Dating the It Guy

by Krysten Lindsay Hager

  “Good luck,” she said. “Call me later.”

  I went back into the hall, and Brendon was sitting on the stairs. I sat next to him and said I believed he and Lauren had just run into each other. Pretending to be someone else gave me courage. I felt like I could say anything I wanted because it wasn’t coming from me.

  “It threw me the way you just shut me out,” he said. “And it hurt to see you had moved on. Before, I felt like we had this connection—like I could almost read your mind.”

  I wanted to tell him how miserable I had been without him, but I didn’t. I had always been honest about my feelings, and it hadn’t gotten me anywhere. Kylie was right—I didn’t feel like I was good enough for him, and I had never felt comfortable around his friends either. Maybe Margaux was smart to hold back and have some control over the relationship. From now on I was going to follow her lead.

  “I just want things to be okay between us. I know you were jealous over Nicola, but—”

  “I wasn’t jealous of her, just upset you picked her of all people. It made me look bad,” I said. It was like I was quoting Margaux. “But I didn’t honestly think you were interested in her.”

  He stared at me. “Oh, okay. So…do you want to watch the rest of the movie?” he asked.

  “Let’s go out. I didn’t have dinner, and I’m starving,” I said as I grabbed my coat. “How about Finnigan’s? I’m craving something fried and greasy.”

  We got into his car, and I put on some music. He pulled into the parking lot, and I asked him to drop me off at the door because Margaux always insisted her dates do it. We sat down to order and decided to split some potato wedges and fried zucchini. The waiter put crayons on the table in case we wanted to draw on the paper tablecloth. I picked up a red crayon and started to draw a house. Brendon grabbed the blue crayon and drew a swimming pool.

  “Maybe I don’t want a pool at my house,” I said. “Make it a tennis court.”

  “Oh, so it’s your house. Fine, I’ll make my own,” he said and he drew a fence between the house and the pool.

  After we ate, we walked downtown and went into one of the gift shops. The store was crowded, and a guy pushing a stroller bumped into Brendon’s leg.

  “I hate crowds,” Brendon said after the guy with the stroller had apologized. “Can we get some air?”

  We walked back outside, and I pulled my hands inside of my sleeves and crossed my arms to keep warm. Brendon saw me freezing and gave me his navy scarf. I suggested we stop for hot chocolate, and we went to Beanie Weanies. We waited in a long line, and the little boy behind me had a hacking cough. Grandma always told me to say a prayer and imagine a white light around you whenever you were around sick people. We got our drinks, but there was no place to sit. We stood by the garbage cans and waited for somebody to leave. Two young guys started to get up, and Brendon shot over there and nabbed the table.

  “Great save,” I said.

  “You know, I’m not a people person,” he said. “Maybe politics isn’t for me.”

  “You could always try modeling if law school doesn’t work out,” I said, smirking.

  He rolled his eyes. “Yeah. I’m not even sure I’m going to go to law school.”

  “I thought your family had your ten-year plan mapped out forever. Law school, then politics. Something change?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “It’s hard to get into law schools, and isn’t there some study which says someday there will be two lawyers for every person or something?”

  “I don’t know, but you have a lot of time before you have to make a decision,” I said. “Have you heard from the colleges you applied to yet?”

  He shook his head. “Nope, but I’m going to South Bend next weekend with my parents to check out the campus.”

  I hadn’t even thought about the fact he’d be moving out of state if he got accepted. He’d be miles away and meeting tons of new people, and he wouldn’t want to be stuck with me anymore. He seemed deep in thought, and I wondered if he was thinking the same thing. Brendon was bound to meet girls who had a lot more in common with him than I did. It was probably a school full of Lauren Hartnets. He’d probably wait until after prom to dump me. Unless he decided Nicola would look better than Lauren in the prom pictures. Then he’d dump me and take her to prom. With my luck, she would get a full scholarship to the same college, and they could spend every moment together.

  “Em, do you want to split an espresso brownie?” he asked.

  I snapped back to attention. “Sure.”

  “Kind of dozed off there, huh?”

  “I was just daydreaming about my other boyfriend,” I said, and I tried to look underneath my eyelashes the way Margaux did when she would flirt with somebody. Margaux had a way of flirting with a guy, while letting him know she had other offers. She knew how to work the whole lashes thing, too. Unfortunately, I think Margaux’s mascara worked better than mine because it made me look like I had a nervous tick or something. Brendon stared at me funny as he got up to get a brownie. When he came back, I broke my half of the brownie into little pieces the way Margaux did, and I tried the eyelash thing again.

  “Do you have something in your eye?” he asked, leaning over.

  “Uh, yeah.” It was either lie or admit my attempt to be cute sucked. Margaux should teach a course on this stuff.

  After we ate, we got in his car and drove around to look at the Christmas lights. I relaxed and forgot all about trying to be Margaux. We had fun picking out which houses we wanted to live in when we got older.

  “I love the red brick house,” I said. “Look at that sun porch.”

  “Okay, that’s where we’ll live when I’m a journalist and you’re a best-selling author,” he said.

