The Boyfriend Thief

by Shana Norris

  “Chemistry?” Zac repeated. The muscles in his neck twitched as he swallowed.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That unseen force that pulls two people together, even though every matchmaking program in the world says they don’t make a good match. What about that?”

  “There will always be exceptions,” Zac said. “Some things can never be planned.”

  “I like plans,” I told him.

  He laughed a little. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  His tone was light, but the words struck deep into me. He sounded as if he knew me, as if he had me all figured out. And the fact that I hadn’t even begun to figure him out annoyed me.

  “Things are better when they have order to them.” I crossed my arms tightly over my chest and moved away from him, building up the wall between us. “Life makes sense that way.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Maybe life isn’t supposed to make sense.”

  “Then life sucks.” I pulled in a ragged breath, suddenly fighting back a wave of tears. If Zac was right, if life wasn’t supposed to make sense, then it meant everything that happened had no reason. It meant my mom could walk out of my life forever without an explanation. It meant Hannah could be valedictorian, class queen, and whatever else she wanted in life while squashing me under her shoe. My dad would marry Trisha or some other brainless girlfriend-of-the-month he decided to bring home next time and there would be nothing I could do to stop it.

  “Hey.” Zac’s voice sounded very close. “You okay?”

  I lowered my hands and opened my eyes to find him kneeling in front of me. One of his hands rested on my knee and the other on my shoulder. I shivered slightly at the contact with his skin.

  “Fine,” I said, pushing Zac away. No, Zac was wrong. Life had order to it. I could fix things. I had been doing exactly that for the past four years.

  “I’m fine,” I repeated in a firmer voice. Putting things in order began with winning over Zac and making it to Costa Rica. If that meant I had to go along with one of his crazy plans, so be it. “Let’s find Delia and tell her we’re doing the website.”

  Zac broke into a huge grin at my words. “We are? Awesome! You won’t regret it. We’ll have the best project in the whole class.”

  Zac grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. He bounced out of the room and into the hall, calling out, “Delia! She said yes!”

  “Who said yes about what?” asked a voice behind us. A tall, beautiful woman stepped through the front door, carrying a grocery bag in one arm. She had the shiniest black hair I’d ever seen and I could detect a slight accent in her words.

  “Hi, Mom,” Zac greeted her. “This is Avery, my business partner. She said yes to building a website for our matchmaking service.”

  Mrs. Greeley’s gaze flickered downward, taking in the sight of Zac still holding my hand, our fingers entwined. I pulled my hand away quickly and hid it behind my back.

  “Isn’t this a school project?” Mrs. Greeley asked. Zac and I followed her into the kitchen, where she set the bag of groceries on the counter. “Are all the teams building a website too?”

  “No,” Zac admitted. “But our project is different. We’re making it into a real working business that we can keep up after the class is over.”

  “I’ll get to work on building the site,” Delia said as she walked into the room. “And you’ll talk with the programmer, right?” she asked her brother.

  “Programmer?” I asked. “I thought you were doing all the work.”

  Delia leaned against the counter and laughed. “You don’t want me building your database. Zac found someone else to do that. What did you say her name was, Zac? Holly?”

  “Molly,” he said. He cleared his throat and glanced quickly at me. “Um, Molly Pinski.”

  “You hired Molly to build our project?” I exclaimed. When had Molly and Zac talked behind my back? And why hadn’t she told me?

  Zac nodded. “She’s the best computer expert I know. So I talked to her about the idea and she said it wouldn’t take her any time at all to build it. And she’s doing it for a very low price.”

  “How low?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Zac said. “I’m handling it.”

  “Zac,” I said in the sternest voice I could manage. “How low?”

  “Free,” he said. “She only asked for ten percent of our profits from the business.”

  Leave it to Molly to work out a deal to benefit herself in the long run. If the matchmaking thing was successful, she could earn more money than she would have from a one-time payment on her work.

