Crazy thing to be thinking about now, obviously, but there you had it.
This girl clearly made me crazy.
“Can I get you some more water, hon?” my mom asked.
I didn’t have to look to know that my mother was beside herself with excitement. I never had girls over.
Ever.
I never even invited Leroy over. Why? Because this was my home. This was my family—and everybody else was just high school. They weren’t permanent and they weren’t a part of this household.
Frustration had me clenching my fists as I watched Harley turn to my mom and answer her with a smile. I didn’t even hear what she said because I was too focused on the nerve of this girl, coming to my house. Hanging out with my mother. Like she belonged here.
My mom left the kitchen a second later. Harley came to her feet and we stood there for a while, eyeing each other. “What are you doing here, Harley?”
“I came to apologize.”
“That couldn’t wait until school on Monday?” I felt a flash of regret when she winced at the rude comment, but I shoved that aside. Something about seeing her here in my kitchen—of watching her chat with my mom like it was no big deal—it made all this feel like that much more of a big deal.
She didn’t belong here. She had no place here. Her very presence was disturbing, and the fact that I was disturbed was annoying. I couldn’t even pinpoint why I was so on edge, but for a guy who’d always been known for his control on the field and off—I was dangerously close to losing it.
She fidgeted before me but unlike the last time we’d squared off like this back in Danny’s driveway, she didn’t look scared or hurt. She looked…resolved. Her shoulders were squared and her pointy little chin was tipped up as if in defiance. “I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “Okay.”
Man, I was being rude and I knew it. She didn’t say anything and I cleared my throat as I struggled for civility beneath these ragged, jagged emotions I couldn’t even name. “It’s fine,” I managed.
“No, it’s not fine.” She took a step closer and I just barely kept from backing away. The girl was basically a midget. I could deadlift her if I wanted to. I wasn’t about to go running scared just because she’d stepped close enough that I could hear her breathing and feel her warmth.
“I was so caught up in my own insecurities that I didn’t even notice how far you were stepping outside your comfort zone to get to know me.”
“My…my comfort zone?” My tone was filled with disbelief, but really…who on earth talked about comfort zones? She sounded like one of those self-help people my mom listened to while she was doing housework.
Harley continued as if I hadn’t interrupted. “What I’m trying to say is, I wasn’t just wrong to make you part of our stupid bet.” She gave her head a shake as if still annoyed with herself over the bet. “I was also too self-absorbed to see that a really great guy was going out of his way to get to know me, and I… I’m so sorry I let my own stupid issues get in the way.”
I stared at her unblinking as one question kept trying to get out of my mouth. Get in the way of what? Curiosity almost got the better of me. Temptation almost made me lose my head…again. I almost asked her if she wished we’d done more than just talk in the halls occasionally. If maybe she regretted that our little flirtation had never progressed to anything more than one kiss in my car.
One hot, passionate, earth-shattering kiss.
“What are you doing here, Harley?” My voice was bizarrely gruff and I couldn’t quite meet her eyes. I didn’t know what I’d do if she looked hurt or vulnerable. I’d want to reach out. I’d have to resist the urge to go to her, and right now I didn’t trust myself to do the right thing—to do what needed to be done.
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry—”
“Like I said, no need.” I shifted, clearing the doorway so she could leave. Hardly a kind gesture, but it was nicer than outright kicking her out.
“Okay, well, I also…I wanted…”
I couldn’t not look at her when her voice trailed off like that. Mistake. Such a big mistake. Those wide eyes were filled with so much emotion and I wasn’t prepared. That look was worse than any hit I’d gotten on the field and the jolt was just as sickening.
“I wanted to see if maybe we could be...” Her throat moved as she swallowed. “Maybe we could be friends?”
Friends. The word hung between us and it felt…wrong. “We don’t exactly have a lot in common.”
Don’t make me say it. Don’t make me say no, because I don’t want to be friends with this girl. I want…I want…
Well, it didn’t matter what I wanted.
All I knew was, I couldn’t be her friend.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” she said.
Her words had me blinking in surprise. “Thinking about what?”
She bit her lip and then she licked it. I had to fight a groan. Did she have any idea how tempting she was? No. She definitely didn’t. But that wasn’t my problem—her insecurities were her issue.
“I’d like to learn.”
I blinked, sure that I’d missed something sometime between her biting her lip and her licking her lips because her comment made no sense. “Learn what?”
“Football.” She said it so clearly, with such determination, I battled the sudden and stupid urge to laugh.
“You want to learn to play football.”
“Not learn how to play it,” she said as a pretty shade of pink tinged her cheeks. “I just meant…” She shifted from one foot to the other. “I’d like to learn about the sport.”
“You,” I clarified. “You want to learn about football.”
She didn’t respond.
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Because it’s important to you and because I want to go to the game this weekend to…to support you. And because…” She shrugged again, and her eyes cast around the room like she was searching for the answer. “Because I want to learn about it if it’s important to you.”
“I thought you didn’t get the herd mentality,” I reminded her.
