by A. J. Lape
This was one of those times you knew the universe had a sense of humor. I waited for some sort of cataclysmic event to put the world back on its axis, where things like this didn’t happen to someone like me...but it didn’t.
Liam’s mouth broadened into a grin. “Let me make this easy for you,” he purred in my ear. “I’ll save you a seat at lunch, and I’ll even buy you some cookies.”
When I answered with a drooling, “Mmm,” I realized I might be a woman of unclean body and lips.
I was too easily bought...not a good sign.
Liam tweaked my nose then turned on his heels, sauntering off to whatever lair senior fastards hailed from. Jeez, he was cute. If he weren’t so cute, I wouldn’t have issues with my thinking processes. Thank Heavens, he didn’t wait for me to accept or even reject. I’m not sure what would’ve come out of my mouth, and the sanctity of my friendship with Dylan didn’t need it spelled out.
Dylan made a gagging sound deep in his throat. “What part of ‘stay away from him’ didn’t you get?” he pouted.
“The stay away part,” I mumbled.
“Obviously.”
“You’re too bossy.”
“Am not.”
“Are to,” I snapped. “You need to work on your people skills.”
He rolled his eyes with a snort. His expression saying, People need to work on the way they address me.
“Doesn’t that bother you?” I frowned. “What people think?”
He laughed darkly, finding humor in his own bad reputation. “What are you up to, Darcy?”
I picked some imaginary blonde hairs off my sleeves. God only knows, I thought. I’d figure it out along the way. “I need something from Liam.”
“You need something from Liam.”
“That’s what I said.”
“That’s what you said,” he repeated again. I rolled my eyes with massive exaggeration. When Dylan was upset, he had a tendency to repeat my sentences as though he weren’t even going to dignify them with any follow-up questions because it was wasting his time.
Tucking my History book under my arm, I threw my Lucky bag over my shoulder. My sense of humor was on the verge of extinction, and Dylan was sucking the last bit of manners out of my mouth. “Our conversations sound like a broken record, Dylan.”
“Then don’t force me to break it.”
I gave him a mean look...his was meaner. I finally blurted out, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but apparently, I need to be blunt. Right now you’re in my way, but everything will go back to normal when you’re not.”
Wow, that sounded Machiavellian. Maybe I should be scared.
I would’ve expected an intense anger to ensue. Instead, a grin threatened to show as he took one step forward, his body dangerously invading my personal space. “Good,” he murmured. “I intend to stay there. What does he possess that you want?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “Is he everlasting?”
At first, I didn’t remember why he chose that adjective, but my memory flooded with the conversation where he indicated what should be the qualifications before you had a date. Sure, I wanted a date (I think), but more than that, I merely wanted information. If a date transpired from my badgirlness, then woohoo for Darcy.
Dear. Lord. Maybe I was fickle.
“I’m not sure,” I shrugged. He just stared. Stared so intently I had to look away. “I could do without the dramatic pause, Dylan.”
He captured my chin with his hand, forcing my gaze into his. Dang it, he wasn’t going to go away, and it was unusually uncomfortable feeling his chest rise and fall up against mine. Tension was inside, tension that wasn’t going to abate until it found an outlet. “Infatuation is not your style, Darcy,” he said frostily.
“What is my style?”
His eyes got dark. “Do you honestly need me to spell that out for you?”
Honestly, I was trying my best not to romanticize the situation with Liam. Taken at face value, he loved me...or really, really liked me. Pragmatically speaking, he was a big, fat, liar. He was Liam; I was Darcy...that was that. Regardless, I needed him, and this was the only way I knew to grab his attention.
I blurted out, “I dressed like a badgirl for a reason, D.”
Dylan flinched, took one look at my clothes, ran a hand through his thick, black hair then did the unspeakable: he burst into laughter. He put his hand over his mouth trying to choke down the outburst but wasn’t getting anywhere. I hated him right now. And if Liam thought I wanted to be with my best friend then he was an idiot. Dylan had better hair than me. No one wanted to be with someone that had better hair than they did.
