She sat down on the couch, folded her arms and crossed her legs. “I’m listening.”
“You don’t like me because your aunt wants you to. You even told me that last night.” He paused and looked at Lexi. She nodded in return. He added, “Just give me a chance. Please? I promise I’ll have them lay off of you. I just want you to get to know me for me.”
“No, I don’t want to get to know you.”
“I’ll see if i can get Violet and Tommy to un-ground you,” he suggested.
Lexi took his offer into consideration. How hard would it be for her to give, or pretend to give, Dan a chance if it meant that she could have some form of freedom back? In exchange for hanging out with him every once in awhile, she would be able to use her cell phone, go out of the house and maybe even get the Internet in the near future.
Hoping that she wouldn’t regret her decision, Lexi answered, “Fine. I’ll give you a chance as long as you can get me ungrounded.”
His beaming smile lit up the room and his blue eyes sparkled. “Thanks, Lexi! I promise you won’t regret it. I’ll make it worth your while.”
Lexi hoped so. But then, what did she have to lose?
“Hey, I’m gonna get going, but do you know where Violet keeps her sun block?” Dan asked.
“Probably in the medicine cabinet,” Lexi answered. “I’ll go look for it.”
In the bathroom, she found herself giggling. How was she supposed to take a guy who needed to borrow sun block seriously? Real men, like Gabe, would just suck it up.
Looking through the medicine cabinet, Lexi found some Band-Aids, scissors, tweezers and tampons. On the top shelf, there were seven bottles of sun block.
Jeez, Lexi thought, who needs seven bottles of sun block in Pennsylvania? It’s not like they lived in Florida, California or Hawaii. Pennsylvanian summers didn’t even last that long. Lexi decided that her aunt must be one of those extreme coupon shoppers who will buy anything when it goes on sale. The sun block must have been ten for ten dollars or something.
Grabbing a bottle of sun block from the cabinet, Lexi went back into the living room and handed it to Dan. “Here, you can take it. I doubt they’ll even notice it’s gone. They have a freakish amount of sunscreen in their cabinet. Why do you need it anyway?”
“It’s really hot out,” Dan replied. “I felt my arms getting sunburn in the car on the way here.”
Looking at him closer, Lexi noticed that more than just his arms had burned. A red rash was beginning to creep up his cheeks.
“I think you have sun poisoning,” Lexi said. “Here, let me help you put the sunscreen on.”
“Thanks,” Dan mumbled, handing her the bottle and taking off his shirt.
Lexi began rubbing the thick white cream on his shoulder blades, which had already turned an ugly shade of purple. As she began blending the cream into his back, he said, “You give a really good massage.”
Lexi laughed. “Except I’m not massaging you.”
“Too bad, maybe you should,” he said. When her hands stopped moving in defense, he said “I’m just kidding.”
She rubbed the sun block into Dan’s shoulders and arms, which Lexi couldn’t help but notice were really cold, despite the sunburn. After she smothered the lotion all over his chest, she handed him his shirt. “All done,” she said.
“Thanks, Lexi.”
Looking out the window, she noticed one of the curtains move at Gabe’s house. Shit, she thought. Had he been watching her rub sunscreen all over Dan? If he had, it definitely couldn’t have looked good. Lexi prayed that Gabe didn’t see, or that he wasn’t mad at her if he had seen.
“Well, I better get going. I’ll see you sometime soon, I guess?”
“Yeah, how about tonight?” She asked, figuring the sooner she could get this over with, the better. Going out with Dan also sounded better than spending another minute in the house with Violet and Tommy. “Assuming that you talk to my aunt and uncle before then.”
“I’m sure I can arrange that,” he replied. “How about we go to a drive-in movie around nine o’clock?”
“That sounds good. See you then.”
Dan had managed to talk to her aunt sooner than she expected. As soon as Violet got home from wherever she was all day, she told Lexi that she was no longer grounded. Since she didn’t mention that it had anything to do with Dan, Lexi didn’t bring it up. Instead, she told her that she had decided to give him another chance.
