How to Hook a Hottie

by Tina Ferraro

  I rushed behind her. And a moment later, her thrill and astonishment made sense. Filling the doorway was the broad physique of my so-called boyfriend.

  Brandon was back.

  Sixteen

  “Hey, Kate,” Brandon said, and flashed a toothy grin.

  I tried to make sense of his presence but came up short. I mean, (a) he was supposed to be in Arizona for another week, (b) he should have at least called first, and (c) I'd half figured that when I saw him again, he'd look different somehow, like a love interest instead of the lab partner who'd been annoying me all semester.

  “Hi,” I said, and tried to smile. “You're . . . back early.”

  “Yeah.” He moved in and pressed his lips against my cheek.

  From somewhere close, I heard a dreamy sigh. But it wasn't from me. Sure, Brandon smelled good and his lips were warm against my skin. But my insides—where it counted—were still coolly indifferent. So much for absence making my heart grow fonder.

  He pulled back, and I noted with satisfaction that he moved entirely out of my personal space. Good little hostess that I was, I led him into the living room, where I made a fast butt-plant in my dad's easy chair. No chance of touchy-feely back-together stuff.

  He settled on the couch, his shoulders rounded inside his jacket, his blue-jeaned knees wide open. It was nice that one of us seemed comfortable.

  While forcing some semblance of a smile onto my face, I heard my sister scurrying off. Which was good—I didn't want her lovesick sighs turning into full-bodied moans and embarrassing us all.

  “So,” I said. “How'd it go?”

  “Good.” Another grin curved his lips. “Okay, great. A few coaches told me to go home and get working on my grades so they can try to recruit me to play for them next year.”

  “Terrific,” I said out loud, while all I could think was what an idiot I had been to agree to wait for him. All I'd done was postpone the inevitable, this awful and awkward moment when I'd have to tell him this joke of a relationship was over.

  My problem was, people might be paying me for hookups, but I had no clue how to gracefully break up.

  “Yeah, but it was a long week,” he said, and a frown settled on his face. “I'm glad to be back. I missed you.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, fixated on how totally clueless Brandon was. He had to know we had nothing in common. He had to have noticed I never called, IM'd, or texted him back. How could he “miss” a person he didn't know and who didn't care?

  “Brandon,” I said, sitting up straight.

  “Babe,” he said simultaneously, so that our voices collided in the air.

  We both laughed and he put his hand up, signaling he was taking the reins. Didn't his mother ever teach him about ladies first?

  “Kate, I came over this morning to tell you that, well, I still like you and everything, and I hate to bum you out, but I gotta end this thing between us.”

  I felt my eyelashes fly up to my eyebrows.

  Wait. What? He was breaking up with me?

  “I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to happen. I've been crushing on you for weeks, maybe months. But last week, I got together with someone else. She was really there for me like I needed.” He paused, and his unsaid words spoke volumes. “I don't know what I would have done without her.”

  I cleared my throat, hoping that when I spoke, my shock didn't sound like heartbreak or devastation. “You met someone in Arizona?” I said, working for an even tone.

  “No, I meant on the phone. And IMs . . . and e-mails. Jenn. You know, Jenn Hammer.”

  My brain scrambled. Oh, sure, Vince's sister, the one who'd needed Brandon's address so she could e-mail him about some DVD.

  A laugh bubbled its way up and out of me. I'd be crazy not to look at this as a blessing, not to feel relieved that I'd gotten off so easy. But wait, just for a moment, could it tick me off that he was giving me the heave-ho for a girl I'd sent his way?

  “I hope we can still be friends,” he said, and sounded sincere.

  My feeling-sorry-for-myself moment came to an abrupt end. “Sure,” I said, and settled deeper into my dad's chair, to show the same sort of casual body language he'd rolled in with.

  “No problemo?”

  “Three words, Brandon: just be happy.”

  He let out a long sigh that ended in a half whistle. “Wow. Thanks. I knew you were different from other girls.” He scooted to the edge of the couch, itching to make his exit. “I don't suppose you'll help me get my grade up in chem?”

