After dealing with taunts from the lug heads, I was appalled to realize I was seconds away from being late to first period and still had to go to the whole other side of the school. Thank goodness for these long legs everyone liked to tease me about. Too bad I still walked into AP Bio about ten seconds after the bell rang. Mr. McGowan was cool, though, and I knew he wouldn’t give me a tardy on the first day of school.
I kept my head down and tried to calm the fire burning in my cheeks. Breathe in. Breathe out. This was not how things were supposed to go. It was supposed to be different this year. Not the same old Piper, stricken with anxiety and wishing to be anywhere but at school.
I vaguely heard Mr. McGowan say something about lab partners and grades and working together. Blah. Blah. I was not a fan of group assignments. I didn’t lift my head until I heard Noah’s name. I didn’t realize he was in the class. That was a bonus. At least I had one friend in the room. He got paired with Tierney Hiatt, a quiet, mousy girl who usually had her head in a book. Noah smiled reassuringly at her when she joined him at their lab table. Noah really was a nice guy.
“Piper Hines.” Butterflies took flight in my stomach when I heard my name. What kind of torture awaited me this year?
“And Drew Thompson.”
My eyes snapped up and immediately found his. He’d been watching me. Warmth flooded my cheeks again and I wanted to melt into the floor. I was ten minutes into the first period of the first day of my junior year and I was afraid I already had pit stains. Drew inclined his head, glancing toward the back of the room where the rest of the class had already moved to sit at the tables.
“Miss Hines. Mr. Thompson. Are you going to join the rest of us?” Mr. McGowan peered at us over the top of his glasses.
As much as I wanted to, I knew I couldn’t stay where I was. I was going to have to sit beside him. I picked up the pile of stuff I would have left in my locker if it hadn’t been for those dumb jocks surrounding it and tucked it into my arm.
Drew was already sitting down at the lab table, his long legs casually braced on either side of his stool. Tuning out everything Mr. McGowan was saying, I studied him. He looked different from the guy I’d talked to last night on the basketball court. He was the embodiment of the hot bad-boy with his hair styled short on the sides and longer on top. He’d slicked it back so it waved just right over his forehead. His black t-shirt hugged his muscles in all the right places while his dark jeans hung low on his hips. It was the small bar through his lip that surprised me the most. I never thought I’d say this, but dang it looked good. On him it looked dang good.
Butterflies danced in my belly and my knees trembled as I sat down beside him. The scent of his cologne filled the small area around our table and I had to remind myself that sniffing him was a bad idea. I pulled a notebook from the bottom of my stack of crap and tried to pay attention to Mr. McGowan. I should probably resign myself to not doing well in this class. How would I ever focus with Drew beside me every day? I was hyper aware of his every movement. Every inhale. Every exhale.
I folded my arms on the table in front of me.
Drew shifted in his seat and wrote something on his notebook. He nudged me with his elbow, the small contact affecting me more than it should. When I glanced in his direction, his blue eyes darted to the notebook.
In black ink, in bold writing was friends?
He wanted to be friends now? After an ambush kiss and then a full on make out, we were supposed to be friends?
I turned to face him with what had to be an incredulous expression.
He grimaced and wrote on the notebook again. Please. He underlined the word twice.
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever,” I whispered. His grin was visible from the corner of my eye. I tried to ignore him and maybe figure out what the heck Mr. McGowan was talking about.
Three seconds later, Drew nudged my arm again. I looked at the page again.
Kissing friends?
The nerve-
I snatched his pen from his hand and wrote NO!
His grin turned into a chuckle. “Damn,” he swore under his breath.
Without considering where we were, I slugged him hard on his arm.
“Ow,” he laugh-groaned and reached up to rub at the spot where I’d hit him.
“Ahem, Miss Hines, do we have a problem back there?” Mr. McGowan’s voice pierced the Drew and Piper bubble I’d created at the back of the room.
“No, Mr. McGowan.” My cheeks flared again as every pair of eyes in the room turned to stare at Drew and I.
“Please refrain from striking Mr. Thompson in my classroom, hmm,” he said, his eyes squinting at me from above his glasses, which if they slid another millimeter south on his nose, would end up on the floor.
“Yes, sir.” Oh. My. Gosh. I wanted to bury my face in my arms. Or better yet I wanted to bury it in my pillow. On my bed. At my house. Could this day just end already!
Drew sniggered beside me as Mr. McGowan resumed his first day speech about weekly homework and quizzes.
I balled up my fist to dead leg him. He reached out to cover my fingers with his own.
“Ah-ah-ah, slugger. The man said you couldn’t hit me in his classroom,” Drew whispered close enough that his breath stirred my hair.
Drew
“Ow!” I should have seen it coming. It had been brewing for the last forty-five minutes of our AP Bio class, that punch I’d stopped her from delivering.
“That’s what you get,” she spat out, walking away from me with her books clutched to her chest.
I easily caught up. “For what?”
She stopped so abruptly, I walked into her back. “I’m not going to kiss you, Drew.” Other students shifted around us as they made their way down the crowded hall.
“Why not?”
“I am not a player. And I refuse to be played by one.”
