I turned and looked along the hallway he’d just walked down. Brady took his coffee without. He’d brought the coffee specially for me, remembering how I take it.
Making me hate him even more.
Destination: Stop & Shop
Saturday morning finally arrived. Emmie had been non-committal as to whether she was going to come by the fundraiser and I was still conflicted about having her there in such close quarters with Dave and I, so I didn’t ask her about her plans. Thankfully, she’d disappeared after breakfast, leaving me to return to the dorm room and get ready on my own, thus avoiding more potentially awkward conversations about the day. Maybe I was over-thinking it, but I still had months to go as Emmie’s roommate and another whole year after that at this school, so really didn’t want to ruin things. Plus, I liked her—she wasn’t just my roommate, she was my friend—so the last thing I wanted to do was screw her over, as Dave put it.
I put on a Rosewood t-shirt and my best jeans; we were allowed to be out of uniform for the event, but I’d decided that wearing clothes with the school name on it was a great way to show our support of the community—something I was sure the dean would appreciate. I threw my hair up into a ponytail but did put on a bit more makeup than usual since we’d be off campus. I tried to pretend to myself that it was because we’d be out in public and not because I wanted to look good for a certain Westwood guy who’d already said he was into me anyway, but who was waiting until after Thanksgiving before we could go out. I wasn’t convinced of my own lie. Why even bother? I said to my reflection as I put on some lip gloss. You’re obviously into him. You just need to hang on a few weeks. With a sigh, I dropped the lip gloss into my purse and gave myself one last once-over before leaving the dorm room.
I had managed to recruit a few more students to come with us including Chelly’s roommate Naomi and a couple of girls I knew from the equestrian team, and the plan was to meet down in the first floor foyer to wait for the bus to pick us up to take us into town. I made sure I was the first one down there about ten minutes early, welcoming and thanking the other girls for giving up their Saturday to volunteer for the food drive.
Chelly came down the stairs last, also wearing a Rosewood shirt, but with one marked difference.
“Is that infant-sized?” I asked, astounded that she had the guts to wear what was basically a painted-on shirt.
She looked down at her chest and then back up at me. “What? Too much?”
“Uh, the opposite. Unless you’re talking about your breasts and not the size of the shirt.”
She gave me a look. “It’s a fundraiser.” Like that was a good explanation.
“It’s a food drive. Not a banner ad for creepers.”
“So exploiting sexy firefighters is okay, but a tight t-shirt isn’t?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“I’m so glad you understand. Go change your shirt. I’m not getting in trouble with the dean because you developed over the summer.”
“Two summers,” she said with a smirk. “This is my freshman year shirt.”
“Worse. Go change.” I put my hands on her shoulders and turned her around, worried that she wasn’t going to budge. After a second, she huffed and stomped away and up the stairs.
Thank God.
“You know, exploiting firefighters isn’t right, either,” said Naomi, who I’d barely noticed but had come down with Chelly.
Maybe it was that the day had barely started and I’d already had to deal with Chelly, or maybe it was because I knew I was going to be seeing Dave (and Jared) shortly and it was going to be way weird, but I had no patience for Naomi and her agendas today. “Neither is starving, so we’re doing something about that and holding a food drive so people can have a Thanksgiving dinner. If you don’t like it, stay here in your pretty glass house and figure out how to save the world all on your own.” Whoa, where did that come from? I wondered suddenly.
“Glass house?”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “You think I didn’t see you drooling over the cute guys in that movie we watched last week? You’re just as hormonal as the rest of us, so keep your holier than thou crap to yourself. And I didn’t tell anyone else about the firefighters, so it’s not like everyone here is helping out for that reason.” Although maybe if I had mentioned it, I would have gotten some more volunteers.
“Well, I, but...” she stammered until I held my hand up.
“Save it. Not interested,” I said and turned my back on her in time to see Mr. Stratton walking down the hall toward us. A hush fell in the foyer as the rest of the girls stopped talking and turned as one to watch him approach in his casual clothes—something I’d never seen before.
