by Ivy Adams
“Are we okay, Piper? You know I have your back, right? Always.”
Piper nodded. “I know you do. And I’m sorry you got dragged into Germaine’s campaign for Bitch of the Year.”
“The year? I think she’s going for Lifetime Achievement.” They both giggled. “It’s going to be all right, Piper. I don’t know how, and I don’t know when, but it will be. I promise.”
Chapter 31
Izzy
Damn it. Cassidy and Mei were right. She had crossed a line. Kissing Tanner was bad enough, but in everyone’s eyes, the real betrayal had been letting Germaine manipulate her. For years, Izzy had sat on the bench, watching Germaine torment one of her best friends. She’d had front-row seats to the spectacle, so she should have known better. Instead, she’d let that witch drag her down into the mud.
God, it sucked being the one to screw up.
All she knew was that she wasn’t going to make the same mistakes Germaine had when she’d separated herself from them all those years ago. She wasn’t going to let one argument drive her away from her friends. She wasn’t going to cling to pride and her own sense of self-importance. Whatever it took, she was going to make this right with Piper.
On the bright side, she finally knew how to do it. That girl loved nothing like she loved drama. And Izzy hadn’t spent the past five years watching chick flicks without learning a thing or two about grand gestures.
That afternoon, the second school let out, she raced to the parking lot and waited by Jackson Grosbeck’s aging Camaro. Cherry red—naturally—with black racing strips, the car wasn’t new enough to be cool or old enough to be classic—it was the perfect vehicle for a douche like Jackson. She recognized it because it was practically a permanent fixture in front of her own house.
When Jackson saw her waiting for him, his face split in a cocky grin. “Hey, Izzy,” he said as he swaggered over. “¿Como esta?”
Then he shot a tobacco-stained loogey onto the ground near her feet. Oh, yuck. This had better work.
“Hi, Jackson.” She tried to swallow back her natural disgust. “I need a favor.”
“Anything for you, baby.” He stepped over the loogey and edged in on her. “You lookin’ to earn some points?”
Points? Boy, he thought a lot of himself. If she had to kiss him, the rest of IKC would probably subtract points. And she so couldn’t afford to go negative.
She backed up a step. A big step.
“You’re the one who … um, acquired the pig Piper kissed, right?”
“Yeah.” He frowned, his pea-sized brain working overtime. “Hey, I heard you and Piper had some big catfight. You want to make her kiss another pig? ’Cause I was thinking, you might mix it up. Like, make it a goat next time.”
“Yeah. Right. You’re a real evil genius,” she deadpanned. He actually smiled at her, clearly too obtuse to recognize sarcasm. “But I need a pig. The biggest, ugliest pig you can find.”
“What about a chicken?” he asked.
“No, not a chicken.” Jeez. Couldn’t people get bird flu from kissing chickens? “I’m not doing a stage version of Old McDonald. All I need is a pig. Can you get me one or not?”
He looked disappointed for a moment, then he leered at her. “What are you going to do for me in exchange?”
Ugh. Could he be more transparent?
Thank God she’d anticipated his skeeziness and had a response ready.
She smiled sweetly. “For starters, I won’t tell my dad you asked me to chupa tu verga.”
Jackson stared blankly at her for a second, no doubt entranced by a female actually taking about his … um, endowments, but then her words sank in and he frowned. “Come on.” He gestured toward his car with a surly nod. “I’ll take you there.”
A few minutes later, they pulled up in front of a decrepit ranch house a few blocks from Cassidy’s. They crossed the overgrown lawn to the front porch, where a couple of aluminum lawn chairs sat. The screen door had fallen off and was propped against the siding. If Jackson had brought her to some sort of crack den to sell her into slavery, she was going to beat him to death with a folding chair.
She rang the bell, and a moment later Tanner opened the door. Holy crap.
“Isabel?” He looked about as surprised to see her as she was to see him. “What are you doing here?”
“You live here?” The question just popped out of her mouth.
