As we crossed the back parking lot, my spinning head caused me to stumble. Gabe reached for my upper arm and steadied me. The mysterious new student followed like a ghost a few steps behind.
Gabe pressed the auto unlock on his two-seater sports car and gestured for me to get in. As I started to sit down in the passenger seat, Jake coughed. I turned and looked at him. “What?”
Standing there—looking all bad-boy like—with his hands tucked into the pockets of his black jeans, he raised his eyebrows and nodded down at the car seat. Suddenly I realized the problem. “There are only two seats,” I said to Gabe.
He looked at me, a little dumbfounded. “Yep. It’s a sports car.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Well, where am I supposed to sit?”
Gabe gestured to the passenger seat. “Next to—” His head popped up over the car’s roof. “What’s your name again?”
“Jake.”
“Sit next to Jake.”
I huffed, not liking that idea. Gabe raised his eyebrows and shrugged.
I frowned, which caused my chin to hurt and remind me I was injured. I rubbed it, and then, begrudgingly, stepped out to make room for Jake.
Gabe got in and started the car. Jake slipped past me, courteously slid the passenger seat back as far as it would go, and then sat down. I stood there, staring. At first, I thought maybe we could sit side-by-side, but it was obvious that with his broad muscular frame, coupled with the small bucket seat of the sports car, that side-by-side was never going to happen.
Jake glanced up at me and gave me a cute lopsided grin, which only added to my hesitation. I glanced around the parking lot and saw no one who might see this. Very carefully, I attempted to sit on his lap. When I wavered, he placed both of his hands on my hips and then gently lowered me into place. My whole body tensed up feeling really self-conscious sitting on a top of a guy’s lap.
Looking like he was enjoying himself, Jake reached out, closed the car door, and snagged the seatbelt. Trying to hide a smirk, he passed the belt from his right to his left hand, and wrapped it around me. The seatbelt, clearly not designed for two people, came up to my neck. I slipped the top strap under my armpit, faced the radio, and stiffly settled in for what I hoped would be a short ride.
Gabe gestured toward my knees that rested up against the stick shift, “Umm…”
“Sorry.”
As Gabe turned to back out, he flashed his baby blues in my direction and smiled.
I tried not to think about the fact that if my dad ever found out I had skipped class and left the school grounds with two boys, he’d kill me—and the two boys I was with. I flashed quick peeks at them. The less they knew, the better.
I checked my shirt again, rubbed the side of my cheek, and closed my eyes. My eardrums continued to pound.
“How’s your jaw?” Jake asked.
As I turned to answer, his gaze traveled over my face. It might have been that I was having a craving for some, but his soft brown eyes reminded me of melted chocolate. I swallowed and watched his thick dark lashes as they slowly blinked. Shoot! Trying to regain my momentary loss of composure, I quickly turned away. With a snap, I opened the passenger-side vanity mirror and stared at the bump under my chin. Bright red, it had swollen quickly and it hurt. The lump’s only redeeming quality was its location—under my jaw. I hoped no one, especially my hyper-vigilant father, would notice. With the right amount of makeup and clever avoidance, I might sneak it past him.
“It’s okay. Thanks for asking.”
“Simplicity?” Gabe leaned over the steering wheel. “I’m sorry you got hurt, but what the heck were you thinking?” He shook his head. “Why would you jump into the middle of a guy fight? I know you’re just like your father and all, but that’s over the top, even for you.”
My feminine ire upped, I responded, “Excuse me? Regardless of who my father is, or that I’m a girl, if I see another person being beaten I’m going to do something about it. I am sick of boys,” I seethed over the word, “who should act like men, but instead, choose to behave like toddlers, throwing temper tantrums over infinitesimal territory they think someone else invaded.”
Gabe stuck his tongue in his cheek and eyed me.
My voice rose higher. “Think about it—you got into a fistfight over a square of cement.”
Gabe rolled his eyes.
“Roll your eyes all you want, Gabe Bennett. I don’t care. I know—you know—I’m right.”
As Jake stifled a chuckle, I felt a vibration coming from his chest. I bit my lip trying not to think about his body underneath me.
