by Rachel Shane
When the day ended, Emma personally thanked Harper for the great day. Brett stood near her, tapping his foot impatiently to get a word in but then Maya tugged on his shoulder and quite literally dragged him toward the parking lot. Harper’s stomach squeezed like she might get scolded by him even though she did nothing wrong. Soon every single person was gone—including the Homes for Charity officials. All except one. Connor. Hammering away with his shirt off.
Harper steeled herself, and then stalked toward him. “Hey, it’s time to head home.”
“I’m almost done. Give me a few?” He patted the pile of planks he perched on and offered her a seat next to him. She glanced over at what he was hammering, a medium-sized, wooden box.
“What is it?” she said, sitting down. As part of her contract with Homes for Charity, she couldn’t leave until everyone else did. The only reason the officials had left already was because when they swept the area, everyone was packed up and mingling by their cars. But apparently Connor had just been taking a five-minute water break, back to work as soon as the officials sped away.
“Dog house. I talked to Angie,” he said, referring to the head of this Homes for Charity project. “The family getting this house has a golden retriever. Figured I’d make them a special present.” He gave Harper a sheepish grin. “I mean, besides the house.”
The sentiment left her breathless. He was building a doghouse on his own accord? Out of the goodness in his heart?
And more importantly, his heart had goodness in it?
He stopped hammering and met her gaping mouth. “Look, I know what you must think of me.”
“That building a house for charity is very far from your usual pastime of blackmail?”
“So I guess Poe told you.”
She jutted out her lower lip. “Don’t try to deny it.”
“I’m not denying it. But I’m also not that guy anymore. I haven’t been for a long time. I regret a lot of things I did back then.” He pulled off a simple silver ring from his left hand and held it up to the sunlight. The words True Love Waits were etched into the interior of the metal. “A purity ring. Next time, I’m waiting for love.”
Harper shivered under his confession. Puzzle pieces connected in her mind. She’d never seen Connor at any of the parties Poe had dragged her to over the last few months. She’d also never seen him hanging out with his partner in crime Eli in the hallways.
“I’m trying to make up for my past.” He tapped the doghouse. “I even volunteer at a soup kitchen on weekends.” He gave a little self-deprecating laugh, as if this was something he was embarrassed of. As if this was a secret. “Um, don’t tell anyone that. It would ruin my street cred.” He pursed his lips. “No, scratch that. I should be shouting that info to the world.”
“I won’t tell,” Harper said, her words surprising even her. The only secret she’d shared with Connor was the unknown truth of what a real jerk he was. But now the secret she had on him was that…he had a good heart. And possibly a good soul.
He had changed.
Over the course of the week, she and Connor chatted more and more. Her guard was down. She let him in past the casual questions, into the deeper ones, and she answered them honestly. What did she want out of life? Her biggest fear? Her greatest secret? After all, he’d told his. And so she told him hers: she’d been the one to wipe his phone, not Poe.
He blinked for a second, his face a mask of surprise. “Wow,” he said. “I’m impressed.”
For a moment Harper could only stare at him, struck numb by his weird comment. But also by hers. All evidence of his past proved exactly how untrustworthy he was, but there was something about him that made her comfortable. When he bent down and swiped a spot of sawdust away from her cheek with his thumb, she almost melted on the spot.
He even helped her brother by taking Jackson under his wing and showing him the proper way to hammer and drill and saw. It warmed her heart to see the school golden boy helping out the school slacker, a role she wished her little brother wouldn’t play.
“Is anything going on with you and Prince Royal Jerk?” Brett asked one day when Harper drove him and Maya home.
“I saw them swooooning over each other!” Maya helpfully added.
“No,” she said fast, her stomach squeezing. Because it sounded like a lie. “Blank Space,” she added to cut tension. “It’s like you don’t even know me.” A little laugh escaped her lips. Maybe she didn’t know herself.
When school resumed the following week, she expected Connor to go back to ignoring her. But when she stepped into homeroom that Monday and slid into her chair, an office aide paraded into the room carrying the biggest vase of flowers Harper had ever seen. All the students in the room straightened up, glancing around at who might be the lucky one to get a delivery during school.
Harper tilted her eyes back to her paper to avoid the sharp clench of jealousy welling in her stomach. But then a shadow loomed over her desk. The aide cleared her throat and set the heavy glass vase down, right on top of Harper’s Western Civ homework.
The required ooohs and ahhhhs from the other students ensued, and Emma escaped her chair with utter glee and rushed over. “Is it from Connor?” Emma rubbed her hands together.
Harper’s heart thumped wildly as she plucked the little white card from between the leaves and read the note.
I didn’t have time to plant a flower garden last week, but then I realized the new homeowners weren’t the ones I wanted to give flowers to. -Connor
Harper’s body thrummed at the words on the note but thankfully her brain was still working. And her brain immediately thought of Poe, who would never forgive Connor, no matter how much he changed. “It’s from my mom,” she said fast to Emma, hating that she couldn’t announce this to the world. She and Connor had exchange one secret but now they had two. No one could find out he was the one who sent these.