  I was about to say I wanted a garden when I realized he had talked about us being together in the future. Did he mean it, or had it slipped out and now he regretted it? Would he get my hopes up if he were going to dump me after prom? He dropped me off at home, and I called Kylie as soon as I took my coat off.

  “So are you guys okay or what?” she asked.

  “Yup, we made up, but—”

  “But? Now what?” she asked.

  “He’s going to be going to be out of state next fall,” I said. “And I’m sure he’s going to want to see other people.”

  “Girl, will you just stop thinking so much and relax? He might want to keep seeing you. Besides, fall is a long time away. You could break up way before. He could die before fall ever comes around,” she said. “You could die before then.”

  “You’re so comforting,” I said. “I almost made a fool of myself doing the flirty eye thing Margaux does. He thought I had something in my eye.”

  “I tried to smack my lips like she does when she wants a guy to notice her mouth, but I ended up smearing my lip gloss all over, and nobody told me,” she said. “I didn’t even notice I had a peach smear under my lips until I got home from school.”

  “Wait, did you do it last week? I thought you had impetigo,” I said. “I even threw my pen out after you borrowed it.”

  “Zach thought I had it, too, and he was freaked out I might be contagious. Luckily, we’re no longer in the impress-me stage, and I just told him it was lipstick,” she said.

  “I’ll have you know I threw out my favorite pen, too. You know, Margaux needs to write a how-to book,” I said.

  “Yeah, but her advice would only be good for relationships you want to last less than a month or on guys whose minds you want to mess with,” she said. “Geez, poor Seth.”

  “Actually, she broke up with him before she left for Kentucky. It’s poor Austin now,” I said.

  It was a good thing I never saw Austin at any of the family reunions because it would be uncomfortable, since Margaux would end up dumping him, too. It always took guys a long time to date after she was through with them.

  “You know, Margaux isn’t the best role model for a decent relationship,” Kylie said. “Zach and I only got together after I stop
ped playing games with him, and now he’s my best friend, too.”

  Kylie might have been right, but Margaux had two things I had been craving: self-confidence and control when it came to relationships.

  “Still, you might want to call Austin’s parents and tell them to cancel any life insurance policies they might have on him. I hear they don’t cover suicides, and it would be a shame for his parents to waste all that money.”

  “How do you know it won’t be different with—” I broke off laughing. “Sorry, couldn’t say it with a straight face. But who knows? Maybe it will be different with Austin. People can change.”

  Chapter 29

  Brendon had been quiet since his trip to his dad’s old school. It didn’t take my intuition to tell it hadn’t gone well. I wanted to ask him, but I figured he didn’t want to talk about it. Sam asked about the trip as we were walking out of school together.

  “Nothing much happened. Just took the tour,” Brendon said. “We’ve gotta go. I need to stop at the bookstore before I take Emme home.”

  He didn’t say anything on the way to the bookstore. He didn’t even wait for me when he got out of the car. In fact, he headed straight for the resources section and started pulling books off the shelf.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  “Um…nothing,” he said as he flipped through a thick college guidebook.

  “I’m going to go walk around,” I said.

  “M’kay,” he said without looking up.

  For all he knew I was going to walk out the front door. I didn’t want him to think I was just going to sit around waiting for him, so I grabbed a copy of a novel I wanted to get and hid out in the travel section. Let him wonder where I was. However, he found me and asked if I wanted to get something to drink in the café.

  “Two soy lattes,” he said when we got up to the counter.

  “Wait, I want one of those mango-infused waters,” I said, putting my hand on his arm.

  We sat down, and he put his books on the floor beside him. I put my paperback on the table and struggled to open my bottle. He reached for the bottle, but I managed to open it myself.

  “What are you looking at?” I asked.

  “Just some college prep books,” he said, taking a drink.

  “For what? Do you have to take some more tests or something?” I asked.

  “Kinda. It’s not super interesting.” He put the top back on his coffee and stood up. “Are you ready?”

  I followed him in line, and he handed me his keys and said I could wait for him in his car.

  “But I was going to buy this book,” I said, showing him the paperback.

  He grabbed it from me. “I’ll get it for you,” he said.

  I glanced over to see if there was some cute girl working the register, but there was a guy behind the counter. It was weird he wanted me to meet him in the car, but I had no reason to stay. I went out to the parking lot and started the car so I could listen to the radio. Brendon opened the door and handed me my book. I offered to pay him back for it, but he shook his head.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Just tired. I had a big test today, and I’m worn out,” he said. He didn’t say another word until he pulled in front of my house.

  “Hey, call me later, okay?” he said without even looking at me.

  I went inside and called Margaux. I thought maybe she’d know why Brendon was acting so weird, but she had just gone out with my cousin, and she wanted to tell me all about it.

  “We went to Augustine’s for dinner, and he paid, of course—”

  “You know, it is polite to at least offer to split the check,” I said.

  “Whatever, and then we went to see the new Anthony Matthews movie,” she said, telling me how Austin had brought her peach roses.

  “See, red’s predictable, but peach is unique and more expensive, especially at this time of year,” she said.

