by Sarah Sutton
“And you’re not going to tell me what it is? A drawing? A self-portrait, maybe?”
That had been Elijah’s thing ever since Mrs. Keller told him about this contest. The county announced the competition back in December, and Elijah figured out what he was going to do not long after. But did he tell me? No. Of course not. Because it had to be a secret.
“My lips are sealed,” he said simply, looking smug. “You’re just going to have to wait and see. A week from tomorrow.”
Right. Next Thursday they were to present their projects at the district library. “I’m not sure I can wait that long,” I said. “Maybe I’ll just sneak up to your room and watch you.”
One of Elijah’s eyebrows rose, a corner of his lips tugging up.
“I mean, I’ll watch you work on it. Because you have that pottery wheel in your room? Not like, watch you, watch you. Not, like, watch you sleep or anything super creepy like that.”
“Are you okay?” he asked, words laced with amusement. “Or should I just write off your weirdness as a side effect of hitting your head?”
“Yes, do that,” I said with a sigh, head throbbing sympathetically. “Please.”
I tried to hide my face in my locker, hide the heat that began to creep up my neck, but my ears snagged on a whispering voice just getting out, “…that was his brother.”
The heat on my skin no longer resembled embarrassment as the words registered. Immediately, my eyes flashed to my left, finding a cluster of freshmen girls at an open locker. They were too busy looking at Elijah with their snooping gazes to notice me.
Anger poured through me, so much that my fists clenched into little balls at my sides. “Stare much?” I demanded, shooting them my most scathing glare. I wasn’t sure if it was scary or not, but my face felt pinchy and red, like I was a dragon about to breathe fire. “Get lost.”
The three girls looked at me wide-eyed, cheeks pinking from getting caught. “S-Sorry,” one of them said, hastily grabbing her things. “We didn’t mean anything.”
“It’s fine,” Elijah said quickly, cutting off whatever was going to come out of my mouth.
Not even I knew what I’d been about to say, but it sure as freak wasn’t going to be something nice. “It’s definitely not fine!”
“What are you going to do about it?” The two girls hurried away as Elijah turned to me, lips thinning. “Fight them in the hallway? Cause more talk? I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to fly under the radar. People talk. There’s no stopping them.”
“That doesn’t mean they have to do it five feet from you,” I threw back. “So, what, you yell at just me about it then? Everyone else can run their mouths but you don’t care. Only I can’t talk about him?”
Amazingly, his lips grew thinner. “It’s different.”
I turned my back to him and rummaged through my locker, searching for where I sat my lock. Different, right. Everything was different. “Listen, I should go find Jeremy.”
“Are you excited for your date?” His voice sounded flat.
I snorted, trying to stop myself from rolling my eyes. But eye-rolling was good—much better than going gaga at his stupid face. Annoyance was good. “You’re pretty invested, huh?”
“My duty as matchmaker requires me to be invested.” A glint of metal shone from the corner of my eye, and I turned to find Elijah with my lock balanced on the tip of his finger. He held it out to me. I grabbed it, not making eye contact. “You know you can call me if you need to, right? In case anything happens and you want me to pick you up.”
“It’s just Jeremy.”
“What’s just Jeremy?” a voice inquired, and a second later, I felt a hand drop over my shoulders, heavy enough to make me wobbly. “Also, don’t put emphasis on the just part.”
I glanced up at the boy in question, finding his pleasant expression focused on me. “We were just saying how it was going to be just you and me going out. No third wheels.”
Jeremy threw a pointed look at Elijah, whose face still looked stiff from our argument. “We could double sometime if you wanted to, bro. But first dates are sacred.”
“I can see if Sav would be up for it sometime this week.” Elijah’s voice was at odds with his appearance, eyes flicking to me meaningfully. “My offer always stands, okay?”
“Okay, Dad.”
That seemed to crack the strange atmosphere between the two of us. Elijah’s eyes regained their normal light humor and he moved to brush past us. At the last minute, he stopped and leaned in to whisper something to Jeremy, something I didn’t catch due to the perfectly timed slam of a locker door.