  Oh, was this guy pushing it! But I saw a way to make this work for me. “Tell you what. You let me concentrate in lab, and I'll let you copy from me.”

  “I already copy from you.”

  You'd think he would've stopped while he was ahead. “Yeah, Brandon, I'll help you, okay?”

  He stood, took some steps toward me, then nodded. It was so much better than letting him kiss me. I walked him out with an odd feeling of victory—and disbelief.

  Closing the door, I turned to find my sister practically on top of me. It seemed that while she might have left the room, she had never really left the conversation. I should have been mad. But I wasn't.

  “You okay?” she asked, slipping her glasses back on.

  “Fine.”

  “But he broke up with you.”

  “He did me a favor.”

  She studied my face, sisterly concern in her squint.

  “Okay,” I conceded. “In a perfect world, he would have come to his senses and admitted we were never a couple to begin with. But the important thing is that this faux relationship is now officially over.”

  She seemed to take this in. “Does that mean if he's ever free again, you won't be mad if I make a move on him?”

  I sort of laughed. “Like you ever step out of your ‘safe’ crowd.”

  She shrugged a shoulder. “It could happen.”

  I went to make a face, then realized she was right. It could. Running full speed at what we wanted was certainly a female DelVecchio trait. And if Brandon was ever single again and he was what she really wanted . . . well, sure, whatever.

  “It's fine with me. But we'd better go run it by the hexagon, don't you think?”

  She grinned and hugged me.

  •

  The phone calls started that afternoon.

  Cautious at first. “Is it true?” Then more direct. “I hear Brandon's back and he's moved on to someone else.” Finally, more aggressive. Like I was on suicide watch. “Do you need me to come sit with you?”

  I didn't need anything. Except to get my focus back on the things that really mattered.

  I mean, in the past week, I'd been so sidetracked I'd come close to sinking my English grade—which would have meant the death of straight As. I'd taken deposits from people I hadn't even begun to help, and had screwed some customers royally.

  And let's not forget that I'd somehow developed feelings for my best friend, who was in a long-term, committed relationship. Didn't it just figure that the one guy in our overcrowded school who suddenly did it for me was already doing it with somebody else?

  It was no wonder I tossed and turned for hours that night.

  In the morning, I looked like the walking dead, with circles under my eyes dark enough to match my peacoat and hair I was barely able to shove under my knit hat.

  As we pulled into the school parking lot, Suzannah advised me to keep my head tilted down when I walked.

  The last thing we wanted people thinking was that I'd been crying my eyes out.

  “This is the one time,” Suz said to me, “you can truly use Mom as an example.”

  I eased into an open space, then turned to her. “What? Mom? Why?”

  “You know how she always acts as if there's nothing wrong with her and Dad? As if her being in Germany is only about school? I mean, we all know there's way more to it.”

  I couldn't believe what I was hearing. “Suz,” I said softly, and reached out to touch her arm. I was proud of her fo
r being so intuitive, and yet, like watching a little kid who'd finally figured out the truth about Santa Claus, I was sorry for her lost innocence. “How long have you . . .”

  She shook her head, giving me the let's-not-go-there signal. “Kate, just remember today that you're a DelVecchio. Be proud, be strong. Be—”

  “Full of it?”

  She laughed. “Sure, that, too.”

  We climbed out of the car and slammed our doors behind us. Keeping my head down as my sister suggested, I nevertheless saw a group of girls across the way, lounging by a staircase railing.

  “Keep walking,” Suz advised. “If they see you, they'll just rush you with questions. And who cares, right?”

  “Right,” I said, noticing with some surprise that none of them—not even Aimee McDonald—glanced my way.

  Inside the building, I fell in with the advancing throng. Funny, but the halls seemed more crowded than ever. If I'd been paranoid, I would have thought it was because people were stopping to gossip about Brandon dumping me. But logically I knew it was more about what people weren't doing—moving very fast.

