“No. I’m tired. I’m going home. I’ve got plans in the morning anyway,” I fibbed.
He sighed deeply and gave in. “All right. So I’ll pick you up for Caster’s party tomorrow night?”I briefly considered making up some excuse, but I knew that would sound suspicious. I’d wait and see how I felt tomorrow. Maybe I was just having an off day. Maybe the demise of our relationship wasn’t really as imminent as it felt.
Come tomorrow night, though, if I still felt the same way, I’d have to have a talk with Drew. At least he’d be loose and happy after a party and a few beers. It might actually work out better that way. Maybe he’d take the news a little more gracefully.
Though I already dreaded the fallout, I felt like there was no sense in pretending that I liked Drew when I didn’t. I wouldn’t string him along; it wasn’t right. Unlike some of the other girls, I wasn’t so obsessed with being popular that I would date a guy I’m not even interested in just because he has great social standing.
Drew prompted me. “T?”
He looked irritated that he’d been forced to bring me back to the present when I’d drifted off into my own thoughts.
“Sorry. Uh, yeah. Pick me up at nine?”
“Good deal,” he said, taking me into his arms to kiss me goodnight.
I could tell by his effort that he was trying to get me to change my mind, but it was so not working! In fact, I could hardly wait for it to be over. What’s worse is that I don’t think he even knew that I wasn’t into it.
“See you tomorrow night,” he said and then turned to walk back down to the front of the lot where he’d parked.
I proceeded on to my car, unlocked the door and slid my bag inside before dropping my tense body into the driver’s seat. I pulled the door shut, leaned my head back and just sat there for a few minutes, thinking about the strange details of my day. I really did feel out of sorts. Even when I tried to describe it in my own mind, that was the most accurate label I could come up with: out of sorts.
I listened to the sounds of my friends’ voices as they giggled and whooped, making their plans and saying their goodbyes. I felt sure that many of them would gather at Trinity’s house later for a small party. But tonight, I just wasn’t in the mood to be a joiner.
When all the lights had faded and my car was the only one left in the parking lot other than the empty bus, I leaned forward to start the engine. Only it didn’t start.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I growled into the silence.
I turned the key again and pushed on the gas pedal, but it only made a tired whirring sound. The dash lights were noticeably dim and when I turned on the headlights, they barely dinted the darkness in front of the car.
While I’m no mechanic, I have enough sense to know when the battery’s dead. And that battery was dead.
I shouted out in frustration. “Crap!”
Options, options, options, I thought to myself, hating to call Drew, but unable to readily think of another choice. After all, I was my own plan B.
I stared out into the night, racking my brain for a person to call that could help me. I doubted Trinity even had jumper cables and most of the other girls probably didn’t even know what they were. Mom was out, as usual, and Dad was gone, as usual. That left me. And since I wasn’t much help to myself at this particular juncture, I was left with Drew.
Frustrated yet resigned, I looked up and out into the night as I rooted around in the console for my cell phone. It startled me when I caught a hint of movement in the gloom. My heart picked up the pace, pounding in my chest like the hoof beats of herd of wild Mustangs. Frantically, I searched blindly for my cell phone, afraid to take my eyes off the windshield for even one second.
A disembodied hoodie materialized in front of my dim headlights and my runaway heart jumped up into my throat. But just before panic could officially set in, I saw a hauntingly familiar pale face come into view. Though my pulse slowed somewhat, all the excitement seemed to transfer to my stomach, where a nest of butterflies fluttered anxiously.
Some part of my brain warned me that I should be scared, that this was creepy and that I should lock my door and call for help. But it was a small part, one quickly silenced by the voice of my growing attraction. Even more bizarre than that, though, was the feeling in my gut, the feeling that said I could trust him with my life. Now that made no sense at all.
Hands resting casually in the pockets of his jacket, Bo approached my window and sank down into a squat. Obligingly, I reached to lower the window. My fading battery didn’t have enough juice to work the mechanism, however, so I had to open the door in order to address him.
