I’m the worst.
On top of that, I promised myself that after practice today I’d tell Mr. Aioki I can’t go to London, but I chickened out. I don’t know what I’m waiting for. The longer I wait, the harder it will be.
I nestle my clarinet inside my case, half listening as Caleb and Erin chat about some indie movie they both want to see. I know she’s dying to talk to me alone, but Caleb follows us out to the parking lot. Since he no longer has a vehicle, Erin offers him a ride home.
I’m surprised to see Wesley’s truck still parked beside Erin’s car. And I’m even more surprised to see him and Jolie standing beside it, talking. Or, rather, not talking. Wesley’s staring at the ground. Jolie’s scowling, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.
We have to walk past them to get to Erin’s car. The closer we get, the harder my heart starts to pound. It’s like walking into the middle of an electrical storm.
Wesley nods curtly at us, but he doesn’t meet our eyes. Erin unlocks her car and we silently climb inside. Caleb gets into the backseat with Erin’s saxophone.
“Woo, boy. Wouldn’t want to be in James’s shoes right now,” he says as we pull away.
“What does that mean?” Erin says.
Caleb laughs. “Let’s just say that he has a lot of explaining to do.”
I catch a glimpse of Wesley in the side-view mirror, getting smaller and smaller as we drive away, and my stomach clenches as it occurs to me that his bad mood during practice might have had less to do with me and Caleb, and more to do with fighting with his girlfriend.
eighteen.
The tips of my fingers are orange. I’ve spent the last fifteen minutes chopping a whole mess of carrots into matchsticks so we can sprinkle them in the salad. I am sweaty and gross—the food truck still has no air-conditioning and there’s no sign of that fan Joe promised. So the turkey legs aren’t the only thing cooking in here today.
Also, Carter’s hovering and, as I’ve discovered, he’s a total perv. He keeps “accidentally” bumping into me, brushing parts of himself against me that I really don’t want to have any contact with.
I’m about to “accidentally” chop off his fingers when the door swings open and Wesley enters.
The temperature suddenly goes up a few degrees. I’m stupidly happy to see him, until I remember that I’m not supposed to be happy to see him. I’m supposed to be avoiding him.
Carter’s buggy eyes shift to the schedule tacked on the corkboard. “You’re not Amy.”
“That is true,” Wesley says. “Amy needed the afternoon off. We switched shifts.”
“You can’t do that. We have a schedule,” Carter says, shaking his head. “There are rules.”
“I owed her a favor. And I didn’t think it would be a problem. I mean, what does it matter as long as someone is here to cover the shift?”
What does it matter? It’s a rule, clearly highlighted on page 19 in the staff orientation manual—no switching shifts unless approved by a supervisor. Seriously, has no one read the manual?
But we’re twenty minutes from opening so there’s not much Carter can do at this point. We won’t get through the lunch rush without Wesley’s help.
“You’re also late,” Carter says gruffly, handing him an apron.
“I had a bit of trouble finding you guys.” Wesley ties the apron over his billowy white pirate shirt. He’s wearing cargo shorts instead of the bottom half of his pirate costume, which, I have to admit, is kind of genius. All anyone can see of us from outside the truck is the top half anyway.
Carter barks at Wesley to help me finish the carrots. I push the huge, still half-full plastic bin toward him, mad that it didn’t occur to me to wear shorts.
“Nice hairnet,” Wesley says, grinning. Clearly, his good mood has returned.
“You’re not going to think it’s so funny in a minute.” I smile back at him as Carter tosses a hairnet in his direction. Wesley acts like he’s been passed a grenade.
“You’re not serious,” he says.
“You don’t want to wear one, shave your head,” Carter replies.
With a resigned sigh, Wesley pulls it on. It traps his messy blond hair, dips in a V across his forehead. It’s almost impossible to look hot in a hairnet, but somehow Wesley James pulls it off. Damn him. Why does he have to be so good-looking?
“So why do you owe Amy a favor?”
