Biggest Flirts

by Jennifer Echols

  I nodded. “I know what you mean.” I remembered marching through the halftime show next to Will on Monday, so close to him physically, but so far away. My stomach turned over. And my heart went out to Sawyer. I couldn’t imagine living with that pain for a couple of years.

  “I’m blowing this joint,” Sawyer said, easing up from the swing so it didn’t shift and send me flying. He could be courteous, but Kaye would never believe it. “I’m sure I can find a better party.”

  “I hope you have a good night,” I called as he headed for the stairs.

  Descending into the darkness, he called back over his shoulder, “I hope you don’t fall in love.”

  Walking back into the party, I tried to shake the uneasy feeling he’d given me. I’d had a great time with Will that night. Just like my very first night with Will, I counted it as one of the best experiences of my life. The key to enjoying myself with Will was making sure I didn’t think too hard about it. I wanted that euphoria back again.

  Will was exactly where I’d left him, talking hockey with the football team. He was even speaking as I approached. But his eyes cut to me and stayed on me. When I reached him, he encircled me with one arm and whispered, “Angelica watched you follow Sawyer out.”

  Tingles spread across my face as I whispered back, “Then you and I need to look like we’re finally having that good time we talked about.”

  14

  I TOOK HIS HAND AND tugged him farther into the living room. I’d thought we could claim a couch in the corner or—if push came to shove—one overstuffed chair. But the night was growing old, and the comfy furniture was occupied by couples getting to know each other better. Will saw this too. He walked through the stately arched doorway of the living room and kept walking until we reached the kitchen table.

  I stepped closer to him and spoke in his ear so he could hear me over the video game music and the laughter. “We can’t flirt here. All the surfaces are hard.”

  He turned his head slowly. His eyes were wide and his mouth was twisted to one side to keep from laughing while he pretended to be outraged at me for uttering the word “hard.”

  “Damn it,” I said, “you know what I mean.” Surely he did. Settling in for flirting (or more) at a party required plush seating.

  “We’ll make it work.” He pulled out a chair for me from under the table. After I sprawled in it with a dispirited sigh, he sat in the chair next to mine. We might as well have been doing our calculus homework together, the turn-on nobody could deny.

  And then he reached around my sides, grabbed the seat of my chair, and dragged me toward him until we were facing each other, knee to knee. “There,” he said.

  That did seem better for flirting. But all of a sudden, I felt shy around him. I found myself looking toward the cabinets—nothing more interesting there than a state-of-the-art microwave—and then the other way toward the crowd in the living room, where, on the couch, Brody and Grace had not gotten into it sufficiently to draw anybody’s attention for real.

  Will put two fingers on the side of my chin and pointed my face toward his again. “Hey. You’re supposed to be flirting with me.”

  “Oh, suddenly this is my job? You’re supposed to be flirting with me.”

  “I did flirt with you,” he insisted. “I touched your chin just now.”

  “Oooh!” I said, raising my eyebrows and pursing my lips to show him exactly how impressed I was, which was not.

  “I touched your chair,” he said.

  “If that counts for flirting, I’m going outside to touch the right rear fender of your car. That will count for getting to third base.” I started to get up.

  “No,” he said, grabbing both my thighs just above the knee.

  While the shock of his touch shot through me, I eased back down in my chair. He slowly took his hands away, a horrified expression on his face. He started to put his hands up in the air to show me he hadn’t meant to touch me quite so high—and then realized this didn’t look very flirtatious. He put his hands back on his own thighs.

  After another silent thirty seconds of staring at the design on his T-shirt, I said, “I don’t know why this is so hard.”

  Then I realized I’d said the H-word again. He gave me the fake-outraged look, which should have broken the ice but didn’t. Nothing could. We sank into another excruciating silence. The more our flirting mattered, the worse we were at it.

