Keeping the Distance (I Heart Iloilo Book 1)

by Clarisse David

  “Why don’t you tell your father you’re going out with Lance so you can stop hiding?” It was so like Cam to get right to the heart of things.

  Cam had a point. Why didn’t she tell her father about Lance? The answer was simple and complicated at the same time. Yes, she was afraid of her father and how he would react, but that was only the tip of the iceberg.

  “Serious conversation?”

  She and Cam looked up at the same time and found Hunter staring down at them. He held a salted caramel ice cream cone in one hand. Cam’s eyes darted to Melissa as if silently asking, Is this supposed to be awkward?

  Melissa raised her eyebrows. It’s supposed to be, but it’s not.

  And it was the truth. Hunter was now The Guy She Grew Up With instead of simply The Guy. She had no idea how it happened, but all the signs of a Hunter Sighting now refused to make an appearance. As proof, she aimed a smile in his direction.

  “Kind of,” Melissa said, edging to the edge of her seat to give Hunter space to sit down. “We could probably use your expert opinion.”

  He looked a little tired today, like he’d stayed up late taking care of his little sister or practicing with his band. His trademark drumsticks were nowhere to be found. Maybe it was just her and the way she saw him. Without even thinking twice about it, he plopped down beside her, his grip never loosening on his ice cream cone.

  “So, what serious matters are we discussing today?” His tongue swirled around the top of the cone and swept back into his mouth.

  Across the table, Cam stared at him as if he’d raised his shirt and flashed a perfect six-pack. Still staring at Hunter, she said, “I totally get it now.”

  “I’m sorry?” Hunter ripped his eyes away from his beloved ice cream cone for a second to gaze at Cam.

  “Why Mel liked you so much.” Cam waved a hand in Hunter’s general direction. “It’s the whole band boy thing. You look like you’re good with your hands, especially when you’re playing the drums. Even if there’s a huge chance you aren’t. And you eating that ice cream cone? It’s pretty tempting.”

  Some of Hunter’s ice cream must’ve gone down the wrong pipe, because he started choking on it. Eyes wide, he blinked at Cam, not knowing where to even begin. “First of all, I look like I’m good with my hands even if I’m probably not? How do you even know that? Also, tempting?”

  Melissa silently watched their interaction, feeling so blind for not seeing this all along. She and Hunter had never been right for each other, because he never managed to knock her off her feet the way Lance did. Come to think of it, she’d never come close to flustering him either. He was always so cool and collected around her.

  Cam, on the other hand, managed to make him choke on his ice cream in the span of ten seconds. How had she never seen this before?

  “Boys and flattery. It’s so easy to manipulate you.” Cam rolled her eyes and stuffed a potato chip in her mouth. “Now, let’s go back to the problem at hand. If you liked a girl, why wouldn’t you contact her for more than twenty-four hours?”

  “Maybe I’m busy,” Hunter said with a shrug. He returned his attention to his ice cream cone, but then all of a sudden, the situation dawned on him. “Wait, are we talking about that jock who picked Mel up by the vacant lot?”

  Melissa and Cam both nodded.

  Still licking his ice cream cone, Hunter proceeded to think. “I don’t know. Maybe he is busy, but since he looked like such a jackass, you should make him pay.”

  As if on cue, her phone finally buzzed with a message from Lance.

  What are you up to?

  After not hearing from him for more than a day, that was all she got? What are you up to? What did that even mean? She wanted to grab the end of her braid and tug at it in frustration. Maybe Hunter had a point. Unable to resist needling Lance a little bit, she angrily typed the words on her phone.

  Hanging out at 7-Eleven with Cam, she replied. And Hunter.

  ***

  “This isn’t funny,” Lance gritted the words out.

  Julianne laughed on the other end of the line. “You have to admit, it sort of is. I mean, will you ever learn, little brother?”

  “Oh, I think I’ve learned my lesson now.”

  Julianne laughed again. If he could reach into the phone and cover her mouth to shut her up, he would, but she was in another continent. The best thing he could do was pinch his nose with his thumb and pointer finger, willing the incoming headache away.

  But then, his sister’s tone turned serious. “What did I tell you before?”

  “Be honest. Don’t play games.” He sighed.

  “Good to hear you still remember.”

  Lance closed his eyes. He could almost picture Julianne nodding, her hair bouncing against her face. The thought that he no longer knew what color her hair was this week made his eyes fly open. “When are you coming home, by the way?”

  “Awww, you miss me? That’s so cute.”

  “Just trying to figure out when I should move out.”

  Before the conversation could get even more ridiculous, Lance extracted a promise from his sister to call soon and ended the conversation. He stood up from the bench he’d been fuming on for the past fifteen minutes, fist clenched and ready to hit something.

  Jace and his teammates were in the cafeteria merrily eating lunch. Common sense told him to walk over there and let their jokes and easy camaraderie defuse the tension threatening to swallow him whole. But he’d never been good at following common sense.

  His feet took him in the general direction of the library, the place where Melissa was currently hiding in an attempt to avoid him.