Teachers should never look that good in jeans and a golf shirt; there should be a law against it.
“Good morning, girls,” Mr. Stratton said, oblivious to the sudden estrogen surge in the building.
“Hi Mr. Stratton,” I said, because he had walked right up to me, which, for a half a second was extremely thrilling until I realized I was running the event. Right. At least I didn’t giggle and toss my hair like so many of the other girls, half of whom weren’t even coming to the food drive but who had materialized from who knows where and were milling around.
“So I guess I’m your chauffeur,” he said, smiling.
“What?”
He shrugged. “The dean was going to drive and wanted to be at the event, but it turns out she wasn’t available, so I’m driving the bus.”
Huh.“ That’s great. We’re just waiting for Chelly and then we can go.”
He nodded. “I’m ready when you are.”
I may as well use this new information to my advantage, I thought. I turned to the crowd of girls and started speaking, raising my voice over the murmurs and whispers. “Okay, everyone, Mr. Stratton is driving the bus into town and will be our chaperone for the food drive, so let’s head outside. And if anyone hasn’t signed out for the day yet, come see me and I’ll add you to the list before we go; we can always use more helpers.”
Suddenly, my list of volunteers got quite a bit longer and I hadn’t even had to mention the firefighters.
~ ♥ ~
The Westwood guys were coming on their own, so I texted Dave once we were on the bus to let him know we were on our way. He texted back that they were about to leave their campus and that they’d meet us at the grocery store.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous about seeing him, but I tried to ignore that and focus on the day ahead. I had a job to do to make sure we had a successful event and that meant putting my own stuff on the back burner.
Right.
But I did manage to relax a bit on the bus, revising the list of volunteers and their duties and listening to the other girls whisper excitedly about the firefighters (because Chelly had opened her mouth) and of course, the Westwood guys we’d be able to hang out with. Not to mention our teacher chaperone, though no one mentioned him by name, just in case he had bionic hearing from the front of the bus.
Finally we pulled into the grocery store parking lot and I hurried to the front of the bus so I could deliver everyone’s assignments before they all scattered.
I’d come up with the idea to do a barbecue to raise cash along with asking people to donate pantry goods. I’d called the fire chief earlier in the week and he’d said they’d be happy to supply the grill (since they were right next door) and the guys to cook, so we needed some girls to sell sodas and hot dogs along with those soliciting for canned goods from the customers at the grocery store. I’d fill in any gaps with Westwood boys, since I had no idea how many were coming and other than Dave and Jared, I wasn’t entirely sure I could count on them not to goof off; there was a good chance any of the guys could have volunteered just to hang out with the girls.
I looked around the parking lot and saw Dave getting out of the driver’s side of an SUV.
Jared unfolded himself from the passenger seat and a couple of guys whose names I didn’t remember got o
ut of the back. They spotted us right away (the bus was probably a good tipoff) and walked toward us, my heart kicking into sprint mode as the two boys walked side-by-side, both smiling at me, but in such different ways.
I suddenly wanted to turn and run away as this all got so intensely real. As I looked at Dave, I wanted to forget the Thanksgiving plan, pull him into somewhere private and kiss him and find out if he really was the amazing kisser Emmie’d said he was (which made me feel all kinds of guilty as I thought it). But then there was Jared and after what I’d read in his manuscript, I wanted to run up to him and throw my arms around him and protect him from the world. But that was stupid, because the parts of his life I was reading about were long over and he was a grown man now, capable of protecting himself from his poisonous past. For some reason, though, that didn’t diminish my mama bear urges.
I looked between them, so conflicted by these two guys who weren’t just roommates, but friends. Maybe even best friends. And if that didn’t make it even more awkward...
“Hey,” Jared said, greeting me first. He stepped close and I was sure he was going to hug me, but he stopped short and then awkwardly glanced at Dave and backed up half a step, like he’d reconsidered at the last minute.
