by Amy Sparling
Like how I’m happy Jonah has a girlfriend.
And how I never liked him anyway.
And how both of those statements are a lie even though I won’t admit it to myself.
The Magpie gets quite a lot of shoppers today, and although many of them are just browsing, many more purchase something. We sell enough books to make me think this might actually be a profitable venture, and I distract myself from thinking of Jonah by looking up new books to buy for the store.
It doesn’t help much.
I’m not a superstitious person, and I don’t believe in signs. Like one time sophomore year, my friend Tabby was asked to prom by this gorgeous senior guy. Only, two seconds after she’d said yes, some idiot threw a football in the hallway and it smacked her right in the face. She’d taken that as some kind of cosmic sign that she shouldn’t go to prom. So she didn’t.
I’m not the kind of person who believes in things like that, but when I look over at the clock on the computer at our front desk, it says the time is 11:11. I think back to being a kid and always making at wish at that time. They never came true. But I always wished anyway. Just like I do now.
I want to be friends with Jonah again.
And then, as if it’s some kind of actual cosmic sign, I look out the window of the store and see Jonah’s girlfriend storming down the boardwalk toward the parking lot. Even from here she looks pissed, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. I wait a few beats, but I don’t see Jonah following behind her. Did he leave first? Or is he still on the beach?
I can’t help my curiosity. I tell Mom I’m going to go grab us smoothies from the shop down the way and she eagerly hands me some cash because the smoothies are the greatest drink ever.
Then I’m out the door, heart pounding with curiosity. I walk slowly, scanning the area for the unusually sexy guy who comes off as such a nerd at school. He’s not on the boardwalk though, at least not where I can see. I venture a little further, down past the shops and to where the boardwalk ends and the beach begins.
And then I see him.
He’s sitting on a large granite rock that separates the private part of the beach were people own beach houses and the public part. He’s just staring off at the water, his toes in the sand.
I walk over to him. At first, I’m going to do this fake, “Oh hey! I didn’t see you there! What a coincidence!” thing as I walk by, but the second I get close and he looks up and our eyes meet, I chicken out. I’ve never been a good actress.
“Hey,” I say, walking over to the large boulder of granite he’s using as a chair. It’s about four feet tall and just as wide, cut into a jagged square shape by the industrial equipment that cut and hauled all of these to the beach years ago.
He doesn’t say anything, but he gives me a half-hearted smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“I saw your girlfriend leave,” I say, staring at a streak of black in the rock instead of looking at him.
“What?”
I cringe a little. Way to out yourself as a creepy stalker, Natalie. “I’m at work,” I say, trying to explain. “I saw you guys walk by earlier, and then I just saw her leave alone. She looked kind of pissed.”
He stares at me, his eyes flitting from my left eye to my right one. He doesn’t say anything so I get flustered and keep talking. “I’m not a stalker. I just—well the store—we have like no customers most of the time. My mom owns The Magpie in case you didn’t know?” I point back toward the boardwalk. Sweat drips down my neck and it’s not from the heat. “It’s a gift shop,” I explain, trying to remember if I ever told him about this. I think I did. He’s still just looking at me though, not saying anything, and I can’t stop talking. “It’s a store and it’s never busy so I was just sitting there bored staring out the window and I saw you guys.”
I take a deep breath and stare out at the ocean. “Then I saw her leave and well—actually no, I wasn’t, like, stalking you or anything. I was going to get smoothies for me and my mom and I saw her.”
“Where’s your smoothie?” he asks, squinting a little as he looks at me because the sun is so bright.
“I, uh, well I haven’t gotten it yet. Um, I—” I stare down at my flip flops, now covered in sand. “I just wanted to see if you were okay.”
“She must have looked really pissed,” Jonah says, still watching me. For the first time since I’ve met him, he’s actually staring at me, not glancing over and then looking away shyly. His stare feels like it’s penetrating into my soul, like maybe he’s trying to decide to forgive me or not.
I swallow. “What happened?”
He gives a little shrug and looks down at my hand, which is resting on the rock next to his.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I say, feeling like a total idiot for coming out here. “I guess I just wanted to find you and tell you I’m sorry for the other day. And well, I’m sorry for everything. I wouldn’t have been all stupidly flirting and messing with you during tutorials if I knew you had a girlfriend. I was just mad that I even had to do tutorials in the first place, so I tried to make it into a joke.”
As the confession pours out of me, I realize it’s all true. “Anyhow, I’m sorry, Jonah. I didn’t know you have a girlfriend. I’ll be nothing but professional at tutoring from now on.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” he says. A gust of warm wind sends a strand of his hair falling into his face. “I have an ex-girlfriend, which is who you saw.”
“Did you just break up?”
He shakes his head. “I broke up with her a couple months ago. She was just kind of a horrible person. Selfish. Rude.” He shrugs and inhales a deep breath. “She ignored me for like a month and then she started texting and calling and saying she wanted to get back together.”
I’m dying to know more. I want every single dirty detail, but I know better than to ask. Jonah shuts down easily and I should be grateful I’ve been told this much.
“That sounds hard,” I say stupidly, just for something to say.