“Yeah,” he said, like he was stating the obvious. “Why?” Only then did he notice Jackson standing behind her. “What—”
“Hey, she made me bring her,” Jackson hurriedly explained. “She wants a pig.”
“A pig?” Tanner asked.
“The pig?” Izzy demanded at the same time. “Wait! You’re the guy who got the pig that kissed Piper?”
“Hey, I’m outta here,” Jackson interrupted. “He’s the guy. Izzy, are we good? You’re not gonna tell your dad?”
“Yeah, whatever,” she muttered to him. A bigger fish had just landed in her frying pan. “You’re the guy who got that first pig?” she asked again, her voice escalating.
Tanner crossed his arms over his chest defensively, then scrubbed a hand across his chin. “Yeah. I’m the guy. But I didn’t know what Jackson was going to do with it, I swear. He said he just thought it would be funny to have a pig at the festival. He paid me two hundred bucks to do it, and I needed parts for my truck. I swear to God I didn’t know what he had planned.”
Izzy swallowed a lump in her throat. She looked at this sad little house, so worn down and miserable. She thought of the farm that Tanner’s parents had spent their lives building. The land out there was beautiful, even if the house wasn’t in much better shape than this one. It made her sad that Tanner had to live here, away from his parents, just so he could play football for her dad and maybe get a decent scholarship. Suddenly the ten bucks an hour his parents had paid her seemed like too much.
Tanner looked like he wanted to say something else, but she held up a hand to stop him. “Look, I believe you.”
He might be a jerk who would kiss one girl while dating another—and she wasn’t even going to get started on the injustice of that double standard—but there was a sort of chivalry to him. He wasn’t a guy who would purposely belittle a girl. Charm her pants off and crush her heart without blinking an eye, yes. Humiliate, no.
But then, this was the kind of thinking that had gotten her into so much trouble to begin with. She’d let herself get taken in by him. She’d imagined they were friends. And for a second, when he’d kissed her in that needy, hungry way, she’d imagined more.
But Tanner Colt wasn’t just some aw-shucks, down-on-his-luck cowboy. He was a star football player with more moves than the square dance at the Cotton Festival. Tanner was as deadly to females as the gun that bore his surname.
He may never have intended for Piper to face Internet humiliation, but that didn’t let him off the hook for kissing her. And then telling Germaine. And he’d had the gall to call River a douche.
Really, between the two of them, Izzy was pretty sure she had the worst taste in guys. Ever.
“Can you get me the pig or not?” she demanded, so ready for this conversation to be over.
Tanner seemed reluctant. How much had he said Jackson had paid to get the pig? Two hundred bucks. She’d socked away at least that much while working for Tanner’s parents, right? Good-bye, college fund.
“I can pay you the two hundred,” she added as additional enticement. “Just like Jackson.”
God, she hoped those were words she never had to say again. Just like Jackson. What a bone-chilling thought.
“It’s not the money.” Tanner shook his head, like he didn’t know how to phrase what he was going to say. “I feel bad enough about what happened last time. So, I don’t want to be a part of it if you’re trying to get back at somebody. You’re better than that anyway, Isabel.”
Shock rocked her back on her heels. “Jesus!” she all but shouted when she got her voice ba
ck. “That’s not why I want the pig! I’m not Germaine.” She sucked in a deep breath. “Which we both already know, or my boobs would be pushed up to here”—she jabbed at her chin—“and my panties would be discarded in the back of your truck.” For a second, she wondered if she’d gone too far. Then another shot of resentment spiked through her and she decided she hadn’t gone far enough. “On second thought, I can see why you might be confused, since your tongue has been in both our mouths in the past two weeks.”
Yikes. Who knew all that repressed anger would sound so nasty when it spewed all over someone?
He seemed as shocked by her words as she was. The second they left her mouth, she felt a flush of embarrassment. She should not have brought that up.
Forgetting momentarily that Jackson had driven her, she spun on her heel and headed back down the front path. “Never mind. I’ll find another pig.”