  Not that I expected this matchmaking business to work. There couldn’t be many people at Willowbrook High who were stupid enough to fall for this scam.

  “I can’t believe you got Molly roped into our project,” I said, shaking my head. “You know she’s in that class too. She has her own project to worry about.”

  “Zac,” Mrs. Greeley said, scowling at him. “You don’t need to convince all of your classmates to follow one of your ideas.”

  “I’m not!” Zac said, flailing his arms in frustration. “I talked it all over with Molly and she assured me it would be no problem. She wanted to help out.” He reached over and patted my shoulder. “You worry too much, Avery.”

  Mrs. Greeley raised her eyebrows, then looked at me. “I hope Zacarías isn’t talking you into one of his crazy ideas. He has a wild imagination, always has. I used to find him convincing the neighborhood kids to buy pieces of mud pies for a dollar each. He told them they were a new kind of chocolate.”

  I couldn’t help the small giggle that escaped my lips at this. Zac’s cheeks reddened.

  “Mom, I was seven,” Zac reminded her. “I’ve grown up a bit since mud pies.”

  “Not much,” Delia said as she reached up to tousle Zac’s already messy hair. “You’re still the same crazy kid, but your ideas have gotten bigger and crazier.”

  Zac looked a little annoyed at his mother’s and sister’s teasing. “You guys never take me seriously.”

  “How can we?” Delia asked. “You don’t take yourself seriously.”

  “You sound like Dad,” Zac snapped at her.

  “Your father wants you to succeed in life,” Mrs. Greeley told him. She unpacked the grocery bag, setting the tomatoes and cucumbers she’d bought in a neat row.

  “No, Dad wants me to be like him,” Zac corrected her. “And I am not a locksmith who makes keys and unlocks car doors all day!”

  The scene had gone way past uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure if the Greeleys even remembered I was there.

  I took a step backward, toward the door. “I need to go,” I said. “I have to get to work.”

  At the front door, my gaze fell on a family portrait of the Greeleys. Mr. and Mrs. Greeley looked so well-dressed, perfectly groomed and poised. Even Delia looked as if she had been posed just so to reflect a perfect teenage daughter. And then there was Zac, hair falling in his eyes, crooked tie, and a smudge of dirt on his chin.

  His smile was infectious, like in real life. I couldn’t help smiling as I looked at the picture.

  The Zac in the picture was a huge contrast to the slumped, moping guy next to me. He looked so dejected, as if his family’s teasing and chiding had stripped away the easygoing attitude he usually had. I felt the urge to cheer him up, as if I needed to see his smile again.

  “The website is a really good idea,” I told him.

  Zac gave me a half-smile. “You think so?”

  I nodded. “I think if anyone can convince everyone at school to sign up for a matchmaking business, it’s you.”

  Zac tapped a finger on his chin. “I am very persuasive.”

  “Not to mention modest,” I added, rolling my eyes.

  A tingling sensation spread through me, from scalp to toes, when his face cracked into a wide grin. “Thanks for putting up with my wild ideas,” he said, reaching out to squeeze my hand.

  The contact felt as if I’d been stung. Electric currents f
lowed up my arm, mingling with the warmth spreading through my body that his smile had caused. I gasped and pulled my hand back quickly.

  I stepped away from him, toward the door, fumbling for the handle. “I’ve already followed your wild ideas this far,” I said, sounding a lot more breathless than I had intended. “I might as well follow this project through at this point, failure or success.”

  “Grim determination,” Zac said, nodding. I hoped he couldn’t see the strange effect his touch had on me. “That’s what I like about you, Avery. You’re not patronizing. You tell it like it is.”

  I wondered if this was a good thing. But his smile was still doing strange things to my body and the overwhelming desire to run hit me. Run out the door as fast and as far as I could.

  Running was in my genes. It was the only thing I knew to do when things got weird. And right then, the way my stomach exploded into a thousand butterflies whenever Zac smiled at me had gone way beyond weird.

