Square dancing for an hour with Emma Burke is worth being pummeled in a thousand dodgeball games.
Chapter 2
Andrew
Square dancing lasted a week. For five days, Emma Burke and I counted lines of teenagers to make sure we both met in the middle. We never talked about it. There was never a formal plan. It was just something we both did—a silent commitment.
Then Monday came, and we started weightlifting for two weeks. I only saw Emma in brief trips to the drinking fountain while the girls were in the other wing of the gym, tumbling.
I’m pretty sure Mr. Crest thinks I’m diabetic, because I’m thirsty all the time.
I don’t have afternoon classes today. There’s an event at the college, so the Excel Program is getting the afternoon off. I intend on spending those extra hours learning about Emma.
Dwayne said I could sit in his classroom, since he has a prep hour for the last hour of the day. But I don’t know where Emma is, and part of me wants to stand outside to look for her. I don’t have my own car yet, just my mom’s or Dwayne’s when they let me borrow it—so I can’t even hang out in the parking lot and offer her a ride home.
I keep glancing through the sliver of a window on Dwayne’s door. Every noise I hear in the hall draws my attention.
“What has you so jumpy?” he asks after my twentieth peek through the glass.
I look at him, my heart a little stuck, my chest tight. This is awkward, and I feel edgy—like I’m caught doing something I shouldn’t. We don’t talk much—Dwayne and me. He was always closer with Owen. I think because Owen had so many struggles. I’m just the smart, quiet one.
“Do you know Emma Burke?” I ask, finally. I want to vomit. I don’t talk about girls. Not to Dwayne. Not to anyone really. There’s never been a girl to talk about.
Dwayne tosses the marker onto the ledge of his whiteboard then kicks his desk chair around until it’s facing him so he can sit. He glides in it to his desk in small scoots, laughing under his breath. He’s laughing at me. Because I’m ridiculous.
“Yeah, I know Emma,” he says.
I nod at him, my lips tight, then I glance back out the window, figuring now that I’m good and mortified, I’m sure to see her. When I look back at Dwayne, he’s still smiling, but he’s looking at his grade book and tapping his marker on his desk, not wanting to make me feel any more embarrassed. We both drift back to the silence of before, except now there’s a ginormous cloud of Andrew likes Emma floating in the fucking air. I’m sure this will be a late-night chat topic for him and my mom.
Awesome. Fucking…awesome.
The tick of the seconds on the clock above his desk is loud, and I start counting with it rather than checking the actual time—testing myself to see how close I come to being right. With two minutes left before the end of the day, Dwayne slides his chair out, letting the rollers carry it to the wall behind him when he stands, and he walks over to the desk I’ve commandeered by the door.
“Here,” he says, dropping his keys in front of me.
I slide them in a circle with my finger, then gaze up at him.
“Your mom will come pick me up on her way home. I have grading to do, and I don’t want you to have to stay here. Besides…don’t you need to give someone a ride home?” He’s teasing me a little, and I kind of hate it. But, I also want to hug this man who is sort of the only father figure I have. Because yeah…there’s someone I need to give a ride home to.
I stand, untangling my long legs from the small desk that doesn’t suit me, and pull my gray beanie back on my head.
“She’s in room one-twenty-seven,” he says, smirking, but only for a second, never fully looking at me. He turns around, and I slip out his door just before the bell sounds, hauling ass to her room on the other end of the hall.
I get to her door seconds before she steps through it, and I lean against the wall on the other side, bending my knee and looking natural. Natural; I look like a fucking creeper. I’m rethinking my pose when she surprises me, kicking her foot into mine. This is our thing, it seems.
“What are you doing here, Harper?”
I wince when she asks that way. People call us Harper, and it’s not usually a good thing. If she’s calling me that, it means people have been talking to her about me—about Owen. About my father’s mental illness, probably his suicide, and maybe James’s drug habits and the way he died last year. The town has been more respectful over James, and I think the fact that Owen landed a basketball scholarship shut them up a little too. But rumors and gossip are hard to kill completely. And us Harper boys—we make headline-worthy gossip. Owen may be the golden college boy now, but he’s also the troublemaker with a rap sheet.