  “I like getting red roses. Well, I only got them once, but I—”

  “They’re nice, but they show zero imagination,” she said.

  I told Margaux how weird Brendon had been acting after school.

  “He’s probably getting too comfortable with you,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, like he feels like he doesn’t need to impress you anymore.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Ignore him a little bit,” she said.

  Margaux said I should pretend that I was too busy to call him tonight. She thought Brendon took me for granted. I took her advice and didn’t call him. He e-mailed me around nine o’clock, but I didn’t write back.

  Chapter 30

  I was walking down the hallway with Kylie in the morning when I saw Brendon standing with his friends. He said “hi” to me, but I just gave him a smile. Margaux said to be mysterious and unavailable. I went to my locker and put my books away.

  “Did you get my e-mail?” he asked.

  “I didn’t read it until late last night. I was super busy,” I said.

  “Did you have lots of homework?” he asked.

  Actually, I had watched a Cutie Pies marathon and spent the rest of the night doing an astrological chart I had promised Rory a while back, but he didn’t need to know my plans. I shrugged.

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, why?” I asked.

  “I dunno. You’re acting weird,” he said. “Are you sick or something?”

  Great, I tried to act mysterious, and he thought I was coming down with something. I said I was fine, and he asked if I wanted to go to the movies after school.

  “I thought today was the college prep meeting,” I said.

  “It’ll probably be boring, and it’s not like I don’t know about it all already,” he said. “Meet me at my car, okay?”

  I thought it was weird he was going to miss the meeting where the counselors go over all the things you needed to do to get ready for college, but I guess he did have a zillion books on it. I told Kylie and Margaux about it, and Kylie thought he just needed a break from college prep stuff.

  “Uh-oh,” Margaux said. “He’s missing the meeting so you guys can go somewhere private and talk.”

  “But they’re going to a movie so they can’t talk much,” Kylie said.

  “Yeah, or make a scene,” Margaux said. “He wants to break up.”

  “What? Are you sure?” I asked.

  Margaux said she had broken up with three different guys at the movies.

  “I always waited until they show the last preview, so the guy can’t throw a fit because the theater’s quiet. Sometimes the guy leaves, which is great because then I don’t have to worry about what to say when the movie’s over,” she said. “Oh, but make sure he pays for your ticket.”

  “You let the guy pay for you, and then you dump him?” Kylie asked with her eyes wide.

  “Sometimes, but Emme will be in the opposite position, so she should definitely get him to pay. It would suck to buy your own ticket and then get dumped,” she said.

  “Yeah, I’ll bet,” Kylie said. “I can’t believe you.”

  Margaux pointed out I’d be stuck at the theater afterward since Brendon was the one driving. She said I should go into the mall afterwards and call my parents for a ride home because it would be too humiliating to get a ride home from him.

  “Brendon is not going to dump her,” Kylie said. “Besides, if he wanted to break up with her, he could just go to the meeting and then dump her afterward. He doesn’t need to miss the meeting, too.”

  “You guys, should I break up with him first?” I asked.

  Kylie said we didn’t even know if he wanted to break up with me.

  “You should find out what was going on with him,” she said.

  But Margaux wasn’t as optimistic.

  “Dump him first,” she said.

  My heart was in my stomach as I walked to his car. He was listening to his favorite Fat Losers album when I got in the ca
r. He didn’t say much as we drove to the theater. I hadn’t actually thought he was going to break up with me, but now he seemed like he had something on his mind.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked.

  “Do you mind if we skip the movie and just go somewhere and talk?” he asked.

  The cheap jerk wasn’t even going to pay for my ticket! He was just going to dump me in the lobby and save himself the ticket price. He took my arm and led me into the mall entrance. We sat outside a department store, and I leaned back and folded my arms across my chest. I wasn’t going to make this easy for him.

  “I’m not going to my dad’s school,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “I met with a counselor while I was there, and it’s not going to work out. It’s not just my physics grade either. There are so many people applying and I—I dunno. I don’t want anybody to know yet because…well, no one thought I had a chance to get in anyway,” he said.

  “I did, but are you sure there’s no chance?” I asked.

  “I’m on the wait-list.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  He shook his head and said he had met with our school counselor when he got back, and Mrs. Bergin said that it would be next to impossible to move up on that list. She told him he’d need to apply to other schools right away.

  “I should have applied to more backup schools, but I was so determined to get in, so I only applied to two others, and I don’t want to go to either one.”

  “You’ve still got a while to decide what to do, right?”

  He shrugged. I had two more years before I had to start worrying about colleges, and I didn’t have an idea of where I wanted to go to school. I wasn’t sure what to say to him, so I thought about what Margaux would do and asked if he still wanted to see the movie. Maybe he needed a distraction, and after all, Margaux wasn’t good at deep conversations, so I figured she’d want to get away from the weirdness and see a movie. I even ordered her favorite combo at the concession stand: bottled water and fat-free gummy bears. Brendon didn’t say anything during the previews, but he did offer me some of his popcorn and chocolate-covered peanuts. After the movie, we went to a department store. I was feeling Margaux-like, so I dragged him over to the makeup counter while I tried on a lipstick.