Dating: On the Rebound

by Stephanie Street

  “So, what did you guys do about it?” I half hoped one of them gave Jack the pounding he deserved. Piper wasn’t his only victim, I was fairly certain no one would care one bit if Jack came back to school with a couple of black eyes and a busted lip. Except maybe his mom.

  Adam Whitaker, another junior, shrugged, obviously frustrated. “Nothing we could do. There were teachers everywhere and they all had football practice right after school. Besides, the last thing we need is to get in trouble for fighting. Coach would have our asses.”

  Adam was right. Coach Holden, our League coach would be upset if we got caught fighting regardless of the reason. But the one we really had to worry about was Coach Tillman, our high school coach. He’d hand our carcasses to us on a platter if we got in any trouble that might get us suspended from playing in games.

  “Well, is she alright? What are you going to do about the parking spot?” I asked wishing there was something I could do. As it was, all any of us could do was be there as much as we could to keep those jerks from hurting Piper any further.

  “Drew swooped in like a knight in shining armor, man,” Zeke laughed, earning himself a frown from Luke.

  “Drew?” Drew Thompson was a new junior who’d moved here over the summer. We’d met him on the neighborhood basketball court and he’d become our friend. I’d seen him flirting with Piper on more than one occasion, but there hadn’t been any talk of them being a couple or anything.

  “Yeah, I thought he was going to kill someone. Maybe we should sic him on those guys. He doesn’t have anything to lose since he refuses to be on the team.” Jared shook his head.

  It was true. Drew was a better player than any of us, but he’d been adamant that he wasn’t going to play on the team. He was fine playing street ball, but for some reason refused to play on an organized team. Which was too bad for us. We could use a guy like him on the team. In fact, I was certain we’d win the State Championship with him on the court. We might win it without him, but with him? Nobody could stop us. He was that good.

  “No way. We need to keep him eligible in case he changes his mind,” Mateo said. He could always be counted on to keep a clear head.

  “What are we going to do about the parking spot?” I knew most of our conversation was just guys being stupid. Nobody was going to beat up anybody.

  “Jared’s gonna help me paint over it after practice,” Luke told us. Jared nodded in agreement.

  We stewed in silence for a few moments.

  “So, Drew and Piper, huh?” I said.

  Luke scowled. “Dude, stop talking about my sister with that guy.” He slugged my shoulder hard enough to hurt, but I just laughed.

  “Drew seems like a good guy,” Adam stated. He dribbled the ball in his hand, setting us all in motion at once.

  “That doesn’t mean I want to think about him with my sister,” Luke grumbled from the free throw line.

  “What about you, Noah? What’s up with Trina?” Grayson asked. Grayson was a senior as well as Mateo, A.J., Will, and I.

  “Girl is insane,” I said as I threw up a three point shot, thinking about our encounter in the parking lot. The ball bounced off the rim before falling through the hoop.

  “Nice!” Will called as he caught my rebound and dribbled out for a jump shot at the top of the key.

  I shagged another ball and shot again from the same spot. “She won’t leave me alone, man,” I told Grayson who shook his head.

  “I don’t get it. Why’d you break up with her in the first place? I thought you guys were perfect,” he said with a smart ass grin.

  “Funny.” I shook off the jab at my nickname. The guys had been making fun of me, calling me Mr. Perfect for as long as I could remember. Sometimes it was a boost to my ego, but others it made me want to pull my hair out.

  “Seriously, though,” Grayson kept prodding.

  I debated what to tell him. I hadn’t talked to the guys about my drama with Trina. It wasn’t worth it to listen to their ribbing.

  “I don’t know, man. She was just getting too serious. Like talking about our future and crap like that.” I snagged a ball and dribbled it a couple of times before shooting. “We’re in high school for goodness sake.”

  Grayson whistled under his breath. “Yeah, that’s messed up.”