A tiny little bug lands on top of my finger on the rock and Jonah shoos it away. “I was open to trying to get back together, but I told her things had to be different. She couldn’t be so rude all the time. She acted like she agreed with me, but every time we hang out, it’s the same old stuff.”
He kicks his foot and sends a wave of hand skittering across the shore. “Last week she makes this big deal about telling all our friends that we’re not dating officially and that we’re just hanging out. She doesn’t want me to hold her hand but she wants to be doted on. And then we come here and I don’t immediately offer to buy her food and she gets pissed. Call me crazy, but if we aren’t officially dating, why should I buy her food?”
“You shouldn’t,” I say.
He sighs and runs a hand through his hair, which only makes more of it flip over to the side. I bite the inside of my lip because right now the boy looks like a freaking cologne model about to do a beach themed photoshoot.
“I don’t even know what the hell she got pissed about just now,” he says. “But she got mad and stormed off. She wants me to chase after her because she thinks that kind of drama is romantic or some shit.”
“No, that kind of drama is screwed up,” I say.
He grins. “Glad I’m not the only one who thinks that. I just want a real relationship that’s not based on these fucking games.”
“So dump her,” I say. “You shouldn’t waste your time on a drama queen like that. Quit answering her calls and let her find some other poor guy to screw with.”
He looks up at me again, and this time there’s a sadness in his eyes. “I can’t do that.”
“What? Why?”
“Because, Natalie,” he says, saying my name like I’m a child. “Guys like me have to take what we can get. It’s not like there’s a line of girls waiting around to date a pathetic nerd. You of all people should know that.”
Chapter 15
April covers her face with her hands. She shakes her
head slowly and I feel her embarrassment for me just as strongly as I feel the morning breeze in my hair. “Oh my God,” she says, uncovering her eyes. She’s still shaking her head. She looks down at the sidewalk and kicks a rock. “Oh my God.”
“Is that all you have to say?” We come to a stop at the intersection before school and I give her a look. “I could use a little…I don’t know, support.”
She barks out a laugh. “Natalie, I don’t know. That’s just…” She shakes her head quickly. “So sad. And cringey. And—”
“Okay, enough.” I hold up my hand to silence her. “I have to stop telling you these embarrassing things because you only make me feel worse, not better.”
“I’m sorry, Nat.” April takes a deep breath. “I am here for you. What can I do?”
A school bus drives by and then we cross the road onto school property. It’s Monday morning and I’ve just told her what happened on the beach with Jonah this weekend.
I sigh and try to push out the memory of Jonah’s face when he called me on my nerd comment. “Can you invent a time machine?” I ask her. I try to smile but it doesn’t really work. “Then I could go back in time and never let him hear you call him a nerd.”
“Hey you called him a nerd!” she says, pointing a finger at me.
“Yeah, but you said what I said out loud and he heard it.”
She rolls her eyes. “Semantics!”
I grab my backpack straps and stare at the cracked sidewalk as we make our way to the school. Today is one thing, but tomorrow I have tutoring with Jonah and I just don’t know how I can handle it. I feel so awful.
“So nothing happened after he said that?” April says. “He didn’t like… try to lighten the mood or anything?”
I shake my head. “He was like, ‘You of all people should know that’ and then he ran a hand through his hair and walked off.”
April’s eyes go big. “You should have said something.”
“I know!” My voice is so loud it makes two guys look over at us. I roll my eyes and keep walking. “Trust me, I know,” I tell April. “I feel like shit. I mean, here I am crushing on him and he totally hates me now.”
“So what did you say his ex-girlfriend looks like?” she asks.
“Short, dark hair, olive skin,” I say with a sigh. “Prettier than I’d like to admit. If she were ugly then maybe I wouldn’t care as much.”
“She’s an ex,” April says. “You can fix this.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think I can. He hates me now. And it’s for the best because what was I even thinking?” I scrunch up my face and try very hard to believe what I’m saying. Deep down I know the words are true. “I don’t like Jonah. It was just a momentary lapse of judgement.”
“Okay,” April nods sharply as if she’s also going to lie to herself in order to believe what I’ve just said. “See you at lunch?”
“Yep.”
April turns down the hallway with all the freshman lockers and I keep walking toward my first period class. April likes to stop at her locker between every class, but I never use mine. I’m lazy and prefer to lug my backpack around everywhere.
As I near the math hallway, someone calls my name. I turn around and see the guy I’ve truly been crushing on jog up to me. My heart skips a beat.
Caleb is wearing distressed dark wash jeans that hug his muscular thighs in all the right places. His shirt is white and also tight-fitting, showing off the bulging muscles he works hard on in the gym. His physique is bigger and bulkier than Jonah’s, but you can expect that from a jock.
Oh my God, am I still thinking about Jonah?
I smile and try to clear my thoughts as Caleb gives me this smirk that’s so hot it could melt the lockers he leans up against now. “Hey,” he says as his smirk turns into a grin. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Well, you know how much I love the math hallway,” I say, gesturing to our surroundings. “If you need me, I’m usually here.”