  The song on the video game changed, from an emo classic to a funky groove. Will relaxed as he always did when the beat was good, transforming from an uptight faux-boyfriend to my friend the drummer. His shoulders settled against the back of his chair, and his fingers tapped out the beat on his thigh, his right pointer finger on the snare downbeat and his left finger on the bass drum.

  I relaxed too. My unease fell away, and all that was left was the usual desire to be around him, talk to him, joke with him, capture his attention, bask in his glow—coupled with the fun of sitting so close to him, our knees touching.

  Slowly I reached across my thighs, across his, and put my fingers on top of his hands. I moved his hands from tapping on his thighs to tapping on mine.

  Still drumming his beat, he glanced up at me, flashing those blue eyes, and gave me a sly smile.

  I kept coaxing his hands up my thighs, so high that if Angelica had looked in, I might have gotten called a name.

  Will was aware of this too, apparently. His lips parted like he couldn’t believe I was so forward and he wanted out.

  Now I wished I hadn’t done it. I’d only been teasing him, frustrated that we were reduced to this awkward silence. I hadn’t meant to chase him off and make things worse.

  He turned and glanced into the living room. With his eyes still on the front door, he leaned toward me and said, “Angelica just left with Xavier Pilkington.”

  Inside, I burst into laughter. Of course Angelica was finally going to get it on with Xavier Pilkington. They would be rocking his car with their synchronized typing as they spent the end of their Saturday night working on the ­English paper that wasn’t due until two weeks from Tuesday.

  But I died a little too. I was afraid of what this meant. Now that she was gone, especially with another guy, there was no reason for Will and me to continue this charade. Our heady night together was over.

  “Tia,” he said.

  I nodded, bowing my head and bringing it closer to his. At least I could feel his breath in my ear one last time before we went our separate ways.

  “When we arranged our deal to make Angelica jealous, I didn’t say what I really meant, which was, please go out with me. I want to be with you. I don’t want it to be fake, and I don’t want it to end tonight.”

  Heart racing, I sat back in my chair. “So, you never really wanted to get Angelica back? That was just a ruse to get me to go out with you?”

  He watched me carefully, like he was afraid I would bolt. “No, not exactly. I didn’t think it all the way through. But you said you wanted to help me. This was a way you could help me. And in the back of my mind I was probably thinking, Grab.” He slid his hand around my waist. “Opportunity.” He circled my fingers with his. “Grab.” Holding my hand, he met my gaze and waited for my answer.

  I found the courage, but slowly. “Okay.”

  His fingers massaged mine as he leaned forward and whispered, “You left out a stop when you took me on a tour of town.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, beaming in anticipation of what he would say.

  “A place people go to be alone. Do you have one of those?”

  “We do.” It was Harper’s grandfather’s strip of beach. He could have sold it for a billion dollars and retired in a mansion, but he chose to continue living in his little bungalow on the same street as Sawyer’s house and keep his fishing boat down at the city marina. Harper had given Kaye and me the code to open the gate at this pri
vate beach in case we ever needed it.

  Now I did. Harper’s boyfriend, Kennedy, seemed more interested in talking smack with his artsy guy friends after hours than going parking with her. Aidan and Kaye would stay here at her house until the end of her party. The beach belonged to Will and me tonight.

  ***

  “Do you have a condom?” I asked.

  We were driving in Will’s throaty car toward the beach. The question hung so starkly in the air that I almost imagined I could see it centered over the armrest between us, blinking as streetlights and the shadows of palm trees alternated overhead. Asking the question meant clarifying what we were about to do.

  After a pause, he said, “Yes. I bought them on my way home from your house that first night.”

  I hooted laughter. “A little sure of yourself, weren’t you?”

  He grinned. “No. Just motivated.”

  “I’m on the pill, too,” I said. “Due to my family history, I make sure I’m super safe.”

  He nodded, then swallowed with difficulty like his mouth was dry. “I want you to know something,” he said. “When I got so mad on the first day of practice and threw my phone, and you said my girlfriend had taken advantage of me before I left . . .”

