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“Do it with tongue this time!” his twin brother, Todd, added. He wore a similar T-shirt, but his hair was tamed, flopping over his forehead and making him look like a puppy dog.
As was often the best tactic with the Idiot Twins, I ignored them.
“Can I talk to you for a second? Alone?” I asked Jake.
“Definitely.” He took my hand and flicked Trevor on the forehead as he led me away.
“Ow!” Trevor whined. Then he turned around and flicked Todd the exact same way. Before we’d gotten five yards toward the corner, the two of them were wrestling on the ground and everyone was gathering to cheer.
Welcome to Orchard Hill High.
Jake tugged me around the corner and laid another kiss on me. This one was slow and deep and definitely involved tongue. My brain started to filter in images of Chloe, but I pushed them back and repeated three words to myself.
I love him. I love him. I love him.
When we finally came up for air, Jake hugged me close for a second and I listened to his heart pounding beneath the soft cotton of his navy-and-white striped T-shirt. By the way he was deliberately slowing his breathing, I could tell he was relieved. He stroked my hair down my back and I smiled slightly, relishing the moment.
“So you’re not mad anymore?” he asked finally.
I leaned back so I could see him. “No. Not mad.” It was a lie, but a white lie. I felt less mad this morning, which gave me hope that I’d feel even less mad tomorrow morning. I bunched up a bit of his shirt, then let it go and smoothed it out over his stomach. “I thought about it last night, like, the whole night.”
“Tell me about it,” he said, rolling his eyes.
I chose not to ponder what part he’d been thinking about the whole night. He actually did look kind of tired. His skin was waxy and his eyes were a little bloodshot. But it didn’t matter. He was the hottest thing I’d ever seen. Those junior girls who’d been watching us were probably plotting my assassination right now. Everyone wanted Jake Graydon. Even Chloe Appleby, apparently. That was just the way it worked around here. And I couldn’t exactly blame them. But he was my boyfriend, and he was going to stay that way.
“And I realized I couldn’t be a hypocrite,” I said.
His brow knit, confused. “What do you mean?”
I looked away and lifted a shoulder. A school bus pulled up at the end of the long line of cars along the drive. The door opened with a hiss, spewing forth laughing sophomores and timid-looking freshmen.
“I mean, I did … stuff with Cooper this summer too,” I said, fiddling with my own fingertips. His jaw clenched, but he said nothing. This sort of icky triumphant feeling bubbled up inside of me, which made me feel like a total jerk. But is it that wrong that I thought he deserved to feel jealous too, on some level? Just this once? “You were right. We weren’t together. So unless you’re go
Jake nodded, looking less than pleased. I bet he was wondering what “stuff” I’d done with Cooper. Good. Let him wonder.
“I know this is go
Jake blew out a sigh. “Thank God,” he said dramatically, tipping his head back and leaning back against the brick wall. “I swear I thought I was going to have to kidnap you and make you run away with me or something. I had us living in a hut on the beach in Mexico by next weekend.”
I laughed and grabbed both his hands, lacing our fingers together. “Is that what you were up all night thinking about? Your kidnapping plot?”
“Yeah. Why? What did you think I was thinking about?” he asked i
The warning bell rang and a couple of kids shrieked as they ran for the sophomore/freshman entrance. Jake and I exchanged a look of dread as the last reverberations died away. I didn’t want to go in there. I didn’t want to deal.
“How were we going to get to this beach exactly?” I asked.
He smirked and slung his arm over my shoulders. “I was thinking private jet. If you’re go
As we made our way back around to the front of the building, our steps got slower and slower. But no matter how hard we tried, eventually we arrived. Chloe and Faith were just getting up from their bench and walking inside.
“Hey, guys,” Chloe said, glancing at me uncertainly.
They were the first words Chloe had spoken to me since telling me off at Sha
“Hi.” I stared at Chloe’s back as we followed her inside, trying to sort through how I felt. Who was she in this scenario? An unlucky girl who got pregnant by mistake, or the evil slut who went after my man? Was it possible to be both?
“I cannot believe you guys skipped Co
Chloe turned green and practically flung herself inside. Jake’s grip on my hand tightened like a vice. Faith giggled and skipped ahead of us, and Jake grabbed the door before it could slam into my shoulder.
“Thanks,” I said, trying to sound normal and failing miserably.
“Anytime,” he replied, matching my tone.
Our expressions were grim as we stepped over the threshold together, hand in hand. This was it. My senior year. It was go
jake
Jump, Java, and Wail! was packed for a Wednesday night. A crowd of sophomores sat in the corner making ridiculous noise like they were the only people in the place. Probably drunk with freedom over being allowed out on a school night. I kind of remembered the feeling. Now here I was, working on a school night, whispering to my girlfriend about the girl whose oven I’d bu
I wished I was a sophomore again.
“So you didn’t talk to her? Not once?” Ally was saying.
“Nope. We have, like, one class together and every time I even looked at her she looked away.” I wiped out a wet mug with my towel and added the mug to the stack behind the counter. “I guess she’s avoiding me.”
“Huh.” Ally toyed with a box of sugar packets, mixing the white in with the brown. I was going to have to fix that later. Her dad, my manager, was kind of OCD about the sugar. “I wonder if she—”
“So what’s up, you two? How was the first day?”
Ally’s father walked up behind me and grasped my shoulder. I instantly stood up straight. Ally stopped talking and her face turned red. But her dad hadn’t overheard. Otherwise he wouldn’t have had that big-ass smile on.
“Hey, Dad,” she said, getting up on her knees on the stool to give him a hug over the counter. “It was … good.”
“Soccer practice was rough,” I added.
“How’s the team this year?” he asked, glancing up as an older couple walked through the door. Chase, the sixth-year college “student” at the register, took their order, which wasn’t that complicated, so I stayed where I was. Ally sat back down again.