Tanner shot off the porch and caught up with her before she’d taken more than a few steps. He wrapped one hand around her arm and pulled her to a stop. He might as well have tackled her, it was that effective. His hand on her bare skin charged every cell in her body.
She’d always thought of herself as being on the scrawny side, but after spending the fall driving a tractor and wielding a hoe, she’d actually developed a few muscles in her biceps. Yet, Tanner’s hand was still so large his fingers met on the underside of her arm.
“Is that what this is about? This pig has something to do with the fact that I kissed you?”
He didn’t release her arm as he spoke, and it took all her concentration not to look back down at his hand. But, oh, she was totally aware of it there. For the life of her, she couldn’t make herself tear her arm out of his grasp.
“Yes, that’s part of it. Piper’s one of my best friends. And I kissed the guy she’s liked for years. I betrayed her.”
Tanner took one step closer to her. His voice dropped a notch. “But I kissed you.”
Izzy sucked in a breath at the intensity of his gaze.
“Isabel, you have no idea how long I’ve wanted …” He broke off and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Piper isn’t the one I’ve had a thing for.”
What was he implying?
No! She wasn’t going to let herself get caught up in this sick little fantasy he kept dangling in front of her. She forced herself to yank her arm out of his reach.
“Yeah, I get that.” She’d wanted to sound breezy and cool, but instead, weeks of angst fueled the words. “Germaine is the only girl for you. You’ve made that abundantly clear.”
“Is that what you think? That I’m in love with Germaine?”
“We’ve already had this conversation and you’re still with her. Obviously there’s something there.”
“I told you. I was with her because that’s what everyone expected and because you never … Christ, Isabel, do you really think I’ve spent all that time at your house because I liked hanging out with Linc?”
“Yes! That’s precisely what I thought!”
“And now?”
“Stop. That.”
“What?” he demanded.
“That. Implying that there’s something between us when there isn’t. You gave me some sort of pity kiss. And then the second Germaine showed up you dashed over to stick your tongue down her throat like you couldn’t wait to get the taste of me out of your mouth.”
“Jesus, Isabel!” He plowed a hand through his hair. “What was I supposed to do?”
She threw up her hands. “Oh, I don’t know. Not kiss her in front of me? That would have been a great start.”
“A great start to what? You’re the one who said over and over again that we were just friends. That you were only an employee. We’ve known each other for two and a half years, and you’ve blown me off every time I tried to talk to you. You only stay around long enough to insult my last name or my intelligence.”
“Then why did you kiss me?”
He gave her an exasperated look and shoved a hand through his hair. “Because I wanted not to enjoy it. I wanted to find out I’d been wrong since the ninth grade.”
Her breath caught in her chest. “And were you?”
A slow, sexy smile spread across his face. “What do you think?”
She didn’t know what to think. Every single thought had vanished from her brain. In fact, every single molecule of oxygen had also vanished from her lungs. It was like she’d been zapped by aliens. Or maybe she’d suffered a head injury. That was it. Jackson really had brought her to a crack den. She’d been hit over the head, and she was hallucinating. That explanation made far more sense.
Finally, her lungs started functioning well enough for her to speak. Only one thing popped into her head. “Can you get me the pig or not?”
“What?” His voice rose sharply. “A pig? That’s your response? After what I just told you, you want to know about a pig?”
“Tanner, I—” But once again her brain short-circuited. Synapses stopped firing and she just stuttered. “I—” Because it was all too bizarre. “I—” Was she really supposed to believe that Tanner had liked her? For years? And he’d never acted on it … why precisely? Because she made fun of his name? “I …” And how exactly was she supposed to process all of this in the middle of her current crisis? “I can’t think about that now.”
“You’re blowing me off again?”
“I didn’t know I’d ever blown you off in the first place!” she admitted. Was she so stupid about guys that Tanner freakin’ Colt had been pursuing her—for the past two and a half years—and she hadn’t even noticed? Was it possible that after years of being Invisabel Isabel, there’d been someone who’d seen her all along? And she hadn’t seen him? Could she really be that stupid?
