“The guy who’s dressed like a rotting banana,” I muttered in answer to Simone. “But I guess cute is a term that can be argued. I don’t like him. He’s playing my position on Hunter’s team.”
Allie gasped. “Permanently?”
“Temporarily,” Lisa corrected quickly. “Until Susan is fit to play again.”
“Oh, that’s not too bad.” Simone shoved her beautiful curls over one shoulder and snickered. “He’s quite the eye candy. What’s his name?”
Simone was the girlfriend of one of the guys on my team, and the two of them usually stuck together like glue, so her remark made us all chuckle. She’d never—not in a million years—dump Alex Winter for another guy.
“Ethan,” I told her.
“Did you talk to him already?” Allie wanted to know.
“A little. Before practice started. Why?”
“Because he’s looking at you right now,” Allie and Simone said at once with grins in their voices.
“What?” Oh man, shoot me, because I did exactly what you shouldn’t do at such a moment. I whirled around to check. And of course, I met Ethan’s gaze, which was indeed focused on me. While my expression was dull, if not a little surprised, the corners of Charlie Brown’s mouth tilted up before his attention returned to the other players and the ongoing match.
I slapped both hands to my face, groaning with my eyes squeezed shut. “I hate you guys! Now he must think I’m checking him out.”
“Are you?” Lisa giggled.
“No.” Granted, I’d done it before, but this time it was a total accident. I wanted to dig a hole all the way to China to hide in.
When I opened my eyes, thank God, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Samantha Summers—the girl that inhaled cherry lollipops like others inhaled air and who had become my closest friend since she’d moved to Grover Beach only three weeks ago—marched through the gate and strolled over to us. She was tiny and funny and I loved her like a sister. She would back me up against the gossiping hens surrounding me.
Sam sat down Indian-style in the grass in front of us and made a face. “Susan, you look miserable. What did I miss?”
“Ethan,” the other three told her at once.
“Who is Ethan?”
“I’ll tell you if you promise not to turn around and look,” I said before anyone else could point out my replacement to her.
Sam’s face scrunched, and it made her look absurdly intrigued. “Promise.” After I gave her the same story I’d given the others, her face split with a grin. “Okay, now you got me all curious. I have to turn around, Susan, I just have to!” She got all fidgety on the ground.
“No! You can’t. He already noticed us watching him,” I hissed, keeping my gaze determinedly away from the players. If she turned around, I’d pull her back by a fistful of her short, black, messy hair—that was a promise on my end.
“You’re crazy, Susan,” Lisa teased and added, “But there’s no need to turn around, Sam. You’re lucky—he’s coming over here.”
What? I froze at her words…gulped…and saw the soccer ball rolling toward us. It stopped right by Sam’s leg. She picked it up and sure enough, Charlie Brown was jogging our way.
“Hiii, Eeethan,” the girls sang out in unison as he took the ball from Sam.
Appalled, I stared into his wicked eyes. When he started to grin, I wanted to shout at him: I told them your name, so what? Only, I couldn’t make my mouth form coherent words because embarrassment had wired my jaw shut.
“Hey, girls,” he greeted the others like a perfect charmer. His gaze landed on my lap. On his iPod still in my lap, to be exact. “You like my music?” He chuckled but didn't give me a chance to answer as he turned around and headed back into the game.
“Thanks a lot!” I spat through gritted teeth at my supposed friends. A moment later, however, I was snickering along with them, because aside from all the embarrassment, the situation was funny. If I were one of them, I’d have acted equally as stupid for sure. I’d just never been at the receiving end before.
Sam leaned back to prop herself on her elbows and stretched her legs out in front of her. She was the smallest of us, all right, but always wearing camo pants and black Doc Martens, she was also the most dangerous-looking of us five—even if her appearance was deceiving. Samantha was the nicest girl I’d ever met. Right now, she let go of a long sigh. “Take it easy, Susan. So he’s playing your position.” She shrugged it off. “It’s only for a while, and he’s cute. It’s really not a drama.”