  When I finally got to my locker, I felt like I'd scored a touchdown. Yvette had the door open and was doing a whole-body shimmy out of her jacket. She'd been one of my calls last night, so I knew she had the 411 on Brandon and Jenn.

  I looked at her, my muscles tensing. Any way you sliced it, the curtain was rising between us for drama. For good news (Lamont loved the confession and they were now together), for terrible news (he told her where to shove it), for Twenty Questions (“Tell me everything about Brandon and Jenn!”), or for a pity party (“You poor thing!”).

  “Hey,” I said, dropping my backpack to the floor.

  She glanced my way. “I hope you have my fifty bucks.”

  Ouch. “Lamont didn't go for you telling him I'd screwed up?”

  “I'm not even trying it now.”

  “Why not?” A numbness was coming over me, like when you know you're about to hear something you totally want to block.

  “I can't admit I went to you for advice.”

  Oh, yeah, me—Loser Extraordinaire.

  But I couldn't dwell on that. The bottom line remained the same: this was business.

  “All the more reason to try, Yvette. If he's at all interested, he'll try to comfort you and make you feel better for having hired a dimwit like me.”

  “Just bring the money tomorrow.”

  I hauled my backpack up on my shoulder, attempting not to think about how I'd tried to sell myself out. Or exactly how far I'd go to make this dream of mine come true.

  The sight of Summer's blond hair in the oncoming rush was a welcome relief. With Brandon out of my life and Yvette about to become an ex-customer, I definitely had the time for her prom quest.

  I hurried toward her, doing a little finger wave, but she looked straight through me. Was it possible she hadn't seen me enough times to recognize me?

  “Summer,” I called out. “It's Kate.”

  She halted. If the corridor hadn't been so crowded and noisy, I swear I would have heard her heels screech. I stopped, too. Someone bumped into me, swore, and carried on.

  “I know who you are,” Summer said to me. “Or who you were.”

  Her words connected squarely with my ego. “Well, if you still want to talk about my business—”

  She cut me off with a laugh. “Yeah, right,” she said, and sashayed off. “You are so yesterday.”

  I watched as she walked away, swallowing hard. Then I shrugged and took a step forward to try to get back into the flow of the crowd.

  But no one let me in. No one acknowledged me, said hello, smiled, made eye contact, or even shot me a look of pity. Not strangers, not those with familiar faces, not friends, not clients.

  It was like everything was upside down, like all the rules had changed. Like the opposite of soaring popularity was not disgrace, the opposite of love was not hate. And the opposite of being Brandon Callister's girlfriend (even his perceived girlfriend) was not simply being his ex.

  It was ceasing to exist.

  Seventeen

  Dragging myself out to the quad later, I decided that this was how my dad must feel after long hours of wrestling sewage pipes: exhausted, bored, unimportant, and ready for comfort. Dad had his TV and his chair.

  I wanted Dal.

  I surveyed the huddles until I spotted him standing with a group, his hair needing a comb, his eyes dark and darting. Our gazes came together in this zip-zap thing, and my body moved toward his as if it had a mind of its own.

  “Hey, stranger,” he said, and opened his arms to me. “I've been looking for you.”

  I braced myself for the power in his touch and was not disappointed by the knee-buckling sensations that raced through me when I hugged him. But I pulled away disappointed. It had all happened so quickly and was so completely friend appropriate. Of course, he'd spent the weekend in Marissa's arms, so he was hardly needy for female affection. Especially mine.

  I caught my breath and regrouped. “You heard the news, I'm sure.”

  “Only once or twice or five hundred times. People seemed to want to tell me about Brandon and Jenn.” He shook his head. “And some are making a huge deal out of it, like as your best friend, I'm supposed to do something about it.”

  My hand went to my hair. I wondered if these same people could see what I'd started feeling for Dal, if maybe I hadn't been as careful as I thought.

  “Kate?”

  I refocused on his handsome face.

  “You don't want me to confront him, do you? I mean, you've told me over and over that you don't even like the guy.”

