by Tracy Deebs
“That’s not true.” It was totally true. Not because he was a jerk—or at least, he didn’t think he was a jerk. But even before his dad got sick, he had never been big on wearing his feelings on his sleeve. Unlike most of his artistic friends, he didn’t feel the need to share every single emotion he had—or to explore those emotions through some big, public art demonstration.
This time the look his father gave him was filled with quiet amusement. “Whatever it takes to get you through the night, buddy.”
“You think you’re so smart, don’t you?”
“Got the Mensa membership to prove it, don’t I?”
Keegan groaned. “Oh God, not the Mensa membership again. It’s not like you got the Nobel Peace Prize. You’re in a club for smart people who are super impressed with themselves for being smart.”
“That may be true, but at least I was smart enough to ask the girl I had a crush on to my senior dance.”
“And then you married her five years later, as soon as you both graduated from college.” He made a gagging noise as he recited the story he’d heard a million times growing up. “Just because I like a girl doesn’t mean she’s my soul mate, Dad.”
“So there is a girl. What’s her name? What’s she like? How long has she gone to NextGen?”
“Wow, curious much? Isn’t it Mom who’s supposed to lead these little inquisition sessions?”
“Yeah, well, she’s had a long day. She passed the torch on to me before she went up to bed.” He put down his own carving long enough to reach into the large basket of wood at his feet and pull out a random shaped block to toss at Keegan.
He caught it, then reached into the coffee table in front of him for his own whittling kit. He wasn’t much in the mood to carve tonight, but it wasn’t like he was just going to go off to bed and leave his dad here when he was either too nauseous or too worried to sleep. He had a bunch of tools he’d gathered through the years—most gifts or hand-me-downs from his father—but he didn’t even have to think before he reached for the pocketknife that had been his first whittling tool, and still the one he used most.
He stared at the block of wood for long seconds, trying to decide what it wanted to be turned into. As he did, a picture of Dahlia at the dance flashed into his head. She’d been wearing a pair of long, intricately designed peacock earrings that brushed her shoulders whenever she moved her head. He’d only noticed them because they weren’t the first peacock thing he’d seen her with. She had a bracelet that she wore to school pretty regularly, and he was almost positive the journal she pulled out in senior seminar also had a peacock on it.
Not that it should matter at all that Dahlia liked peacocks, but now that he’d realized it, he couldn’t get the stupid bird out of his mind. Figuring it was better to just go with it instead of trying to think of something else to carve, he started the slow, painstaking strokes that would eventually yield the bird’s long, slender head and neck.
“Her name is Dahlia,” he admitted after a few minutes. He wasn’t sure what it was about woodworking that made it easier to talk to his father.
“Pretty name.”
“Yeah.” He made a few more strokes, being careful to leave enough wood on the top of the bird’s head so that he could carve feathers later.
A couple more minutes went by with nothing but the sound of knife on wood before he got up the nerve to ask, “So, how are you feeling? Is it the nausea keeping you awake again?”
“Nah. I feel good. I was just waiting up for you.”
“Yeah?” He wasn’t sure he bought that. His dad’s insomnia had been pretty out of control recently.
“Yeah.” His dad flashed him a reassuring look. “I just, you know…”
He didn’t finish, but then, he didn’t have to. The words hung, unspoken, in the air between them. This might be the last school dance he was able to wait up for Keegan. Prom was seven months away and no one—not even the doctors—knew what those seven months might hold.
It was a thought he’d been having more and more lately, but that didn’t make it any easier to handle. In fact, it only made everything more difficult. More difficult to accept that his father might be dying. And more difficult to imagine him actually beating the cancer.
He hated himself for having that thought. Hated himself even more for lying awake, hours later, staring at the ceiling and thinking about what it would be like to come home after prom to a dark house and his father’s empty office.
Chapter Five
Keegan was still thinking about his father—and how much cancer sucked—when he walked down the hall to the cafeteria early Monday afternoon.
Of course, he was also thinking about Dahlia and what he was going to say to her in senior seminar after the weird way things had ended on Saturday night.
Plus he was worrying about the fact that he’d pretty much bombed his calc homework. Which was great. Just great. Especially considering his mom had been riding him extra hard lately about being valedictorian. He didn’t actually give a shit about being first in his class, but she obviously did. And the last thing he wanted to do was make waves by not living up to parental expectations. None of them needed any more stress.
He was so lost in thought that he nearly plowed into two freshmen as he made his way through the huge double doors. They jumped back just in time, yanking their trays out of the way, but he still felt like a total jerk. Especially when they took one look at his face and then scurried off before he could even apologize.
Jeez. He must look as pissed off and miserable as he felt. Maybe he really should have stayed in bed today, because the day was shaping up to be a total clusterfuck and he hadn’t even gotten to the part he’d been dreading.
What the hell was he going to say to Dahlia? The last thing he wanted to do was ignore her after the conversation they’d had, but maybe she wanted him to? She had turned it into a joke when he’d asked her out, after all. She was probably regretting ever having spoken to him at the dance, even though she was totally the one who had started the conversation.