  “I was so out of line,” I said. “You were right when you said I hold stuff in and pretend I’m not mad, and it comes out later as a backhanded insult. I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head. “No, I mean, she didn’t. Take advantage of me. We didn’t do it. The whole time we were dating, she said she wasn’t ready. And the night I left, she did it with my best friend. So she was ready, just not for me. I guess it doesn’t matter. But I didn’t want you to think that I was that . . .”

  “Experienced?”

  “Naïve,” he said, “that I wouldn’t know what was going on if she tried to trick me into, like, putting out or whatever.” He glanced at me. “Or experienced.”

  I touched his hand on the gearshift, lifted my hand when he had to shift, and settled my hand on his again. “Are you sure you want to?”

  “Yes,” he said instantly. He wasn’t smiling, exactly, but his whole face looked happy, starry eyed and breathless with the idea. Then he started laughing uncontrollably. “Yes!” he chuckled. “Good Lord. But you’re not.”

  “Me!” I exclaimed. Then a rush of warmth flowed through me. It was relief that we wouldn’t do this. Not tonight. And something more: a deep appreciation that he knew somehow what I’d been feeling without me having to tell him.

  “If it didn’t mean anything, you’d be willing,” he said. “Now that it means something, you want to go slow.”

  I gazed at him across the car, his head and shoulders mostly in shadow. The moonlight burnished his short hair, turning it bronze, and kissed his long lashes and long nose, his expressive mouth. This time I knew better than to think he looked handsome only because of the moon. I had been a fool to push this guy away.

  “Well,” I said, “I don’t know about slow.”

  He was laughing again as he pulled up to the gate. After we were through and I’d locked it behind us, he drove underneath the palms. The trees were thick at first, then more sparse, until the grove opened onto the beach. The moonlight streaming toward us across the ocean was as brilliant as the sun.

  “Wow,” he breathed.

  “I told you it was beautiful here.”

  He cut the engine. Instantly the sound of waves crashing on the beach rushed to fill that space. He turned to me. Now he would hand me one of his delightfully cheesy pickup lines. It was beautiful here, he would say, but he didn’t mean the beach. He meant me.

  He caught me completely off guard when he said instead, “I fell for you that first night we were together. And you can say it’s because of what we were doing, or I was rebounding from Beverly, or I was stressed from the move, but I know how I feel. I love you.”

  We weren’t touching anymore. I sat on my side of the car. He sat on his, watching me with a serious expression in his shadowed eyes, the worry line between his brows deeper than ever.

  “I love you too,” I breathed.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” he complained. “Now I’ll never get laid.”

  I giggled as he tumbled his big frame over into my side of the car and eased the seat back flat. Kissing me deeply, he unbuttoned the front of my dress, then reached around to unhook my bra. Then he bared my breasts and put his mouth on me.

  “I like it when you do that.”

  His lips brushed my skin as he spoke, and his low voice sent chills through me. “Yeah, I remembered you like it when I do that.”

  A long time and endless explorations later, his warm hand moved into the front of my panties and rubbed me there. He knew what he was doing, and I figured he’d done this plenty of times before. Naïve he was not—not about this. I’d done it before too, but with him, it definitely felt different. Before long, sparkles like points of moonlight on the waves washed down my body. He kissed me deeply as it happened.

  Then he placed sweet kisses on the corner of my mouth and chuckled to himself. “I’m the king of the world,” he murmured.

  In a sexy, satisfied tone that most chicks would use to reaffirm their love, I said, “You are the king of the dorks.”

  He closed his eyes and rubbed the tip of his nose back and forth against mine. He breathed into my mouth, “I’m the king of you.”

  “Yes, you are,” I said softly, “but not for long.” I slid my hand onto him. “Your turn.”

  15

  THE ALARM ON MY CELL phone woke me midmorning on Sunday, and I cursed Will within an inch of his existence. I was justified in doing that now that we were in love. He was the one who’d convinced me to start using an alarm to get myself up in the morning. Now, because I was responsible, the timer had gone awry. After staying up late with him last night, I was up bright and early, rather than sleeping until the last possible second before I had to go in to the antiques shop.