Yeah, she was right; it wasn’t. And Sam would know a thing or two about dramas herself. Only a week ago her cousin Chloe had almost succeeded in making her parents send Sam back to Egypt, where Sam’s parents still lived. Because her father was a general in the U.S. Army and garrisoned in Cairo for three more months, Samantha had been allowed to move ahead to Grover Beach at the beginning of November to stay with Chloe and her family, so she wouldn’t have to move later, during the school year.
No one could have guessed that Chloe still had a crush on Tony Mitchell, the guy from my soccer team who Sam had hooked up with. It had caused a pretty nasty scene a week ago when Chloe wrecked her car and later almost drowned herself in the sea. We had quite an eventful fall.
Admittedly, none of us had liked Chloe Summers much before. But after what happened, we all looked at her with different eyes now—even though she never looked at any of us, ever. It seemed she felt really bad and sorry about what had happened. And now, knowing all the facts, it wasn’t hard to forgive her, whether she asked for it or not.
On the weird side, none of us had ever seen Tony as radiantly happy as he’d been since the day he and Sam became a couple. He spent every minute of his free time with her, so it didn’t surprise me when he came over to us during timeout. Stopping behind Sam, he bent down and stole a kiss. He did that every so often, and most of the time, he didn’t come alone. Hunter normally couldn’t stay away from Lisa either, but today he kept away.
Noticing, Lisa pouted at Tony. “Why isn’t Ryan coming over?”
“He’s scared.” Tony chuckled. “After the thing with Ethan, he’s afraid Miller will bite his head off.”
“Ha, ha,” I said. But there was a grain of truth in that joke. I flashed a tight-lipped smile across the field at Ryan. Catching my gaze, he rubbed his neck and laughed out loud, knowing that Tony had just ratted him out.
With only a short time left for practice, Tony headed back to score another goal against Ryan’s team. Watching the two of them out on the field was always a delight. Hard to say which of them was the better player. Since it was Ryan’s final year at Grover Beach High, I often wondered if he would nominate Tony for captain of the team when it was time for him to leave. But that was still a few months off and no one talked about it just yet.
Practice ended at quarter to four, and my friends immediately fanned out to their guys on the field. Being seventeen and still as single as could be, I stayed put and shoved my book into my backpack. It was then that I saw Ethan walking toward me and my mouth dried out. Why? Because he’d taken off his shirt and was wiping his face with it. Before he shook it out and put it back on, I got an exclusive glimpse at his rock-hard abs and shapely chest. I was pretty sure the real Charlie Brown didn’t look anything close to this beneath his yellow shirt.
Determined not to get caught staring again, I quickly turned my head away and rose from the bench. The backpack was already on my shoulders and I was about to walk off in the opposite direction when Ethan called out to me, “Hey, Susan, can you wait up a minute?”
Startled, I pivoted to him. He loped over and stopped so close to me that a whiff of his sweat caught me square in the face. Luckily he’d put on enough deodorant that it didn’t smell bad at all. Maybe it was just his shower gel, I couldn’t tell. In any case, it smelled manly and…nice.
Still slightly out of breath from practice, he sat down and glanced up at me. His cheeks were red and he’d tossed his ball cap a
side, displaying a disheveled thatch of blond hair. He resembled a little boy, which was quite a cute look. It suited him.
“What’s up?” I asked, feeling a bit awkward because of my previous gawking. Hopefully that wasn’t the reason he wanted to talk to me. I’d put his iPod back on the bench without a scratch, too.
When Ethan reached out for my hand and pulled me down next to him, I didn’t protest. “I need to talk to you about my joining the team,” he said.
“You stole my place, end of story,” I answered, a little sullen now. “What more is there to talk about?”
He grimaced and released my wrist. “Hunter says I can stay, if you say I can.”
“Oh.” My gaze skated over the soccer field to find Hunter with Lisa some sixty feet away. When I lifted my eyebrows, he started to walk toward us, but Lisa quickly grabbed his arm and said something to him that made him stop and smile. She cast me a brilliant grin, gave me two very unsubtle thumbs-up, and dragged Ryan away to the parking lot. I rolled my eyes. Did she think she was Grover Beach’s new matchmaker all of a sudden?