  Chapter 15

  I sat upright in bed, gasping and blinking in the dark as I tried to figure out what the noise was that had woken me. Then I heard it again. The chime on my phone, signaling a text message.

  Stumbling out of bed after tripping on my blanket, I lunged for the phone on my desk to make it stop ringing before it woke anyone else. I narrowed my eyes, trying to make out the glowing red numbers of my alarm clock through the haze of sleep. 12:41AM.

  Who in their right mind would be texting me after midnight?

  I had to blink a few times against the brightness of my phone before I could read the message. R u awake?

  It was from Zac, whose number was programmed into my contacts because of our business project.

  I am now, I texted back.

  Open ur window.

  I pulled back the blinds and nearly yelped at the face peering at me through the glass. The window opened with a shudder, letting in the night air, which was still warm after the record hot day.

  “What are you doing here?” I whispered. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “I came for our date.” He rested his arms on the windowsill and grinned at me. The moonlight illuminated the top of his head like a halo.

  I shook my head, still trying to wake myself up. “What date?”

  “You said you wanted to see my comedy routine the next time I did it,” he explained. “Tonight’s the night.”

  “Now?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I like to go on late. I mean, it’s not like I’m sleeping or anything. And that way, I’m sure my dad won’t come waltzing into the diner in search of good entertainment and catch me in the middle of my act.”

  My brain was still fuzzy with sleep and so it took longer to process anything Zac was saying. My inability to get moving must have annoyed him, because he poked my arm and said, “Go. Get dressed and meet me outside.”

  He disappeared before I had a chance to protest the craziness of this idea. After locking the window again and pulling the blind down, I cast a longing look at my bed. It would be so nice to crawl back under the covers and go to sleep. Sleep was good. Sleep was vital to a healthy body.

  But I had to admit I was curious. Only so I could win Zac over, of course. This would have to win me major brownie points in his good graces. I doubted Hannah had ever been to one of his midnight shows.

  So I got dressed, pulling on my purple shoes and jeans and a T-shirt. I tried to tame my bed head into a ponytail and only paused long enough for lip gloss. Then I tiptoed out of my room, stopping in the hall outside my dad’s door to listen for any sounds of movement. The house was dark and quiet. I could faintly hear my dad and brother snoring through their closed bedroom doors.

  Zac waited outside, sitting on the hood of his beat up sedan. He slid down when he saw me.

  “You came,” he said, as if he didn’t believe I would.

  I eyed Zac’s dented and dirty car and then said, “Why don’t I drive?”

  The town was still as we drove through the darkened streets, lit only by the streetlamps along the side of the road. I wasn’t used to being up this late. I kept to a strict eight-hour sleeping schedule and was always in bed by eleven at the latest. The world I knew so well looked different in the light of neon signs and sleepy eyes. Every now and then we’d pass a 24-hour fast food place or a club where people spilled out onto the sidewalk, their laughter breaking the silence of midnight, but other than that it was almost like Zac and I were the only two people awake in the entire world.

  Zac’s knees bounced up and down in the passenger seat. “I hope you like my show. I’ve never done it in front of outsiders.”

  “Outsiders?” I asked.

  “People who aren’t part of the regular midnight comedy crowd.” He reached over to fiddle with my radio and I slapped his hand away.

  “The radio stays on one oh one point seven,” I told him. “Car rule number three.”

  He made a face at me in the light of a streetlamp. “That station that plays those weird indie bands?”

  “They’re not weird,” I said, stopping the car for a red light even though no other cars were visible in the other direction as far as I could see. “They’re underrated.”

  “They’re whiny.” He turned up the volume and a slow ballad filled the air. “Listen to that. It could put even me to sleep.”

  I smirked. “Maybe we should turn it up louder then.”

  “We need some music to dance to. Something to keep us awake and get us energized for the big show. Something that makes you say, ‘woooo!’”