“Oh. She found my swipe card.” Wesley plucks a knife out of the knife block and studies my chopping technique, expecting, I guess, that I’ll slow down and show him how it’s done. I don’t. I just keep chopping. “I guess I left it in the staff room. And I know I don’t need to tell you about the rules.”
He certainly doesn’t. But the way he says it, it sounds like an insult.
Carter barks at us to hurry up, we’re opening in five minutes. Helping us would be, well, helpful, but I guess that’s not in his job description. He decides to step outside for a last-minute cigarette instead.
“What a douche.” Wesley slows down on the chopping until I nudge him. We still have about a million carrots left and, like, no time.
“You’re really not supposed to switch shifts,” I say. “And anyway, he’s just doing his job.” Ugh. Why am I defending Carter, of all people?
An awkward silence descends. I’ve had some time to think about what happened at band practice—both the idiotic way I acted and Wesley’s reaction. And I’ve reached the following conclusion: Making him jealous is stupid and a waste of time. If Wesley liked me—and I’m no longer convinced that he does—he is taken. And, really, even if he wasn’t, it wouldn’t matter. Because I cannot be with Wesley James. Not after what he did to break up my family.
We finish chopping the carrots, and Carter comes back inside and unlocks the take-out window. When he rolls up the steel door, all I can see for miles are people. An endlessly long line of people, all staring at us with hungry eyes.
“Yikes,” Wesley says.
Yup. That about sums it up.
* * *
An hour later, the line looks like it’s barely moved. More people keep coming. I guess Joe was right about having a corner on the medieval-food market. Maybe turkey legs are the next big thing.
Surprisingly, the three of us work pretty well as a team. We haven’t come anywhere close to delivering the orders within the required ninety-second window—our best time, by my watch, was just over three minutes—but so far, no one has complained. Not even when we ran out of rice pudding.
After serving what seems like most of downtown Seattle, the lunch rush is finally over. Carter, Wesley, and I stare at one another in stunned silence.
I feel like we’ve come through a war. We looked directly into the face of a hungry mob and we lived to tell about it.
“I need a cigarette.” Carter stumbles out of the truck, his fingers fumbling to untie his grease-stained apron. He can’t seem to get it off fast enough.
“So that was fun,” Wesley says, tossing his hairnet into the garbage can. He picks up the tip jar and starts sorting through the bills. “How much do you think we made?”
I don’t even care. I’m too busy obsessing over how I will probably never get the fried turkey stench off me. Being locked in such a tiny space has magnified the stink. I am desperate to go home and take a shower, but we still have so much cleaning up ahead of us. It’s like a bomb went off in here. Seriously, I do not even know where to start.
Wesley counts out the bills, smoothing them on the counter. “Two hundred bucks.” He smiles at me, delighted, and he looks so much like the boy I used to know that I feel myself softening toward him again.
The feeling totally unnerves me. Every time I make up my mind to forget about Wesley, he throws me off balance. I fill the sink with water, while Wesley stuffs the money back into the tip jar.
“So…,” he says as I squirt lemon-scented dish soap under the running water. “What happened to you at the party? You sure left in a hurry.”
I don’t
want him to know that my exit from the party had anything to do with him. Or his pixie girlfriend. “I wasn’t feeling well. Caleb walked me home.”
Wesley grabs a dishcloth and tries to corral the food crumbs covering the counter into a neat pile. “So you and Caleb, huh?”
I swallow. “Yeah. Me and Caleb.” I don’t sound convincing, but maybe I’m a better actress than I think because Wesley doesn’t say anything.
Why isn’t he saying anything?
He reaches past me to dump the crumbs into the garbage can underneath the sink and his arm brushes against mine. It feels intentional and that makes it much worse.
“Q?”
“Yes?”
I glance at him and my heart starts to quicken. There isn’t a lot of room inside this truck, but he’s definitely standing a lot closer to me than he needs to. He’s also staring at me with the same expression he was wearing at the party, when we were on the balcony. Right before he almost kissed me.
“I should have told you about Jolie,” he says. “I don’t know why I didn’t.”