  Maybe this whole thing was his fault. He sure started it when he deliberately decided not to contact her. He wanted to see what would happen, see if she’d reach out first and show that she, you know, missed him. It wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

  In the end, he’d been the first to cave and reach out to her. Her response almost made his phone fly out of his hands. She’d been having a grand time not hearing from him. With Hunter. It took a thirty-minute lecture from Jace to stop him from rushing out of their video game marathon.

  So, he decided to play it cool, and they now hadn’t spoken to each other in three days.

  It was cool.

  It wasn’t driving him crazy.

  Not. At. All.

  Obviously, playing it cool was no longer an option.

  When he reached the library, he found Melissa sitting on one of the more secluded tables. Stacks of textbooks surrounded her, each one thicker and more boring than the one before it.

  Students whipped their heads up from their notes the second he walked inside, surprised to see him in this place. They all knew he spent lunch being obnoxious in the cafeteria with his friends.

  Lance cleared his throat. His hand reached up to tug the collar of his shirt away from his throat as if it was choking him.

  Ignoring the stares, he walked over to Melissa’s table. Her spine stiffened the second she sensed his presence, and her grip tightened on the gold pen he’d returned to her after they went to Sunny’s Beach Resort together. He pulled out a chair on the table right behind her and sat down, their backs to each other.

  He loudly cleared his throat.

  She refused to take the bait. It took all of his willpower not to turn around and flip the open notebook in front of her closed.

  “How long are you going to pretend I don’t exist?” Lance asked, his voice low so no one could hear them. He leaned back on his chair, so he could hear her answer.

  It took her all of two seconds. “For as long as I want to.”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Are you saying I did?” He could almost imagine her eyebrows rising. The venom in her voice told him he was in deep shit.

  “That wasn’t what I said at all,” he tried to backtrack.

  Melissa didn’t say anything, but he soon heard a thick textbook slam down on the table. The sound of a tex
tbook being flipped open with force followed.

  “You know, the book didn’t do anything wrong,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

  “You’re right.” Melissa’s voice was as low as his, but she couldn’t hide the anger coiling through every word. “The book doesn’t deserve to be manhandled like this. It didn’t ignore me, because it was too busy playing videogames with Jace.”

  Oh, shit.

  He had forgotten that Jace tagged him in a photo of the two of them with the caption: Gaming marathon with my bro. No distractions, just drinks. Too late. He wished he could pull out his phone and call Julianne again, ask for a way to get out of this minefield he’d walked right into.

  When it took him too long to respond, Melissa’s chair scraped against the floor. He heard her stand up and stomp over to the maze of bookshelves to their right.

  Should he or should he not follow her? He scratched the back of his neck as he mulled over the question. He could stand up and walk out of this library right now, forget about Melissa and the fact that she now had the power to hurt him. It would be so easy.

  Or he could stand up, follow her into the shelves, and trust that even if she had the power to hurt him, she wouldn’t.

  He told her once that he didn’t want to be the person who walked away when things got hard. It was time to keep his word.

  He found her hunched down on the floor between shelves full of moldy textbooks. Melissa hugged her knees, her lower lip trembling from the effort of trying not to cry. Lance clenched his hands into fists at the sight of her. He, no one else, had done this to her. It dawned on him that he had the power to hurt her, too.

  Lance slid down to the floor beside her, leaving a respectable distance between them in case someone walked by. Unable to stop himself anymore, he reached for her hand and laced his fingers through hers. He hoped he still had the right to do that.

  “This is going to make me sound like a complete dick, but I wanted to see if you were going to contact me first,” Lance finally said.

  She sniffed. “What do you mean?”

  “I guess I was testing you.” He had no idea how to continue. How could he possibly explain what he’d been like before she burst into his life and sucked him in like a vacuum? Before he had any idea what somebody really catching his attention was like? “I’m not used to liking someone more. You’ve heard the rumors about me. Some of them are actually true.”

  Melissa didn’t say anything for a heart-stopping minute. She stared down at their intertwined hands and sighed. “Hearing rumors and realizing they’re true are two completely different things.”

  “I can’t change who I was before you came along,” Lance said. “I want to, but I can’t. If you’ve changed your mind about me, you can say so.”

  It would hurt like hell, but she could say so.

  A tear rolled down the right side of her cheek. He brushed it away with his thumb. They stared at each other for what felt like a lifetime but must’ve only been a few seconds. Melissa blinked up at him as if fully taking him in for the first time, the real Lance clashing with the idea she’d built in her head during the past couple of weeks.

  “Cam was right.” A brittle smile took over her features.

  Lance didn’t know whether to feel relieved or worried. “About what?”

  “This. Us.” She motioned at the two of them. “She said going out with you wasn’t going to be easy.”

  “Does that mean you’ve changed your mind?”

  The blood in his veins turned ice-cold when she slipped her fingers out of his grasp. He should’ve known this was coming, should’ve known this was never going to—

  Melissa cupped his chin and turned his head until they were facing each other. She blinked up at him, lashes still wet from her tears. Once. Twice. “Let’s spend the weekend together, okay?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The teddy bear sat on the bottom of Melissa’s floral backpack, like a grenade awaiting its turn to wreak havoc on the world. She didn’t even know what possessed her to buy it for Lance in the first place.