  We shot around for a little while without talking, but then he asked, “You know there are people who marry their high school sweethearts, right? I mean, my parents did.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want to. It’s not like I love Trina. I like,” I stopped myself, “I liked her well enough, but marriage? No way. Especially not now after all the crap she’s been pulling lately.”

  Grayson frowned, dribbling between his legs as we talked. “What do you mean?”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have opened this can of worms. “Well, since I broke up with her, she’s been calling me. I think I have twenty missed calls from her today. And the texting, she texts me all damn day long.”

  “Why don’t you block her number?” Grayson asked.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to be a jerk, but I guess I’m going to have to. She followed me out of the school today. Look what she did to my arm.” I held out the arm she’d scratched.

  Grayson whistled under his breath, frowning.

  “Dude, block her. Avoid her at all costs.” He pointed to my arm. “That’s assault. You don’t need a psycho girl messing with you. This is it, bro, our last season. We can’t blow it. This is our year, I can feel it. No drama.”

  Grayson was right. I could feel it, too. We were so much better than we were last year and the juniors coming up were better than they had been as sophomores. Mateo was right, too. We needed to somehow convince Drew to play for the high school team. Maybe if he really did have a thing for Piper we could talk her into helping us out with that.

  “What you need is a rebound girl,” Mateo said. Obviously, he’d been eavesdropping on our conversation. “Get psycho girl off your back.”

  “Dude, why does everyone keep saying that?” The guys just laughed, but it wasn’t funny. It didn’t help that my first thought was Tierney, either.

  And that just wasn’t going to happen. No matter how adorable she was when she got mad at me.

  5

  Tierney

  I’d successfully avoided talking to Noah any more than was necessary to get through AP Bio and work out a plan to meet so we could plan the Homecoming Dance. Apparently, we were supposed to do all the planning and then once we had the details ironed out, Ms. Lowe would give us the names of the volunteers who would help us execute our plan. The dance was in five weeks. We had a lot of work to do, starting after school when I was supposed to meet Noah in Mr. Hoffman’s classroom.

  But first I had to ditch my sister and Hannah was determined to linger at my side until she deposited me at Noah’s side.

  “There is no way you can convince me a book boyfriend is better than the real deal. No way. Not buying it.” We were back to this argument. Hannah was convinced she wanted a boyfriend and it had become her new goal to talk me around to getting one of my own.

  “Trust me, young grasshopper. Real boyfriends are just a load of trouble.” I should know.

  “Yeah, but they kiss better.” Hannah pulled out all the stops, but there was just no convincing me. Fictional men rarely let you down, whereas their real-world counterparts rarely didn’t.

  “Doubtful.”

  Hannah huffed with exasperation. “Reading about men kissing their book girlfriends doesn’t count.” She turned sideways, facing me we walked. “Haven’t you ever kissed a boy? You can’t honestly tell me it’s not better doing it than reading about it.” She raised her brow, challenging me.

  I wanted to deny that I’d ever kissed anyone, but I was already hiding most of my life history from my sister, so I didn’t. “Sure, kissing can be fun, but I’ve never, ever kissed a guy that could make my toes curl. And every book boyfriend can do that.”

  Hannah rolled
her eyes and faced forward again. We were just outside Mr. Hoffman’s room. Noah was already inside, sitting at one of the desks, tapping a pencil on the surface, his handsome face full of annoyance.

  I sighed. It was probably too much to ask that this little meeting would go without a hitch or a full blown fight between Noah and I.

  “I bet he could make your toes curl,” Hannah murmured under her breath.

  I was so engrossed watching Noah, I’d forgotten she was standing beside me. I grunted in response even though I was sure she was right. Just the thought of kissing Noah made my toes curl.

  “Not gonna happen, Hannah,” I whispered. Not only would Noah never be interested in me, I’d seen him talking to his ex, Trina, the other day. They were perfect for each other. I figured it was only a matter of time before they got back together.

  Hannah snickered and I shot her a look. The last thing I needed was for her to draw attention to the fact that we were standing outside the door drooling over my lab partner slash committee co-chair.