Awesome, Jared, make it even more awkward, I thought. Of course he’d heard my thoughts and gave me an apologetic shrug.
“Hi,” Dave said, his eyes intense on mine and I wondered if he completely missed Jared’s aborted move.
Stop over-thinking all this, Brooklyn, I told myself. Just take the guys to their posts. “You guys can start inside the store. They said we could set up a table by the canned soup aisle to maybe get people to buy an extra can or two to donate.”
“Soup for Thanksgiving?” Dave said. “I can think of a lot of things I’d like for Thanksgiving, but soup is not one of them.”
His meaning wasn’t lost on me, but I couldn’t deal with that right now. “This way,” I said, turning away from him and Jared (and the other two guys) so they wouldn’t see me take an anxious breath. As I did I almost ran into Chelly, making me realize I’d completely forgotten the girls. “Sorry,” I muttered, but the other girls were already across the parking lot and turning the corner toward the grocery store’s front doors.
“So this is interesting,” Chelly said practically in my ear.
I glanced at her and it was obvious she’d seen the look in Dave’s eyes. Maybe even the one I’d returned. Crap. “Please don’t say anything.”
She looked at me sideways. “What’s going on?” she mouthed.
“Nothing.” Yet.
She stared at me for several long moments, putting me into a panic because the guys were right there. Finally, she nodded. “Take me to these hot firefighters I was promised,” she said. “Maybe they’ll show me their pumpers and hoses.”
~ ♥ ~
“Tell me those are not them,” Chelly hissed in my ear as we turned the corner out of the parking lot. “Because if they are, I would like my money back.”
“What money?” I gave her a look, but followed her gaze to the front of the store where five guys, no, five men and one woman were standing in crisp light blue shirts and navy pants, setting up tables as the other Rosewood girls watched.
“Go on in and get set up,” I said to the guys who nodded and disappeared into the store.
Ignoring Chelly’s muttered curses, I cut through the rest of the crowd and stepped up to the people in uniform. “Hi, I’m Brooklyn Prescott.”
As one, they turned and I was able to confirm that these were our firefighter partners by the crests sewn onto their shirts. They all seemed fit, so that wasn’t Chelly’s issue, but if I had to guess, the only one of them under like fifty was the woman.
The oldest looking one, with pure white hair and a bit of a paunch, stuck his hand out toward me. “Great to meet you, Brooklyn, I’m Chief Sid Carver.”
I put my hand in his and shook it before we did our introductions around our respective groups. Chelly managed a smile and after a couple minutes of us chatting about things like burgers and sodas and how a new shift from the firehouse would be coming in an hour or so, she stopped looking like she was going to kill me in my sleep.
I was about to go inside to buy some supplies for the barbecue when two more guys in uniform came out of the store, loaded down with bags of food.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Chelly murmured from behind my right shoulder.
I chuckled. “You’re awful,” I said quietly, but I had to agree. These two guys were what we’d been hoping for: young and cut with sculpted faces and broad shoulders. And judging by the looks they got from a couple of the ladies going into the store, we weren’t the only ones appreciating the view. I had a suddenly insane thought that if I took some pictures of the guys with my phone, I could make a calendar to make even more money for the food bank. I smiled at my sudden philanthropic generosity.
“You’re forgiven,” Chelly said suddenly and then practically sprinted to help the guys unload their burdens onto the tables.
I rolled my eyes, but she’d already forgotten me.
Break Time
Two hours or so later, the food drive was running like a well-oiled machine. Despite it being a bit cool out, we had sold a ton of hot dogs, hamburgers and sodas outside the store and I kept getting update texts from Dave that the guys were collecting plenty of pantry donations inside the store. I had a feeling he wanted me to come inside to touch base with them in person, but keeping my distance felt like a good strategy.
