“I think it’s fine, but maybe you should go to the office. I’m sure someone is still there.”
He shook his head quickly. He was embarrassed, obviously, about taking a hit from a girl half his size. “Did you, uh”—he looked sideways at me—“witness that whole thing?”
“Some of it. She’s got a mean right hook.”
He laughed, releasing another trickle of blood. We needed to stop the flow before he bled to death or something.
“I’ll go get some damp paper towels.”
He nodded, and I noticed how pale he’d become in the last few minutes. I did not want to come back to find him passed out and bleeding on the just-buffed floor, so I took his non-bloody hand and towed him toward the nearest girls’ washroom.
“Seriously?” I said when he hesitated at the door. “It’s four o’clock. Almost everyone has gone home. There’s no one in here. Look, I’ll even check.” Leaving him there, I slipped inside and peered under each stall, then opened the door again. “Empty,” I assured him. He walked in, slowly, glancing around like he was expecting tampons to drop from the ceiling.
I ripped off several lengths of paper towel and held them under cold water until they were just partially wet. As I did this, Ben leaned over one of the sinks, examining the damage in the mirror.
“Damn,” he said to his reflection. He did look rough. Like he’d just been smashed in the face with a frying pan. Tori really did have quite the arm on her.
I waited while he scrubbed the blood off his hand and then ordered him to turn around. When he obeyed, I pressed the cold paper towels to his nose. He flinched. It was starting to swell. I wished the bathroom had an ice machine alongside the feminine hygiene dispensers.
“Hold that there,” I said, and his hand replaced mine on the wad of towels. I soaked another batch and used it to wipe away the blood on his mouth and chin. Soon, his skin was clean enough so I could make out the fine blond stubble on his jaws.
“I used to get nose bleeds sometimes when I was a kid,” he said, sounding like he had the world’s worst cold.
“Yeah?” I rinsed the bloody paper towel under the tap, squeezing until the water was no longer pink. “Hopefully they weren’t caused by blunt force trauma like this one.”
Again, he laughed, but without the red trickle. We’d staunched it, finally. “No, they just happened randomly. I’d have to sit with my head tilted forward and pinch my nose until it stopped.”
I told him about my run-in with the volleyball in fifth grade. “I needed to wear a splint,” I said as I used the clean towel to wash off the rest of the blood. “And I had two black eyes. I looked like a prizefighter.”
“Really.” His eyes flicked over my face and focused on my nose, which still had a small, telltale bump on the bridge. “Well, you healed perfectly.”
My skin tingled and all of a sudden I realized how close we were standing to each other. My chest grazed his bicep with each swipe of the soggy brown towel and my hair brushed against his shoulder. The freshness of summer mixed with the metallic tang of blood surrounded me, making me feel dizzy. Clearing my throat, I drew back and gently pulled the other clump of paper towel out of his hand. “I’ll make this cold again.” I turned on the freezing water, wishing I could splash some on my burning cheeks.
I made sure to leave a few inches between us as I pressed the fresh, folded paper towel to his nose. Ben lifted his hand, and just as I was about to let go so he could take over, he wrapped his fingers around my wrist and held me there. Startled, I stared first at his hand and then shifted my gaze to his eyes. The expression in them—admiration mingled with a trace of surprise—made my heart race, then stumble, then race again, like a clumsy sprinter. He’d never looked at me like that before.
“Lexi,” he said softly.
I couldn’t tear my eyes from his, even as he slowly slid his hand down my arm, ran his fingertips along the crease of my elbow, and then reached up to touch my hair. “We’ve been friends for so long,” he said, taking the paper towel off his face, “sometimes it slips my mind that you’re beautiful. Then you do something nice like this and I remember.”
My mouth felt like the dental hygienist had vacuumed it for hours with her suction wand thing. Ben Dorsey had just called me beautiful. In a disgusting school bathroom on a Thursday afternoon with the smell of disinfectant in the air and blood-streaked paper towels all around us. It was the most romantic moment of my life.
When I didn’t say anything, he let go of my hair and turned away, his cheeks reddening to match his nose.