  I let out a laugh, which appeared as a cloud between us in the cold. “Totally. Don't worry, Dal. If anything, I'm relieved.” I was also super surprised he was offering. The last time he had defended my honor had been . . . what . . . on the elementary school playground?

  “I'm glad. You're too good for him anyway.” He slipped his bare hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “And honestly, I'm kind of burned out on confrontations. I feel like that's all I did all weekend.”

  I tried not to smile—“tried” being the operative word. “Really?”

  “Marissa is dead set against our hookup business. She called it ‘a crime against nature’ and accused us of stealing people's money. And said we should get out before we do any real damage.”

  Oh, she did, did she? My eyes narrowed.

  Okay, I loved the fact that I was causing trouble between them, even indirectly. And from people's reactions today, our business was on its last legs anyway. But that didn't mean I had to take her criticism lying down. Especially since she was the one getting to do the coveted lying down with Dal.

  “Maybe if she was here and actually saw what we were doing, she wouldn't be so fast to judge,” I told him.

  “Maybe. But face it, Kate, we have been flying by the seats of our pants.”

  Sure, but no way I was giving her the upper hand. “We've been providing a service. Supply and demand. Capitalism at its finest—”

  He held up a hand. Which was probably a good move, since I was working up to the kind of spin I usually felt while banging my meeting gavel.

  “Mark was all pissed off last week,” he reminded me. “And last I heard, Yvette was freaking out over Lamont.”

  That stopped me even colder. So true. And he didn't even know that Mark was mad at me again. Chelsea, too. And that the Yvette/Lamont thing had actually gotten worse.

  He inched toward me, not just closing the gap between us but heating the air a little, too. “How did that work out for Yvette, by the way?”

  “She wants her money back.” I rolled my eyes. “Okay, yeah, so there's been some mistakes. But we made two clients pretty happy. That's something.” Not to mention, I continued silently, that the extra time you and I spent together has made me happy.

  As we stood there at an impasse, Carlton appeared and handed me a CD for Brianne. Right then it dawned
on me that no one else had approached Dal and me at all in the past few minutes. Not a word about the hookup biz, not even a “hi” in passing.

  It was like the past week had been a dream.

  I took the CD, but I had to be totally honest with him. “You do know my name is mud, right? And that any association with me is going to negatively affect your image?”

  Carlton huffed out a laugh. “You do know I'm desperate, right? Senior year's ending in a few months, and I may never see her again. I'm running out of time.”

  “Fair enough.” I offered him a hand, and he shook it. “I'll let you know when I make the drop. And you let me know if you need anything from me,” I added, mentally crossing my fingers that it wouldn't be his money back.

  •

  As I walked to chem, I tried to convince myself that seeing Brandon would be no big deal. We'd left things on a good note. And he was the dumper, after all.

  What I didn't count on was finding my so-called ex in a closed-eyes lip-lock with his new girlfriend next to our classroom door.

  I drew in a ragged breath, unable to tear my eyes away. Being squashed down to invisibility wasn't enough? Brandon had to pick at the remaining shreds of my dignity?

  Totally into the kiss, he was holding Jenn's waist like she was a delicate bouquet of flowers. As I neared, people noticed me and started stepping back. Voices dropped to a whisper. The only sounds I could hear above my own heartbeats and my racing thoughts were my footsteps across the tiles. I had a bigger audience than most of our school musicals.

  So . . . how to handle this? Glare? Pretend not to see them? Make some sort of guttural noise in my throat? “Accidentally” bump into them?

  All doable. But I sidestepped those ideas and went with what was beginning to become second nature to me: I tried to turn it into an Ideal Opportunity.

  “Excuse me,” I said, tapping cute little Jenn's cute little shoulder.

  They broke the kiss. Brandon's eyes popped open and he dropped his hold on Jenn's waist.

  “Hi there,” I said to him when our gazes met.

  He seemed to flinch, but maybe I was giving him more credit than he deserved. Jenn dropped her arms and turned toward me, too.