Beck’s head tipped down. I imagined him grinning at his hands, preparing.
Carter rose from the booth and headed toward the front, where a small line had formed. I stared—glared—at the back of Beck’s head, waiting for him to look over his shoulder.
And then he did. With all the nonchalance in the world, Beck turned in his seat, the booth cracking with the movement. He laid his elbow over the booth partition, his electric eyes finding mine. Hewassmirking, and his lips parted to speak.
I didn’t let him. “Get lost,” I all but growled.
Beck slid his ringed fingers into his hair, leaning his head against his palm. “Don’t wanna.”
I actually gaped at the childish response.
“Quite ambitious.” Beck’s eyebrows came together as he smiled. “Only a dweeb like Pebble Brain could make that sound like an insult.”
P-E-B-B-L-E B-R-A-I-N.It was almost infuriating how long it took me to realize it was a play onPembleton.“What are you even doing here?” Outrage caused my voice to go high. “Why would you show up?—”
“Didn’t you listen?” Beck parted his hair to expose his ear, giving it a tap. Every piece of him moved solazily, as if he wasn’t fighting against the clock of Carter returning to the booth. “I said I’d remind you what it’s like to really want someone.”
The words burned me now just as they had before, the audacity of the outrageous statement like a fire poker that’d been sitting in the coals. “Leave, Beckham. I mean it.”
“Don’t. Wanna.”
“I don’tcare.” I watched as Beck’s eyes went past me, no doubt to where Carter stood in line. The thought of Carter seeing Beck here, unraveling pieces of the truth I’d buried, caused my stomach to cramp again. “It’s highly inappropriate that you?—”
“Highly inappropriate. So you reallydotalk like that all the time?” He wrinkled his nose. “This kind of feels more like an interview than a date. I’ve only been sitting down a minute, and I’m ready to fall asleep.”
I could’ve told him how Carter and I agreed that this wasn’t a date. Could’ve. But didn’t. “As if you’d know what a date looks like,” I threw out, a dull, desperate jab. “Poor Lydia.”
“Lydia?”
“You’re using her to make me jealous, aren’t you?” That was the only reasoning I could come up with as to why she would’ve sat on his lap. Because someone like Beckham Jennings would’ve hated someone like Lydia Johnson.
A part of me thought Beck would mock the question, but he just shook his head. “Jealousy doesn’t work on you.” Then his eyes roamed my face. “But you know it drives mecrazy.”
Beck leaned forward even further, lowering his head, tossing his blond hair from his eyes. My heart hammeredin my chest, the hardest it had beaten all day. Even when Carter picked me up for my first date ever, it hadn’t raced this fast. But with Beck across from me, I was struck, hard, by the boy I once knew. The boy who’d had darker hair and a softer expression, but those eyes. The ones I’d loved. They were wild. Exactly the same.
And the same tumbling feeling that came whenever I’d won his sole attention. It also felt exactly the same.
“Have you looked at his mouth yet?”
I flinched back. “Why would I look at his?—”
“Have you imagined kissing him?”
I very nearly hurled my iced espresso at his smug face. “What iswrongwith you?”
Beck’s laughter was too loud, nearly disrupting the poet on the microphone. “When you want someone, you’ll look at their mouth. You’ll imagine kissing them.” Pointedly, his gaze dropped to my lips. “You won’t be able to help it.”
There was something strange about watching someone watch your mouth. Watching their eyes trace your cupid’s bow, glancing across your bottom lip like a fingertipped touch itself. There was something strange about that person being Beckham Jennings. He’d looked at my lips like this once before, and just like warmth had flushed down the back of my neck then, it swamped me now. My bolero became sweltering hot.
Look away, I thought, unsure if it was directed at myself or toward him. The letters choked me.L-O-O-K A-W-A-Y.
Unbidden, shamefully, my eyes dropped to his smirking mouth.
But Beck turned almost immediately, as if he’d heard my desperate thoughts. He tucked his arm back over the partition and turned back around.
I knew what that meant, but I still jumped when Carter set down a ceramic plate on the tabletop. “They had banana nut muffins,” he said cheerfully, and when I looked up, I found his gaze focused on the other plate he held. Another muffin. He set it down. “I figured that was good.”
I trembled in the booth from the leftover adrenaline, the letters in my head unable to quiet down. I pinched my fingers under the table. “Maybe we should just head out,” I said. “Maybe the fresh air would help.”Fresh air and distance from Beckham Jennings.