“Really? That’s great, Lexi! I’m so happy that you’re going to at least make the effort to get to know him,” Violet answered.
“I hope you’ll be as open-minded about Gabe as I am being about Dan in the future if it doesn’t work out,” Lexi added.
“We’ll see,” Violet said. “Let’s really hope it doesn’t come down to that though. I think you and Dan may be a perfect fit!”
Lexi sighed and went upstairs to get ready for her date. Nothing would ever change their mind about Gabe. She couldn’t wait until she was eighteen so she could make her own decisions. She only had one year and one month to go. Lexi realized that it was going to be her first birthday without her mom and she felt a pang of sadness. She still wondered what had happened the night her mom had died. The doctor said they had found E. Coli, caused by beef in her stomach, but Lexi knew that her mom hadn’t eaten beef in years. Had Greg Lawrence somehow convinced her to eat beef that night? Or maybe her mom had eaten beef without realizing it. Lexi knew that, at some point, she really wanted to talk to the mayor about it.
*
Rummaging through the boxes of clothing on the floor, she tried to unpack and find an outfit to wear tonight. Lexi decided that she wasn’t going to try to scare Dan away with her outfit again, since it hadn’t worked the first time. Pulling out a pair of white ballet flats, she figured that she might as well try to look nice this time.
Lexi found a bright, solid pink sundress at the bottom of the box. Instead of wearing her hair straight, like usual, she used the curling iron (that she also found in one of the boxes) to create tiny waves throughout her brown hair.
Glancing in the mirror, Lexi decided that she looked the best she had looked since she had arrived in Briar Creek. She wished that Gabe would be the one to see her dressed like this, instead of Dan though.
Dan pulled into Aunt Violet’s driveway at nine o’clock on the dot. If it had been a less persistent guy, Lexi would have been surprised that he was actually on time, but she was beginning to accept that nothing surprised her in Briar Creek anymore. Her aunt and uncle had probably warned Dan not to be late, so that Lexi couldn’t hold it against him.
Once they were in the car, Lexi felt a sense of awkwardness again. She didn’t know what to say to a guy who she barely knew and who was so fascinated by her. Instead, she looked out the window and ignored the awkward silence.
Some of the business names in Briar Creek made her want to laugh. They passed Crimson Hair Studio (was it only for people with red hair?) and a bar called On the Rock’s on Main Street. Lexi wondered if Austin had ever snuck into that bar with a fake I.D.
When Dan pulled into the drive-in movie theater, Lexi felt like she was in an old movie. There weren’t drive-in movie theaters where she lived in New Jersey and she had always wanted to go to one. They had agreed that they would see the latest Owen Wilson movie together.
As Dan turned off the engine and tuned the car radio so that they could listen to the movie, Lexi found herself glancing around. A tall guy was sitting in a red Subaru next to them.
On second glance, Lexi recognized the blonde sideburns. It was Dave.
Dan immediately picked up on the fact that she had noticed Dave. “He said he was going to the drive-in tonight, too. To be honest, it’s what gave me the idea to bring you here.”
“It was a good idea,” Lexi said, smiling. “I’ve actually always wanted to go to a drive-in movie, believe it or not.”
“I’m glad you agreed to come with me then.” Dan reached over and grabbed her
hand, intertwining her fingers in his. Being around Dan really made Lexi feel comfortable for once. Maybe giving him a chance on her own terms and for her own reasons (even if the main reason was not being grounded anymore) was all that she needed to do to be open-minded about him.
Next to them, a car door slammed shut. Lexi glanced over and noticed that a girl had gotten into Dave’s car, sodas and cotton candy in hand. In the darkness, Lexi thought that it was Julie at first – but then she realized that the long, brown locks of hair belonged to Mary-Kate.
Out of the corner of her eye, Lexi saw Dave lean over to kiss Mary-Kate. A few moments later, she heard a loud moaning.