Oh crap. He thought he’d offended me. As if. As if I hadn’t been waiting for him to say something like that for two years. I thought again about how he was leaving for college in the fall. Time was ticking. In less than five months, we’d be in different places, living separate lives. It was now or never.
Desperate, I blurted out, “I’ve had a crush on you since tenth grade.”
To my relief, he turned back to me, intrigued. His nose had stopped bleeding, but the swelling kept getting worse, making his features seem slightly unbalanced. Somehow, it made him look even more adorable.
“Really?” he asked with a faint smile.
I nodded, biting my lip. Had I really just said those words out loud? In the girls’ washroom? To a boy who’d just gotten his nose busted by his girlfriend? To a boy who possibly still had a girlfriend?
“Well,” he said.
“Yeah,” I replied.
He started to grin, but it quickly changed into a wince as the muscles under his nose attempted to stretch. “Ugh.”
I sincerely hoped the ugh was in response to his pain and not to my declaration of love. Or crush, as it were. “Does it hurt?” I asked. Captain Obvious strikes again.
“Not anymore.”
All of a sudden, I had a flash of him lifting me off Dustin Sweeney’s laundry room floor and carrying me all the way to the street and Shelby’s car. He’d helped me when I was vulnerable, and now I’d helped him. Karma. We were square.
“So.” He tossed the paper towel into the sink behind him, his hazel eyes never leaving mine. “Can I drive you home?”
Just by the way he asked, I knew his offer meant something beyond a simple drive home. The question felt loaded with possibility. “Sure. That sounds great.”
Chapter Fifteen
The next day, Ben and Tori were officially over. A week later, I took her place in the passenger seat of Ben’s Acura TL. I had arrived. Again.
Waiting a week before publically “coming out” was all Ben’s idea. And the reason behind it was purely logical and practical, like Ben himself. He thought it might look bad for him to be seen with another girl only a day or two after a break-up. I understood, even though it killed me to spend an entire week pretending nothing had happened between us and worrying he’d change his mind. Still, I did it. For him. In Ben’s world, seven days was an acceptable period of time between girlfriends. Any sooner, he explained, and the cheating rumors would start circulating. But as it turned out, in our case, a million years probably wouldn’t be long enough to satisfy the more imaginative busybodies.
The first time we walked into school together, hand in hand, the rumors quickly grew rampant. In one, Tori had hit Ben because she’d found out he was cheating on her with me. In another, Tori and I were involved in a catfight and Ben had intervened, taking an errant punch to the face. And the most ridiculous one, I hit Ben in a jealous rage because seeing him with Tori had driven me over the edge.
None of it even fazed me. My head had been stuck in the clouds since our little moment in the girls’ washroom. After Ben drove me home that afternoon, we’d ended up sitting in my driveway for over an hour talking about us. About why we’d never tried dating before, and if we should.
“I just never really saw you that way and I thought you didn’t see me that way either,” he’d said.
I told him the truth, that I’d hidden my feelings because I was so intimidated by him. Hearing
this, he shook his head in amazement. He was totally unaware of the effect he had on people. Namely me.
By the end of the conversation, it was decided. If I was willing, he’d like to try being more than friends. See how it went. If I was willing. I felt like laughing from the absurdity of his comment and the sheer joy that erupted at the thought of me, Lexi Claire Shaw, dating wonderful, perfect Ben Dorsey. Being his girlfriend. Me.
Between the recent developments in my love life and the fragile-but-steady progress with my father, I was feeling pretty good about life for once. Confident, even. So when Ben and I made our official debut as a couple, I tried to copy his indifference to the raised eyebrows and stares we were garnering. I also tried not to feel insulted by the occasional expression of shock. Okay, so I wasn’t Ben’s usual type, but circumstances changed. People changed. Right then and there, with his warm fingers entwined with mine, I vowed to prove all the doubters wrong and be the best damn girlfriend he ever had.
Of course, being the best damn girlfriend ever came with some sacrifices, and one of them involved revealing my new relationship status to my mother.
“You’re shitting me,” she said when I told her the news on Friday evening, the day after the public unveiling.