  I winced at his loud screech right in my ear. “Less woo, more quiet.” I pressed the CD button on the dashboard. “Here, how’s this for dancing?”

  My favorite song by Hallow Flux filled the car, upbeat music dancing all around us. Zac nodded his head, grinning wide.

  “Hallow Flux,” he said. “This is what I’m talking about.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You know Hallow Flux?”

  “Don’t sound so surprised. I happen to be a music connoisseur. Delia got me into them. We went to their show last year, when they came to Greenville.”

  I slapped my hand against the steering wheel. “No way. I was at that show with Molly. Why didn’t I see you there?”

  “Because before our little business project you’d never spoken a word to me?” Zac asked, poking a finger into my side. “And you know, the fact that like five hundred other people were there.”

  His words hung in the air for a moment, echoing through my head. Before our little business project you’d never spoken a word to me. He was right, of course. Ever since that summer after seventh grade, I’d only spoken to people when absolutely necessary. Zac and I weren’t in any of the same clubs at school, we didn’t hang out with the same groups, we didn’t have anything at all in common. And yet, here we were, in my car at midnight, on the way to his comedy show.

  The Rose Castle glowed in the dark night. A few people stood outside, talking and laughing to each other, and through the windows I could see more people inside.

  “Hey, Zac!” a guy greeted him as we walked across the parking lot.

  “Moody, my man!” Zac answered, reaching out to grip his hand. He grinned at the other faces gathered around, nodding to them. “Hey, Mark, Ally, Nate.” They were all older than us. The man Zac had called Moody and the woman looked to be at least in their fifties.

  “Got the whole Zac Pack here tonight,” Ally said, reaching over to hug him tight.

  Zac pulled me forward into their gaze. “This is my friend Avery. Avery, this is Mark, Ally, Nate, and Walter—but everyone calls him Moody.” He leaned toward me and whispered. “He has a short temper sometimes.”

  The group greeted me warmly, with Ally breaching my personal space to hug me as tight as she had Zac. She smelled like peppermint. I wasn’t used to hugging random people and at first I stepped back slightly when she lunged toward me. But then when she wrapped me in her embrace, pulling me close to her warm body, a slight tingling buzzed th
rough me. I closed my eyes for a moment, relishing the embrace.

  After a few minutes of chitchat, in which an alien took over my body so that Ally was able to pry my entire life story out of me with a few well-meaning questions, Zac led me inside the tiny diner. The brightness of the lights compared to the darkness of the late hour outside made me blink several times before my eyes could focus on anything. People sat at the tables scattered throughout the room with their chairs turned to face a temporary wooden stage that had been set up along the far wall. The place wasn’t packed, but still a good amount of spectators filled the seats.

  Zac seemed to know everyone, or else they at least knew him. Everyone called out to him as we wound our way through the room.

  A waitress carrying a tray of chips passed by us. “Find a table anywhere,” she said over her shoulder as she kept moving. “Someone will be with you in a minute.”

  I gestured toward a table. “This okay?” I asked Zac.

  He looked at me as if I had lost my mind. “Not there. Only the old people or newbies sit at the tables.”

  “I am a newbie,” I reminded him.

  “You’re with me. There’s a difference.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the side of the room, where cushions and bean bag chairs lined the wall. A few people were slouched against the cushions, legs spread out across the floor as they waited for the show.

  Zac walked over to the bean bag chairs, turned around, and with one smooth movement, plopped down. He sat there smiling up at me as he sank lower into the beans, his knees almost level with his head.

  “This is so not ergonomically friendly,” I said, giving the bean bag chair next to him a wary look.

  Zac patted the bag. “Sit. Relax. Enjoy.”

  I tried to sit as easily as he had, but the chair was much lower than I’d thought and I fell into an awkward sitting position when my knees gave up holding my crouching body. The bean bag almost swallowed me whole as I sank toward the floor.

  “So,” I said, raising an eyebrow at Zac, “what exactly does one do at a comedy show?”