She was right and I knew it. That didn’t mean it set right, hearing it spoken out loud like that. “I wasn’t playing you, Piper.”
Her expression closed off. “So you don’t want to be kissing friends? You want to be...what?”
Sighing, I knew she had me. And by the expression on her face she knew it, too. I wasn’t in the market for a relationship. Just like I’d told her. But we were going to have to figure out a way to be around each other and not have it constantly be awkward. I was friends with her brother. We were lab partners now. I should never have opened this can of worms in the first place.
“Friends. I want to be friends.”
The space around us had closed until it was like we were the only two people in the hall. We were close enough I could see gold flecks in her eyes, eyes that searched mine for answers I didn’t want to give.
“Why?”
The question surprised me more than it should. Why shouldn’t we be friends?
“Why not?”
“We don’t have to hang out. We don’t have to be friends. You can play ball with Luke and everybody and I will just stay away. No big deal. Why are you pushing this? You’ve made it clear you don’t want to date me.” Her tone scalded and I hated the hint of vulnerability I heard in it.
I shook my head. “I don’t want to date anyone. It’s not just you.” Hurt flickered in her eyes and I wanted to punch myself. “Look, Piper, we have to be lab partners. Let’s make the best of it. I just don’t think I can handle all this awkward between us. Plus, it would really suck if you stopped playing basketball with us.”
She held me under her gaze for a long moment. I could almost see the gears in her brain cranking around and around as she tried to figure out my motives. Finally, her eyes cleared. I had no idea what she was thinking but she said, “Okay. Friends it is. No attack kissing.” She held her finger between us as warning.
Sighing, I knew I had to agree. No, I had to promise. And then I had to keep that promise. Somehow. I wished this girl didn’t have the effect on me she did. But that was my problem, not hers.
I held out my hand. “No att
ack kissing.” She took my hand and I squeezed. She nodded like it was a done deal.
“Unless, of course, you initiate it.” I took a step closer and spoke low. “You can attack kiss me anytime you want.”
Piper gasped and ripped her hand from mine. “See you around, Drew.”
“You know you can’t restrain yourself around me.” She just shook her head as my laugh followed her down the hall.
Chapter 12
Piper
“Oh, my gosh. It’s only lunch time!” Dannika dropped dramatically into the chair beside me in the cafeteria. I had been one of the first ones to go through the line and had already eaten a slice and a half of pepperoni pizza.
I sooo felt her pain. “It’s only the first day! One-hundred and seventy-nine left.”
Dannika balled up a napkin and threw it at me. “Let’s not talk about it.”
The tables around us were quickly filling. This was my third year at this high school and the seating arrangement in the cafeteria never altered. I’d been sitting beside Dannika since the first day. Dannika wasn’t into basketball and played soccer instead. She was a five-five bundle of excess energy. Her hyper vibe didn’t rub everyone the right way but we’d been friends for so long, I’d learned to overlook any of her annoying tendencies. In turn, she overlooked mine. It worked for us.
Dannika was the only soccer girl at our table. The rest of us were on the basketball team. I wasn’t really any more popular with the basketball team than I was with the rest of the school, but since I played varsity last year while the rest of them were stuck on JV, they seemed to accept me as some sort of undesirable royalty. Whatever, they had their side of the table and Danni and I had ours.
Beside us at the nearest table was the boys’ basketball team, including my brother, and now also including Drew.
Ugh.
I still wasn’t really sure what Drew’s deal was. It wasn’t like I was popular. I definitely wasn’t beating guys off with a stick, to use a phrase my Uncle Ronald was prone to over using when he teased me at family functions about my dating life. Which was non-existent.
I wasn’t necessarily ugly, but my height seemed to scare guys off and more than one boy at our school had told me on more than one occasion how masculine it made me. My inability to find feminine attire in my size only added to that opinion, especially as the school year went on and I stopped caring, wearing men’s sweats and oversized t-shirts to school every day.
Having Drew, who was gorgeous and obviously experienced, pay me any attention seemed about as likely as palm tree sprouting in the middle of a cornfield. So what was his game, really? And what was with the no relationship thing? If he wasn’t a player, then what was he? A jerk? Probably.
“Is that him?” Dannika jerked her head in the direction of the boy’s table as Drew sat down beside Luke.
I nodded, keeping my eyes on my plate.
“Goodness. That boy is snatched.” Dannika eyed Drew unrepentantly.
“Snatched?”
“Yeah, it means good looking, hot, gorgeous-” Danni rattled off.
“I know what it means. Why are you saying it?” Danni and I usually avoided using the weird trendy words that went around.
She shrugged. “I thought I’d give it a shot.” Her brows scrunched. “No?”
“No!” I shook my head.
Dannika laughed. “Okay. Sheesh.”
Conversation lagged while Dannika inhaled her lunch. I was finished so I took the time to take in the room around me.
When I was younger I thought high school was going to be the highlight of my life. I’d seen those eighties movies. The ones that seemed like they were going to be about how hard high school was but ended up emphasizing how cool it really could be. Best friends were made. Parties were had. The girl got the guy. Or maybe it was the guy that got the girl. Either way, they ended up together.