Bo rose and shifted to the side to let me push the door wide. When it was open as far as it would go, he stepped into the V and squatted down right in front of me.
Up close at night, his eyes appeared to be endless wells of inky liquid. The low light shone on their glassy surfaces and sparkled. His hair was the rumpled mass of jagged peaks that it always was and his jaw was dark with five o’clock shadow.
He smelled wonderful, too. I could tell it wasn’t cologne. He just smelled clean, like soap and something tangy, spicy.
“Need some help?”
Though his voice was not much more than a whisper, I heard him clearly. It was as if his soft words resonated somewhere deep inside me, causing a little thrill of pleasure to vibrate through my body like a tuning fork.
I could’ve just answered his question. I should’ve just answered his question. But I had questions of my own and they seemed far more important at that moment.
“What are you doing here?”
“Watching you,” he confessed, as if that was the most natural thing in the world, to be lurking in a dark parking lot in the middle of the night.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you watching me?”
“Why does everyone watch you?”
“Everyone doesn’t watch me,” I rebutted.
“Yes they do.”
“No they don’t.”
“You just don’t see them watching you. But they do,” he said, his lips twisting up into what might’ve been a tiny grin. I couldn’t be sure since the shadow of the door frame fell across part of his face.
“But why? Why would anyone watch me?”
“Come on. You have to know how beautiful you are. You don’t need me to tell you that,” he said, making it sound as if I was fishing for compliments.
“I guess that’s just your opinion,” I responded sharply.
He eyed me suspiciously, determining whether or not I was being sincere.“You really don’t know, do you?” He seemed genuinely surprised.
I shrugged, wishing that I could tear my gaze away from his and look anywhere but into those eyes.
“But you are,” he declared softly. “You shine like the sun and you move like water. Your eyes are the perfect mix of gray and brown, like fog in the woods, and you smell like lilacs in the summer. I think if you laughed, it would sound like music.”
If anyone else had said something like that to me, I probably would’ve smiled and written them off as either a total dork or a total nut job. But not with him, not the way he said it. He was enchanting and I was enchanted.
Even though his poetic words stirred something inside me, bringing long dead things to life, it was his eyes that told the real story. They promised that he meant everything he’d said and that he was just as intrigued by and attracted to me as I was him.
My lungs seized, trapping air inside the painfully tight walls of my chest. I didn’t know what to say. I had no such elegant prose to explain the way he made me feel when he looked at me with those hypnotic eyes. I couldn’t even really make it make sense to myself, so telling someone else was hopeless.
But I could feel it. Oh, how I could feel it.
“Your battery’s dead,” he stated flatly.
“I-I know,” I admitted.
“Let me walk you home. You can get it fixed tomorrow.” He stood, holding the door open wide.
He held out his hand and I took it. It was cool and a little rough, but attractively so. When I stood, we were less than a foot apart. The words of gratitude I’d been about to speak died on my tongue. My insides were warm and tingly and tightly focused on him, and I fell mute in the face of his nearness.
Though he was a few inches taller than my five foot six frame, he was not so tall that I would have trouble touching my lips to his. All I’d have to do is stretch up on my toes and lean forward just a little bit…
Logically, the thought ended with our mouths locked in a kiss, a fiery one that made my knees weak. Shaking off the image, I was flustered by how much I wanted that kiss to happen, exactly as I’d seen it, passion and all.
As if he could read my thoughts, his eyes dropped to my mouth and stayed there for a nerve-racking minute before they rose once more to meet mine.
“Let me get your bag,” he said, leaning past me to reach inside the car.
His body brushed mine and gooseflesh broke out all along my arms and legs. I held my breath and closed my eyes against the onslaught of sensation that followed the simple contact. But closing my eyes was not the wisest choice.
On the backdrop of my lids, I had no trouble imagining where a kiss like that could lead—his endless eyes staring down into mine, his bare skin pressed to mine, desire rising hot and wild between us. It was so clear, this scene, that I might’ve seen it before in reality. Only I hadn’t.