I slammed my locker shut, hoping I had that don’t-mess-with-me swagger going on. I was done talking, and all he was going to get was a picture of my rear end and the dust it was going to kick up. With an overly dramatic hair flip, I pivoted on my heels and ran face-first into Brynn Hathaway.
I had the gene for public humiliation.
My plastic tortoiseshell headband twisted with her designer model and snapped in two and tinged on the tile.
Picking up the two pieces, I shoved them in the pocket of my jeans, mortified.
What I didn’t need today was a dose of Hathawaywood, but it seemed like Hathawaywood was on the menu. Why did she worry me? She and Dylan had a history. Murphy never allowed me to attend parties or middle school dances, but evidently, Dylan had a good time without me. Rumor said he and Brynn fell off the grid for an undetermined amount of time, returning all flushed-faced and a little wiser to the ways of the world. I’d asked in the past if the grapevine was true, and his cocky laugh told me his lips might be filming a sequel.
Brynn was Dylan’s type I guess, if he had a type. I called it the 5 B’s: brunette, beautiful, bedazzled, beguiled, and besotted. A paradigm of perfection when I was a provincial mess.
“Hi, Brynn, how are you this morning?” he asked, placing his palm on the nape of my neck.
She twirled a brown curl around her pale pink fingernail. “I’m great,” she gushed. I just bet you are, I rolled my eyes to myself. When Dylan talked to girls, it always left them in some mindless la-la state. It was another fifteen seconds or so before she found her voice. Frankly, her voice was annoying. It was too candy-coated sweet. Almost made me hate candy.
Dressed in head-to-toe pink (someone enlighten me, I don’t know where you get pink jeans), she saw Dylan’s fingers wrapped around my neck and acted as if she had amputation on her mind.
Suddenly, I felt like the spare tire. Leaning over, I gave him a nudge. “D, I think you’re supposed to let me go now.” The way she was looking at him—like he was a hunk of ribeye and she was an unhappy vegan—I figured he lost track of me just as she had. Next thing I knew, though, he shoved his left hand over my mouth and held on even tighter. Brynn flinched at his aggressiveness, but really, this was status quo of our overly physical relationship anyway. If she didn’t like it, she shouldn’t have butted in.
“I spoke with Sydney,” she finally said sweetly. “So, she’s having a party this weekend?”
I stopped listening, contemplating my lot in life. I looked like a badgirl, or I was hoping to look like a badgirl, when Brynn oozed good. When you’re forced to look at perfection, no way in the world can you escape comparing their excellence to your deficiencies. My push-up bra couldn’t hold a candle to hers. Hers was way more than a training bra. Mine was...well??...borrowed and hopefully disease-free.
As Dylan halfway answered her questions, she grew more and more impatient. I gave her one of those hey-I-tried shrugs, walked three feet when Dylan lunged for my belt loop. Yanking me back toward him, he grabbed me around the waist, his large hands almost spanning the circumference.
I felt like I’d been branded.
He held onto me for the rest of their conversation—and it wasn’t pain-free, people. I wanted loose and God knows she wanted me loose, but this was Dylan...have your cake and eat it, too. I started laughing because I hadn’t been this amused in a
very long time. She shouldn’t be jealous of me. That was completely preposterous and defied logic, but maybe in a perfect world, Brynn’s dumb. That’s it. Down deep she’s dumb.
I heard him say, “Sure, I’ll do that,” when all of a sudden she marched right up to him and literally (honest to God Himself and any other man, plant, or animal you choose to swear to) no good, low down dirty kissed him. There wasn’t a second for him to say no; there wasn’t a second for him to say yes. Brynn just jumped on him like a virus in cold season. Thing was, she might as well have kissed me, too. We were breathing the same air, taking the same space. That was certainly one way to quicken the pulse, and if mine was racing, God only knew what his was doing.
I mean, there was a tongue-licking smack included. It’s not good when there’s a smack, is it?
Cue the sleepless nights. One day soon, she was going to steal him away from me.