God, why were girls so freaking complicated all the time? And why did he have to go and fall for one who seemed a million times more complicated than any of the others?
Keegan gave himself a couple more seconds to wallow as he grabbed a sandwich and a bag of chips from the express line. Then he made his way over to his regular table in the back corner of the cafeteria. Most of his friends were already there, since he’d stayed behind to talk to his calc teacher for a few minutes in what turned out to be a totally fruitless effort to figure out what the hell he was doing wrong.
Grabbing the last chair available, he settled down next to Chris and Lauren, who were arguing over a movie they’d seen the day before. While they disagreed with the happily-ever-after ending, each had their own idea of which terrible direction the screenwriter and director should have taken the characters. Because, obviously, the only way a movie could be good was if someone died terribly at the end and those left behind nearly drowned in their own sorrow.
He barely resisted rolling his eyes. Fiction writers, man. They were the worst. Always rewriting other people’s stuff in their own heads, always thinking they could do it better. Always wanting to make some important statement about the world and the people in it… And that’s if you didn’t count how much time they spent wallowing in pits of their own existential despair.
Then again, the artists did that, too. And so did a lot of the musicians, especially the composers. They were constantly dressing in black and bemoaning the state of their own existence—and everyone else’s.
All the angst and emotion was a little unnerving, especially to a guy who was only at this school because his mom was vice principal. And who planned on majoring in marketing next year. He was in the graphic arts track, with an emphasis on Web design and social media, but in his opinion it was all just training for when he got a job in marketing for a kick-ass nonprofit company that wanted to save the world.
Shakin
g his head at all the drama his friends were manufacturing, he opened his bag of chips and absently shoved a few in his mouth as he prepared to be entertained. But after a couple of minutes of listening to them go on and on about the lack of authenticity in a happily-ever-after ending, he couldn’t resist saying, “I liked the ending. I thought it was kind of nice how they ended up together. I mean, people deserve to be happy, don’t they?”
They both gasped in outrage, their eyes widening and mouths dropping in horror at his “ridiculously bougie attitude.” He just grinned and wiggled his eyebrows at them as Chris informed him, scathingly, that “happiness is a social construct.”
“So is unhappiness. So is everything,” he answered before shoving more chips in his mouth and turning to Jacen and Himesh to see what the lovebirds were up to today.
But he barely had a chance to say hi to them before his arms and lap were filled with warm, strawberry-scented girl. And not just any warm, strawberry-scented girl, he realized as he looked down into wide brown eyes. The perfect warm, strawberry-scented girl.
Dahlia.
“What—” he started, but she wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly against her.
He started to pull away—largely because he was starting to wonder if he’d just ingested hallucinogen-dusted potato chips and wanted to get a better look at the bag—but his arms wrapped around her waist of their own volition, holding her in place when she started to slip off his lap.
She laughed a little, then placed a careless kiss on his cheek, right at the corner of his mouth. Electricity shot through him at the first press of her lips on his skin, and as Dahlia wiggled a little in his lap—either trying to get more comfortable or trying to drive him completely insane—it took every ounce of control he had not to get hard. And even then it was a close thing.
It got even worse when she leaned forward, pulling his head down so her lips lined up with his ear. “Smile,” she murmured softly, her breath hot and shivery against the sensitive skin of his neck. “And say something funny.”
He smiled—of course he did. With Dahlia in his lap grinning up at him with stars in her eyes, it was hard not to. But as for the rest… “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he whispered back.
She threw back her head and laughed like he was the funniest guy in the world. And right there he decided to forget about acid-laced potato chips. He’d obviously fallen straight into the twilight zone.
“You’re hilarious!” She giggled, patting his cheek a couple of times before twisting around in his lap to grab his sandwich off his tray. She handed him one half, then took the second for herself. “What kind is it?”
“It’s supposed to be turkey, but we usually call it mystery meat.”
She laughed again before reaching out and patting his chest. “It’s so good to see you. I missed you yesterday.”
Forget the twilight zone. He’d obviously fallen into some alternate dimension where he and Dahlia were actually a couple. There was no other explanation for the fact that she was eating his food and sitting on his lap like she belonged there. Like she was comfortable there and had done it a million times before.
Except when he glanced around the table, he realized all of his friends were staring at them. Oh, some were trying to be subtle about it while others—like Chris and Himesh—were gaping, mouths opening and closing like the huge clown face at miniature golf. The one that did its worst to keep you from scoring. Jacen, of course, was grinning like an idiot and giving him a not-so-subtle thumbs-up.
So, not the twilight zone, then, and not another dimension.
This was real. Dahlia was actually sitting on his lap right now, trying to choke down half of his very dry turkey sandwich. And he was just staring at her, trying to figure out what was happening. And what he was supposed to do about it.
Before he could think of anything else to say, Dahlia twisted around in his lap and smiled at Lauren. “I agree. I thought the ending was a total cop-out. Like, you can’t set up all that crazy conflict and then just end it like it was nothing. It makes no sense.”
