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This girl. I swear. She could eat salad one day and chili cheese fries the next. Then she went from a calorie-loaded latte to a diet cola. She was the ultimate conundrum.
And every time I discovered more pieces of her puzzle, I realized I liked her even more than the day before.
Which was dangerous.
So, I made an exit not long after that, knowing I was tempting fate. It was one thing to hang around her in order to ensure Patricia wasn’t picking on her and try to make it look as if I didn’t care all the much about her while I got to learn more in the process. But it was another to flat-out fall for her. So yeah, I fled.
Only to find myself buying her a latte and sitting with her in the grass before classes the following Tuesday morning, where we talked about my sister’s upcoming birthday and the horrors of face acne, of all things.
On Wednesday, our topic of conversation veered toward the Dewey decimal system and how wonky it was, because another one of Reese’s part-time jobs was at the college’s library. That day, she had a bag of honey mustard and onion pretzel pieces, which I had to taste. They weren’t half bad, so I helped myself to the rest of the bag.
Thursday, we partook in a serious, in-depth debate over television shows. I maintained that The Walking Dead was ten times better than Breaking Bad, but I could never quite get her to agree. So, I made her share her orange with me for being so stubborn.
By Friday, she’d convinced me she ruled at math, plus she packed two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that day, already aware I would thieve food from her. After polishing our lunches off, we started our calculus homework together, and somewhere between question one and twelve, we began opening up on a more personal level.
It started by Reese accrediting her father for her math skills since he taught the subject, and before I knew it, she was asking me about my dad.
“I don’t remember much about him,” I admitted, shifting uneasily next to her on the bench seat. “I just know he was in the Army.”
She immediately set her hand over her heart, her mouth forming a worried O. “I’m so sorry. Was he killed in the Middle East?”
I sighed, not wanting to confess, but then I confessed anyway. “No. He never went to combat. He got tanked one night and killed a family of four, plus himself, in a drunk driving accident.”
“Oh my God. Mason.” She grasped my arm. “That sucks.”
I don’t think she even realized what she did; she let go of me before I could really enjoy the touch, so I drew in a bracing breath, forced the brief delight of flesh against flesh from my mind, and nodded.
“Yeah, pretty much. And in this small town of a community, everyone knows how he died, so I can’t even fabricate some hero’s death for him.”
She looked uncertain a moment before saying, “So… Can I ask about Sarah’s dad?”
I wasn’t sure how she knew my sister and I had different fathers, probably because Mom and Sarah had a different last name than me, but I didn’t particularly want to talk about him either.
“Butch Arnosta,” I admitted reluctantly. “That loser ran off after we learned about Sarah’s condition. Mom met him when I was seven. They had a quickie romance, she got knocked up, they got married, and then he was gone again as quickly as the doctor said the words ‘cerebral palsy.’ After that, I think Mom gave up on men completely. She never really dated again.”
And thank God for that. I already had enough to worry about from her. Having to wonder which lowlife she was hanging around next would’ve stressed me into an early grave for sure.
Reese nodded sympathetically. “Well, I don’t blame her any. Sounds like she has as bad a track record with men as I do.”
I shook my head. “How can you have a bad track record? You’re only, what, eighteen?”
She sniffed, lifting her chin. “Eighteen and a half.”
I laughed. “I beg your pardon, old woman.” Then I held out my hand to her. “Let me see your palm, Miss Eighteen and a Half. I’ll take a look at your love line and tell you just how bad your track record really is.”
And that’s when the whole palm reading bit had started, which had allowed me to experience a little more flesh-on-flesh action with her—innocent action, of course—but I was also able to discover a crook in one of her fingers, where she told me she’d broken it playing ball in high school.
I never would’ve guessed she’d been a basketball player, but she assured me she had been during her freshman through junior years but not her senior because I guess she’d broken her arm then. She paused in a strange way when she admitted that, but then she moved on again so quickly I forgot all about it moments later, mostly because we veered into old boyfriend territory next, which really caught my attention. When I learned she’d only had one past boyfriend, it struck me that she’d said she had a bad track record with guys.
At first, I was sure she was referring to me, because how could befriending a twenty-year-old gigolo be considered a good record?
But when I questioned her about him, her face paled and her eyes filled with wary unease. “Sometimes it’s more about the quality than the quantity that counts,” she murmured quietly enough to put me on instant alert.
“That bad, huh?” I asked, all the while pushing down the urge to gather her into my arms and just protect her from the entire world. She was becoming the bright spot of my day. I didn’t want anything clouding that. “What did he do?” I asked as nonchalantly as possible, needing to know why I already hated the bastard who’d hurt her. “Cheat on you?”
“Among other things,” she mumbled, looking away and trying to pull her hand from mine, because, for some reason, I’d never quite let her go after my faux palm reading.
And I couldn’t let her go now, either. Not until I learned everything. “What other things?”
