A quick punch to the garage-door opener next to his visor, and Eli swung into the driveway leading up to his house. After we pulled in, the whiney rumblings of the wide door closing ushered us into an artificial darkness. It smelled vaguely of a combination of motor oil and cut wood as we sat in the parked car.
His quiet gaze caught mine. A heartbeat later, something in his look shifted. When he didn’t immediately look away or say anything, I felt suddenly unsure. Something in the air between us seemed different somehow, charged.
My tongue moistened my lower lip. I became aware of what I was doing when I caught a quick movement in his throat as he swallowed, watching me. Suddenly he blinked, giving his head a half jerk.
“Umm, let me just check on Vader quick, then I’ll head over to your house, okay?” His voice sounded a little higher than usual.
“Sure, okay. I’ll, ah, meet you there.” I stumbled over the words, anxious to get out of the car. I pulled on the door handle, grateful for the excuse to look away from the intensity of his gaze. One foot landed on the cement floor before his hand materialized on my shoulder.
“I’ll be there soon,” he said.
“S…see you then.”
After clumsily hopping out, I strode quickly to the side door in the garage, which led to the narrow yard separating our houses.
What the heck? Things were never weird between us. I always got the familiar rush around him; I’d been dealing with that for years. But this was different.
You’re just reading something that isn’t there because of the whole Facebook thing.
But I couldn’t get the look I thought I’d glimpsed in Eli’s eyes out of my mind.
Chapter Five
Emma
Eli checking on Vader would give me maybe five minutes. I raced to my desk and opened my laptop to check for any interesting activity on my profile. Well, Kelli’s profile.
A few messages showed unread in her inbox. It was weird, part of me wanted Eli to have an interest in Kelli, and even initiate contact with her based on the profile description I’d written. But another big part felt sick inside at the thought of him trolling for other girls.
I tried to push those feelings down, reminding myself that he needed to talk to her in order for my master plan to work. Of course I wanted him to talk to her.
Kinda unreal so many people would write to a total stranger with such blatant come-on lines. I actually blushed reading one of them. Anyway, nothing from the one person I wanted to hear from. Do I message him to get the ball rolling? Since I had nothing to lose, I decided to go for it.
Fingers poised above the keyboard, I tried to think what to type. In any other circumstance, I would enlist Eli’s help. Couldn’t exactly do that now. Rotating my neck in slow circles, I considered some options.
Hey Eli!
Boring.
Hi Handsome!
Gag.
Yo Sexy!
Omigod, this so wasn’t going to work. Talk about being officially clueless when it came to initiating flirting.
Finally, I settled on simple.
Hey! I noticed we seem to like a lot of the same things, so I just thought I’d say hi. I see you’re a fan of Star Wars too. Don’t laugh, but I even named my cat after a character in the movie, Princess Leia. LOL. Well, hope to talk to you soon! Kelli.
Not great, but the best I could do. Where was my fairy godmother when I needed her advice?
Hopefully I’d managed to find the perfect blend of perky and interesting. Hopefully he wouldn’t die laughing when he read it.
I’d just leaned back in my chair when footsteps bounded up the stairs. I quickly grabbed a nearby book. Eli’s head poked around the doorway into my room, accompanied by a quick three-tap knock on the frame. I looked up, feigning surprise.
“Oh hey! I was reading and didn’t even hear you coming up!” Liar, liar, pants on fire! I smiled and motioned him into the room.
He’d taken the time to comb his hair and smelled of fresh soap. I bit my lip. I should have checked my own hair. Or brushed my teeth.
I cleared my throat and swiveled around on the chair, looking at his empty hands in confusion. “Where’s the movie?”
“Oh shit! I got distracted doing some stuff, and completely forgot to grab it off my dresser.”
Did the profile of a certain mystery girl distract him? My stomach flip-flopped between hope and sadness.
“Oh. Well, do you want to just run home and grab it?”
