For reasons unknown, seeing Alec rattled me, even more than when Eddie Marks had sat next to me in geometry last year. I couldn’t make sense of what was happening, which left me feeling frazzled. So much so that I was halfway across the room before I realized I’d abandoned Alec by the door.
I spun back around. “Um, you can sit there if you want,” I said, pointing to the booth where my books and bag were. “I’ll only be a few minutes.”
In the kitchen, I pulled everything I needed from the industrial-size fridge—ice cream, milk, blueberries, maple syrup—and set it out by the drink mixer. As I worked on digging a huge scoop of vanilla out of the frozen tub, I wondered what Alec needed to talk to me about. Whatever it was, it must have been important if he was willing to meet me in person twice to discuss it. What if he thought I was the one telling the tabloids all those crazy, made-up stories about how we met? Oh crap, maybe that meant he was mad at me.
But he didn’t look mad, I reminded myself.Stop freaking out.
Although I could make a blueberry milk shake blindfolded, I measured the exact amount of each ingredient to give myself a few minutes to calm down. When I returned with two bluish-purple drinks in hand, Alec was listening to his music. He yanked out hisheadphones and dropped them around his neck as I set both glasses on the table.
“Thanks,” he said, pulling one of the shakes toward him. The tower of whipped cream on top wobbled.
I slid onto the bench across from him and smoothed out my shirt.
“Pretty good, huh?” I asked when he took his first sip. “I love blueberry-flavored anything, but milk shakes are my absolute favorite. The problem is most places don’t make blueberry ones, so when I started working here, I convinced Miss Daisy to add them to the menu. There’s this ice cream place down the street from my house that makes them, but theirs were terrible. The ratio was all off—too much vanilla, not enough berry. So I gave them my recipe, and guess what? They totally use it now too!”
Why. Am. I. Rambling?
Alec offered me an amused look when I finally finished. “Your recipe iskiller,” he said, using my earlier description.
Too flustered to drink any of my shake, I swirled the straw back and forth, making a mess out of the whipped cream. “Thanks.”
I couldn’t tell if he was teasing me or not. Normally, I was good at reading people, but with Alec, it was impossible. I could study him all day long and still not be able to crack his reserved front. The only thing I could make out for sure was the unmistakable intelligence that flickered in his eyes.
And crap. I’d been staring at him for a whole ten seconds.
“So about yesterday,” I said with a start.Might as well swallow my embarrassment and cut to the chase.“You mentioned there was something you wanted to talk about?”
“Right.” He hesitated, and the anticipation nearly drove me mad. “I wanted to say I’m sorry. Both for any trouble the media attention has caused you and for what that one magazine said about you—”
“Not being as pretty as Violet?” I finished, unabashed. I wouldn’t take to heart what some poor excuse of a journalist wrote in an attempt to create drama. I had tougher skin than that.
He coughed. “Er, yeah.” After a quick pause, he added, “It’s not true.”
I blushed. “You drove all the way to my house to apologize?”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“No, but most people would have called.” After all, I had given him my number…
It was Alec’s turn to blush. “My mother always said it’s important to apologize to someone in person.”
Ohmygod. A gentleman who isn’t embarrassed to talk about his mom?
“Plus,” he added, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t like talking on the phone, and you deserved more than a text.”
“Alec, you have nothing to be sorry for.” I wanted to reach across the table so he could feel the truth behind my words, but I tucked my hands under my butt so I didn’t do anything stupid. “For the record, I didn’t believe any of it. What they were saying about me in the magazines, I mean. I don’t care about tabloids.”
Which was ninety-nine point nine percent true. The only details in the articles that remotely piqued my interest were the bits about Violet being Alec’s girlfriend. Part of me wanted to ask him about her, to clarify whether or not she was his girlfriend, but the other part of me didn’t want to hear his answer.
Alec didn’t bother to hide his relief. “Good.”
I sank back into the vinyl cushion of the booth, feeling that same release of tension. Somehow, while making the milk shakes, I’d turned whatever I thought he was going to say into something negative. In reality, he was worried about how the rumors and gossip had affected me. That along with his apology proved to me that Mom was wrong about him. Alec was a genuinely nice guy.
But now that he’d said his piece, I wondered if he would leave. He had no other reason to stay. My heart dropped at the thought. I didn’t want him to go.
Say something, Felicity, I thought. Anything.
Well, maybe not anything. I’d already humiliated myself enough by going on about blueberry milk shakes. The problem was that a lock of Alec’s impeccably gelled hair had come loose, no doubt a result of the rain. It fell right above his eyes, brushing the top of his eyelashes, and made it impossible for me to concentrate.