It was a miracle Ethan hadn’t seen them sneaking off. He was still gazing at me. “So what do you think? Do I make a worthy player for the Bay Sharks?” His voice sounded awfully hopeful.
Dropping my gaze to the ground, I coughed to get rid of the annoying dryness in my throat. “How would I know?” I mumbled. “It’s not like I watched you play today.”
For a few seconds, Ethan just stared at me. The feeling was aggravating. As I turned to him again, the corners of his mouth tilted up in a slow grin and he drawled the word, “Liar.”
The heat of embarrassment rose in my body and here I was, once again wishing for a time machine. Since that wasn’t going to happen, all I could do was laugh. I don’t know why, it just burst out of me, and rather hysterically, too. I sounded like a hyena. Yeah, that was sexy Susan Miller at her best.
But sexy or not, the anger and tension from the past hour slipped away from me. I could look Charlie Brown straight in the eye and didn’t even blush. “Okay, you’re right. I did check you out, but I had to see what Hunter came up with to replace me. And”—while we were at it—“the thing with the girls before was totally stupid, but I’m not saying sorry for that.”
Ethan had watched me, fascinated, when I had my laughing fit, but now he chuckled, and the sound of it was quite delightful. “You don’t have to. It’s sweet that you couldn’t wait to tell your friends my name.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, right. Like that was the only thing on my mind since you introduced yourself.” Yeah, right. Like that wasn’t the truth. A shrug rolled off my shoulders, and suddenly I felt I could be honest with him. “As for joining the team—only temporarily, of course—you’re actually a passable player from what I saw. Your long passes are excellent. I guess Hunter could use you. And yes…I like your music.” Now I stuck out my tongue at him.
Man, I needed to stop before I talked myself into a frenzy which, hands down, happened more often than not, especially when I started to feel comfortable with someone. I couldn’t tell why exactly he made me feel so at ease, but I’d obviously slipped past the point of no return already. “You have a lot of good stuff on your playlist. And it was your fault anyway; you didn’t turn off the music when you left.” Duh!
A little surprised, either over my swell of words or about my taste in music, he tilted his head. “You like Aerosmith?”
“Not so much, but I kinda inhale Kings of Leon day and night. Sadly, there’s not enough Volbeat on your iPod. That’s my second favorite band in the world.”
Ethan turned to me on the bench, putting one leg on the other side to straddle it. An excited gleam appeared in his eyes. One that I knew all too well from myself, when I talked about books or music. “Yeah, they’re awesome,” he gushed. “I’ve only just discovered them, and I’m going to get all the CDs they have. Call me weird, but when I really like a band, I just don’t want to download their music. I’m like a—”
“Hoarder? That’s totally what I do.”
“Yeah, something like that. Only, the music shop in town isn’t very well stocked. I’ll have to order a few things online.”
“I have all their CDs, and DVDs. Their best one is Live from beyond Hell. You can borrow it if you want.” When he nodded, I made a mental note to find it tonight and bring the CD to school tomorrow. “Guess what! I even got them to sign my hoodie after a concert last winter.”
“You’re kidding me! You’ve met them? How cool is that?”
“Veeeeery.” I pulled my backpack down from my shoulders and fished for my phone before thumbing euphorically through the thousand pictures on it. When I found the right one, I held the phone out to him so he could look at the screen. My proud grin reached from Utah to Ohio. The picture showed me with the singer from Volbeat, his arm casually draped over my shoulders, both of us smirking at each other rather than into the camera.
“Holy cow! That’s awesome!”
“Yeah. And he smelled so terrible, all sweaty and worked up after the show—” I laughed. “But, for the life of me, I couldn’t bring myself to shower that night.”
Ethan nailed me with a calm stare. “I totally understand. I wouldn’t have washed Michael Poulsen’s DNA off either, if it was pasted on me.”
Oh boy, could it be that Charlie Brown and I spoke the same language? I’d known him for what, five minutes? And I already felt like I’d met my soul mate. We raved endlessly about the bands we loved, those with a natural talent for singing, and ranted about others who apparently thought they needed to strip naked in a video to draw attention.