He shook his head. “Nah, that’s okay. Why don’t we watch something you have here?”
I scrunched my eyebrows, watching him. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah, it’s fine.”
He walked over to where I still sat at my desk. Only inches away, he reached out his hand toward me. My breath caught until he reached past me to the computer.
“You wanted to see the pictures, right? Here, I just finished uploading the rest of them so I can show you.”
As I spun in my seat to look, his breath tickled the back of my neck when he leaned in, his arm reaching around me to click the mouse. Omigod, he smelled good.
He pulled my computer closer to the edge of the desk so he could reach it better.
Oh no. I’d been logged into Kelli’s account when he came over. Kelli’s account would be open on my computer.
Bam!
I slammed the lid back down before he had it fully open, almost taking off his thumb in the process.
“What the hell?” He snatched his hand back and stared at me like I’d suddenly sprouted a second head.
I blinked. And proceeded to blurt out the first thing I could think of.
“I was bra shopping and didn’t want you to see.”
It was his turn to blink.
Then he looked strangled, and a sound came out of his mouth that was somewhere between a snort, a laugh, and clearing his throat. “Excuse me?”
“Bras. I was shopping for bras. You know what a bra is.” I crossed my arms in front of my chest defiantly. Bras? What the hell was I thinking?
This time it was a clear snort. “Yes, Em. I know what a bra is. Just seems kinda strange that you’d almost remove my fingers so I didn’t see a picture of one on your computer.”
I scrunched my face up, thinking hard. “Well, it’s different when it’s a bra for me. You know, one I’ll be wearing.” This was getting worse by the second.
He took a quick peek at my chest, then cocked his head and stared at me.
A flush rose in my neck as he continued to study me, while I talked about bras no less. I held his gaze, refusing to say more.
Finally, he gave in. “Okay, well how about we skip the pictures and watch the movie?” His lips twitched.
Jaw set, I refused to give in to the embarrassment. “Fine,” I responded, trying to sound completely cool and collected. In reality, I was praying my plush lime carpet would swallow me whole and put me out of my misery.
He reached his hand out to help me up. Taking it, I allowed him to lead me over to the bed, where we both sat down. I scooted back and sat cross-legged, spine straight. Eli, on the other hand, leaned back into a mass of pillows, looking sexy as sin.
“So, what color bra was it?” He smirked.
I refused to rise to his bait. Instead, I folded my hands primly on my lap. “So what do you want to watch?”
He stretched out even more, his six-foot frame taking up a good part of the bed. His left leg brushed against my knee. I swallowed nervously, and cleared my throat.
Eli simply gave a slow grin.
“Okay, so no help from you. How about The Breakfast Club? That’s always good,” I said.
A rap sounded on the partially opened bedroom door, and my mom stepped into the room. She smiled at Eli as soon as she entered. “Eli! How was training camp? Your mom was telling me last week how excited you were to be going.”
He sat up a bit, and his face reddened slightly. “Hi, Mrs. Kurtz. It was really good, thanks.” It was Eli’s turn to
clear his throat. “I had fun and managed to pick up a couple of things that I think are really going to be helpful this coming season. We had some awesome coaches.”
Mom smiled again. “I’m so glad to hear you enjoyed yourself.” She turned to include me in the conversation. “Are you guys hungry at all? Do you want me to make some popcorn?”
“No, thanks, we’re good. If we want anything later, I’ll get it.”
Given the fact that we pretty much grew up in each other’s yards and homes, I knew Mom and Dad liked Eli, and more to the point, they respected him. Their only rule was that the bedroom door stayed open when he was over. Kinda funny considering nothing ever happened between us that would come remotely close to warranting a closed door.
Just then, my dad’s footsteps sounded walking down the hall toward my room. “What’s this? Are we having a party and you didn’t invite me?” My father’s attempt at being cool.
His head joined my mother’s in the doorway. I began to understand how zoo animals felt. Raising my eyebrows, I looked at my parents, silently asking them to leave.