Thankfully, she still had his number from the sign-up sheet. She huddled against her locker between class periods. It’s Harper. Thanks for the flowers.
His reply was immediate: But you told everyone they were from your mom. :-(
Wow news traveled fast, at least when Emma was involved. Harper swallowed hard, grappling for an excuse. But he was quick on that too.
I get it. Poe.
Tension flew from her lungs. Sorry, I just don’t want her to find out.
Another text came: Does this mean there’s something for her to find out? Followed by a winky emoji.
Before she could reply, the warning bell rang and she shoved her phone back in her locker. She refused to look at her phone the rest of the day for fear she’d break down. Reply. Flirt.
She busied herself with moving a set of googly eyes she’d discovered pinned to a pencil sharpener in her Bio class and transporting them to the vending machine where they stuck to the glass and appeared to turn a Twix bar anthropomorphic.
That plan worked well enough until he showed up at her soccer game the next afternoon and enthusiastically cheered her on from the stands. Even though it was an away game at a school two hours away. None of the parents had even shown up but Connor had driven all that way just to see her play. Her teammates kept looking at her, wondering what was going on, and she couldn’t answer. She could only douse herself with icy cold water and pray the chill would wake her up from this dream. When she got back home, her fingers betrayed her by texting him thanks again. And he texted her back. And suddenly it was three a.m. and they’d been texting for hours about nothing and everything.
And a few days later on a Friday, the doorbell rang while she sat at the kitchen table doing homework across from Jackson. He sprang from his seat and skidded in his socked feet toward the door. He never liked bringing friends over because their parents didn’t exactly approve of the burnouts he’d chosen as compadres. But a guy’s voice filled the foyer before Jackson paraded his guest into the kitchen.
Connor.
Harper dropped her pencil and Connor delivered her his
trademark golden boy smile.
“What are you doing here?” she asked when she found her voice. It had gone hidden somewhere beneath her vibrating nerves.
“Helping your brother get ready for his date,” Connor said like that was the most obvious thing in the world.
Harper practically spat as Jackson buried his face beneath his mass of chin length red hair. “Date?”
“Amelia asked me out,” Jackson mumbled.
“We got to talking about it last week at the build about how he didn’t know what to wear. So I offered my services.” Connor plucked the collar of his shirt. “I am an exceptional dresser after all.”
But he kept staring at Harper as if his reason for being here wasn’t about Jackson at all.
Still, the two headed up to Jackson’s room and Harper tried her best not to freak out. She focused on the words on the page, the way each letter connected to make a word to make a paragraph but none of it made sense.
An hour later Jackson came down looking amazing. His hair was actually brushed and parted to the side, slicked with gel in a sophisticated hipster way. He wore khakis he must have purchased earlier that day with a button down shirt hanging loose. A skinny tie ringed his neck. He smelled different too, musky and earthy, like Connor himself.
Connor flourished his hand toward Jackson like a Fairy Godmother presenting his transformation. “Come on,” Connor said. “Bow.”
Jackson’s face turned bright red and he ducked under his hair again.
Connor nudged him with his elbow. “Hey, what did I tell you?”
Jackson straightened and shook the hair out of his face, something his mother had been begging him to do for the last few years.
“Open,” Connor said and Jackson’s mouth flopped open. Connor sprayed minty breath spray into Jackson’s mouth and then patted him on the back. “I think you’re good to go.”
“Tell mom and dad I’ll be home by nine,” Jackson said.
“Ten,” Connor corrected with a wink at Harper.
And then a horn honk and Jackson let out a sound that somewhat resembled a dying animal before trudging toward the door. Connor cleared his throat and Jackson straightened, swaggering.
Connor turned to Harper and grinned. “Speaking of dates,” he said. “I’d like to take me out on one too.”
He lifted his finger to his lips in the universal sign for secret. And when he slipped his hand inside Harper’s, she didn’t let go.
CHAPTER 15
POE
Poe followed at a safe distance of about twenty steps behind Valentina and Kate like she was in a low speed chase in a sleuth movie. Moonlight splattered a faint glow onto the sidewalk. Thick trees swayed in the breeze, attempting to block her path and her vision. She nearly lost her marks in a crowd of people scattering from kegs in a hotel parking lot across from stupid Frick Hall. Sirens blasted, shouts rang out, and the people fled wildly. Bodies whirled past her, knocking into her in a mad dash to cross the street into the safety of the campus boundaries. The stench of beer hung in the air.
Her heart pounded as she craned her head left and right, debating between fleeing with the crowd back toward campus or away from it, where police officers could scoop her up and cite her for being part of the party she took no part in. She went with her gut and ran with the crowd away from the emerging police cars, away from campus, until she found Valentina and Kate strutting along a side street, their arms flailing, their voices carrying as if they hadn’t even noticed the commotion going on behind them.