Before I could ask what had happened, Elijah strode away.
“Here, I’ll carry your pack,” Jeremy said, swiping my backpack away before I had the chance to object. He had it up and over his bicep in a moment. “So you know, I was thinking. I know I originally said a movie, but I’m starving, aren’t you? We could go to Mary’s Place over on Fifth Street. You know, that diner?”
“Okay,” I said distractedly, glancing over my shoulder to watch Elijah’s retreating figure. His backpack bounced with his casual gait, and I kept wishing he’d turn around, meet my gaze one last time. I could just imagine the tortured look he’d pass me, the idea of me going on a date with another guy tearing him apart.
But he didn’t turn. His green backpack just rounded the corner and dropped out of sight, the nonexistent tortured look going with him.
Jeremy took his arm from me to hold the door open, and I slipped through. “Look, the snow’s melting. Finally. I know winter just started and all, but I am already sick of this season. Once Christmas is gone, I’m over it.”
As the cold ghosted over my arms, I realized I’d left my coat in my locker. I paused, ready to turn back. “Oh, my jacket—”
“Don’t sweat it, Rem.” In an expert move, Jeremy slipped his varsity jacket off his shoulders and laid it over mine. A gust of his cologne hit my nose, and I hardly stopped myself from gagging over the intensity. “Come on, my car’s this way.”
He’d double-parked at the very edge of the student parking lot so the silver sedan was in no danger of being dinged by another car door, he said. He bumped into me in his haste to open the passenger side door, so I stepped aside to let him pass. “Can you try and knock off as much of the snow from your boots as you can before you get in? I have all-weather floor mats, but I’ve got a thing about dirt, and the snow out in the parking lot is filled with all sorts of crap.”
“Of course,” I answered at once, tapping my toe against the slippery asphalt. I pried the edge of the door back so I could slip past him and ducked into the car.
Once I settled in, I reached for the door handle to tug it shut, but Jeremy just smiled down at me, pressing his hand against the outside glass. “I’ve got it, Remi. Luxury treatment. Just make sure your feet are in.”
Despite the slight strangeness of it, I was touched by the gesture, and I tucked my boots back so he could slam the door. He was trying a little too hard, that much was obvious, but maybe our outing wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe I was stressing over nothing.
Chapter Ten
There weren’t many places to eat in Greenville—in fact, there were only two. Mary’s Place, an amazing diner that offered the best strawberry crepes in the county, and a steakhouse so expensive that I’d never even been to it before. Mom and Dad used to go there sometimes for date nights and would bring back leftovers, but that was the closest I’d come to eating there.
The diner, though, was as familiar as Freezing Fred’s Ice Cream Parlor. Dad and I used to go to Mary’s every Sunday when I was little, and after he’d gone, Elijah and I continued the tradition about once a month. Always sitting in the same booth, swapping bites. He’d always get chocolate-chip pancakes and I’d get my crepes. Every single time.
I’d never gone there for dinner before, and I stared at the other side of the menu like it spoke a different language.
“Their burgers are to die for,�
�� Jeremy said from across the table, already sitting with his menu folded. “I come here all the time with friends and it’s the only thing I ever get. Well, that and their steak fries. Man, those are seasoned to perfection. Have you ever had them?”
I rubbed my fingers against my left temple, trying to keep track of his quick voice. “I haven’t, actually.”
“They’re good. Savannah—you know, Sav, Eli’s girlfriend? I used to come here with her sometimes and she’d always steal some of mine. Not like a date or anything, just as friends who hang out. I mean, we did date before, so it’s not like it’s weird or anything. We haven’t hung out since she started hanging with Eli, though, so don’t worry.”
“It’s Elijah,” I told him, tracing my fingers over the greasy menu. “I mean, he doesn’t like anyone using the nickname Eli.” Anyone except me.
“Oh. Okay.”
I gritted my teeth, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut, and focused on the words in front of me. I wasn’t much of a burger eater, and nothing on the menu sounded good. Yes, their breakfast was good, but dinner? I wasn’t sure. “So I should get a burger and fries?”
