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Hannah narrowed her eyes on the other girl and crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re wasting time, Ava.”
Ava moved to the chair in front of her desk and sat down and focused on Hannah, a resigned look on her face. “Ethan’s been coming here for years, right?”
“Sure.”
“So has Josh, but Josh has never noticed I’m anything more than an inanimate object, like a stick of furniture.”
“But Ethan has?” Hannah asked, a trickle of excitement for her friend running through her. Ethan was hot. Hot with a capital H. And of course, it didn’t exactly hurt Hannah’s feelings to know that Josh hadn’t noticed her friend. Inside, she was smiling about that.
“Only recently. Well, maybe for a year, I guess? About a year ago, I started to notice that his gaze would linger, you know? Or if I was in the room, he’d drag his feet and not leave the very second that Ty would. Stuff like that. Nothing more happened, he never tried to talk to me or anything and I really just thought it was my imagination, you know?”
“Okay?” Hannah gave a verbal nudge.
“Okay, well, it wasn’t my imagination, and a few weeks ago—”
Ava’s voice trailed off and Hannah came to her knees in a rush of motion and threw her hands on her hips. “Tell me, now! I’m dying here!”
“This is embarrassing, Hannah. You have to understand … I was mortified … and you better never tell anybody, okay?”
“Of course not!”
“Okay.” Ava swallowed and took a deep breath. “It was during the summer … before school started. Mom and Dad were at work and Ty should have been at work, too. And I thought he was.” Ava looked at Hannah and shook her head at whatever she was remembering, bright red color spilling into her cheeks. “Hannah, I never prance around half-naked—”
“Oh my God.”
“Yeah. I was standing in the bathroom, blow-drying my hair so I couldn’t hear much of anything.” Ava put her face in her hands and shuddered before continuing, “I was in my bra and panties.”
“Holy crap.”
“Yeah. The bathroom door was wide open and Ethan walked from the living room into the hallway and saw me. I saw someone come in and almost had a heart attack. And when I realized it was him—”
“What happened?”
“I must have turned off the blow-dryer, but I don’t remember doing it. I just froze … staring at him. And shit, Hannah … he didn’t turn and leave.”
Hannah was almost in a trance, picturing what her friend was describing. “What’d he do?”
“For a few seconds he stood completely still and then he walked straight toward me.”
“No, he did not!” Hannah exclaimed on a gasp.
“Yeah, he did.”
“And?”
“He stood in the doorway without taking his eyes off me. I mean they were glued to me. Like running up and down my entire body, you know?”
Hannah couldn’t get her throat to work so she stayed silent and waited for her friend to continue.
“Then he put his hands on the doorframe and leaned toward me and he looked as pissed as shit. Just like he did when we showed up at the party … that same exact expression.”
“And?”
“And then he said, and I quote, ‘Do you know how to close a fucking door?’”
“Oh my God,” Hannah said.
Ava let out a breath. “I know, right?”
“And then?” Hannah asked.
“I was pretty much in shock and stayed silent, and then I heard Ty coming in from the back door, and Ethan moved away and slammed the bathroom door shut and that was it.”
“Holy crap.”
“I know.”
Hannah stared at her friend for a moment while Ave looked steadily back. “So did anything happen between that day and then last night?” Hannah asked.
“No, not really. Just a lot more of those searing looks of his … a whole lot more and a whole lot hotter.”
“And then last night? When we got to the party and he stood blocking our way in? That was the first of … whatever it is?”
“Yeah.”
“So, what happened after Josh pulled me outside?”
“I pushed past Ethan and went inside—”
“That was brave!”
Ava grinned. “Yeah, I know, right? I was pretty proud of myself. I saw Ty and Kayla and went to where they were hanging out, but Ethan followed me. He just kind of hung around, almost like he was guarding me, you know? He didn’t say much and then Ty took off with Kayla and told Ethan to take me home and you know the rest.”
“I don’t know what happened after he followed you in here last night. I heard arguing.”
“Oh, we argued, all right,” Ava agreed.
“Did he kiss you?”
“No.”
“Damn it,” Hannah said on an exhale.
“I know.”
“What was said?”
“He immediately started bitching about me not being careful, being too young to go to a party like that, blah, blah, blah.”
“What’d you say?”
“I told him it wasn’t any of his business and that I already had a brother and didn’t need another one and he needed to leave me alone.”
“And?”
“There was a minute there when I thought he might, you know, I don’t know, grab me or something, but he didn’t. He just said, ‘whatever’, and then he slammed out of my room and went into Ty’s.”
“Whoa. Did Ty ever come home last night?”
“He came slinking in around six this morning, I think.”
“So do you like Ethan?”
Ava raised a single eyebrow and amusedly asked, “Really, Hannah? Have you seen the guy? Or are you totally blind to anyone who isn’t Josh Turner?”
Hannah ignored the qu
estion. “Then we need a plan. You know, to push Ethan into something.”
Ava began shaking her head. “Uh-uh, no way. I’m not that brave … or suicidal. I’ll just sit here and drool whenever I see him, but I’m not going to be in on any ‘plan’.
“Okay, I get that, but you’re taking a chance and he might slip through your fingers.”
Ava narrowed her eyes as if she didn’t care for that scenario but she didn’t respond to the ploy, and instead, changed the subject. “What about you and Josh? What happened?”
“Just more of the same. He harped on about how young I am, kissed me some more, and then reminded me again that we can’t date, even though he wants to.” Hannah wasn’t ready to tell Ava everything that had happened between Josh and Jesse at the party. It was highly doubtful that Jesse would ever come into Ava’s radius, so Hannah wasn’t afraid her friend could get hurt. But she didn’t want her to know everything that had gone down the night before, or how scary Josh had been when he’d been threatening Jesse.
“Well then, here we are. Kind of in the same boat. What are we going to do about it?”
Hannah smiled. “Today? Forget about it and go shopping ‘til my mom comes?”
Of course, there wasn’t really any place in town the girls could go shopping, but they had a few hours to burn until Hannah’s mom came to pick her up, so they walked the few blocks over to Main Street and went inside the general store.
Even though Hannah loved the ranch, the wide-open spaces and the swimming pool her father had put in the year before, the ranch was secluded. It was nice when she spent the night with Ava. Since the family lived in town, the girls could walk everywhere and often did.
They spent about forty-five minutes browsing through the make-up and magazines. They made a few selections, and Ava paid first and went to wait for Hannah outside on the sidewalk. Mr. Rigsby was ringing up Hannah’s purchases when she felt another customer walk up behind her to get in line to pay.
“That’ll be twenty-one-seventy-five, Miss McIntyre,” Mr. Rigsby said.
Hannah felt a moment of panic and embarrassment when she realized she had gone over twenty dollars. It was even worse knowing she was about to hold up the line behind her.
