“No, I really don’t.”
“So do you think you can make it?”
Gio…pool party…shirtless…yesss…“Yeah, we’ll be there,” I say, cringing at the thought of explaining this to Dad. I think I’ll just refrain from mentioning it at all. “Can I get your number? I mean, in case I need to ask you any questions about the party.”
Whoa, what? Madison Landers…I mean, Daley…whoever you are, I hate you. Why the hell would you feel the need to ask that question?
“Good cover,” Gio says with a teasing wink. “And yeah, you could have had it, anyway.” He goes to my contacts and plugs his number in, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
Sorry, Me, I didn’t mean it…and now I have Gio Abate’s number!
Gio takes me downstairs, where everyone is now gathered in their stylish, traditional living room. I sit down on their plush, cream-colored sofa, and Gio sinks down in a taupe chair across from me. He’s focused on me again, this time wearing an admiring smile instead of a look of utter confusion. He winks after a long moment of gazing at each other, and my heart rejoices out of control.
Something tells me that ‘no studly boys’ thing is not going to work out.
June 3
Life Made
I totally just became friends with Giovanni Abate.
He wants me to teach him how to play Battlefield better. I would have preferred letting him teach me how to French, but I’ll take what I can get. Gio may not be able to beat me at video games, but he is still the thing of dreams. I’ve pinched myself several times this evening to make sure that’s not exactly what he was. He’s so gorgeous, and he treated me like an equal, which is something I definitely wasn’t expecting. At first, I thought he was a little rude, but then as the evening went on, I realized he was just confused.
When he called me “bella,” I was absolute putty in his hands. He probably says that to all the girls, but it was still the most beautiful word I’ve ever heard rolling off anyone’s tongue. Judging from the easy way he says Italian words, I’d say he speaks his family’s native language fluently. I know I’m fan-girling hard mode right now, but Jesus…
I’m afraid I won’t even be able to handle being near him on Saturday in bathing suits.
My only worry with him is I’m at risk of veering off into the friend zone. Typically, guys play games with their other guy friends…or, at least, that’s what I’ve gathered from the conversations I’ve heard over my headset. I need to somehow avoid coming off as a guy in a girl’s body. That’s basically what I am, but…he doesn’t need to know that, right?
Think girly thoughts…think girly thoughts…
I don’t know if I even stand a chance with him, but I’m going to try my best to find out.
Ttyl,
Mads
I sleep in until noon the next day. After lunch, Cass, Ana, and I take body floats to the pool to lounge in the shallow end in our bikinis, which I still feel very awkward wearing. As we lie there enjoying the warm sun, I adjust my big black prescription sunglasses on my nose and talk to Ana. “So what did you and Steph talk about last night? You never said anything about it.”
Ana’s face lights up at the mention of his name. “Oh, we talked about everything. Upcoming fashion trends, what it’s like to be a designer…he even showed me his wardrobe.”
“Badass!” I say, truly happy for her.
“He says I have great taste in fashion, and I have a bright future ahead of me in the industry.” Ana stops and swallows hard. “He, uh…he also told me that he wants me as a teen model for his new line.”
“Wait, what? Why didn’t you lead with that?” I shriek, starting to get excited.
Ana lets out a heavy sigh, twirling her finger through the shimmering ripples beside her. “Because I have to have parental permission to do it, and Mom and Dad are never going to agree to this in a million years.”
My train of celebration slams to a screeching halt. She’s right. Her parents don’t even let her wear shorts in the summer back at home. No way are they going to let their daughter become a model. “Damn…that sucks.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Ana says. A weighted silence follows, and I finger one of the strings on the side of my black bikini bottom, not knowing what to say.
A few minutes later, I look up and notice some people walking around the outside of our mansion, swiftly approaching our pool. They’re two guys who look like they’re in their upper teens and a younger teenage girl. Cass smiles and waves at the sight of them, so I guess they’re friends. Then Gio appears behind them, and my heart thunders in my chest.
Looks like I’m going to know what it feels like to be near a shirtless Gio a lot sooner than I thought.