Mom seemed to get the hint. “Come on, Rob. I think there’s a movie starting on Lifetime that looked good.”
Dad looked stricken.
I laughed at his expression. “Have fun!”
Dad gave a final grimace before they headed down to the living room.
“A Lifetime movie, huh? I think I feel bad for your father.” Eli looked at me and chuckled.
Smiling, I got brave and shifted the tiniest bit closer to him. “Don’t worry, I won’t make you watch one too.”
“Good. Because I might not be able to recover if you revoked my man card like that.”
I laughed and picked up a pillow to toss at him. “Your man card is safe with me.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Oh shut up, you know what I mean.” Shaking my head, I leaned over to grab the TV remote from the nightstand. “Let’s pick a movie.”
“You got it.” He held out his hand. As I passed him the remote, I made sure our fingers didn’t touch. I couldn’t handle any more shocks to the system. Plus it was critical I didn’t accidentally give away how I felt about him until I was convinced that I might actually have a shot.
So, the plan was to act like he didn’t affect me in the least, and get him talking to Kelli. I could do this.
Chapter Six
Eli
Today had been weird. Like, way weird.
It had to be that I was overtired from camp or something. In the car earlier when Emma had looked at me, her big brown eyes all wide and…
Uh-uh. No way. This was Emma we were talking about.
I shook my head, propped the pillow higher under me, and reached down next to my bed to grab one of my baseballs. Tossing it up and catching it a few times relaxed me. The movement followed an expected pattern—the ball goes up, the ball comes down. No weird movements you don’t expect. Nothing out of left field. Simple.
But something nagged at me. I could have sworn that right before I nearly lost my fingers, I saw that Kelli chick’s profile on Emma’s computer.
Before I’d even had the chance to say anything about it. Why would Em be looking at Kelli’s profile? It didn’t make sense. Unless, of course, she’d noticed it on my timeline and was curious. That could happen. Maybe.
Regardless, my mind wasn’t on Kelli. It kept going back to sitting with Em in the garage this afternoon.
Emma was pretty. Like, really pretty. How’d I never really noticed it before? Her wide eyes, and those full lips that just made me think of…
Argh!
I whipped the baseball across the room, knocking over a trophy on my bookshelf. What the hell was wrong with me?
I obviously needed sleep. Or maybe I needed to work out more. Or vitamins. Something.
Things with Emma and me were good just the way they were. No way I wanted to mess things up by crossing into that territory. I’d seen it happen with friends and the results usually ended up like crap. The people broke up and then didn’t talk or else they ended up hating each other.
Kelli’s profile on Emma’s computer flashed in my head again. Maybe she was embarrassed to be caught looking and that’s why she didn’t want me to see it. But something about the profile seemed familiar and I couldn’t quite place my finger on why. It was driving me nuts, since I’d never seen the girl in the photo before in my life.
I rubbed my eyes with my fists. I needed a distraction from thinking about Emma…and maybe talking to this Kelli girl would help me figure out how I knew her. If I knew her. I glanced toward Emma’s house. Her room was dark. Probably sleeping already. I was the idiot awake mooning over the girl next door…how totally cliché. Emma would laugh her ass off. I sat up and reached for my laptop. I’d answer Kelli’s message.
Hi Kelli, Nice to hear from you. I was a little surprised to get your message. You’re right, it does seem like we’re into a lot of the same things. Pretty cool. And really? You named your cat Princess Leia? Hmmm…you don’t strike me as a cat person, but I could be wrong. Anyway, what did you do tonight? Anything fun? I better go, but hopefully we can talk more soon. Eli
As I leaned back against my headboard I felt nervous, almost like the time we were in the championship game and it was tie with only thirty seconds on the clock.
It wasn’t very long before my computer dinged.
