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  Normally I would have made the rounds and talked to all my friends whom I hadn’t seen during the summer. But I wasn’t passing up the perfect opportunity to question the mysterious Mr. Matthews on the percussion skills he’d suddenly acquired. I retrieved my towel from my pile of stuff and spread it out on the grass. “Join me?” I asked him.

  “Ssssssure.” He eased his big frame down onto half of the towel and leaned back on his elbows, showing off his abs. The guy had a six-pack. Every girl in band—and some of the guys—turned to stare, then faced forward again like they’d just been looking around casually. It wasn’t that six-packs were unusual at our school. Athletics were important. But the chiseled chest was less common in band.

  Allowing the uncomfortable silence to stretch on, I smoothed sunscreen across my arms, legs, and face. I held the bottle toward him. “Need some?”

  “We’re in the shade,” he said.

  True. The high bleachers on the home and away sides provided a lot of shade in the morning and evening, and the ends of the stadium were surrounded by palm trees and live oaks that shaded the grass even more. But because the field sat lower than the surrounding ground, it got no breeze. None. The heat turned the stadium into a hundred-yard pressure cooker and ensured that somebody, sooner or later, was going to die of heat exhaustion. Though the sun wouldn’t make us crispy by the end of practice, skin as white as Will’s would turn an unhealthy pink. The sun was sneaky and would find its way to him.

  “Trust me,” I said.

  He took the bottle grudgingly and squirted lotion into his palm to spread along one muscular shoulder. “You’re saying I look like I’m from Minnesota.”

  “You look like a hockey player from Minnesota,” I clarified. The flutes stared unabashedly at him as his hands moved over his own body, as if he was putting on a peep show. I asked, “Want me to get your back?”

  He watched me sidelong for a moment. At least, I thought he did. His mirrored shades were in the way. All I could see was the shadow of his long lashes.

  “Sure,” he said again, leaning forward.

  I spread sunscreen across his broad back, kneading his shoulders and neck as I went. All the way across the field, the majorettes were looking. Chelsea actually pointed at me. I waved cheekily at her. I wished I could see old Angelica’s face from this distance.

  I said softly in Will’s ear, “You don’t seem as surprised to see me here as I am to see you.”

  Through my own sunglasses, I couldn’t tell whether a blush crept across his cheeks. His long silence spoke volumes, though. Finally he said, “I told you last night that your friends had sent me to find you and introduce myself to you.”

  “Yes, you did,” I acknowledged, “but—”

  “When I walked into the party, I said I was new and I played percussion in the marching band. They said, ‘Oooh, you have to meet Tia Cruz, the drum captain.’ ”

  I liked the way he imitated Harper and Kaye—not in the high faux-girly voice boys used when they didn’t think very much of girls. The pitch of his voice stayed the same, but he smoothed over the oooh like they’d made me sound delicious, and he’d agreed.

  But I was sure he hadn’t mentioned anything to me about drums last night. I would remember. I hadn’t been that drunk. In fact, I’d watched him tapping his fingers to the rhythm of the music and wondered if he was a drummer, but I hadn’t put two and two together. “I thought they sent you to me because you wanted to get drunk and hook up.”

  He shifted to face me on the towel. “They would meet a complete stranger at a party and send him to hook up with their drunk friend?”

  He had a point. Kaye and Harper were way more protective of me than that. “I guess not,” I admitted. “I was drunk as I was thinking this.” I went back over what had happened last night when I looked up from my bench and saw a pirate. His explanation didn’t make sense. “No,” I insisted. “I thought you wanted a beer. I gave you a beer. You took it.”

  “I didn’t drink it.”

  I glanced around, suspicious that I had been transported to a parallel universe where high school boys didn’t drink the beer they were given. But there was still only one sun, mostly blocked by a tall palm, and I didn’t detect extra moons or a visible ring around the planet.

  As I thought about it, though, I decided I’d seen his true nature from the beginning—if not when he found me on Brody’s back porch, at least by the time he walked me home and acted like a gentleman instead of the scoundrel I was expecting. I’d seen it, but I hadn’t wanted to see it.

  Yet if he was that innocent, what business did he have coming to a party and deliberately sitting next to the girl over the cooler? I pointed out, “We spent a lot of time together last night. You had plenty of chances to tell me that you’re on the drum line, or that we would be seeing each other again soon, as in this morning.”

  He nodded. “You’ve got me. I didn’t intend to hide it from you. Once we started talking, I was having fun with you, and I didn’t want anything to ruin it.”

  That I understood. I’d felt the same way the countless times I’d thought, This boy is not a real pirate.

  “And I hoped we were heading for something really good. If we’d started dating, which honestly was what I assumed was going to happen after last night, the fact that we’d have to spend so much time standing right next to each other would have been good news.”

  “It’s still good news,” I assured him. “I just don’t want a boyfriend.”

  “I get it,” Will said.

  Ms. Nakamoto issued instructions through her microphone then, commanding all the drums to move our equipment so DeMarcus could place clarinet players in a curlicue where we’d been sitting. As we lugged our stuff five yards downfield and plopped on the forty-five, I pondered whether Will really did “get it,” as he’d said. My reasons for not wanting a boyfriend ran deep. Not even my closest friends completely got what I only half understood about myself.