Lauren blinked for a second, looking back and forth between Keegan and Dahlia. But then she grinned and punched him lightly in the shoulder. “Right? It makes no sense. You can’t have a resolution until you deal with the conflict. That’s Writing 101.”
“Also Relationship 101,” Jacen chimed in, shooting Keegan another long look. The second Dahlia’s face was turned away, though, he mouthed, Is this her?
Keegan shook his head and glared. This so wasn’t the time for that.
“You’re Dahlia, right?” Himesh asked in an obvious attempt to deflect Keegan’s annoyance from his boyfriend. “We’re in senior sem together.”
“We are.”
“Oh, right. You’re the one who’s going to be writing the songs for Lizzie.”
Dahlia grinned at the mention of their senior project, a musical version of Lizzie Borden’s life. “Yep, that’s me. Theoretically, anyway.”
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” Chris commented, and Keegan tried not to notice that the guy was looking at her like she was fresh meat. “My senior sem group is doing a graphic novel and I’m doing the writing. Which is cool, but it’s hard trying to fit my words to someone else’s vision, you know? Like, other people are plotting it out and I’m writing according to what they want.”
“It is hard,” Dahlia agreed. “But it’s kind of cool, too. Definitely makes me work harder. But I like hearing all the different ideas. Collaborating usually makes the final product better—and it’s fun.” She shot Keegan a grin that nearly had him swallowing his own tongue.
“If there is a final product,” Jacen interjected. “Has anyone seen any part of the script yet?”
As the whole table started talking about their own senior projects, Keegan racked his brain, trying to think of something to say to Dahlia that wouldn’t sound stupid. But before he’d come up with anything that didn’t start with Um, she was twisting the lid off his lemonade and taking a long sip. Which shouldn’t have been a big deal, except it was a little mesmerizing. He tried really hard not to think about how good her mouth looked on the bottle, but it was no use. She looked really good.
She put the bottle down after she’d drained about half of it, then she popped off his lap without warning. He wanted to reach for her, wanted to pull her back down so badly that he ended up curling his fingers into his palms in an effort to resist the temptation. “Thanks for lunch,” she told him as she waved to the rest of the table. “I’ll see you in class in a little.”
Then she was gone, half walking, half skipping across the cafeteria, and he was left staring after her, wondering what the hell had just happened.
Chapter Six
“Hey, can I talk to you?”
I look up from my phone to find Keegan slouched against the wall outside our senior seminar classroom, one knee bent and foot propped against the wall. For a second, I’m struck a little dumb at how good he looks in that position, all long, lean torso and even longer legs. His ripped jeans and tattered Imagine Dragons T-shirt look good on him. Really good. Though I can’t help wondering what he’d think if he knew I’d hung out with them a bunch of times.
“Sure.” I smile at him like I have no idea why he’s waiting for me. “What’s up?”
His brows shoot up and his electric green eyes go wide as he studies me for several seconds. It’s obvious he’s trying to figure me out, trying to put all the pieces together so that he can decide exactly what happened at lunch. And while I have every intention of telling him, it’s kind of entertaining watching him try to work it out. I’m not normally a game player—at least, no more than I have to be to survive in the music industry—but playing with Keegan is entirely too much fun.
Then again, how could it not be? He’s such a good sport. I love how he went along with me at lunch today, though I could all but feel his confusion radiating from him. And I love even more that he’s staked out Oliver’s classroom,
determined to get an answer for what I’m sure he thinks of as my strange behavior.
“Umm, did you…”
“Did I…”
“Earlier—café—umm…” That’s all he seems able to get out, and he looks like he’s suddenly doubting himself and his memory. Like maybe he thinks he made up the part of the day where I sat on his lap and stole half his lunch. Poor guy.
Deciding to put him out of his misery, I loop my arm through his and start tugging him down the hallway. “Hey, walk me to the water fountain, okay?”
There are too many people hanging around Oliver’s door, and I don’t want us to be overheard. Not now when I’ve just started putting my evil plan into action.
“Thanks again for lunch,” I tell him as we turn the corner into the much less busy alcove that houses this building’s restrooms and water fountains. “I left my lunch at home and I was starving.”
His face smooths out, like he’s suddenly figured something out. “Oh, hey, no problem. Anytime. Although I should probably warn you that prolonged exposure to mystery meat causes strange and dubious side effects.”
“I can only imagine.” I give a fake shudder. “Tomorrow’s a normal schedule, right? Not this late-start one with a short lunch so there’s no time to go off campus?”
“Yeah. The rest of the week is normal. Why?”
“Because I want to repay the favor tomorrow and take you out to lunch.”
“You want to take me to lunch?”
“Absolutely! You can give me the scoop on everything NextGen-related since Finn thinks I need to stop lurking in the shadows and actually meet some people. And in exchange, I will help you with Operation Dream Girl.”
For some reason, his eyes narrow when I mention Finn. But that’s the only reaction he has as he continues to stare at me for long seconds when I can all but see the wheels turning in his head. Eventually, he starts to say something but then he stops, shakes his head. More seconds pass, then, just as the warning bell rings, he asks, “Operation what?”