She flinched a bit. “Yeah, well…it’s possible I was too quick to judge.” Her eyes met mine as she said it and her words seemed to echo in the space between us.
“So,” I said slowly. “You want to learn and…” I drew in a deep breath. “You want to be friends.”
She nodded and her lips parted. I watched her take a deep breath and hold it as she waited for my response.
I should say no. I should tell her to go away and never come back because she was dangerous to everything I held dear. She was a dangerous distraction, whether she meant to be or not.
But I couldn’t bring myself to hurt her like that. She might have made a mistake with the ridiculous bet thing, but I didn’t doubt her motives. She didn’t have a mean bone in her body and to pretend to think so, to make her feel guilty for some stupid challenge would have just been cruel. So after a long moment I forced a tight smile. “Yeah, sure. We can be friends.”
“Good,” she said, her breath coming out in one long exhale. “Great.” She gave me a smile that seemed just as forced as my own as she edged toward the door. “Friends…that’s great.”
It wasn’t until she was gone and the air felt a million degrees colder that I was finally able to fully catch my breath. I sank into a seat at the kitchen table and stared sightlessly at the wooden table in front of me for I didn’t even know how long.
“Harley seemed nice.” My mom had entered the kitchen and I hadn’t even noticed.
“Hmm? Oh yeah. She’s…” Nice seemed way too mundane. Sure, she was a sweet girl but ‘nice’ sounded way too vanilla for someone like Harley. “She’s…unique.”
My mom scoffed. “Unique, huh? Is that good or bad?”
“It’s neither,” I said, already pushing my seat out so I could leave the room. My head was still spinning and I wasn’t ready to talk about Harley with my mom.
Besides, there
was nothing to say.
“Why’d she come over?” my mom asked before I could make my move.
I held back a sigh. Of course my mother wouldn’t let this drop. Like I’d said, no girls ever came over to my house. I should have known she’d be interested.
“Do you two have a class together?”
I couldn’t ignore her completely and I couldn’t lie—not to my mom. “No.”
“I see.”
I arched a brow. I didn’t know what she thought she saw, but she was wrong.
“Why didn’t she stick around?”
That sigh? It was barely being contained. But it wasn’t my mom’s fault that I was in a bad mood and I tried not to take my frustrations out on her. “It’s nothing, Mom. Seriously. Just let it go.”
“Okay,” she said quickly. “It’s just…”
I could have walked away but then again—I couldn’t. That would have been rude. When I turned to face her, my mother’s expression was filled with concern. She shouldn’t be concerned about anything. We’d gotten her results. She was still in remission. Nothing to worry about…but that didn’t mean we wouldn’t have fears to face down the road. We were never truly in the clear and that was what I had to remember.
“I just want to make sure you’re not…” Her words trailed off again when I arched my brows in question. My mother’s smile grew instead. “She seemed really nice.”
I let out a huff of amusement. Great. Just great. Just what I needed, my own mother pushing me toward Harley. “She is nice,” I said. “And immature.”
It was a harsh thing to say, but it was the truth. She was worried about popularity, or the lack thereof—she was caught up in bets and challenges and worry about things like homecoming. That wasn’t me.
“Immature, huh?” My mom’s voice held a world of amusement. “She’s sixteen.”
“Exactly.”
She rolled her eyes. “Need I remind you that you’re seventeen?”
I stared at her. What was her point? We both knew I was older than that in every way that counted. Her expression grew affectionate and sappy as she gripped my hands in hers. “Sweetheart, you know I love you and I couldn’t be prouder of the ways you’ve stepped up and taken on responsibilities in this house, when I was sick and then again when your grandfather passed.”
I watched her and waited because there was a ‘but’ coming and I could see it from a mile away.
“But you’re seventeen,” she finally said. “You’re allowed to be immature sometimes. You’re allowed to think of things that aren’t duty and obligations.”
“I know that,” I said, but my voice sounded too stiff. I just wanted her to chill out because she was starting to get way too intense.
Her brows shot up in disbelief. “Do you?”
Irritation had me stepping out of her grip. I was trying to do the right thing here. I was doing my best, my insides were killing me, my head was spinning, and now my mom was criticizing me for it? I couldn’t win. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean…” She sighed loudly. “I worry, that’s all.”
Great. And now I felt like a jerk for making my mother worry. Rubbing at my forehead I took a deep breath. “You have nothing to worry about, Mom.”
“I know you do well in school, and you’re working so hard to get that scholarship, and you never give me anything to worry about when it comes to partying or drinking or drugs—”
“So then what’s the problem?” It came out louder and harsher than I’d intended, but I didn’t have the patience for this right now. “You said it yourself, I’m doing the best I can to get ahead and to help this family. What more do you want to hear?”
Her expression was so sad it made me want to punch something. I hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings and I wasn’t even sure why she was looking at me like that. “Sweetie, you’ve gone through a lot over the past few years, but I don’t want you to forget that you’re still a teenager. I’m the parent here, not you.”