“I can assure you, I’m not.” Jeez. It wasn’t a good sign when my own mother found it hard to believe that Ben would deign to go out with me.
She leaned into the bathroom mirror and made her open-mouthed, bug-eyed mascara face, the one that always used to amuse me as a child when I watched her get ready for dates. In fact, it still amused me. “The blond boy,” she clarified as she swiped on her first coat of mascara. “Rick Dorsey’s son.”
“Yes.”
Blinking, she moved back to admire her lashes, then dug through her makeup bag for her blush. My mother’s makeup routine ran longer than some of her dates. Earlier, when I’d walked in and sat down on the edge of the tub, she’d already been at it for twenty minutes, concealing and plucking and smoothing the years away.
“Well,” she said, dabbing at her cheeks with a tissue. “If he’s anything like his father, you’re in for a world of hurt. Rick Dorsey is a womanizer. Ever since his wife died, he’s been running around with a bunch of twenty-year-old gold digging bimbos. It’s pathetic. He’s older than me,” she added as she spackled on another layer of under-eye concealer.
“Ben isn’t a womanizer.” I was pretty confident on that. Whenever he dated someone, he focused all his attention and energy on her and her alone. After two days with him, I already felt like the only girl in the world when we were together. “He’s sweet and respectful.”
Mom smiled at her reflection, checking her teeth for lipstick smudges. “Sounds like Jesse.”
I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing. Her hypocrisy and lack of awareness astounded me sometimes. She’d called Ben’s father a womanizer, yet she was dating the biggest letch around. My mother was delusional.
“Okay, I’m leaving,” she said airily as she zipped up her makeup bag and gave her hair one last fluff. “I’m staying at Jesse’s tonight, so I’ll just go to work from there in the morning. Have fun, say no to drugs, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do and all that jazz.” With this parting wisdom, she blew me a kiss and flounced out of the bathroom.
Well. That had gone . . . exactly as I’d expected. My mother never did care much about the guys I dated. She’d taken me to her doctor to get birth control pills when I was fifteen and that was pretty much the extent of her input into my sexual health. She probably wouldn’t even care if she found out about Tyler and me having sex in my room. In fact, the main reason I’d insisted he enter my house through the window instead of the front door wasn’t because I thought she’d disapprove, but because I’d spent most of my life waking up to drunk male voices at three a.m. and watching strange men doing the walk of shame past our kitchen in the morning. I didn’t want my mother to think I was anything like her.
But I didn’t have to worry about that anymore. Tyler was history, and for the first time ever, I was a normal girl in a normal relationship I could proudly share with the world. With a boy everyone loved. Well, almost everyone. Ben had left a lengthy trail of bitter ex-girlfriends behind, most recently Tori, who’d quit student council and practically ran the other way when she saw Ben in the halls. And Kyla, the girl before her, who’d brushed past me yesterday after school as I stood alone at my locker and muttered, “Good luck, honey.” And most notably, Shelby, who seemed less than thrilled about Ben and me getting together. She kept her Ben-bashing to a minimum around Emily, but I’d heard enough over the past year or so to know where each of them stood. Their break-up had been messy, and Shelby getting knocked up by Evan a few months later didn’t exactly help matters. Basically, they avoided each other at all costs, and I worried that my new relationship with Ben might affect my friendship with Shelby.
“I’m fine with it, Lexi,” she’d assured me when I voiced my concern to her. “Ben wasn’t right for me, but he might be right for you. Besides, maybe he’s changed.”
Or maybe, I thought as I got ready for my own date, he’s just been waiting for someone like me.
For our first official date, Ben and I made plans to go to a movie and then hang out at a coffee shop or somewhere afterward. The prospect of being alone with him for several hours in a row made me insanely nervous. After Mom left, I spent a half hour in her closet, looking for a top Ben hadn’t already seen me in a million times. Finally, I chose the gauzy white blouse she’d worn the day she caught Nolan, Amber, and me on the computer in the spare room. It was loose on her, but on me it fit like a glove. I figured Ben wouldn’t be opposed to some cleavage.