He laughs even though my joke wasn’t that funny. “So, Natalie—” He reaches forward and pokes me in the shoulder and I have no idea why my insides turn to goo at just a simple poke. “I was thinking we should hang out this Friday.”
“Yeah,” I say entirely too eagerly, which makes heat rise in my cheeks. I clear my throat. “Yeah, that’s cool. Any reason why?” I have to ask because I can’t be sure what’s going on here. My heart is dying for a date with Caleb Brown, but what if this turns into some stupid misunderstanding and he really wants me to meet up with him for non-romantic reasons?
He shrugs and leans against the lockers in this way that makes him even sexier, if that’s possible. “Just thought we could hang out,” he says, reaching out and letting his fingers slide down my arm. Goosebumps prickle along my skin. “You seem like a cool girl.”
Oh my God oh my God oh my God.
It’s a date.
It’s a date, date. Not a misunderstanding.
Be. Cool.
I draw in a breath slowly and consider my words before I let them fall out of my mouth. I will not be that stupidly eager girl who throws herself at him. I won’t be lame. I’ll be sexy and mysterious and make him want more.
“You said this Friday?”
He nods, his blue eyes peering into mine in a way that reminds me of that shaggy haired boy he used to be, not the clean cut short haired jock he is now.
“Let me guess, hopscotch and bicycle races like in the old days?”
He looks confused for a minute and then he smiles. “Man, that was a long time ago. It’s weird that we knew each other as kids.”
“Well, we have lived in the same town and gone to the same school our whole lives.”
“And our parents own businesses on the boardwalk,” he says. “We practically lived there as kids.”
I nod. Back when Jack Brown wasn’t a threat to my mom’s business.
“Unfortunately,” Caleb says, brushing my arm again, “I wasn’t planning on bike races this time. You’ll have to settle for hanging out with me without a bike.”
It takes everything I have not to jump up and down with excitement. “Sure,” I say with a casual nod. “Friday sounds fun.”
“Cool,” he says with a grin. “Give me your phone.”
I hand it over and he types in his number then presses the call button before handing it back to me. “I’ll text you later,” he says. His fingers touch mine when he hands me my phone and it sends a jolt of something through my body. Lust? Desire?
I don’t know, but I do know I want more of it.
***
The next day, April and I haven’t found anything else to talk about besides my upcoming date with Caleb. We gushed about it at lunch yesterday and then on the walk home from school and then on the walk to school today and now it’s lunch time and we’re back at it. That’s the best part of hanging out with a freshman—they don’t pretend to be too cool to talk about boys. My old friends would have never cared about this.
I dunk a fry into nacho cheese sauce and gaze across the cafeteria toward the athletes’ table.
“You should go sit with him,” April says, nudging me in the arm.
“No way.” I shake my head and reach for another fry. “He hasn’t even talked to me since then.” As if on impulse, I glance down at my phone that’s on the cafeteria table in front of me. After I saved Caleb’s number into my phone, I’ve spent pretty much every second of my life hoping he’ll text me. But he hasn’t. It’s only been one day though, and guys are notorious for making girls wait three days.
“He asked you out so he obviously likes you,” April says. “Go say hi.”
“No way. He’s sitting with his friends and I’m not going to be the girl who’s clingy and annoying on day one. You have to slowly win over the friends.”
“Screw the friends! A hot guy has a date with you on Friday. Go flirt with him so you’ll be less nervous on the actual date!” April gives me this exaggerated wink that makes me laugh.
&nb
sp; “I’m not doing it,” I say with an adamant shake of my head. “I’m going to be the cool mysterious chick who he has to chase.”
She rolls her eyes. “Whatev.”
“So in other news,” I say as my heart starts to beat a little faster. “I still haven’t looked at it.”
“At what?” April says with her mouth full of food.
“It,” I say, tapping my binder on the table.
“Oooh,” she says. “This semester’s progress report.”
I reach for the paper, which is folded in half and stapled together. That’s how our homeroom teacher passes them out each semester so the grades are somewhat private. I’ve had mine for a few hours now and I’m too scared to look. I take out the paper and slide my finger under the staple, ripping it open.
“You can do it!” April says.
“It’s only been a couple of weeks. My grades won’t be much higher,” I say, chewing on my lip. We haven’t had enough grades yet to even out my average, but I’m still hopeful that I might be passing all of my classes.
With a deep breath, I open the paper.
Last time I was failing math, chemistry, and history.
This time I’m failing math, chemistry, and history.
My shoulders fall.
“It’s not so bad,” April says as she leans over my shoulder to see the grades. “You had thirties and forties and now you’re in the sixties.”
“Still not passing,” I say, folding the paper back up. I don’t know what I was expecting. Having a thirty-six in math class takes longer than two weeks to turn into a C or a B. A thirty-six is like…a triple F.
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” April says sweetly. “You’re really close to passing and there’s still two and a half months of school left.”
“Yeah, I know.” Without thinking about it, I look up at Jonah’s table.
He’s looking right at me.
Chills scatter across my arms as we make eye contact. I want to smile or wave at him, or show him my grades since I know he’d be interested. But I am frozen with shame for what I called him, and how badly I’ve hurt his feelings, so I don’t do anything.