Dating the It Guy

by Krysten Lindsay Hager

  “What do you think?” I asked, trying Margaux’s famous lip smack.

  He shrugged and said it was nice. I bought it, and then made him wait while I tried on some jeans. He sat in a chair next to the dressing rooms, looking bored. I started to feel bad, so I suggested we stop for lattes at Beanie Weanies. There were a lot of people there, so I told him to get a table, and I’d order for us. I asked the guy behind the counter for extra soy whipped cream and tried doing Margaux’s lip smack. I apparently nailed it because I got my extra whipped topping, and he didn’t even charge me for the white chocolate flavoring I had in my latte. I brought the drinks over to the chairs Brendon had saved for us.

  “What were you doing?” Brendon asked, glaring at me.

  “What?”

  “The way you were acting with the guy behind the counter.”

  I acted like I didn’t know what he meant.

  “I couldn’t hear what you were saying, but it sure seemed like you were flirting with him,” he said.

  “I wasn’t, but I guess he was kinda flirting with me,” I said. Margaux always acted like she couldn’t help she was irresistible.

  Brendon stood up and said he wanted to go, but I tugged on his arm and said I wanted to finish my coffee first. He sat back down, but he barely said two words to me. I tried asking him questions, but he kept giving me one-word answers. Finally, I gave up and we left. The whole playing-hard-to-get thing was supposed to make him like me more and give me control over the relationship since I had always felt like he was in control before. At least it was how it worked when Margaux did it. The guys would always call her right after they dropped her off. Of course, she was too busy to take the call, but they still called all the same. Only Brendon didn’t call me at night, and he barely spoke to me in the hall the next day. I asked Margaux what I did wrong, and she blew it off.

  “It’s a typical guy thing. You take a little control away, and they’ve gotta go all out and show you they’ve still got the power. It’s classic,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  Later, I told Kylie I had followed Margaux’s advice, and now Brendon was acting weird. She asked if anything happened at the movies. I didn’t tell her about Brendon not getting into his dad’s old school since he didn’t want anyone to know.

  “I would just ask him what’s up,” she said. “But I wouldn’t take Margaux’s advice. I mean, has she ever had a relationship which has lasted longer than her attention span?”

  Kylie’s advice made more sense, and at least she and Zach had been going out for a while. I was going to write him a note, but Margaux told me not to put stuff in writing. I decided I would leave the math lab a little early to make sure I caught up with him after his last class. However, Tyrell had other ideas.

  “The math teacher suggested I work with you to help you get caught up,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s something you wanna do, but I could stay after the lab’s over, and we could go over your homework.”

  I did need the extra help in math, so I stayed. I saw Brendon standing outside the lab, and I went to tell him that I needed to work with Tyrell a little longer.

  “I can call my mom for a ride if you have to go,” I said.

  “Fine, whatever,” he said, walking away.

  I had to fight to concentrate on what Tyrell was showing me. We worked for a half-hour, and he asked if I had a ride home.

  “I’ll call my mom,” I said.

  “I can give you a ride home if you want.”

  We were walking out to his car when we saw Brendon and Sam sitting on a bench. I knew they were talking about me because Sam nudged Brendon when he saw me.

  “Do you want me to wait for you?” Tyrell asked, and I shook my head.

  “No, but thanks for helping me today.”

  “No problem. I needed the extra tutoring points for student council anyway,” he said.

  I sat down, and Sam got up and made some excuse to leave. I asked Brendon if everything was okay, and he shrugged. I tried to put myself in my Margaux persona, but I figured her solution would be to go after Sam and flirt with him to make Brendon jealous, which was not the right thing to do at the moment. Maybe I needed to drop the whole Margaux thing. It was obvious Brendon was upset about something, so I asked him if he wanted to talk.

  “Let’s go sit in your car. It’s freezing out here,” I said.

  He switched on the heat in the car, and I rubbed my hands together as the windows started to fog up.

  “What’s going on with you?” he asked. “You’ve been acting weird lately.”

  “Me? You’re the one who blew me off in the hall this morning.”

  He started to say something else when somebody knocked on his window. He rolled it down. “What?”

  “Can I get a ride home, man?” Sam said. “My car wouldn’t start.

  “Fine, get in,” Brendon said.

  Sam lived further out than me, so Brendon dropped me off first. I was hoping we’d get to talk, but at least he asked if I wanted to hang out after school tomorrow, so he couldn’t have been too mad at me.

  Margaux, Kylie, and I did a three-way call later to talk about the whole Brendon thing.

  “You know what? We should do the new Healthy Self thirty-day challenge,” Kylie said. “We’ll get fitter, healthier, and—”

  “You think I need to lose weight?” I asked.

  “No, it’s just part of the program. My mom ordered it, and I just thought you might want to do it,” she said. “By the way, did you hear Lauren got into Senator Agretti’s old school?”

  “Seriously? I wonder if she applied there because Brendon did,” I said.

  Margaux snorted. “Duh, of course. Seriously, she might as well just pee on him to mark her territory.”

  “Margaux, shut up,” Kylie said.