  “See you at home, sis,” she grinned as she backed away down the hall toward the gym and her own practice.

  I wished I could follow her. I’d been dreading this meeting with Noah all week. I sighed again. There was nothing more I could do except pull up my big girl panties and get on with it.

  Mr. Hoffman was unsurprisingly absent. It was all over the school that the man had turned into a complete basket case waiting for his wife to give birth. I had to wonder why he’d offered to sponsor this particular school activity since it would be taking place so close the birth of his baby.

  Whatever. It didn’t really matter. Noah and I were more than capable of taking care of whatever needed to be done. I just didn’t want to.

  I entered the room and cleared my throat. Noah’s eyes popped up to meet mine. Goodness. Would I ever get used to how gorgeous he was? I doubted it. A week of sitting beside him in Biology hadn’t cured me even a little.

  “Hey,” I greeted.

  “Hi.” He was so not excited to see me.

  I sighed. Despite my earlier panic attack, I was determined to see this through. If not for my own sake, for Noah’s. He didn’t deserve to have to work with a crazy person. It wasn’t his fault I was so screwed up.

  I took a deep breath. “Look, Noah, I owe you an apology.”

  Noah’s eyes widened and his shoulders tensed. I almost laughed. He looked ready to fend off an attack rather than accept a simple apology.

  “I was acting psycho the other day. But I promise I’ll pull my weight on this committee and not drag it down.” I held my breath waiting for his response. As much as I didn’t want to be on this committee, I wouldn’t ruin the dance for everyone else.

  Noah breathed a sigh of relief. “Apology accepted.” One corner of his mouth lifted. “I’m sorry, too. I was a jerk the other day. Let’s just forget about all that and start fresh.” He held out a hand. “Deal?”

  I stared at his hand suspended in the air between us and experienced a feeling I’d never felt before. I’d read about them, watched them in movies, but never experienced one myself. If it had been a movie, the actors would have paused and looked meaningfully into each other’s eyes before grinning like fools. If it had been a book, the girl would explain the way just looking at him made her heart beat faster or maybe he made her breath catch and she could see he noticed. He would grin, feeling proud of himself for having that affect on her. Her cheeks would turn red.

  Noah’s hand still hung there. My pulse spiked, my hands felt suddenly sweaty, and I just knew I had that deer-in-the-headlights look in my eyes. If I touched his hand, something was going to happen to me, I’d change and never be the same.

  All these thoughts assaulted me in a matter of a milli-second and I had to make a decision before Noah became offended and the choice was taken from me.

  I reached for his hand.

  His warm skin enveloped mine like a hug and I felt it down to my curled toes.

  Hannah hadn’t been kidding. Noah was exactly the kind of guy to make a girl’s toes curl and I was in so much trouble.

  Noah let go of my hand and sat back down while I fought to breathe. Apparently, I didn’t have the same affect on him that he did on me. But of course not. I was just the shy bookworm who dressed like a mom. And he had the likes of Trina Davis wanting him.

  “Did you get a chance to look over the list at all?” Noah asked, glancing over at me. He frowned when he noticed I was still standing. “Are you okay?”

  I gave myself a mental shake. “Yes, I’m fine. And I did look over the list.” I tossed my backpack to the floor and took a seat beside him. Get it together, girl!

  Noah scooted his desk around so our desks faced each other, forcing me to actually have to look at him. The tension might be one sided, but as far as I was concerned it was thicker than pudding pie.

  I cleared my throat and tried to focus. “I, um, I think the first step is to decide on a theme.” I’d been thinking about this a lot. There were a million and one lame dance theme ideas. I considered myself a creative thinker, but all I could think up was ‘Enchantment Under the Sea’.

  Noah nodded, his eyes on the packet of papers in front of him. “I agree.” He glanced up. “Any ideas?”

  I shrugged. “None I want to admit to because they’re so lame.”

  “Yeah, me too,” he sighed. “All I could come up with was ‘Enchantment Under the Sea’.”