They come to the side of the pool to stand near us. Since I’m wearing dark sunglasses, I allow my eyes to wander all over Gio’s exposed upper body. I’ve been dreaming about this moment since last night, and I’m definitely not disappointed.
“Ciao, signora!” Gio greets us. “You lovely ladies mind if we join you for a swim?”
“Sure, dive in,” Cass says pleasantly, and Gio and his friends hurry over to the diving board to comply.
Everyone swims to me first and gathers around my float. Gio introduces his friends as Dalton
Jacobs, his sister Devon, and their family friend Hayden Turner. The one he introduced as Dalton almost rivals Gio in looks. Both he and his sister have the same sandy-brown hair. Hayden’s hair is a little darker in color, and he has ebony eyes and a lanky build.
“Good to meet y’all,” I say.
Dalton returns my smile warmly. “Good to meet you! I’m a huge Grim Weeper fan. He’s one of my inspirations. I play W3 music constantly.”
“He plays a mean electric guitar,” Gio brags.
“Well, that’s something we have in common,” I say.
“You play guitar too?” Devon asks, looking shocked. She’s a younger version of her brother except for her coffee-brown eyes. Dalton’s eyes are an intriguing shade of hazel.
“Yeah, mostly Avenged Sevenfold. I’m a little obsessed.”
“Great choice!” Dalton says. “I love me some Avenged. What other bands do you like?”
“Disturbed, Seether, Evanescence, Three Days Grace—”
“We’re going to have to jam together sometime,” Dalton says, brimming with enthusiasm. “‘Riot’ is one of my favorite songs to play.”
“Rock on!” I fist-bump him, happy to finally meet someone who gets me. Back in Kentucky, most people I met only liked pop, country, and religious music. Dalton and I discuss music for a few more minutes, not realizing we’re making the others uncomfortable.
“Do I need to give you two a moment alone?” Gio jokes.
Dalton’s head snaps back like he just got jolted out of hypnosis, and then he laughs. “Oh…sorry, man. It’s cool. I’ll let you guys chat while we hang out with the others. Come on, Dev.”
The three of them back away from me, and I feel like bats just flew into my stomach and started whirling around in a circle. Gio must have told them he wanted to talk to me alone.
“Good to meet you, Madison,” Devon says.
“Call me Mads,” I say, waving after them. “That goes for you too,” I say to Gio, who now has his arms resting on my float near my waist with his body extended in the water behind him. His closeness makes my insides do crazy things, but I will myself to keep my composure. No crazy fangirling…no crazy fan-girling…
“Mads?” Gio cringes, making a tendon in his neck stick out. He shakes his head confidently. “That’s not a pretty enough name for you.”
I smile at the compliment, and then I give him a nonchalant shrug. “I’ve been called that since I was born.”
“I have a reputation for giving people good nicknames. I’ll come up with a better one, don’t worry,” he says.
My eyebrows shoot sky-high. That was a little presumptuous, but coming from him, I really don’t mind. “Well, all right, then.”
Gio inches closer to my face and croons, “So why didn’t you text me last night?” That was a sultry tone of voice if I’ve ever heard one, and I can feel his warm breath on my lips and cheeks. Every pore in my body starts leaking sweat.
“Um…” I bite the inside of my lip shyly. “I didn’t know you wanted me to.”
“Well, I felt jilted, just so you know,” he teases in a mock-offended tone.
I giggle at his word choice. “Sorry, I won’t make that mistake again.”
Gio’s arm slides a little farther onto the float and brushes against my leg, and I bite back a shuddering sigh. I hadn’t touched him at all up until this moment, and the mere brush of his skin against mine sends waves of anticipation rippling up to my chest. There’s a definite vibe here, and I have to stay strong if I want to keep it going. I can’t let him see me obsess over him, even though all I want to do right now is fall down at his feet.
“You look very mysterious wearing these,” Gio says, reaching up and tugging at my sunglasses.
I respond with a teasing smirk. “Are you going to demand that I take my glasses off again?”