Lexi shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She found it harder and harder to focus on the movie knowing what was going on in the car next to her. When Mary-Kate was dating Austin, she had cheated on him with Dan. Now, she was with Dan’s brother – who also happened to be dating one of her close friends? What a slut. What was stranger was that Dan wasn’t reacting to it at all. Lexi didn’t feel his body tense or his skin warm up or any other physical signs that would make her think he was angry at Dave, Mary-Kate or both of them. Dan had to have seen that Mary-Kate was the one who was in Dave’s car. Didn’t it bother him at all that his brother was with a girl who he had been interested in at some point?
“You okay?” Dan asked, glancing at her out of the corner of his light blue eye. “You look bothered.”
“Yeah, everything’s fine,” Lexi whispered back, attempting to pull her glossy lips into a smile.
If only everything really was fine.
****
Chapter 16
When Dan walked her to the front porch, Lexi wasn’t sure how to feel. For weeks, she had been telling herself that he wasn’t the right guy for her and, deep down inside, she still knew that she would never have the right chemistry with Dan – the type that made her body feel like it was going to explode into fireworks every time she saw or even thought about Gabe. And yet, their date really hadn’t gone as awful as she had been expecting it to.
“I had a great time,” Lexi said quietly. “Does that mean that you’re willing to see me again? Or are you just being polite?” Dan questioned, nervously sliding his car keys in and out of his pocket.
“Yes, I’ll see you again.” She replied, glancing across the street at Gabe’s darkened house out of the corner of her eye. Lexi couldn’t help but feel slightly guilty. He was probably in bed, possibly dreaming of her, and here she was standing on the front porch with another guy. Unlike last time, Lexi couldn’t really say that it was entirely her aunt’s fault. After all, she had been the one who had agreed to go out with him…even if it was for her own selfish reasons. Dan’s tight smile transformed itself upside down into a slight frown when he realized where she was staring.
“Lexi, you know you’re not allowed to see him.”
“Yeah, I know that, Dan. It’s just not right.”
He sighed. “It’s right for your own sake. If he were to ever hurt you during one of his mood swings, I would never forgive him. I know that Violet and Tommy wouldn’t either.”
Lexi grunted. Dan obviously didn’t know her aunt and uncle as well as he thought. She was convinced that Violet and Tommy weren’t concerned about her well-being.
“So, when do you want to see me again?” He asked, a doubtful tone in his voice.
“I don’t really know,” she said. “How about I’ll give you a call whenever I’m ready?”
He nodded and his blue eyes sparkled in the moonlight.
“That sounds great.”
Just as she was about to go back into the house, Dan encircled her in his strong arms, planting a kiss on her lips. She felt his familiar tongue brush against hers before he released her.
“Goodnight,” Dan said, slowly turning and walking back to his car.
Instead of going back into the house like she had originally planned, Lexi flopped down on one of the white wicker chairs on the porch. As she watched Dan back out of the driveway and speed away, she thought about their kiss. It hadn’t been the worst kiss she’d ever had (that would have been her first kiss with Justin), but it also didn’t give her the same butterflies in her stomach, and the racy heart feeling that she got from kissing Gabe, either.
It dawned on Lexi that if she had never met Gabe, kissing Dan probably would have been fine. In fact, there may even be a chance that she would find herself attracted to him and wanting to get to know him better, but with Gabe in her life, there was just no room for Dan.
Gazing up at the stars, one blinked at her. Lexi had always been a firm believer that when a person died, their spirit occupied one of the stars. She wondered if the star that was shining at her was her mom trying to tell her something.
“You didn’t have to kiss him, you know,” a deep voice said, interrupting her thoughts. Looking up, she realized that Gabe was standing in front of her.
“I know that your aunt and uncle are making you date him, but kissing him was unnecessary.”
“Gabe, I…I,” she stuttered. “Spending time with him is making it so that I’m not grounded. If kissing him is what I have to do to have a little bit of freedom, it’s worth it.”
“Freedom? Either way, you’re still not allowed to see me.”
“No,” Lexi said, shaking her head. “You’re right, I can’t see you. I am allowed to talk on the phone now though.” She handed him her cell phone. “Give me your number.”