25 PLAYING WITH FIRE
I IGNORED DYLAN all day, and when I say all day, I mean ALL day. Let me amend that; up to lunch, at least, but a girl’s got to start somewhere. He spoke, I ignored him; he touched my hand, I jerked it away; he put his arm around my shoulder, I’m not kidding, I leaned over and bit it. It wasn’t a proud moment, people, but when he laughed out loud, I bit him even harder.
Right. Now. I. Did. Not. Care.
He was behind me in the lunch line, thinking I was going to sit by him as usual, all dutiful-friend-and-good-girl-in-training. Well, guess what...I had a date. A date I intended to keep.
I punched my student ID number into the silver keypad by the cash register. It was hooked up to the register and automatically deducted your day’s lunch expenses out of your account. Dylan said, “Darcy, you’re killing me. I wish I could be angry with you, but you’re too sweet to be mad at for long. Come here and hug me, sweetheart, so I can forget I’m mad at you.”
Wrapping my arm around his waist, I gave him some sort of disinterested and passionless half hug, tapping his shoulder like he was a gnat I was swatting away.
He pulled back frowning, his buttery eyes boring into mine like a drill bit gone crazy. “Wow, was that as good for you as it was for me?” he asked sarcastically. I gave him a shrug that was even less interested. “Are you sure we’re good?” he asked. Ugh. “Do we need to talk about this more?”
“No, we’re…”
“I’m not even sure I understand…”
“…fine, okay?”
“…what the this is but I want to talk about the this if we need to.” He stopped for a breath. “I don’t enjoy arguing—”
“Yeah, you do,” I laughed.
“…and I especially don’t enjoy arguing with you.” Now, he’d just lied to me. He loved winning arguments—he always had—and winning arguments with me was some sort of astronomical aphrodisiac. It’s like he enjoyed putting me in my place...which, unfortunately, was heeling at his feet.
All I could say was, “We’re good.”
Then I added a confident nod.
Dylan winked as he dug a one hundred dollar bill out of his back pocket, handing it to the lunch lady. Her eyes bugged out of her head when she pulled the Franklin up to her eyes.
“Are you going to want change?” she asked stupefied.
“It’s probably a tip,” I mumbled.
Dylan was instantly embarrassed...but just as instantaneously came the disarmingly intense charm. “No, ma’am. My mother didn’t have anything smaller. If you would, please deposit the rest into my account.” That’s what happened, folks, when you were richer than God. Heaven only knew the last time they’d ever touched a bill smaller than a twenty.
When she finished, Dylan ran a hand through his jet-black hair. “Maybe we should talk about this some more.”
I expelled a worn out sigh. “Pinky swear, we’re good.”
And this is why I loved Dylan. He suffered from a hyper conscience and couldn’t rest until we were back on the same page. But Dylan’s problem was he couldn’t let bygones be bygones...at least with me. I wanted to ignore last night; move on, be done with it. We were speaking, and that meant I didn’t have to dive into the reasons I was so short-tempered. The best I could come up with was I stressed over my current situation, and maybe the green-eyed monster named Brynn-envy was getting to me. Go figure. His ego didn’t need to know that. My word, it was big enough already.
“I owe you an apology, sweetheart. I’ve obviously hurt your feelings.”
He did.
All of them did. So, I screwed up with my badgirlness (I was going to burn this bra as soon as I got home), but I could tell you this, it wouldn’t happen again. Dylan needed to be turned off, though, before he could fully get turned on. When he was in this mood, it could be an all-day gab session. I talked over my shoulder as we walked. “You owe me nothing, D. I love you, you love me, and we both know it’s for always. Just like until the day we die, but I shouldn’t have to explain myself. You’re a guy. It’s all about the shama lama, ding-dong. I may not know a lot, but dang it, I know guys like the shama lama, ding-dong.”
My word, was he an idiot?? Dylan went still. He cleared his throat once, then again. “The shama lama, ding-dong,” he murmured.
“The shama lama, ding-dong,” I repeated.
“Am I supposed to know what that means?”
