“Family friend,” he repeats, drawing out each syllable as his eyes crinkle.
I resist the urge to apologize or explain. I’m not dating Cade, and Jensen is… Jensen.
We stop outside my classroom and Cade brushes my arm as he tells me goodbye. He’s sweet, and I’m sure if my family met him, they’d love him. It’d be nice to be able to date. To be kissed. To experience the highs and lows of teenage love like the rest of my classmates.
I think about dating all the time. Sometimes, in my daydreams, I’m someone else. I’m not AUB. I’m a “normal” teenage girl. I date and drive fast and break into liquor cabinets and stay out late and flirt and attend parties. It’s my super-secret second life, lived out only in my fantasies.
And as much as Jensen grates on my nerves, and despite the fact that he’s part of the family, I thought about him last night. I fell asleep imagining the way his lips would feel against mine, and the way his body could pin me against the bed and make me his in all sorts of ways. I pulled out the old Harlequin novel stashed between my mattress and box springs and flipped to page one-seventy-six, reading the steamiest scene in the book and pretending it was us.
I shake my head and snap out of it, take my seat in the front row, and flip my notebook open. I can’t think about him. And it’s all kinds of wrong. He’s my brother now, and that will never change. Our parents are eternally sealed to one another.
CHAPTER 5
“You can drop me off at A1 Auto Repair.” I climb into Waverly’s car after school gets out. She’s been waiting a good twenty minutes, and she’s clearly pissed. I can’t help that I got cornered on my way out by a whole gaggle of junior girls trying to flirt with me. They couldn’t flirt their way out of a paper bag, but that’s neither here nor there. “You know where that is?”
“For future reference, my schedule will not revolve around your social life.” Her eyes dart to the clock on her dash before she slams her car into drive. I haven’t had a chance to buckle up. “Where were you the last block? I thought we had AP English together?”
“I swapped English out for another art class.” I roll down the window. It might be April and sixty degrees outside, but her car is a fucking sauna. What is it with girls claiming they’re freezing all the time?
“Don’t you need English to graduate?” Her words are fast and choppy, as if she is personally offended I dropped that class. That or she’s still mega-pissed about having to wait on me.
“Nope.” I take in a sharp breath of heated air that glazes my lungs with a soup-like coating. “Just needed chemistry. Everything else is elective. Plus, I took AP English last year.”
She snaps her gaze toward me and then returns to the road. I know what people see when they look at me. My outside and insides contrast. I throw people for a loop. I’m smart, and I’m a smartass. It works for me.
“Oh,” she says. She squints into the afternoon sun, then snaps the visor down and grips the steering wheel.
“You okay? You seem kind of…”
I don’t know what she seems like. I’ve known her for all of a couple of days. All I know is she walks around with a holier-than-though attitude, and when she’s not busy prancing around as Mark Miller’s golden child, she’s huffing and sighing and keeping her opinions to herself like she’s forbidden to speak them.
“It’s not good to keep things in.” I stretch my arm across her small car, hooking it behind the driver’s seat.
“I’m not keeping anything in. I’m dealing with everything in my own way. Thank you for your concern.”
It sounds like a canned response, and I don’t buy it. “You’re an angry girl.”
More like sexually frustrated.
“How would you know?” She spits her words with a wrinkled nose.
“Told you earlier. I’m smarter than everybody else.”
“Hate to break it to you, Jensen, but you’re not.”
“Ouch.” I clap my hand across my chest as if she’s just aimed and shot at me. “I doubt you’ll be calling me stupid when I’m tutoring you for your calculus final.”
“How do you know I’m taking calc?”
“I know everything about everything, kid. Tried to warn you. I’m all-knowing and all-powerful. Omnipotent. O-m-n-i-p—”
She jabs an elbow into my side and retrieves it just as quickly, which tells me she’s not a girl used to being physical with anybody. This girl has a shit ton of pent up anger and frustration. If she needs to take it out on me, I’ll gladly be her human punching bag. I don’t mind when it’s going toward a good cause.
“Saw you walk into your class on my way to Mixed Media. Our classrooms are down the hall from each other. Relax.” I rub the dull ache in my rib cage until it subsides. She’s got to do better than that next time. That was weak.
Waverly pulls up to a mechanic’s shop with gray cinderblock walls and five bays. A yellow sign with black and red lettering says, “A1 Auto Repair.” She slams on her brakes, which I’m guessing is her way of telling me to get the fuck out. God, I’d kill to hear her say “fuck” or “damn.” Or even “hell.”
For a second, I debate asking if she’ll come pick me up in a couple hours, but I don’t dare. If looks could kill…
“Thanks for the ride.” She peels out of the parking lot before I have a chance to shut the door behind me. “All right, then.”