Shut Out

“It’s not about teasing, remember?”

“I won’t tease him…. Well, not much.” She took another puff on her cigarette. “What about you? Are you sure you can handle this, Lissa? Being alone with Randy and not jumping his bones? I mean, he is pretty fine. Will you really be able to say no?”

“Trust me, I’ll be all right,” I said. “Randy’s hot, but it isn’t like he’s Adonis.”

She looked skeptical. “Whatever you say. He may not be a sex god, but I know you like it.”

I blushed. “God, Chloe. Can we not talk about this?”

“What?” she asked. “Come on. If you’re mature enough to have sex, you should be mature enough to joke about it with your super-fabulous best friend.”

I didn’t say anything to that.

We pulled into the library parking lot and I quickly undid my seat belt.

“Have fun at work,” Chloe said.

I watched as she put out her cigarette and left the butt in her ashtray. “Doesn’t your mother see those and get pissed?” I had to ask.

“Psh. Nah. She bought me the pack.” Chloe shrugged and gestured to the glove compartment. “She swore she’d quit for real last time. But after the divorce, she asked me to go out and buy her a pack. I told her she could only have one if she bought me one, too. I figured she’d be like, ‘No way in hell,’ or something, but she just tossed me a twenty and said it was okay.”

“My dad would kill me,” I said.

“Eh. I’m eighteen now. Even if she didn’t like it, there isn’t much she can do.” Chloe started messing with the radio dial, and I climbed out of the convertible.

“Thanks for the lift.”

“You know it’s not a problem. See you tomorrow.”

I slammed the car door and waved over my shoulder as I made my way up the steps to the front entrance.

“About time,” Je

“I’m five minutes early,” I told her.

She chose to ignore this, of course, and jabbed a finger at the cart of children’s books beside her. “All of those need to be shelved right away,” she informed me, tossing her curtain of cherry-red hair over her shoulder. “Hurry. There are some kids up there now. What if someone is looking for one of those books and can’t find it on the shelf? Chop, chop.”

Je

I grabbed a few of the adult fiction books that had accidentally been placed on the children’s cart (Ha! Je

“Oh, by the way,” Je

“Who?” I asked.

“Some high school kid.” Je

“Name?” I pressed.

“Can’t remember. But he’s hot. Don’t let that distract you from working, though. I don’t want it to become a problem.”

I rolled my eyes when she wasn’t looking.

“He’s late,” Je

I was about to respond when the library doors opened behind me.

“Sorry I’m late. I had to talk to my soccer coach about making up practice.”

My whole body went rigid. I knew that voice.

“There you are,” Je

She’d excuse it? Je

“Sorry,” Je

“Cash.”

“Right. Good. Cash, this is Lissa. You’ll be working together to keep this place in top order.”

I had to keep myself from blushing as I turned to face him for the first time since he’d walked into the library. I was a

“Hey,” he said.

“Hello.”

“You two stop having a staring contest and get to work. Take those books and shelve them in the children’s section,” Je

“I know where the children’s section is,” I told her.

“Cash doesn’t, though. Now hurry up. What if some poor little kid is looking for The Velveteen Rabbit and can’t find it because you guys took so long putting these books on the shelves?”

I sighed and grabbed one end of the cart.

“Elevator,” Cash said as I pulled the cart toward the stairs.

“What?” I looked over my shoulder at him.

“The elevator,” he repeated, gesturing to our left. “You know there is one right here, don’t you?”

“Um, yes,” I said slowly. Of course I knew. I was here all the time. I knew the place like the back of my hand. “But it’s awful. It takes forever just to get to the second floor.”

“Maybe,” Cash said. “But that cart is going to be a bitch to get up the stairs. It looks really heavy. Let’s just use the elevator.”

As much as I hated to admit it—and to spend any amount of time stuck in an enclosed space with Cash—it really would be easier to move the books upstairs in the elevator. And who knew? Maybe they’d fixed it. I hadn’t used the thing in months.

“Fine,” I agreed.

Cash helped me roll the cart into the ancient, microscopic elevator. Now that I was inside again, with the doors closing, I remembered why I’d hated it the first time. Aside from being slow, it was also kind of creepy.

My fingers tightened around the handle of the cart as the elevator trembled, making horrific scraping sounds as it slid upward at a snail’s pace. Of course, my anxiousness wasn’t helped by the fact that Cash was standing just centimeters away from me, the limited room forcing us uncomfortably close to each other.

“So… you and Je

I looked up from the titles on the cart, narrowing my eyes at him. “What?”

“Je

“How?”

“I don’t know. She just reminds me of you. You’re both kind of control freaks—not in a bad way or anything, but… You haven’t noticed?”

“No.”

“Huh.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s just me, then. But she really reminds me of you. I just remember when we were talking at that party over the summer, you said you had a thing about order and…” He trailed off. I could feel the heat rising on my face when he mentioned that night. “Anyway,” he continued, “she seems like she’s a lot like you.”

I focused hard on keeping my reply cool, free of any emotion.

“You just met her,” I reminded him. “And really, you don’t know me that well, so you can’t make comparisons. Especially not between me and Je

“You sure about that?” he teased, elbowing me playfully. Flirting, the way he did with every girl.

Despite his romance-novel-worthy name, Cash Sterling was anything but a leading man. We’d gone to the same school since kindergarten, and in all those years, he’d never once had a girlfriend. Hell, as far as I knew, he’d never even hooked up with a girl. But he was a flirt. Chloe called him “the ultimate tease” because he was good-looking, friendly, and charming, and he led all the girls on but never pursued any of them.