The doorbell rang while I was working on my makeup. Oh crap. He was fifteen minutes early. I swung open the front door, my face still partially naked, and then relaxed when I saw it was just Nolan.
“Did I leave my Jenga game over here?” he asked. “Amber just told me she’s never lost a game of Jenga, like, ever. So naturally I have to test her claim.”
I vaguely remembered borrowing his Jenga game a few months ago because Grace saw a commercial for it on TV and wanted to play. “Um, I don’t know. I’m kind of in the middle of getting ready to go out, but feel free to search my room if you want. It’s either there or buried in the family room somewhere.”
“Cool.” He came inside, taking in my half-done makeup job as he brushed past me to the stairs. “Where are you off to?”
“The movies with Ben.”
“Ah,” he said, nodding, and then he continued downstairs without another word. Nolan was trying his best to act indifferent about me dating Ben. He didn’t really like him, but he knew how I felt about him and wanted me to be happy. For the most part he kept his opinions to himself, aside from one subtle dig when he first heard the news. “Good thing we quit smoking,” he’d said, reminding me of the incident a few weeks ago when Ben had thrown my pack of cigarettes in the trash and Nolan dug them out. Come to think of it, Nolan never did give me back that pack.
The doorbell rang again five minutes later. It was Ben . . . ten minutes early. I still hadn’t finished my face, so I told him to come in.
“You have freckles,” he said, sounding surprised.
I resisted the urge to cover my face with my hand. He’d never seen me without my trusty armor of liquid foundation. “They’re dorky, I know.”
“No, they’re cute. I like them.”
I smiled. He looked pretty cute himself. The swelling around his nose had faded completely, and he wore jeans and a light blue Oxford-style shirt under a plain black jacket. I couldn’t recall ever seeing him in a T-shirt or hoodie or anything wrinkled.
“Is your mother home?” he asked as I led him up to the kitchen.
“No.” I gestured to the fridge. “Can I get you something? I’ll just be another five minutes or so.”
Instead of answering, he moved closer to me and placed a hand on my hip. My cheeks burned, because he was seein
g my freckles up close and because he was staring at my lips like he wanted to kiss them. For the first time ever. Here. Now. In my kitchen. Did all our romantic moments have to take place in utterly unromantic locations?
“I didn’t want to wait until the end of the night to do this,” he said, leaning in. I closed my eyes in anticipation, but all I got was the tease of his breath on my lips before the sound of heavy footsteps clomping up the basement stairs broke through the silence. Ben reeled back in surprise.
“Found it!” Nolan called from the entryway, and then the front door closed with a bang.
I’m going to kill him, I thought. I hope his Jenga tower collapses on his head and buries him alive.
Ben regained his composure and glanced toward the doorway. “Was that . . . ?”
“Nolan. Yeah. He just came over to get something.”
“Oh.”
I looked at Ben expectantly, waiting for him to come close again so we could pick up where we’d left off when Nolan had so loudly interrupted. But he stayed where he was, a small frown on his lips. “The movie starts in twenty minutes.”
I blinked. Awk-ward. “Right. Um, I’ll just . . . finish getting ready. Be back in a sec.”
Our town wasn’t big enough for its own movie theater, so we drove into the city. Ben was a little quieter than usual on the way, probably because he was disappointed with our failed attempt at a first kiss. I knew I was. I’d only been dreaming of that moment since I was fifteen years old. Nolan barging in, however inadvertently, had never been part of my fantasies.
Ben seemed to perk up as we waited in line to buy movie tickets. He held my hand, and kept holding it all through the movie. It wasn’t as good as a kiss, but it was something. I had a feeling the physical aspect of our relationship would progress very slowly, which was fine. After Tyler, I could do with a slow, sweet romance. Fast and fiery hadn’t worked out so well for me.
After the movie, we walked down several blocks until we came across a cute little coffee shop called Jitters. Inside, we bought hot chocolate from the tall, black-haired girl behind the counter and sat down at the only vacant table in the room. The place was bustling with caffeine addicts of all ages and types, waiting out the chilly rain that had recently begun to fall.
Faking Perfect Page 12