I decided to play the mocking bird, repeating his phrases just to get on his nerves. “You’re supposed to know what that means.”
I smiled to myself.
“Huh,” he chuckled. “Please enlighten me, oh thee of the creative tongue.” My face instantly felt like a five-alarm fire. “Darcy, Darcy, Darcy,” he joked, “are you blushing?”
“You’re standing behind me,” I snorted, “how would you know?”
“I feel you, sweetheart.”
I meandered in and out of three tables, making my way toward a waving and smiling Liam. Sweat dripped down my back, causing my shirt to stick to my skin. I didn’t know if that was from looking at Liam or being under the gun with Dylan. “You know…” I stalled.
By that time, Dylan was right by my side, leaning into my shoulder. “Uh-huh,” he chuckled again. “Give me specifics.”
I blushed even deeper. “You know, wink-wink.”
“What do you mean, wink-wink?”
The best way to shock Dylan into silence was to tell him my limited knowledge of the opposite sex in a thirty-second sound bite. I opened my mouth and unloaded everything I knew from Health class, what magazines had warned me about, and what Murphy had told me was a big green light to guys, ergo, don’t ever do it. I unloaded everything I knew about the badgirl and how my goal was to be the baddest of the bad.
With a reputation that would make the trampy look pure.
Dylan dropped his tray then caught it right before it hit the floor.
With that statement, I gave him an exactly-what-I-was-going-for smile then marched toward a patiently waiting Liam (shaking my hips), trying to smile like a badgirl on the prowl.
I heard a four-lettered word but kept right on walking.
Lunch was a grilled chicken sandwich and mixed fruit in some sort of red gelatinous mold. I bought a slice of pizza, picked at my salad, and scarfed the three cookies Liam had waiting as an appetizer. Wow, you had to love a man that bought you cookies.
The first ten minutes we talked about TV shows we liked, professional baseball season (he was shocked I could hang), and what plans we had for summer break. I asked him what college he was considering, but Liam gave me a look like nothing was set in stone. Something other than indecisiveness was in that look. It was an unmistakable restlessness as though he couldn’t make any decisions until something of greater importance was resolved.
When we neared the fifteen-minute mark, my nerves reminded me lunch was all but over. Indigestion started, and I knew I needed to get to the bottom of what Liam was so desperate to talk to me about. But a part of me didn’t want to break the mood. I liked Liam. He laughed easily, really listened when you spoke, and alth
ough I’d heard—and probably believed—he was a fastard, there was some genuine goodness in him. But I couldn’t let a crush on someone I knew very little about keep me from helping Oscar if I could. Thing was, we were getting along so well there was never a lull in conversation. That left no other recourse than to basically interrupt a male who was currently telling me the dimple on my chin should be outlawed it was so delicious.
Only my luck, I frowned.
“Liam—” I said.
My iPhone sang Bad Moon Rising, and when I looked at the screen, I saw Dylan’s number and face flashing. For God’s sake, he was calling me from two tables over. I rolled my eyes then scratched my head in my mind. I’d never understand him.
I took perverse pleasure tapping “decline,” sending it straight to voicemail.
I tried again. “Liam, what was it you wanted to speak with me about?”
“You have the most beautiful eyes,” he gushed.
Omigosh, I thought. He’s really into me. Dream on, Darcy. Dream on. For a minute, I tried to picture Liam and me as the school’s superstar couple. Crowds parted when we walked through, and envy followed us everywhere. Then I felt the pressure, the pressure to keep being the it-couple. BARF. Who in their right mind would want that kind of life?
I shook my head hard, butting into my own daydream.
“What was the talk you wanted to have with me, Liam? You mentioned it twice, and I could tell both times it was serious in nature.” He said nothing, looking like he’d even shut off his breathing. “Could it have something to do with that gang of boys we talked about? You have some details about the Oscar Small case, don’t you? Some details that are keeping you up at night.”
He clammed up like he was on the bottom of the ocean and someone was going for his pearl. “I have no answer for that.”
“You have no answer or none you’re willing to give?” I qualified.