“I might,” he says with a chuckle. “I don’t get to hide from you, why should you get to hide from me?”
I immediately start listing off the reasons I need to wear these sunglasses outside. “Well, first of all, I need these to see. Secondly—” I’m interrupted by his laughter, and my heart melts. His laugh is so adorable.
“I was just messing with you, bella,” Gio says, lightly scratching my forearm with his forefinger. His fingertip migrates to my float, and he starts tracing little shapes on it. “I like mystery in a woman. It keeps things entertaining.”
Laughter plays at my lips. He’s acting like a fullgrown man right now. Come to think of it, I guess he almost is. “Just curious, how old are you?”
“Seventeen,” he says, and I breathe a little sigh of relief. If he had been eighteen already, it might have made this complicated. “My birthday is November 27.”
“I’m seventeen too. My birthday is October 31.”
An odd sequence of emotions parades across his face. First shock, then confusion, then dismissal, and finally putting on his flirting face again, which consists of a cocked eyebrow and eyes sparkling with mischief.
“Halloween, huh? I bet your birthday party’s gonna be interesting.”
“Well…if I’m here.”
“Okay, lovebirds, break it up,” Cass teases us from the sidelines, chucking a volleyball at me. “Who’s up for a game of pool volleyball?”
The guys set up the net, and we start a match of guys vs. girls. I let Ana, Cass, and Devon do most of the work, since I’m generally uncoordinated and also hypnotized by Gio. I watch him unashamedly as he stretches up to hit the ball and swings his muscular arms to serve it. His hair drips with pool water and curls touch down on his forehead, and then he laughs at something Dalton says, making his dimples appear. Because of him, I’m not paying any attention to the game itself, and at the end of the match, the ball hits me square on the head and bounces off to the side.
“Guy point for the win!” Dalton cheers, and he turns and does a secret handshake with Gio.
“Well, damn,” I say, picking up the ball. “Sorry, girls.”
“Feel free to sit out the next match,” Ana says. I stick my tongue out at her like a child, and she returns the love.
“It’s fine, I don’t like volleyball anyway.” I hand Ana the ball before I climb out of the pool, and then I dry off and fall into a lounge chair as they play another round. Dad comes out of the house in swim trunks and joins me on the sidelines.
“You okay, sugar?” He eases himself down into a chair next to me.
“Yeah, I’m good. Where have you been?”
“Just on the phone helpin’ Melissa with some farm stuff.” Dad and I talk for a few minutes, and I tell him who everybody is. Then I start watching Gio again, and Dad figures it out. “You have a thing for that Abate kid, don’t you?”
My head snaps around to look at Dad. “What?”
“You like Gio,” Dad repeats, and I start sweating again.
“No,” I lie, but I feel my face flush.
“Yes, you do,” Dad says with a chuckle. I continue to protest, and then he rebukes me for my obvious lies with a single word. “Mads…”
“Well…yeah…kinda,” I admit with great reluctance. Now I’m going to be banned from ever seeing him again.
“It’s okay,” Dad says. “You know, I was thinkin’ maybe we could make an amendment to that agreement we made earlier.”
My stomach jumps. “Really?”
“Yeah. After all, you’re four months away from turning eighteen. If you really like Gio Abate that much, you can see where things go. Just don’t do anything stupid, all right?”
“Ohhh, I can’t promise anything,” I say with a face-splitting grin.
Right after Gio takes the others back to his place in the late afternoon, I take my phone from a nearby table and text him.
Me: This is because I don’t want you to feel
“jilted.” ;)
Gio texts back about fifteen minutes later.
Gio: Lol I appreciate that. Thanks for letting us hang, we had a great time.
Me: Same here. :)
Gio: I just said goodbye to Dalton, Dev, and Turner, and I’m heading up to take a shower now. After that, do you want to party up?
I try to keep some incredibly vivid mental images of him in the shower out of my head as I text him back.
Me: Sounds good, I’ll add you while I wait.