I opened my mouth to argue. Not that she was the parent, but that I was just a teenager. I wasn’t some kid. I hadn’t been that—I hadn’t been able to be that—for years.
“If you don’t get the scholarship, we’ll survive,” she said. “We’ll take out loans, we’ll do what needs to be done—”
I tried to protest again, but she held up a hand to silence me. “And if you fail out of school—well, that would be a bummer but we’d handle that too. And if you never get a good job? Guess what…we’d survive. You know why? Because I’m the parent. I may not have always been strong enough to be there for you when you needed me, but I’m still your mother and I don’t want to see you throwing away your youth because you think you need to take care of me all the time.”
My throat was painfully tight. “We take care of each other,” I said.
She reached out and patted my chest. “That’s right,” she said with tears in her eyes. “We do. But that means that sometimes I get to take care of you.”
“You do,” I said.
She smiled. “I try. But right now, as your mother, I need to know that you’re not missing out on life.”
I frowned down at her. “What does that even mean?”
“It means…” She sighed wearily as she pulled me in for a hug like I was still a little kid. “It means, you don’t have to sit out on the sidelines all the time, honey. It means you’re allowed to do stupid things and make mistakes and…and fall in love.” She kept talking before I could interrupt, and even if I could have, I wasn’t sure what to say. The L-word was like a mute button, silencing all my thoughts. “I want you to live your life, sweetheart. I don’t want your youth to pass you by.”
I returned her hug but stayed quiet because I didn’t know what to say. Her words tugged at me and they did nothing to help this confusing jumble of emotions that left me not knowing which way was up.
When she pulled back, she looked me straight in the eyes. “I don’t know what’s going on with you and that girl, but I know that she has an effect on you—she clearly makes you feel something—and that’s something to hold onto.”
I didn’t say anything because what was there to say? Did I feel something around Harley? Of course. I felt way too much, and I didn’t like it.
An awful suspicion slithered up inside me and before I could stop it, a little voice was whispering. You liked it just fine until you thought she didn’t feel the same.
Was it her I no longer wanted or had I just been avoiding rejection?
“I don’t know how I feel about her,” I finally said when it was clear my mother wouldn’t let me go until I confessed. “I don’t know what I want.”
She pulled back slightly. “I doubt you’ll figure it out on your own.”
I held back a sigh. I knew what she was getting at, but I didn’t want to hear it. “I don’t know that I want to figure it out.”
She surprised me with a sudden laugh. “Yes,” she said, her voice filled with laughter as she patted her palm lightly against my cheek. “Because that is very mature.”
14
Harley
I was trying to ignore Janice’s wide-eyed stare, but it was difficult.
“So you’re…friends then?” She sounded unconvinced, not that I could blame her.
I wasn’t exactly convinced myself, and it was probably equally clear in my hesitation. “I guess so?”
“Is that what you want?”
I stared at the mural—more precisely, I stared at my rendering of Tristan, which was only half painted.
“Do you think we’ll finish this thing in time for homecoming?” Janice kindly changed the topic when it became clear that I wasn’t about to answer her last question.
I shot her a grateful smile. “Not if we just stand around talking about Tristan O’Hare all day.”
She snort-laughed. “Fair enough.” She picked up her own paintbrush and got back to work on the background. While Janice enjoyed art classes, she’d be the first to admit that she
wasn’t entirely skilled—particularly with the painting details—so she’d been relegated to filling in the bright background colors while I worked on the portraits.
I’d left Tristan’s for last. Why? Because I hadn’t exactly relished the idea of staring into his face—even a fake, drawn-by-me version of his face. But I couldn’t put it off forever…and besides, maybe this was the closure I needed to finally move on.
Impulsively going to his house the other day to tell him how I felt?
That had not been the closure I’d been expecting, and it certainly hadn’t been the happily-ever-after I’d been hoping for. But then, not all of us could have Conner’s luck, I supposed. Maybe both of us getting our happy endings was too much to ask—maybe there was only so much good luck allotted to one family.
Family. Strange how I was starting to think of Conner and his mom that way.
“What’s that look for?” Janice asked.
I’d stopped painting and was staring at Tristan’s face again. “Nothing, just…thinking.”
“About?”
For a girl who I’d thought was so quiet, Janice turned out to be quite chatty once you got to know her. She hated sitting out here in silence and had no problem peppering me with questions.
So long as she didn’t turn out to be a gossip, I didn’t mind. In fact, it was kind of nice to have someone to talk to. I guess I could even officially call her my friend. My best friend. I’d definitely never had one of those before.
“You’re doing it again,” she said.
“Doing what?”
“Staring at that wall like Tristan’s image just came to life.”
I gave a huff of amusement at the thought. “Sorry, just thinking about how much my life has changed these past few weeks since I got here.”
“Change for the good?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly, smiling ruefully as my eyes snagged on Tristan’s picture. “For the most part.”
“You do seem different from when I first met you,” she said.
Dating the Quarterback (The Bet Duet Book 2) Page 12