I shake my head. “You don’t owe me an explanation.”
“It’s just … I don’t want any awkwardness between us,” he says. “I really do want to be—”
I find myself holding my breath, hoping, against my better judgment, that he’s not going to use the F word.
“—friends.”
He’s staring at my mouth when he says it.
What kind of twisted game is Wesley playing here? He’s totally sending me mixed messages. This is all obviously part of a plan to get me to like him, so he can then …
Well, I haven’t quite figured out his motive yet. But I know he has one.
I move away from him.
I start attacking the rice pudding pot with a scrub brush. A hunk of pudding skin hangs from the edge of the pot—so gross it actually makes me shudder—and rice is crusted onto the bottom, hard as cement.
Wesley takes the pot from me and he’s standing really close to me again. Every nerve in my body is firing. This doesn’t feel like friendship. This feels like so much more than that.
“There’s something else,” he says.
“Hello?” Someone raps on the counter. Wesley jerks around, and over his shoulder I see a homeless man standing at the take-out window.
“Argh, what can I get ye, matey?” Wesley says, leaning on the counter. “The turkey leg makes for a fine feast, if ye be lookin’ for a hearty meal.”
“Smells good,” the man says, sticking his head inside the window. “Got any leftovers? Anything you were going to throw out?”
“No, but…” Wesley grabs the tip jar and extracts a five-dollar bill. “I do have enough for one special. Sound okay?”
The man smiles and Wesley sticks the bill into the cash register. He gives me a small shrug and then turns to throw a frozen turkey leg into the deep fryer. A cloud of hot steam instantly rises up, obscuring his face.
God, why does he have to be so nice? Why can’t he be an ass and shoo the guy away like Carter does? He’s making it harder and harder for me to destroy him.
Wesley James may seem like he’s a good guy—the kind of guy who feeds the homeless and builds houses or whatever for people in Mexico—but it’s all an act. It has to be.
No one is that perfect.
And suddenly, I’m mad again. Angrier than I’ve been since the night Wesley first showed up at Tudor Tymes. Because he’s a total fake. And everyone is falling for it.
Even me.
So while he’s busy making lunch for Homeless Guy, I unpin the schedule from the corkboard. Wesley and I have only one shift together next week and it’s at the restaurant. He never makes a copy of the schedule or writes down his shifts; he relies on his memory.
I check to make sure he’s not paying attention and then I grab a purple feathered quill from the box of Tudor Tymes souvenirs that Joe is always pressuring us to sell.
The schedule is a photocopy—the original is posted in the staff room at the restaurant—so it shouldn’t be hard for me to change Wesley’s shift. Make him an hour late. Maybe two, for good measure.
Just enough to tarnish his suit of armor.
And, with any luck, finally get him fired.
nineteen.
Caleb’s waiting for me at the entrance to the beach, a big wicker picnic basket hooked over his arm. He grins when he sees me, and while his smile doesn’t go right through me the way Wesley’s does, it does make me happy. I’m sure choosing Caleb is the right decision.
Pretty sure.
Mostly sure.
I mean, okay, I don’t have the same crazy physical response when I’m with him that I do around Wesley, but you know what? Attraction is overrated. I may not want to rip Caleb’s clothes off, but maybe that will come in time. He’s funny, sensitive, and kind. And—as an added bonus—he isn’t responsible for the destruction of my family.
“Hey, you,” he says. He leans over to give me a kiss, but I turn my head at the last second. Instead of my lips, he gets a mouthful of my hair.
After what happened between us the last time we were on the beach, I know that there’s a high probability of kissing in the forecast tonight. I’m hoping that this time there will be fireworks, that any lingering doubts about Caleb will be put to rest and he’ll make me forget all about Wesley James.
So yes, my expectations for this date are high. Turning my head away when he tried to kiss me is probably not the best way to start it off. From here on out, I decide to be more open. If Caleb tries again, then I’m going to just go with it.
“Hi,” I say. “You look nice.”