He took the tiny cell phone in his large, masculine hands. Lexi watched as he clumsily entered his number into her cell phone contacts.
“I’m putting my number under Nora,” he said, adding, “just in case your aunt and uncle go looking through your phone.”
“Smart idea,” she said in a hushed voice, afraid that Violet and Tommy might wake up if they heard them talking too loud.
“So, do you like him?” Gabe asked her, avoiding eye contact.
“Yes, I like him,” she answered. She added, in a softened voice, “But I love you.”
A smile widened on Gabe’s face. “I love you too. I guess I better get going now. I don’t want your aunt or uncle to get pissed off if they find me here, especially after last time.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” Lexi agreed, getting to her feet.
Gabe put his arms around her waist. He stared intensely into her eyes and gently kissed her lips, which she pressed hard against his. His kiss sent a shockwave of shivers down her spine, forming goose bumps on her bare legs and arms. As he pulled away from her, she felt lifeless, as though she had been unplugged from an electric fuse.
“Goodnight,” he whispered into her ear before crossing the front lawn and heading back towards his own house.
Feeling disappointed that nothing else had happened between them, Lexi strolled into the house. Just as she was about to begin climbing the stairs, she heard the sound of someone clearing their throat. Afraid that she and Gabe had been caught, Lexi froze.
“Did you have a good time tonight?” Violet asked.
“Um, yeah,” Lexi answered. “It was fun.”
“Good. Just wait and see, Lexi. You and Dan will be good for each other in more ways than you realize right now.”
Unsure what her aunt meant, Lexi forced a smile. “I guess so. I’m pretty tired, though, so I’m going to head to bed. Night, Aunt Violet.”
“Goodnight, sweet niece of mine.”
Sweet niece of mine? Lexi found it hard to believe that one date could change her aunt’s entire attitude towards her.
*
Stretching out her legs the next morning, Lexi checked her phone and sighed. She had sent Gabe a text message the night before so that he would have her phone number. Lexi had been hoping that there would be a text message from him waiting for her when she woke up the next morning, but, so far, there was nothing.
Between her mom’s death and arguing with her aunt about Gabe and Dan, she had lost focus of the entire reason she had fought with her mom about wanting to
stay in Briar Creek – to figure out what had happened to Austin the night he had died.
As she headed downstairs to grab a bowl of cereal, Lexi realized what she had to do today. Her aunt was at the stove, her fiery red locks of hair pulled up into a loose ponytail.
“Lexi, do you want something to eat? I figured that I would make breakfast to celebrate how successful your date with Dan went last night.”
“No, thank you,” Lexi replied. “I’m really in the mood for Cocoa Krispies.”
“Oh, okay. Well, I guess we can always have a celebratory dinner then! I just want to celebrate.” Drowning her cereal in skim milk, Lexi bit her lip to keep the words that were rolling around in her head from spilling out. She couldn’t understand why her aunt was so obsessed with her and Dan dating. Maybe it was her way of coping with Austin’s death. The first day she had met Dan, he had told her that he and Austin were like brothers. Violet probably viewed him as a second son and, now that Austin was gone, Dan was the only one she had left. At least, that’s what Lexi was hoping. The alternative was that her aunt was a control freak – which was a strong possibility.
Once she and her aunt were sitting across the table from one another, Lexi put her spoon down. “Aunt Violet, I was just wondering if you called for the Internet yet.”
“Not yet, Lexi,” her aunt answered smugly. “I’ll call them sometime today though, if you’d like.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Lexi replied. She was feeling really anxious to get on Facebook. Although it had only been a little more than a week since the last time she had signed into her account, she was beginning to have withdrawals. At home, she logged in several times a day. Now that she had moved away, Facebook felt like the best way for her to keep in touch with the few friends that she did have from home…if they hadn’t already forgotten about her. With the exception of Justin, she hadn’t heard from any of them since she had arrived in Briar Creek.
The Briar Creek Vampires 01 - Kiss of Death Page 12