He pulls out his phone at last. “Since you can’t be trusted, you better give me your number this time.”
I must black out from nerves, because the next thing I know, I’m sitting in class. I spend the entire hour daydreaming about him calling, asking me out, kissing me; about becoming one of the most popular girls in school, prom queen on the arm of the guaranteed prom king.
Yes, I am an utterly hopeless twat.
I’m so disgusted with myself that I intentionally leave my phone at home while I’m at work that night. It comes back to bite me in the ass when I get home.
Diana is curled up on the couch reading. She looks at me over her glasses, one eyebrow arched. “A boy called,” she says, then goes back to her book.
“What boy?” I demand.
“Chase something.”
I’m about to boil over with impatience. “Did you talk to him? Where’s my phone?”
“It’s on the table.” As I turn away, she finishes. “He wants you to call him back.”
I try not to show my eagerness as I walk to the table, but my heart is thumping hard enough to make me weak. I pick up my phone and go to my room. I stare at it. My heart will not stop pounding, but I’m afraid to call. I set down my phone and go take a shower. When I’m done, I sit on the edge of my bed, still wrapped in a towel. I catch my reflection—my hair is wet, little rivulets of water sliding from my hair down my neck and chest like thirsty snakes, burrowing under the towel and vanishing. My heart shaped face is scattered with freckles, my cheeks flushed from the water, my blue eyes bright. I’m not ugly. Maybe someday, someone will think I’m pretty. Who says it can’t be Chase London?
Before I lose my courage, I hit call. My heart starts beating overtime again as the phone rings, once, twice, three times. I almost hang up, but then it clicks on.
“Hello?” It’s a girl’s voice, breezy and cheerful.
Shit. I don’t know anything about this guy. Why shouldn’t he have a girl over? A girl who knows him well enough to answer his phone. It could be his sister, his cousin, or his girlfriend. My brain stops right there. I suddenly can’t think of a single thing to say.
“Chase will be right here, hold on.” In the background her sweet voice says, “Someone called your phone.” A pause. “I don’t know. She’s not in your phone.”
So he didn’t even save my number, just punched it in.
“Hey,” he says into the phone, his voice different somehow, more like the boy I met last summer and less like the smart-ass from school.
“Oh. Hi.” I sound the same as always—like I’m having trouble breathing. What the hell, I sound like an idiot. I silently berate myself for being such a total freak around him. I’m normally a rational, intelligent human being.
“Oh, hey, Sky. I talked to your mom earlier. Nice lady.” I can hear the laughter in his voice, and I vow to murder my aunt for whatever she said to him.
“Whatever,” I say. “Were you wanting to research tonight? Because I just got off work, and it’s kinda late.” Switching into school mode, the only way I ever talk to people outside my family, calms me.
“You work?” he asks, like it never crossed his mind that some people have lives that don’t revolve around his needs.
“Yes,” I say, drawing out the word. Even when Dad was around, I would’ve gotten a job to pay my way. But people around here are weird about that kind of thing.
“Cool,” he says. “Where at?”
“The mall.”
“Does that still exist?”
I can’t help but laugh. “Yeah, barely.”
“You have off tomorrow?”
“No.” I wonder if he can hear my heart hammering through the phone. It sounds deafening to me.
“You should know that I take my grades very seriously,” he says. “This is a term paper, which means you’re stuck with me for a while. So we might as well get it over with sooner rather than later.”
I’m not sure whether he’s saying he wants to get it over with as much as I do, that he’s made a mistake by asking to work with me. All I know is that suddenly, the thought of not having his infuriating, addictive attention isn’t quite so alluring.
“Friday night,” I say.