  “Whatever. Anyway, the important thing is if Brendon knew she was applying there,” Margaux said. “Em, do you think he knew?”

  I hoped Lauren was just trying to follow Brendon, but what if they had planned this whole thing while they were dating? What if he convinced her to apply there so they could go to college together, wear matching American flag sweaters with big scarves while drinking hot chocolate, and jump into leaf piles just like a preppy clothing catalog. At least now I didn’t have to worry about them reciting poetry to one another in South Bend, but still, what if they had made plans to go to school together?

  “Don’t worry about it,” Kylie said. “She was probably trying to follow him—like she always does. She’s so pathetic.”

  Kylie was trying to make me feel better, but Lauren was far from pathetic. After all, she was pretty much the “Most Likely to Succeed” poster girl. While she was out overachieving and saving the world without messing up her perfect, bouncy hair, I was trying to get through each day. I tried to push away the image of Lauren and Brendon holding hands and drinking hot chocolate under a stadium blanket, but of course, I had to go and ask him about it the next day. We were sitting in the bookstore café when I asked him if he knew she had applied to the same school as him.

  “Huh? Yeah, I think she mentioned it,” he said as he flipped through a news magazine.

  “Did you know she got in?”

  He glanced up for a second, and then shook his head. I couldn’t read his expression. Was he thinking, “Crap, I dumped the wrong one,” or “Well, it sucks Lauren got in, and I didn’t,” or maybe “Will she shut up so I can read this article?”

  He just stared at me. “I’m getting a muffin. You want anything?”

  I wanted a chai latte, but he got up before I could answer. I followed him in line as he picked up a blueberry fat-free muffin.

  “You know, they should call those things frosting-less cupcakes because they’re not any healthier—”

  “Can I have one day without a food lecture? Please?” he said.

  “Fine.” I shoved a five-dollar bill at him. “I want a chai latte.”

  He handed me the money when he brought my drink over to th
e table. I thought he’d apologize for ripping my head off, but he didn’t say anything. He just stared at his magazine. Brendon had been different ever since he found out he wasn’t going to his dad’s alma mater. I thought about asking if he wanted to do something this weekend, but I didn’t want to get shot down. What happened to the guy who used to e-mail me the weather report every night?

  “Your horoscope says you shouldn’t overspend this weekend,” he said.

  “You read my horoscope?” I asked.

  “Every day,” he said.

  “Even when we weren’t together?”

  He nodded,

  “I read yours, too.”

  “Did you read Derrick’s as well?” he asked.

  “Who? Oh, Darren? No. Why?” I asked, trying to hide a smile. He had been jealous of Darren.

  He shrugged. “I just thought since you started hanging out with him two minutes after we had a fight, maybe you thought he was your soul mate. You were supposed to find your soul mate in your number five year, weren’t you?” he asked. “So did you?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say, and I was afraid to set him off, so I said I thought he didn’t believe in that kind of stuff. He started to answer when Margaux came over with my cousin. I was surprised she was still with Austin.

  “Can we sit with you guys?” she asked. “Austin, bring over two chairs and get me a gingerbread latte and a lemon bar, but not the kind that has the crumbly junk on top of it. I only like the ones with powdered sugar on top.”

  “So what’s up? Ooh, horoscopes,” she said, pulling the paper out of Brendon’s hands. “Mine says to utilize this opportunity to streamline your position. What’s Austin’s sign, Em?”

  I remembered going to a birthday party for either him or his brother a million years ago, and I thought I had been wearing a sundress at the time, so I guessed it was some time in the summer.

  “So like a Cancer or Leo?” she asked. “I hope he’s a Leo, I’d hate to have some moody guy dragging me down.”

  Brendon stood up. “I need to make a call.”

  “Margaux, Brendon’s a Cancer,” I said when he left.

  “I know, and from the look on your face when I walked in, the moody guy was bringing you down. So what’s his problem? Did he get sparkling water on his sweater label?” she asked, rolling her eyes.

  “No, he’s just—”

  “Is this the kind of lemon bar you wanted?” Austin asked, coming over. She nodded and asked him what his sign was. “Leo.”

  “Are Leos and Aries compatible?” she asked. I nodded. Maybe it explained why he was still in the picture. On the other hand, Cancers and Leos, Brendon and my signs, weren’t exactly destined to be together…even if sometimes I felt like we were.

  “I am so dreading winter break,” she said. “We have to go to my Aunt Patti and Uncle Randolph’s for Christmas Eve, and Patti wears the same Santa Claus sweater every stinking year. It’s like she thinks it won’t be Christmas for the rest of us if she doesn’t have it on.”

  “Didn’t she give you the design-your-own-sweatshirt kit one year?” I asked.

  “Mm-hmm. You see what I’m dealing with. Plus, my uncle makes the same stupid joke each year about asking Santa for a sports car. Seriously, I could record my whole conversation before I go in because they ask the same crap about school, and then Randolph goes on about the ‘importance of education.’ What he should do is tell me to stay in school so I don’t end up like him. Kidding.”

  My mouth dropped open, and I glanced over at my cousin to see his reaction, but he was smiling at her. “You crack me up,” he said.

