach.
That sinking feeling in my gut returns. I want him to come so bad. I need to apologize, need to get this off my chest.
“Liv, there he is,” Rebecca whispers out of the side of her mouth as she directs her attention straight ahead.
Instantly, my gaze lifts from my cell where I’m sending a text to April, letting her know I’m at the airport. I see Zach, along with Bill and Mike, approaching the gate area. Our eyes meet. The smile I send him is all nerves.
He tips his chin toward me but doesn’t pause in his conversation with the other guys, just breezes right by us and takes a seat toward the back. I have to force myself not to turn to look at him.
“Don’t worry, he’ll come around,” Rebecca assures me. I’m not sure why she’s so confident about that.
I told her about him helping me change my tire and about who really started the rumor after swearing her to secrecy not to breathe a word of it to anyone. Although I’m not sure why it’s such a big secret. If I were Zach, I’d want me to know just how wrong I’d been.
“I didn’t think he looked the type. He looks too—too mature for stuff like that.” Rebecca didn’t say it in that I-told-you-so way April had but it’s still a topic I’m particularly sensitive about so any mention of it stings.
I give a heavy sigh and think about what the next six days are going to be like. I need to get the apology out of the way so I can really enjoy this trip. If not, it’s going to do nothing but dog my every step, suck out so much of the excitement of Paris for me.
When in Paris... (Language of Love) Page 14