“Anyway,” I huffed. “You’re the one who got all testosteroned-out and took it too far.”
“What?” Gabe gestured toward himself, all exasperated. “It wasn’t my fault. I was willing to let it go and let him, save face.” Gabe stuck his thumb towards Jake. “I was like ‘What the heck, dude? You can’t go dissing me in front of the whole school’—then he sucker-punched me.”
I looked at Jake. This time, when my eyes locked on him, Jake was the one who looked away.
“I’m sorry I sucker-punched you,” Jake said toward the window. “I was trying to start a fight.”
Confused by that logic, I had to ask, “Why?”
He looked at me, debated for a moment, and then answered, “No reason.”
I looked to Gabe. Gabe let out a snort. I couldn’t tell if it meant acceptance or indignation.
“Still,” Gabe shook his head, “you shouldn’t have jumped into the middle of a fight, Simplicity. You could’ve gotten messed up.”
“Well, I only jumped in after I heard that high-pitched snap. I thought Jake was seriously injured. It sounded like you broke a bone.”
Gabe looked at Jake, concerned. “Is she right? Did you crack a rib or something?”
Jake looked over his body giving himself a little self-check. “No, I don’t think so…You know, she probably heard my jaw cracking.” He cocked his mouth to the side and popped his jaw out and back in again. It made that same horrible piercing snap, exactly like I had heard during the fight. I winced.
Gabe’s mouth dropped open. “That’s cool, man. Do it again.”
“No,” I yelled. “Don’t do it again.”
“Why not?” Gabe asked. “I wanna learn how to do that.”
I shook my head. “Not while I’m around.”
Gabe pulled himself up by the steering wheel. “Where’d you learn that?”
“I didn’t learn it. It just does it. I broke my jaw when I was a kid and it never healed right.” Jake started to pop it out again.
“Don’t do it.” I twisted around, and without thinking, I grabbed both sides of Jake’s face. “It sounds awful.” While I held his cheeks in my hands, he made an enormous smile and out popped an adorable dimple.
A funny shiver went up my spine.
I let go, turned away from him, and faced forward. “I hate it when guys crack their knuckles.” Nervously I tapped my foot.
Gabe grinned. “Like when girls scrape their nails on a blackboard?”
“Yeah, like that.”
They both looked at each other with a devious glint. Then Gabe cracked his knuckles as Jake popped his jaw.
“Stop it!” I squealed and covered my ears. “Haven’t you two put me through enough today?”
“We?” Gabe feigned outrage.
“Yes, you, decking me. And you, making me think you were dead.”
They both chuckled.
“I’m sorry.” Jake gave me a short nod and then gave one to Gabe.
“Yeah, sorry.” Gabe looked at me and then at Jake.
I watched them. They seemed like they were apologizing to each other as much as to me.
A moment later, we reached the main road and turned onto Route 37.
“Where’re we headed?” Gabe asked.
“My house is across the street from the Cinnico gas station—the one just before the county line. You know where that is?”
As we drove through the center of Stony Creek, I squished down. The last thing I needed was for some busybody to tell my dad they saw me riding down Main Street—in a sports car—during school hours. I kept myself hidden as I scanned the faces that walked along the old brick sidewalk.
Stony Creek was a quaint New England village whose residents kept to themselves, as most New Englanders do. I wondered sometimes what secrets my neighbors kept hidden away behind their stone-faced facades.
There was old, white-haired Mr. Crowley, cane in hand, as he limped his way to his brother’s seafood shop. On hot summer afternoons, the dumpster out back reeked of dead fish, or at least I hoped it was dead fish.
Kicking down her doorstop was Betty Lou. She was a genteel southerner who had moved here years ago. During the day, she always kept the door at Betty Lou’s House of Beauty wide open as she aired the place out. It always stunk with heavy chemical fumes from the dyes and perms. Inside, a horde of housewives cackled away, gossiping about the latest rumors as they sat getting their hair primped and preened. I squinted and tried to see if my step-mom was there this morning, but her bleached-blonde hair was nowhere to be seen.