Jeremy shrugged. “I mean, if you want to. Their mac and cheese is good, but that’s really a side. Savannah always used to get their country-fried steak, but to me, it’s kind of gross. Gravy isn’t supposed to be milky white, you know?”
The waitress came back to the table with her pad of paper in hand, pen poised and ready to begin writing. She looked about our age, flawless makeup, and her pretty blonde hair wrapped in a bun on top of her head. Her orange and white dress had her nametag pinned by her collarbone, Sienna. “Have you two decided yet?”
“I have. Just waiting on her. Did you figure it out yet, Remi?”
I closed the menu, reaching for my napkin. “I’ll just have a side of mashed potatoes.”
The waitress and Jeremy both blinked. “Just mashed potatoes?”
“I’m not feeling that hungry,” I told them, passing over my menu. The throbbing between my temples hadn’t subsided yet; in fact, it felt like it was getting worse. “No gravy, please.”
Jeremy placed his long order—“burger well done with lettuce and tomato but no mayonnaise with steak fries and extra seasoning”—and Sienna disappeared with a quick smile. Then we were alone.
Something I realized about Jeremy that I’d never noticed before? He was a talker. As we waited for our meal, he talked about the parties he threw—“only occasionally, I’m not really a partier, you know?”—and about graduation—“I just can’t wait to get out of this godforsaken town”—and he also touched a little bit on bones he’d broken when he was younger—“my left collarbone, my humerus, and two of my fingers.”
After our meal was delivered, he kept talking. At least he didn’t talk with his mouth full. “So, do you watch basketball?” he asked, popping a steak fry into his mouth.
“I don’t, not really.” Sometimes I went to school games, but not often. Elijah and I usually stayed home and watched movies. “Do you?”
“I’m on the team,” he said with a chuckle. “Have been since I was little. Like those little league baseball teams? That’s actually how I broke both of my fingers, playing basketball. Sophomore year and junior year. Still have time left to break one my senior year.”
I stirred my spoon through my mashed potatoes, giving him a tired smile. “That doesn’t sound like a fun tradition.”
“Sports are just a big part of my life. Football, basketball, golf. Except baseball—yeah, I’m not a baseball fan one bit. Watching it is fine, but playing is so not my thing.”
“I’ve never been into sports,” I said.
“I wish our school had lacrosse,” Jeremy said, picking up his burger with one hand, a fry in the other. “That would be sweet. Or golf. Yeah, golf would be so cool. Why doesn’t Greenville have a program like that?”
I watched as he took a big bite of his burger, something not sitting right with me. Maybe it was just the throbbing headache, the jackhammer to my brain. Not even my warm, very tasty mashed potatoes made me feel better. We went on for a little while, him talking my ear off, me interjecting here and there.
And then I realized what exactly felt off. Every time I spoke to Jeremy, it was like my words went in one ear and out the other. Not registering. Or maybe they were registering, and he just didn’t want to hear them.
Jeremy slowly pulled into my driveway just a little bit after five, and by slowly, I mean slowly. He’d barely broken thirty-five the entire drive, even in the fifty-five zones. I’d tried to casually make a comment about it, but he said that going slower in these weather conditions was a way to stay safe.
“I’m sorry about your headache,” Jeremy said as he slid the gearshift into park, turning to look over at me. “I would’ve loved to keep this night going with a movie. There’s a great one out right now that’s said to have the most explosions in one movie ever. Who doesn’t love explosions?”
“Next time,” I replied in a light voice, my forehead propped against the cool glass window. Mom’s car wasn’t in the driveway, so at least I could stumble inside without a barrage of questions.
Jeremy’s spine straightened. “I’ll walk you to the door.”
I pressed my hand against his arm the second he reached for his seatbelt. “You don’t have to do that,” I said. “I can manage the walk. You’ve been gentleman enough for the entire night.”
His face pinched as he tried to smile. “I overdid it, didn’t I?”
“Maybe just a smidge.”