Anyway, I’d been working hard schmoozing extra donations out of people as I sold them their lunch outside and felt like that was where I should be, considering I was running the event. I wasn’t sure how much we’d collected so far, but the chief’s helmet was almost full of bills and rattled heavily at the bottom, so we were definitely doing well. It felt good to know we were helping make a difference in some people’s lives for Thanksgiving and I understood why Emmie liked doing stuff like this. On a personal level, I was sort of glad she hadn’t come with us, but I was still kind of surprised she hadn’t and wondered what she was up to; she hadn’t even texted me, so I had no idea. I just hoped she wasn’t mad about something.
I’d given the first batch of girls a half hour for their own lunch break and as I looked up from the man I was handing a soda to, I saw them returning right on time. There were still a bunch of other girls to go first, though, so I stayed behind the table, resigned to take the last lunch shift.
“Why don’t you take a break,” Mr. Stratton said from beside me. He had disappeared soon after we’d arrived at the store, saying he had some errands to run, but I guess he was done with whatever it was, because there he was, smiling and looking slightly rumpled, which was really, really a bad thing for us students.
Chelly hummed out an almost inaudible sigh.
“What?” I said to Mr. Stratton, trying to get my brain back online.
“You look hungry and a little bit frazzled. Have you had a break yet?” he asked, looking from me to Chelly and back again.
“No,” Chelly said with a loud cluck of her tongue and a big eye-roll. “Brooklyn’s the worst boss ever. She’s been working us like dogs and hasn’t even let me have a sip of water.”
I looked pointedly at the open can of soda in her hand. “Really?”
She blinked back at me. “It’s not water, is it?”
Mr. Stratton laughed and came around to the back of the table, waving us away while the other girls who had returned got themselves settled back in. “Go on, we’ll manage without you.” He introduced himself to the firefighters and started chatting with them like he’d been there the whole time.
“Okay, so I guess it’s break time,” I said to Chelly as we walked away from the grocery store.
“Where to?” she asked, pulling out her phone and scrolling through the screen.
I shrugged. “I’m not all that familiar with the town.” I looked up the street to see if there was s
omewhere we could get a coffee and saw the sign for The Belvedere Gallery across the street and just a couple of doors down from where we were. “What time is Celia’s luncheon?”
She glanced up. “One o’clock.”
I glanced at my own phone, deliberately ignoring Dave’s most recent text and looking at the time. “That’s like an hour from now. Do you think we can go say hi?”
Chelly nodded “Yep, let’s go.”
~ ♥ ~
The smell hit me first: the salty tang of fresh seafood. My mouth watered, but I had to remind my stomach that it would get something off the grill back at the grocery store; we weren’t here to eat.
The kitchen looked and sounded like chaos when we snuck past the gallery set up as a dining room to say hi to our friend (after stopping to use the fancy bathrooms that were so much nicer than the ones in the grocery store). It didn’t take long to find Celia once we were in the kitchen; she was at one of the big counters, placing seafood onto a giant platter.
“Whoa,” I said as we approached, not over the food itself, but over how it was displayed. Celia was hunched over, her face intent as she arranged the seafood into a mermaid, the shrimp overlapping and making up the scales of her tail and the lobster claws making up a sunset above. Her hair was made of seaweed salad and the rocks she was ‘sitting on’ were oysters and her bikini top was made up of two huge scallop shells. It was one of the most spectacular things I’d ever seen—certainly the most spectacular thing I’d ever seen done with food—and I would hate to see it at the end of the luncheon, when half of her body had been consumed.
“That looks amazing,” Chelly said, speaking for both of us. “You’re quite the artist!”
Celia looked up, startling as she noticed us for the first time. She smiled. “Oh hey. Thanks,” she said, returning to her task. “How’s the fundraiser going?”
“Really good,” I said. “We’ve sold a ton of food off the grill and the guys are collecting pantry stuff. You look really busy, though, so we’ll get out of your hair. We just wanted to say hi.”
Reading Between the Lines Page 10