Last on the block was a small bookstore. Inside it looked like an English aristocrat’s library with tall wood bookshelves. Ms. Canterbury the quiet shy spinster who ran the place, always had her head buried in a book. It was the only place in downtown that I thought had a pleasant aroma. Something was special about the sweet fragrance of old books.
As we drove out of town, past the tract housing that marked the transition into suburbia, I squished my legs together and pressed them tightly at the knees. I tried to keep my body formal and rigid, but inertia kept moving me around. When we hit a small pothole, my shoulder inadvertently bumped against the center of Jake’s chest. I swallowed and tried not to think about his firm stomach next to my hip . . . nor to his warm, moist breath that tickled my skin as he exhaled . . . nor to the sharply contrasting cool draft of his inhale that sent shivers along my arm. . .
Darn it!
Clearly—I was failing.
After we entered the main road and the car’s speed increased, I reached for the handle above the window. Teetering, I tried to balance on the muscles of Jake’s thighs attempting to keep my body exactly where he had placed me on his lap. It was uncomfortable, but I didn’t want to shift around at all because I was unsure of what I was sitting near. Boys—down there—were a complete mystery to me. The sex education class I had last year featured only an anatomical picture of one drawn from the side. It looked to me like a weird, limp banana. When I was younger, I thought boys were bizarre creatures from another planet. As I got older, they moved from the alien category over to conquering invaders out to plunder treasure.
All my girlfriends were just as inexperienced. We traded ideas, but we had no real clue. And at that moment in our lives—we really didn’t want to know. “Oh shoot! The girls!” I realized my girlfriends were probably panicked, since they had no idea where I’d gone. I reached down for my purse, fished out my phone, and saw that a bazillion text messages had flooded my cell phone in the last fifteen minutes. Fingers flying, I typed away.
Gabe looked at me concerned. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, fine. Just half the student body wants to know where we are.”
Gabe leaned over and looked down at my phone. “Did any teachers see what happened?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask.”
The car drifted over the yellow line. “Keep your eyes on the road,” Jake snapped as his hands protectively grasped my hips a little tighter.
“Sorry.” Gabe adjusted the steering wheel and nervously checked the rearview mirror, presumably for a police cruiser.
I texted Tabitha.
im fine with gabe & new kid
did any teachers see us or what happened?!?
I wasn’t paying attention and lost focus of my goal of not moving around on Jake’s lap. We took the corner too fast, and my bum slipped down in between his thighs. “Sorry,” I muttered, totally mortified.
He gave me a crooked smile. “That’s fine. You’re so light, you can’t break anything important.”
I coughed and flushed.
His eyes stayed locked on my face, steady and cool.
When he looked at me like that, something happened to my brain cells; my synaptic nerve endings stopped working. Instead, they floated around in the euphoric high having a good ole’ time.
The funny feelings I was having were momentarily distracted by Tabby texting back.
No teachers saw u. No one squealed. WRU?
I texted back.
my shirt is dirty just getting a new one
be back before assembly ends
That was all the information I wanted “Gabby Tabby” to have at the moment. She loved to talk, so I withheld all hot, gossipy items: Like the fact that I was alone in a car with two older guys, heading to this new kid’s house out on the edge of town with a ripped up shirt. Nothing that would cause her to fly off the handle, panic, and then tell everyone within earshot, sending the rumormongers’ windmills churning at hurricane speeds. And absolutely nothing that could ever be fully explained in a one hundred and sixty-character text message.
“That’s the entrance, there on the left,” Jake pointed.
Gabe pulled down a long, winding driveway that led back a good five hundred feet off the road. There, buried in the woods, under a tangle of weeds, was an old, run-down mobile home.
It was spooky. Where the trim had fallen off, the gray vinyl siding curled at the ends. In the middle of the mobile home was an aluminum door. On either side of it were cheap single pane windows. The window on the left had been broken and then hastily taped back together with duct-tape. On the right, some faded, yellow insulation hung down from the eave under the roof.
Concerned that coming here had been a big mistake, I flashed a look of concern to Gabe. He shot an equally nervous look right back at me.
Everyone Keeps Secrets (Romantic Suspense Saga: Part 1) Page 7