“Elijah told me I needed to be on my best behavior,” he said, releasing a breathy chuckle of relief. “I figured you were only into charming guys. I didn’t know how long I could keep it up, honestly. Good to know you thought it was lame too.”
I blinked at him. “Wait, what?”
“The whole opening the door, giving you my jacket—I don’t know how guys do that all the time.”
“Do what?” I asked with a frown. “Be thoughtful?”
“Yes! I was exhausted the entire time, trying to think of what I needed to do next.” Jeremy adjusted the collar of his jacket against my neck, fingers lingering. “I’m glad you’re not the kind of girl that expects that. A bit unrealistic, yeah?”
I looked into his hazel eyes, thoroughly confused. Was he saying being a gentleman was lame? I mean, yeah, he went a little overboard with everything, but that hadn’t been what annoyed me this evening.
Unrealistic. And Elijah had prompted him to act this way? What was that about?
I pressed my fingertips to my temple, their chill soothing the heat there. “Well, the next time we get together, just be yourself.”
“Next time,” he murmured, fingers by the base of my throat. “I like how that sounds.”
I popped the car door open before he got any ideas. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Remi?” Jeremy called once I got my feet. “My jacket?”
“Oh. Yeah.” I pulled my arms from the sleeves and set it on the passenger seat. Goosebumps swept across my skin in a moment, and I crossed my arms. “See ya.”
Jeremy waved at me as he backed out onto the roadway, and I’d just stuck my key in the lock when he started down the street, still at full-on turtle speed. Well, at least he’d been genuine about his cautious driving.
The door jammed, of course. I kicked it in the corner, but it didn’t budge. Ugh, seriously not what I needed.
I turned around, planning to go for the back door, and saw a car backing into Elijah’s driveway, running lights on and brightening a section of my snow-covered front lawn. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but it was Savannah’s car, and there were people inside. It really wasn’t hard to guess who.
Since it was the middle of winter, the sun went down a lot earlier, and though it wasn’t completely vacant from the sky just yet, I was able to hide in the shadows of my porch. My heart pounded fast, and I reached complete creeper status, standing out there with my breath fogging and m
y arms freezing. I wanted to lie to myself and say that I didn’t know why I was watching them, but I knew.
Elijah popped his door open, causing light to fill the interior, fully illuminating their faces. Fully illuminating how they were pressed together, close enough to kiss.
And then they were kissing, Savannah’s hand cupping Elijah’s cheek, her lips landing on his. My stomach twisted painfully, and then my chest followed suit in a way that it never had before. All the air flew from my lungs. I started moving. Down, off the porch, out of the shadows, and into the glare of Savannah’s stupid headlights. The snow crunched as I hurried across it, desperate to escape the scene before me. The rapid breaths that my lungs demanded didn’t feel too good, the air like knives on my insides, burning my throat. My brain was about to start oozing out my ears.
I’d seen Elijah and Savannah kiss before. Not too often, since they were just starting to get their footing in their relationship, but it’d happened before. But there was no explaining the violent way my stomach seized when I saw them tonight. Her hand cupping his cheek. His hand touching her hair. Maybe because I could still feel those fingers in my hair, his lips on my lips, and it threw me so much that I felt sick.
In the midst of everything, one clear thought ran through my cracked mind. I had a crush on my best friend. This pain that I felt? Jealousy.
Before I stepped away from the glare of the car headlights, I thought I heard my name being called to the wind. I didn’t turn around.
Mom didn’t get home until eight-thirty, finding me at the kitchen table, struggling through my math homework. I couldn’t get my brain to focus, to delete the image of Elijah and Savannah embracing each other. I was so distracted that I was surprised that I could even answer two plus two.
“You’re not straining your eyes, are you?” Mom asked immediately, her purse and keys clattering as she set them on the countertop. She seemed to melt against it, sagging.
“Yeah, I am,” I said, leaning my chin against my fist. The headache hadn’t gone away entirely, but after a cool compress and some medicine, the dull pain had lowered to a manageable level. “Straining them so bad. Want to do it for me?”