Poe wiped sweat from her brow. Her long hair dangled behind her back, dancing along the hem of her blouse. Her eyes followed the swinging hips of the girls in their tight black dresses. She glanced down at her own pencil skirt, her blouse tucked neatly inside. The outfit was armor, it was uniform, and it transformed her from the Poe of the past to the Poe of today. The one that didn’t make grave mistakes. The one whose reputation revolved around being hard to get, not the opposite. The one who desperately tried to put on an air of sophistication in the hope that maybe if she acted the part, she’d believe it herself. Sure, she went on dates and indulged in heavy make out sessions, but she always stopped there. With her clothes still on. Poe was a different kind of easy now: the easy answer during class when no one else raised their hand.
But the girl with all the answers also knew a thing or two about costumes thanks to her theater experience. A girl dressed for an office meeting would never appear in a scene set at a college bar. With trembling fingers, Poe yanked the bottom of her blouse out of her pencil skirt and began unbuttoning the delicate pearl buttons. She’d saved up for weeks to buy this shirt from Anne Taylor Loft but she squeezed her eyes shut and tossed it onto a nearby grass lawn, trying not to mourn the loss of it. Beneath the shirt, she wore a simple black tank top intended to guard against unwanted exposure of her bra. But paired with the pencil skirt of the same color, it was sexy. Appropriate. Perfect for wherever she was heading.
This was her Broadway revival for her signature performance of Drunk Party Girl, now touring nationally.
Poe let out a strained laugh that carried into the night. It was funny how the fewer clothes a person wore, the more they revealed of themselves.
She followed the girls into a small house on a side street with pumping music blasting and bodies streaming inside. Her old ways came back to her like someone holding a pencil again after a summer spent without homework. She felt right at home as she slipped inside the kitchen door, squeezing past a blockade of people congregating in front of the refrigerator. Her feet traipsed over scuffed linoleum, sliding into a puddle of spilled beer. The room was so packed, a few people were sitting on the stove, their legs dangling over the oven.
A tray of Jell-O shots jiggled as someone passed it around and the girls nearby plucked two, one for each hand. The person held out the tray to Poe and her stomach wrenched. Alcohol always took her to places she could never return from. Places that gave her both the best nights of her life and the worst. But she was playing a part now. She wasn’t Poe, the slut who slept with anyone who let her spend the night. Or Poe, the born again virgin whose religion didn’t worship a God of any kind but an opportunity. To get the fuck out of town and never return. Good grades were her saints. Extra curriculars her guardian angels.
The green Jell-O wobbled in her trembling hands. She squeezed her eyes shut and sucked back the concoction the way she used to do a few years ago, when she drank to forget and the next morning tried to remember what the hell she’d done.
The gooey Jell-O shot glided down her throat, leaving a distinct aftertaste of Poe’s past that made her cough.
Soft sultry guitars plucked from the college radio station crooned through tinny speakers. Girls screamed and squealed along with the lyrics no one over the age of twenty-two would be able to recite. The people in the living room pressed up against one another, legs slid between legs, grinding. Poe followed the crowd into the second room, her feet crunching over fallen potato chips, where a wooden bar stretched across the back wall, clearly handmade. She pictured the owner of this house hammering and sawing just so he could hold out his calloused hands and prove that he knew how to use them. Wink wink.
Poe’s eyes traced the pack of bodies for Valentina but instead she found the keg, and the guy holding out a foamy beer to her like a contract. If you take this, you agree to kiss me. She plucked the cold plastic from his hands. Her stomach swam with both nausea and nostalgia at the cloying stench of yeast. Beer was never her drink of choice, only as a last resort, and this seemed like the last of them all. It was her last and final chance to identify the part of her that hadn’t existed until a lawyer swung his car into her driveway and enlightened her. She continued weaving through the crowd until she saw them, standing in the center of the next room, clutching beers to their chests. Kate flailed her arms in full on conversation but Valentina’s eyes kept darting around the room. Poe froze as Valentina’s eyes locked on hers for the briefest of seconds before con
tinuing on—and lighting up when a guy with very spiky hair walked into the room.
The guy darted forward and practically knocked people out of the way to get to the girls. He wrapped Kate in a giant hug but she squirmed away from him, wrinkling her nose and pushing him playfully in the chest. Valentina allowed him to hug her as she stretched on her tiptoes and brought her lips close to his ear, whispering something soft and quick before pulling away. His eyebrows rose behind her back and a quick smile flashed on his face before he composed himself and spun to face Kate too.
Poe inched closer, the riff of a guitar strumming to the rhythm of each step. She inserted herself at the edges of a circle of girls sipping drinks, hoping she was close enough that she appeared to be part of their group but far enough from the circle that they wouldn’t look at her like she had three heads for joining them.
The pulsing beats made it difficult to latch onto the full conversation, but Poe caught enough snippets to piece it together.
“—Away. You’re ruining my game,” Kate said to the guy, pushing him gently again with her palms.
The guy shook his head. “No way, I already warned the guys. No one here is allowed to date my little sister.”
She flicked her wrist at him. “This is an open house party. There will be other people here besides your roommates. Thank God.”
Valentina stifled a smile and then locked eyes with the guy—Kate’s brother?—for the briefest of seconds before they both looked away.