  She blushed and fed him a bite of her lemon bar. What was this?

  Brendon came back to the table looking madder than before. “Everything okay?” I asked. He nodded. “Well, we better get going so you don’t miss your meeting. See you guys later.”

  I heard the song they played at the funeral home as we walked out of the bookstore. I hoped it was a sign from Grandma things were going to be okay. Brendon opened the car door for me.

  “Why did you lie and say I had a meeting?” he asked.

  “Well, Margaux can be a lot to handle, and I was getting strong let’s-get-out-of-here vibes from your direction,” I said. “Did I read that right?”

  “You always do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, but in the past it’s felt like you could read my mind. You just seem to understand me when no one’s ever been able to get what I’m dealing with being in my family. And what’s even weirder is…well, I’m sorta able to do it with you,” he said. “I knew something was wrong with your grandma before you told me about the stroke. It’s why I was at your locker that day. I had a feeling and—”

  “Wait, back up. What do you mean?”

  “Even before we started going out I’d get these feelings about you. I saw you during the school year last year, and I had this feeling we were supposed to, I dunno, be together. So when I walked into our summer class, I knew it was meant to be, and I wasn’t surprised at all when Mrs. Rae had us working together. Then I’d have these dreams about you—I’m weirding you out, aren’t I?”

  I shook my head. “No, I mean, maybe a little, but keep going. I want to hear this.”

  “I’d know when I was supposed to call you, and I’d always seem to get this feeling when you needed me. At first, I thought it was a coincidence, but there was too much going on. It threw me the day the numerology book said that thing about the soul mates,” he said. “I never told you this, but the day I came to your house to look at your computer, my mom asked me where I was going and when I told her she said, ‘She must be your soul mate if you’re leaving the house for her during the basketball playoffs.’”

  “You missed a playoff game to help me?”

  “Yup, but once we got to know each other better—I got a little scared by how well you seemed to get me. Most people try to imagine what my life must be like or act like they get it, but you seemed to see past all the stuff people assume and actually got what I was dealing with. For the first time I felt like someone understood me and what I was going through—from my family’s expectations, to my grandpa being sick, and the whole pressure to be someone or something I’m not.”

  “You haven’t had other people you could talk to?”

  “Nope. If I complain in the slightest they act like I’m ungrateful. I don’t get to be myself fully because, well, like you said, there’s a five-year plan already set up for me,” he said.

  “Your dad is a nice guy though—he wouldn’t do all that stuff to help other people if he wasn’t. I think he’d listen to you if you showed him how important journalism is to you.”

  Brendon ran his fingers through his hair. “I think I am going to talk to him about it. But, Em, something else has been bothering me—other than the college admissions people telling me I’m a big, fat, stinking loser.”

  “You’re not a loser.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve felt like one with the hot and cold thing you’ve been running on me. It’s like we’re back together—oh no, we’re not. Every time I felt like we were getting close again, you’d pull back.”

  I glanced down at my hands and then saw my bracelets. It hit me. Cheryl was right about the way I hide behind New Age stuff instead of dealing with things head on, and I realized I had been holding back with Brendon because of all the other things going on in my life. And maybe Kylie was right—I didn’t feel good enough for Brendon, so I didn’t share my real feelings.

  “You know, I don’t think we talked about how I felt when you blew me off the night of the reading and then the whole Lauren thing—it hurt me you went to the dance with her.”

  “But I thought it was pretty obvious homecoming night who I wanted to be with when I kissed you at the after party,” he said.

  I shifted. “Honestly, I didn’t know what the kiss was about. I think the whole thing with you and Lauren was always on my mind. Your relationship with her wa
s a lot…well, it was much more serious than I ever got with a guy, and I didn’t know if she had some sort of hold over you because of it.”

  “Yeah, we did date for a while,” he said. “But that was history.”

  “And that’s what my ex said, and then he cheated on me with the last girl he dated.”

  “But that was him, not me.”

  “Same situation.”

  “How?”

  I swallowed. “Well, John’s ex was…well, they had slept together, and when I told him I wasn’t ready for anything like that, he said it was fine, but he went back to her because…well, he knew she’d be okay with it.”

  Brendon stared at me, but didn’t say anything.

  “I pretty much figured you and Lauren had the same kind of relationship,” I said.

  “I’m not going to lie to you—we did. But it also complicated everything. She got weird afterwards. I’m not saying I wasn’t taking it seriously, but she got super codependent, like it was assumed we’d go to the same college and law school and get married. That part of the relationship put all this pressure on us. I felt guilty when I realized I couldn’t be with her anymore—like I had to stay with her, and I think it’s why we stayed together for so long. And there was this one time last year when I told her we needed to take a step back. It was because she started talking about if we should get married while we were in law school or wait until we graduated. It was the same day she yelled at me for forgetting our six-month anniversary, which I didn’t even know was a thing. And when I say yelled, I mean she let me have it.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, and I said we were moving too fast for me, and she said, ‘What did you think it meant when we slept together?’ I spent the whole night apologizing and feeling like I didn’t have the right to break it off with her.”