And he does, if a little buttoned up. He’s wearing navy shorts and a white golf shirt, with pristine brown leather sandals. His golden-brown hair is neatly parted, not a hair out of place. Not like Wesley’s hair, which often looks as if it’s never seen a comb.
Why am I thinking about Wesley again? I need to put him out of my mind, once and for all. He is taking up valuable space in my brain, space that should be devoted to this nice, available boy in front of me. A boy who has packed a picnic for me.
Caleb’s smile widens. “Thanks. You too.” He takes in my flowy blue sundress, his eyes resting briefly on my cleavage before traveling down the rest of my body. “Ready?”
I nod, kicking off my flip-flops. Caleb shifts the basket on his arm and reaches for my hand. I let him lead me through the soft sand to a quieter area of the beach. We don’t speak as he spreads out a cozy plaid blanket on a patch of sand partially blocked off by a large piece of driftwood. I worry that we’ve run out of things to say to each other, five minutes into the date. The silence doesn’t feel comfortable the way it does when I’m with Wesley.
Nothing with Caleb feels the way it does when I’m with Wesley. But I’m determined to change that.
We sit down and Caleb begins to unpack the picnic basket: roast beef sandwiches tightly sealed in plastic wrap, a bunch of red grapes, chocolate chip cookies the size of dinner plates. Two bottles of iced tea. I’m touched that he put so much thought into our date. And guilty that I haven’t.
“This is great,” I say, grabbing a cookie.
Caleb laughs. “Dessert first? My kind of girl,” he says. He shifts, moving a little closer to me until his knee is touching mine. His skin is warm and tanned.
A picnic on the beach as the sun goes down—it’s like something from a movie. It should be romantic. I should feel happy to be here with him. I am happy to be here with him.
Only why do I have to keep reminding myself of that?
I break off a piece of my cookie. “What happened with Wesley at band practice the other day?” I ask. I probably shouldn’t probe Caleb about this, but maybe if we talk about it, then Wesley will finally vacate my brain. “I thought you guys were friends.”
Caleb snorts. “That dude is no friend of mine,” he says, shaking his head. “Clearly, he knows nothing about the bro code.”
Bro code?
“You
never go after a friend’s girl,” he says. “And being honest about his feelings does not make it honorable.”
Wait, what? Is he referring to me? Is he telling me that Wesley has feelings for me? That I’m the reason they’re no longer friends?
I think so.
Caleb’s watching me closely, gauging my reaction. I’m trying very hard not to show any emotion, but my heart is jumping in my chest. I don’t know how to process what he’s just told me, what it means. And I don’t have a chance to, because Caleb leans over and kisses me.
And it’s not terrible. It’s better than the last time. Nice enough that I let him push me back on the blanket. We make out, but I can’t seem to let go and enjoy it because all I’m thinking about is Wesley. I’m obviously holding back and I guess Caleb senses that because after a few minutes he pulls away.
We lie on our backs, looking up at the sky. It’s too early for stars, but I can see the ghost of the moon. The air between us has changed slightly, grown cooler by a few degrees.
Caleb is doing everything right. Any girl would be lucky to have him. But I’m not any girl. And he’s not Wesley. And I can’t do this.
I sit up, gathering my thoughts as I brush off the crumbs from the cookie I never got around to eating, crushed into a million pieces beneath us. I’m completely disgusted with myself for allowing things to go this far with Caleb, when I should have just listened to what my heart was telling me all along. I may not be able to have Wesley, but that doesn’t make Caleb a consolation prize.
“What’s the matter?” he says warily.
“This isn’t going to work. I’m so sorry.” I shift away from him. My first instinct, always, is to run, and I have to fight hard against that feeling now. But I owe it to Caleb not to.
His face darkens. “You’re breaking up with me?”
I’m not sure we’re actually breaking up, since we were technically never really together. Technically or not, though, I’ve obviously hurt him, and I feel like the worst person ever. I nod. “I’m sorry.”
“Is this about Wesley?” A muscle in his jaw ticks.
Wesley James Ruined My Life Page 12