  “Oh, my gosh. That’s what I was thinking, too!” I couldn’t believe it.

  Noah grinned. “Really? I love Back to the Future.”

  “So do I. Michael J. Fox was so great in those movies.”

  “Yeah, the guys and I marathon all three movies at least once a year.”

  Look at us bonding over movies.

  “That’s awesome.” But we still needed a theme for the Homecoming dance. “This is a lot of pressure for two people. Can’t we take a poll or something? Get suggestions from everyone?”

  Noah shook his head. “I think it’s too late for that. Some of these vendors require several weeks for shipping. We need to nail this down so we can figure out decorations and get the orders placed.”

  I knew he was right, but this whole thing seemed like a ton of work for just two people who still had school and other activities to worry about. Speaking of other activities…

  “Don’t you have practice tonight?” I asked. If he had a timeframe I should be aware.

  Noah shook his head. “We have a game, but it doesn’t start until later.”

  “Oh.” That made sense.

  “What about doing a Back to the Future theme?” he asked.

  “Like dress up like the movie?” I could picture the gym full of girls wearing poodle skirts with sweaters and guys in jeans and puffy vests, even white lab coats and crazy white hair.

  Noah lifted one shoulder. “Yeah, we could even actually do Enchantment Under the Sea decorations since that was part of the movie.” His eyes sparkled with excitement as he spoke.

  I thought about what he was saying and my mind raced with all the different decorations and props we could come up with. “Maybe we can talk the seniors into making a DeLorean for our class float.”

  “That would be so awesome! The classes could come up with all kinds of cool stuff from the movies to use for floats.”

  I was warming up to his idea, my mind raced with different scenes from the movie and how we could incorporate them into the dance. “I wonder if we could get those old fashioned soda glasses? You know, for drinks? Maybe root beer floats. And we could order cookies shaped like records? Like a jukebox kind of thing?”

  Noah scribbled down ideas as we tossed them out. For thirty minutes we discussed different ideas from decorations to refreshments to photo backdrops. By the time we were finished my brain was fried, but I was also excited about the idea we’d come up with.

  Noah tossed his pencil onto the desk and sat back in his seat, stretching his arms high above his head. I t
ried not to drool when his shirt rode up exposing an expanse of skin across his stomach. Wanting any part of Noah was just plain dumb.

  “I think this is a good start, don’t you?” he asked through a yawn.

  I nodded. “Yeah, I think it’s great. Do we have to get approval from anyone before we move forward?”

  Noah frowned, thinking. “I don’t think so, but it wouldn’t hurt to run it passed Mr. Hoffman and Ms. Lowe.”

  “Okay, I’ll take care of that.” I jotted a note for myself as a reminder. It was Friday. I would send an email to them and hopefully get a quick response. If not, I would talk to them on Monday.

  “Sounds good. Let’s wait to meet again until we hear back from them,” Noah said as he began packing up his things to leave.

  “Okay,” I agreed and stood up to put my own things away.

  There was an awkward moment once we were both ready to go. Did we walk out together? I knew Noah had a car, so we both had to go to the parking lot. Should I pretend I had to go to the bathroom and just hang out so he could leave ahead of me?

  While I was stressing, Noah seemed completely unflustered.

  “Come on. I’ll walk you out.” He tilted his head toward the door and waited for me to go first.

  “Oh, thanks. You don’t have to-” I didn’t want him to feel obligated. He wasn’t responsible for me. I wasn’t his girlfriend or anything. That made me think of Trina. Were they back together?

  I experienced a surge of jealousy.

  What would it even be like to call this gorgeous guy my boyfriend? I’d dated some good looking boys in my past life, but none of them compared to Noah Jacobs. The guy had it all; amazing body, handsome features, a sexy confidence that seemed so effortless. All if it combined to form the perfect man.

  “So, have you come to terms with going to the dance yet?” he asked as we walked side by side.

  I scowled. “No, I’m still trying to figure out how to get out if it.”