Reality was a huge disappointment. Especially for me. I knew high school had turned out like those movies for some. Some girls had it. Cute. Little. Feminine. Male eyes followed them as they strutted their stuff through the halls. And it wasn’t just the popular girls. Girls in every imaginable social faction had guys.
Sporty girls.
Emo girls.
Goth girls.
Hipster girls.
Feminists.
Even the girls covered in paint splatters wearing overalls from their mom’s nineties high school days.
All around me there were couples.
They held hands.
They kissed.
They whispered in each other’s ears.
Nerds girls.
Popular girls.
Mathletes.
Apparently love knew no bounds. It was out there, available to all.
All except me.
Instead of eyes following me with wanting, the eyes following me were filled with cruelty.
Until Drew. But even he didn’t want me. Not really.
Maybe Mom had it right. Maybe it wasn’t worth it. The worry. The angst. The wondering what was wrong with me. But I knew what was wrong with me. I was tall. Tall and athletic. Not tall and willowy, like a model, but tall and strong- like a guy.
Too bad I wasn’t a guy.
Pushing my tray away, I wrapped my arms around my stomach. It was time to stop worrying about this. It was time to just be me. Piper Hines. The tall girl. At some point I had to be okay with that. And that point was now- I hoped.
Drew
Damn high school. They were all the same. Jocks. Popular kids. Cheerleaders. Such bullshit. I would know. I’d always been at the top of the pack. All the packs. I was smart, made good grades. I was good looking. Athletic. Got along with everybody. On top of that, I was filthy rich, or my dad was. I was a high school god. Even as an underclassman.
I hated it all. Didn’t people realize how stupid it all was? How pointless? Rise to the top so you can rip apart the guy below you. And why was he below you? Because he had more pimples than you? Less muscle? Less money? Read more books? Read less books? Who made up these damn rules anyway?
I hated the looks I’d been getting all morning. I hated the way people assessed each other. What can he do for me? Would dating Drew Thompson take me to the top? Would being his friend make me more popular? When I played basketball it was even worse. How could you know if a girl liked you for you and not for what you brought to the table? Popularity. Status. Championships.
That’s what happened at my last school. And that’s why I wasn’t playing those games. No basketball. No girls. Just me doing what I needed to do to.
Juniors had lunch together. That meant Piper was in the cafeteria. Walking into the room, I wanted to sit by her, but she was surrounded by a bunch of girls. No thanks. So I sat with Luke and the other guys I’d been playing ball with the last few weeks. I considered myself to be an independent person, but even I was glad to have a few friends in the crowded room.
“How’s the first day, man?” Luke held out his hand in greeting and we exchanged a fist bump.
“Eh, it’s whatever. School is school no matter where you go.” That was mostly true.
“Well, I’ve heard your name pass more than one girl’s lips this morning. It’s only been four hours and you’ve hit celebrity status.” Luke took a huge bite of his pizza.
I snorted. “Right.” I hoped he was wrong. A big part of my fashion decisions was to discourage that kind of attention. I knew girls thought I was good looking. And I used to be that guy, the popular jock who dressed in all the designer clothes and flirted and encouraged the attention.
“I’m serious. Look around this room.” Luke waved his hand in a circle, gesturing to the room at large.
Dipping my head down, I took a bite of my lunch while glancing around the room without being obvious about it. And dammit if he wasn’t right. I supposed it could just be because I was new, but I didn’t think so. All around me, groups of girls were whispering behind their hands and giggling. Some were hiding it better than
others, but one thing was certain- a lot of them were talking about me.
Ugh.
“It’s just because I’m new.” It would go away after a few days. I was sure of it. There weren’t a lot of mainstream girls that would go after a guy with tattoos and piercings who wore black every day.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Luke murmured under his breath.
“Hey, man, did you have any luck finding Bigfoot this summer.”
Luke and I both looked up to see two beefy guys standing behind Piper and her friend, Dannika, where they sat at the table beside us. Luke tensed, every muscle in his body wound tight as he launched to his feet. Surprised, I rose, too.
“You got a problem, Fawcett.” Luke got right up in big mouth’s face, fists clenched at his side. Jared, Zeke, and Adam were just approaching our table. They all made their way to Luke’s side. Jared put a hand on his shoulder.
“Luke, stop.” Piper, lips pinched in a tight line, reached for Luke’s arm. “It’s no big deal.”
Eyes wide, I watched the drama unfold as adrenaline pumped through me. I hadn’t even realized it at first, but the two guys were talking about Piper.
What the hell.
“What’s up, Little Man?” Fawcett grinned, his ruddy cheeks squishing on the side of his face. “Your Sasquatch sister gonna protect you?”
Little Man?
Sasquatch?
“Too stupid to come up with any new material, Fawcett.” This from Adam, whose posture was just as defensive as Luke’s and Jared’s.
Fawcett scowled.
“Yeah, Jack. Don’t want to use too much brain power, you might not have enough left to play on Friday,” Zeke taunted.
The guy with Fawcett nudged him from the side. After a second longer staring Luke in the eye, Fawcett backed down. He was outnumbered and drawing attention.
Dating: One on One: Eastridge Heights Basketball Book 1 Page 8