  But when I glanced at the screen, I saw it wasn’t the alarm. It was Violet calling. That meant she was in trouble.

  Five minutes later I was on the phone with Will. “Can I borrow your car?”

  “Yes,” he yawned. “Why?”

  “Don’t ask,” I said.

  “I’m asking.”

  I let out a sigh that lasted for about seven seconds, one for every year my mom had been gone. “Violet wants to come home. She wants my dad to come get her right this moment before her boyfriend shows up, which means she feels threatened. And I can’t wake my dad for this. He has to get a full night’s sleep before he goes to work tonight, or it’s a safety issue. He used to take off work all the time to get Izzy and Sophia out of trouble, and he racked up so many demerits that they were threatening to fire him. He can’t take off work for that shit anymore. I’ll go get her myself.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Will said.

  “No!” I exploded. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to wake up my dad with my hysterics. I said more quietly, “This is exactly why I shouldn’t have called you, but I thought you would be furious if you found out I called Sawyer.”

  “Tia!” he barked right back. He must have been afraid his parents would overhear him, too, because he took a deep breath, then lowered his voice. “Sawyer wouldn’t let you go alone either. No guy in his right mind would let you borrow his car to do something dangerous by yourself.”

  “It’s not dangerous, exactly,” I qualified. “Maybe not. Her boyfriend disappeared with his friends for three days and left her at their apartment with no car. The only reason it might be the slightest bit dangerous is that they have a bad habit of coming back.”

  “Who is they?”

  “My sisters’ boyfriends and fucked-up husbands,” I explained. “And in all the times my dad has rescued my sisters, a gun has never come out, but I wouldn’t be surprised. I
keep up with the news. This is how people get shot.”

  “Then why are you going?” Will demanded.

  “My dad can’t,” I said. “So I have to.”

  “Then so do I,” Will said. “I’ll be there in five.” He hung up.

  I cursed him again, not because he’d fallen down on the job this time, but the opposite. I did not want him witnessing the Cruz family’s annual audition for a reality show. But he was right. I should have known there was no way to borrow a guy’s car without the guy attached.

  If he was coming with me, though, I was going to use him. After finding something to put on among the piles in my own room, I waded to the laundry room and searched there. When we’d first moved in, I’d been very careful about sorting the clean laundry from the dirty. I knew the clean shirt I wanted was under there somewhere. But we’d had way too much stuff to store in this tiny house, and over the months, the laundry room had become the place to stash things. I excavated the back wall like an archaeological dig. By the time Will knocked softly on the front door, I’d found it.

  I pulled him inside the house. “Put this on,” I said, handing him one of my dad’s sleeveless T-shirts that he used to cut grass in, back when he cut the grass. “It’s clean.”

  Will held it up and eyed the oil stains dubiously.

  “Let me rephrase that,” I said. “It’s been washed. But you know what? You’re right. You have a respectable tan now, and you could just take off your shirt when we get over there.” I stretched the bottom of his T-shirt up above his waistband to make sure there wasn’t a preppie flat front going on, like Aidan would wear. They were cargo shorts, which would do nicely. My eyes moved to his thick arms. Briefly I considered giving him a Sharpie tattoo on his biceps.

  “You’ve got your shades?” I asked. “And a baseball cap you can turn around backward?” When he nodded, I said, “Let’s go.”

  The apartment was worse than I’d pictured. I knew Violet and Ricky had moved three times in the five months they’d been together. They had a nasty habit of not paying their rent. I figured the apartment had gotten worse each time, but I wasn’t prepared for this: brick buildings that didn’t look so old but hadn’t been taken care of at all, tagged with black graffiti—not even colorful, pretty graffiti—underneath a tangle of palm trees and dehydrated-looking water oaks, surrounded by long grass and trash, all practically underneath the interstate.