It struck me dumb how much Ethan and I were in tune. Okay no, it didn’t—nothing ever rendered me speechless, but it was amazing. None of my friends felt so strongly about my taste in music, so this boy in front of me was definitely a keeper.
When my phone went off after some time, we were so deep in conversation that I didn’t answer until the fifth or sixth ring. Absently, I said, “Yeah?”
“Susan? Where are you?”
My mother’s impatient voice dragged my attention away from Ethan’s shiny blue eyes. “Still at the soccer field,” I answered warily. “Why?”
“It’s after seven. Your great aunt Muriel is here. We’ve been waiting for you to start dinner for over half an hour.”
I brought the phone down quickly and glanced at the display to check the time. She was right—it was five past seven. Crap! Being with Ethan, I’d totally forgotten my grandfather’s sixty-eighth birthday. His slightly senile, hard-of-hearing sister Muriel had come from Pasadena to celebrate with us tonight. I was supposed to help Mom cook dinner. Just where had the time gone? We couldn’t possibly have been talking for three hours. My face felt like the color just vanished from my cheeks. “Sorry, Mom. I got caught up,” I said into the phone and promised to be home in a few minutes.
“You have to go?” Ethan asked after I hung up.
“Yes. Family celebration.” Grimacing, I packed my stuff and stood up. “I can’t believe I forgot about that.”
Ethan rose with me. “It’s crazy. I wouldn’t have thought we were talking for more than twenty minutes.” He walked with me to the exit of the field, matching my slightly slower than normal pace. As we reached the parking lot, he stopped by a blue Ford Mustang and unlocked the doors with the punch of a button on his key ring. Looking back and forth between the car and me, he asked, “Need a ride home?”
I shook my head. “It’s not far. Only five minutes.”
He said, “Okay,” but it sounded like: What a shame. And it was exactly how I felt about having to go home now. I hadn’t enjoyed anything as much as talking to him in a long time. In fact, my mouth and throat had gone so dry from talking that I constantly had to swallow now to keep my voice smooth.
We looked at each other for an extended moment as if neither of us wanted to say goodbye first. When I decided I would be the one, Ethan beat me there, but what he said was, “Um, that was ni
ce. Maybe we should do it again. What do you think? Tomorrow after school? We could go get a soda together somewhere.”
I ran a hand through my hair and played with the ends that hung in front of my chest. “What…you mean like—”
“A date?” He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. Three o’clock at Charlie’s Café?”
A very funny feeling spread in my stomach. One that was usually reserved for when I was watching a movie with Zac Efron in it. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Ethan repeated with a smile, already opening the door of his car.
I waved at him instead of saying goodbye and turned around, grinning like a lunatic. But before I could walk away, he shouted after me, “Hey, wait.” As I pivoted once more, he asked, “What should I tell Hunter about me playing on the team?”
I laughed and again found a strand of my hair to twirl around my finger. “Well, I said yes to the date, didn’t I?” And with that I hurried home, hoping to get a piece of Granddad’s birthday cake before Aunt Muriel ate it all.
Chapter 2
MONDAY NIGHT WAS a fight night in my house. It started right after dinner when Gramps had blown out the thousand candles on his birthday cake and Dad cut it, then handed him a piece.
“Richard, you know my father shouldn’t be eating sweets,” my mom scolded him through gritted teeth. “Remember his diabetes, for goodness’ sake.”
“Come on, Sally,” Dad wheedled. “It’s his birthday. You didn’t make this cake to have the birthday boy watch the rest of us eat it.”
After that conversation starter, it was clear to me that I’d be sleeping with a pillow over my head tonight—like so many times before. Granddad cut me a wary look from across the table just before I got up and went to the fridge to get a glass of milk. No idea why I did that. I didn’t even like cold milk. But each time my mom and dad got in an argument, I felt the need to dash out of the room and find something else to do.
Dating Trouble (Grover Beach Team Book 5) Page 2