I immediately head up to my room, shower off in record time, and slip into a comfy tank top and athletic shorts. Dad bought me a console earlier today while he was out shopping for some miscellaneous household needs, and he even hooked it up to my TV in my room while I was sleeping. Getting him to do things for me is easy as hell now. He feels guilty about hiding our life story from me, and I’ve been taking full advantage of that sentiment lately.
I add Gio on the console, and five minutes later he confirms me and we start talking on our headsets as I sit on my bed.
“Hey!” I say.
“Ciao, bella!” he replies cheerfully, and I pinch myself again.
“Ow.”
“You okay?” There’s concern in his voice.
“Yeah, I was just being stupid, sorry.” I laughing it off, and we party up.
As we’re getting ready to start a match, he talks to me. “So awesome that you play games. I’ve never had something like this in common with a girl before.”
“Then you’re hanging out with the wrong girls. There are a lot of us out there,” I say.
“Duly noted, although I don’t really need to meet another one right now.” Oh my God…I hope that means what I think it means. “You’re still coming to the party on Saturday, right?”
“Yeah, of course! By the way, what’s the dress code?”
“It’s out by the pool, so most girls just wear a bikini and shorts…or ditch the shorts…”
“Got it.” Shit…that’s the one thing I really didn’t want to wear…
Most of our talk after that is game-related, but I do find out a little bit about Gio over the next half hour. For one thing, he doesn’t mind taking instructions from a girl, which means he doesn’t have an ego problem. Secondly, he thinks it’s hilarious when I cuss up a wall. Whenever I die in game, I have a bad habit of letting my sailor mouth take over. Dad never holds back when gaming and neither do the guys I hear over my headset while playing, so I guess I just picked it up.
Gio chuckles after a particularly rousing swear session. “It’s fun listening to girls swear. You all try to be so dainty, and—”
“I am not dainty!” I hate to yell at Giovanni Abate, but seriously. He did not just call me that.
“But you’re so pretty and small. How could you be anything but dainty?”
I smile at the “pretty” bit, but I don’t let him hear it in my voice. Instea
d I mumble under my breath, “I’ll show you ‘dainty.’”
The next time I die in-game, I go through my entire repertoire of swear words, and Gio almost starts crying because he’s laughing so hard. “Okay, now it’s official,” he chokes out through his laughter. “I’m going out with a guy on Saturday.”
My entire body freezes, causing my character to die on screen. “Shit! And…what?”
“Oh…did I not mention you’re my date for the party?”
Oh God…don’t pass out, don’t pass out… “No, you didn’t.”
“Well, you are. Hope that’s okay.” There’s a teasing lilt in his voice.
Don’t. Pass. Out. “Sounds great.” There wasn’t even the slightest tremor in my voice. I silently congratulate myself on my unexpected poise.
June 4
He’s Into Me
He asked me out. The day after I met Giovanni Abate, he asked me out. At first, I was over-the-moon excited, but now my stomach is in knots and I’m gnawing my fingernails off. I’ve been wracking my brain all evening, and I can only come up with three things this could possibly mean.
Scenario 1: He actually likes me.
This would be super weird and something that would never happen to me. It’s too good to be true. I can’t count on this being reality. I’m hoping for it, but I’m not sold on it.
Scenario 2: He just wants me for a summer fling.
This is a little more realistic, but still weird. I mean, I’m not exactly the first thing that comes to mind when a guy thinks about which girl he wants to screw around with for the summer. If he wanted someone for sex, I think he would have picked Ana over me. So yeah…this one’s unlikely too.
Scenario 3: He wants to humiliate me at this party.
This is probably the most likely scenario of all. It’s not that he seems like a person who would do this, it’s just that I can’t imagine this guy actually liking me or wanting to fool around with me. There are too many other options for him. I’m fresh meat, and he sees an opportunity to show me who runs this place, so of course he’s going to take it. I’m such an idiot…and now I’m not sure what to do.
D.O.R.K. Series Box Set: Diary of a Rocker's Kid, The Sister Code, Twin Wars Page 9