Of course, given her history with River, then, yeah, she just might be that stupid when it came to guys. Tanner had taught her how to drive a tractor, after all. Hadn’t she told Mei exactly what it meant when a guy tried to teach you something?
“I can’t even think about this right now,” she repeated, partly to convince herself. “It changes nothing. Piper’s pissed with me because I kissed you and because she thinks I’m BFFs with Germaine. I have to fix that first.”
Izzy’s heart shrunk for a second as she considered the possibility that this thing with Tanner—whatever it was—might not be an open-ended offer. Once she’d repaired her friendship with Piper, he might have changed his mind.
But she couldn’t let that matter. “Piper’s one of my best friends,” Izzy continued. “I have to put her first. It’s what she would do.”
As she said it, she realized she was right.
Piper was fiercely loyal. She would never—not in a gazillion years—have betrayed Izzy the way Izzy had betrayed her. Not for all the guys in the world. Not for all the guys and all the shoes in the world. And all the lip gloss, too.
And suddenly, Izzy understood why Piper had been so hurt.
She looked up at Tanner—into those gorgeous blue eyes Piper had raved about so many times—and instead of saying any of the things she wanted to say, she asked, “So can you get me the pig or not?”
He studied her for a second. Then he nodded, his expression exasperated but resigned. “I’ll get you the pig.”
Friday afternoon, everything was in place. The assembly was in full swing. Mei was in the front row with Cassidy, Mei’s parents’ digital video recorder was charged and ready to go. Piper was in the audience, doing her best ostrich impression. Ms. Vogel was out onstage, discussing Internet safety in tones as serious as her perky voice would allow.
But there was no pig.
Tanner hadn’t shown up.
Izzy was pigless. Anxiety knotted her stomach. Where was he? He’d sworn he’d get her some swine. What was wrong with him?
Then she saw Tanner, making his way through the ropes and pulleys for the stage curtains. But he was still pigless.
She hurried to him and whispered, “What happened? You were supposed to bring me a pi
g.”
She was afraid Vogel might be wrapping it up before she’d have a chance to get out there. It was the third time she’d mentioned her office hours.
Then Tanner smiled at Izzy and she forgot to listen to Vogel. “Where have you been? I was about five seconds away from making a cardboard snout out of a toilet paper roll, taping it to Jackson Grosbeck’s face, and dragging his ugly ass onstage.”
Tanner smiled at her, gazing into her eyes for a second before saying, “Then thank God I got here in time. I’m not letting you kiss anyone else.” Before she could process that, he swung his backpack over his shoulder and held it out to her. “I told you I’d come through.”
The backpack was heavier than she’d have thought it would be. And it squirmed. And then oinked.
She unzipped a corner and out poked a tiny pink snout, no bigger than a Twinkie. The snout snuffled and wiggled until the hole was big enough for the piglet to look through. It was possibly the cutest thing she’d ever seen. Unfortunately.
Still, you had to work with what you had.
Before she could march out onto the stage, Tanner stopped her. “Isabel.”
He didn’t even touch her, but something in his voice made her insides tingle with warmth. She stopped and turned back toward him. “Yeah?”
“Before you go out there,” he began, and despite herself, she stepped closer. “You said you needed to take care of this first”—his voice dropped lower—“but I need you to know, I broke up with Germaine. The same day we kissed, I ended it. I never should have been with her in the first place. Not when I felt this way about you.”
Izzy’s mouth was suddenly dry. She couldn’t talk. Couldn’t even breathe. All she could do was just stare at him, mouth slightly agape, simultaneously wishing that this moment could stretch on forever and that she could rewind it and play it over and over again in her mind.
He raised his eyebrows, clearly waiting for a response from her. After an endless second, he grinned as if enjoying her stunned silence. Then he reached out his hand and gently nudged her jaw to close her mouth.
Finally, she said, “You broke up with Germaine?” She swallowed past her suddenly dry mouth. “Because of how you feel about me?”