Eli, Why don’t you think I seem like a cat person? Tonight I hung out with a few friends, you know, nothing too wild. Anyway, I’m glad you want to keep talking. By the way, I really liked the pictures you posted today. You look cute. =)
I smiled and ran my hand through my hair at the compliment, but a part of me felt a tiny bit let down, though I couldn’t even say why. Why didn’t I think she seemed like a cat person? I didn’t allow myself to answer the question.
She was showing in my list of chat contacts, so I decided to send her an instant message.
Hi
She didn’t answer. I frowned, and tried again.
You there?
Finally I could see her typing back, and relaxed a little.
Hi back.
So you think I looked cute, huh? I couldn’t help but grin.
LOL, Yes I did. So, what did YOU do tonight? Anything fun?
Should I say I spent the evening with Emma? Would that make another girl jealous? I ran my hand through my hair again. The whole thing was starting to get confusing.
I settled for,
I’m glad you liked the photos. And yeah, I had a lot of fun tonight. Watched The Breakfast Club.
Oh, I love that movie!
The Breakfast Club was one of Emma’s favorite movies too.
We talked for almost a half an hour. General get to know you kind of stuff at first. I finally got brave and told her how cute she was, and asked what it was about my profile that had caught her attention.
Maybe it’s those mesmerizing eyes.
I almost fell out of my chair.
Before I could type a response, she changed the subject, almost like she wished she hadn’t said it, so I played along. We spent five minutes discussing the pros and cons of the latest zombie series we were both addicted to instead.
Once when I got up to grab some water, I could’ve sworn a faint light glowed inside Emma’s room, almost like she was on her laptop, too.
The more we talked, the more an idea took root in my head. What if Kelli and Emma were the same person? I told myself I was being ridiculous—wishful thinking and lack of sleep on my part. But little things she said sounded so familiar, so much like Emma, that I couldn’t completely shake the thought.
About twenty minutes later, she abruptly ended the conversation.
Well, I better get going. I need my beauty rest you know.
I remembered Emma in the garage. Her dark hair spilling down her shoulders. Her wide eyes.
I responded,
No, you don’t. You’re beautiful just the way you are. Goodnight.
> And before I could wimp out, or second guess myself, I logged off. I knew, even if my hunch was wrong, that I hadn’t intended my message for the girl in the profile photo. I’d meant it for my best friend, for Emma, my girl next door.
Chapter Seven
Emma
The next few days passed in a boring blur. School, homework, eat, sleep, repeat. I’d messaged Eli twice, but hadn’t heard back. Or rather, Kelli messaged Eli. The communication blackout wasn’t helping my plan. On top of that, Eli seemed busy avoiding me, too. The real me.
I needed to step up my game. Only problem…I wasn’t quite sure how to do that. Not exactly being the queen of flirtation made the whole thing a tad more difficult. Time to call for back-up reinforcement.
“Sarah? It’s me.”
“Hey girlie! What’s shaking?” Sarah’s voice sounded as cheerful as ever.
I leaned back on my bed, staring at the photos on my bookshelf.
“I need your help.”
“Please tell me this isn’t about your little plan.” Now she just sounded tired and worried, the sunshine gone.
I picked at a piece of string on the sleeve of my hoodie.
“He hasn’t answered since that first night. I don’t know what I did wrong.”
“You mean other than pretending to be someone you aren’t?”
“Yeah, besides that.” I chewed on the drawstring.
“And?”
“And what?”
“And has he mentioned any of this to you?” She cleared her throat. “I mean to the real you?”
“No. Nothing. He’s not going out of his way to speak to me, either.” I paused. “To be honest, we’ve barely talked at all the past three days. Every time I see him in the halls, he just gives me this weird look, then hurries off the other way. Or else kind of waves, and makes an excuse that he’s late for something.” I paused. “Do you think he somehow figured it’s really me and he’s avoiding me?”
Silence.
“Oh no, you do.”
I wanted to throw up. Maybe I could convince my parents to move, like, to Argentina.
The Girlfriend Request Page 3