  Well, she did, but she wasn’t admitting it out loud.

  At least, not anytime soon.

  The teddy bear caught her attention when she was at the mall with Cam, because it hugged a wooden cylinder with enough space for a secret message or two inside it. Giving it to Lance had seemed like a great idea at first. Now, it sounded stupid.

  “Any plans to tell me where we’re going?” Lance said when the car slowed to a stop underneath a red light.

  It was strange. She’d kissed him and could run her fingers through his messy hair every time she wanted, but the sight of him still had the power to scramble her brain.

  Melissa’s lips pulled up at the corners to form a secret smile. She shook her head and smoothed down the hem of the light blue skirt that fell inches above her knees.

  She’d carefully planned every detail of this day. From the white shirt with a peter pan collar she wore to the brochure she clutched in her right hand. Good thing she managed to hide it under the passenger seat before he noticed.

  “Give me something to work with here,” Lance prodded when she refused to say anything.

  His hands were firm and strong around the steering wheel, and suddenly, she remembered what Cam said about guys and their hands. Lance definitely looked skilled with his.

  Hoping her cheeks weren’t bright red, she pretended to sigh, like they were back in class and he was kicking the back of her chair again. “Martial arts.”

  “What?”

  “It’s your first clue.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her before he resumed driving again since the light had already changed. “I have a bad feeling about this, like you’re taking me to some secret warehouse so you could have your way with me.”

  “Comfy seats.”

  This time, he couldn’t stop himself from waggling his eyebrows at her. “Like I said, you clearly want to have your way with me.”

  “You’re impossible.”

  “I think you mean irresistible.”

  Instead of rolling her eyes at him like he expected, she surprised the both of them by saying, “That, too.”

  The grin that took over his face, bright and almost blinding, was worth the discomfort being so blunt caused her. He couldn’t hide it no matter how much he tried to play it cool.

  Before he could drive off in another direction, she pointed straight ahead where the road led to a bank with a tiny, little-known theater called Cinematheque across the street. She and Lance were going to the movies.

  Instead of fancy blockbusters like the cinemas at the mall, the place showed foreign films with subtitles and indie films from the local scene free of charge or for a small fee. There were only a few seats, ones that were purchased from an old theater that closed a long time ago. They couldn’t bring popcorn or sodas inside, so they could forgot about sharing butter popcorn in the dark.

  But it was the closest thing to a normal date Melissa could give Lance, considering all the hiding they had to do because she was so scared of telling her father about them.

  She had a feeling he was going to hate it as he jogged across the front of the car to open the passenger side door for her.

  “What is this place?” he asked, leading the way toward the entrance.

  Before they could step inside, Melissa grabbed his arm and dragged him underneath the awning of another bank next to the theater. She exhaled and faced him.

  “This place is called Cinematheque.” Melissa shoved the now-wrinkly brochure into his hands. “They’re having a Chinese film festival, and if we go in right now, we could get pretty great seats.”

  “Martial arts and comfy seats.” Lance stared down at the brochure listing the movies that were going to be shown in the next couple of hours, his expression unreadable. “I have to say I’m disappointed.”

  “If you’re not into it, we can go—”

  His gazed darted up to hers. “Don’t get me wrong.
I’m disappointed, because I really thought you were going to have your way with me. But”—he looked down at the brochure—“Bodyguards and Assassins is up next, and it sounds incredible. Where do I sign up?”

  Forgetting that they were in public and that word could get back to her father, Melissa jumped up and wrapped her arms around Lance’s neck with a loud, overexcited squeal. He didn’t even hesitate, his arms finding their way around her waist and pulling her close in a flash. Her head fit right under his chin. They were so close that she could feel his heartbeat speed up.

  This boy was unraveling her in the best way imaginable.

  When she drew back from him, she slowly ran her fingers over his face, like she had all the time in the world. “You had me nervous there for a second.”

  “Mel,” Lance started, reaching up to grab the hand currently tracing his cheekbones, “I really don’t care if we’re going to watch Bodyguards and Assassins here or some romantic comedy in a cinema full of people. As long as I’m with you, the place or time doesn’t matter. Especially if you intend to have your way with me.”

  He said the last part with a lascivious wink, and she couldn’t help but laugh. With his arm draped across her shoulders, they walked into Cinematheque together.

  ***

  They were back in the alley behind the Chinese private school. This time, they held cola-flavored Slurpees in their hands instead of hamburgers from McDonald’s. Melissa slipped her feet out of her gold flats and turned to face Lance, curling her feet under her. Unable to resist, he took a sip of his Slurpee and faced her as well.

  “So…” she started.

  “So?”

  “Did you like the movie?”

  He liked her more. He wanted to reach out and run his thumb over the bottom lip she was currently biting. “It was awesome. I didn’t expect anything so filled with historical facts could be, you know, fun. How did you find out about Cinematheque anyway?”

  “Cam actually discovered it.” Something lit up in her eyes at the mention of her best friend. “She’s a sucker for depressing foreign films with moody weather and lots of nudity. It’s not really my thing.”