  “Jesus. It’s. Hot!” Will took off his cap, poured bottled water over his head, slicked his fingers through his hair, and put his cap back on.

  “You’ll get used to it,” I assured him, munching a Pop-Tart.

  “By the time I get used to it, I’ll be gone.”

  This was true for a lot of the old people who thought they wanted to retire here. They came into the antiques shop to buy knickknacks for the cute cottage where they planned to live out their days. They told me it was a lot hotter in Florida than they’d imagined, and they asked if we were in the midst of an unusually hot spell. I told them no. When they reappeared a few weeks later to sell their knickknacks back to me, they admitted they were packing up and heading back to Cleveland. They weren’t as sick of five feet of snow each winter as they’d initially thought.

  But a high school senior couldn’t do what he chose, obviously, so Will’s words sounded bitter. I wondered again whether he was taking my no-boyfriend rule the wrong way: that is, personally.

  I teased him, which was my solution to every problem. “If you want to stay cool, getting rid of the Paul Bunyan beard might help.”

  He rasped one hand across his stubbly cheek. “I can’t find my razor.”

  “Your refrigerator and now your razor?” I poked out my bottom lip in sympathy. “We have razors in Florida, you know. And stores to buy them in. We’re not that weird.”

  “I didn’t want to be late this morning.” He glanced sideways at me. “To beat you in the challenge.”

  “Ohhhhh!” I sang. “That hurt.” It didn’t really, but he’d seemed so straight-laced in the bright light of morning that the jab did surprise me. “By the way, how did you memorize the drum cadence so quickly?” I’d arrived too late to hear him, but he must have played the challenge perfectly to pull ahead of me.

  “As soon as I knew I was moving here, I wrote ahead and asked Ms. Nakamoto to send me the music
,” he explained. “I’d already planned to challenge you on the first day. I mean”—he corrected himself when I raised an eyebrow—“I’d planned to challenge the drum captain. I didn’t know it was you. Until last night.”

  Then he leaned over until his breath tickled my ear. By now just about all the boys in the band had pulled off their shirts, and some girls had too if they’d remembered to wear a bikini top or sports bra underneath. But I was very aware of Will’s bare chest in particular, and the way he’d set my skin on fire last night, as he whispered, “You let me beat you, didn’t you?”

  I gazed at him, neither confirming nor denying, and hoped that, behind my sunglasses, my eyes were as unreadable as his. I didn’t like to lie, but I wasn’t willing to admit this either.

  He whispered again, “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”

  Ms. Nakamoto was calling to us again: Everybody up. Back to our places. The drum captain had to provide a beat while the whole band marched through the first formation of halftime. Drummers scrambled toward us from all corners of the field. But Will and I sat watching each other. We understood each other better than either of us was comfortable with.

  The moment passed. He stood and pulled me up after him. We marched elbow to elbow through the first thirty-two measures of the song, then stopped to let DeMarcus shift people a few steps up or back according to what Ms. Nakamoto hollered.

  “So, this school’s mascot is the pelican?” Will asked.

  I was relieved that he’d dropped the serious conversation. Or maybe he just didn’t care to have one while the third- and fourth-chair snares, Jimmy and Travis, and all the cymbal players could hear us. As long as he wanted to be jocular, I didn’t care why.

  “You’ve come to this realization only gradually?” I asked. “How did you interpret the large sign at the entrance to campus that says HOME OF THE PELICANS?”

  “I thought it was a home for pelicans.” He gestured to five of them flying in formation overhead, on their way from one inlet to another.

  “You did not.”

  “School mascots are supposed to be fierce,” he explained. “Cardinals and ducks and pelicans are poor choices. If you’re going to pick a bird, pick one that hunts prey or eats carrion, at least.”

  “Right. Let me guess. You transferred here from Uptight Northern High School, Home of the Vultures.”

  “We aren’t vultures.” With mock self-righteousness, he said, “Our mascot is the Wrath of God.”

  I snorted with laughter I didn’t quite feel. Granted, he’d been in town only two days. But I wished he’d referred to his other team as “they” rather than “we,” and in the past tense. He still identified himself as a member of his old school, not this new one. If he had his way, he probably would make it back to Minnesota before he got used to the heat. I watched a bead of sweat crawl down the side of his neck.

  And I felt a fresh pang of guilt that I was part of the reason he didn’t like it here. I certainly hadn’t helped matters by taking him home and then brushing him off. But I wasn’t about to change my no-boyfriend policy just to make a cute stranger feel more welcome.

  I said calmly, “I see. And your marching band was called the Marching Wrath of God?”

  “Please tell me this band isn’t the Marching Pelicans.” He sounded horrified.

  “Yes,” I said with gusto. We weren’t really. We were called the Pride of Pinellas County. “It’s weird, but no weirder than lutefisk.” Another score, courtesy of lessons on state trivia in Mr. Tomlin’s third-grade class.

  “Oh!” Will gaped at me in outrage. “No lutefisk jokes. That is low.”

  “Just preparing you for when school starts.” Sawyer would be at the top of the list for making lutefisk jokes.

  “The Tampa Bay Rays have a good name,” Will said contemplatively. “Stingrays kill somebody every once in a while, right?”

  “Well, they used to have a manta ray on the logo, but now the Rays are supposed to be sun rays,” I informed him. “Like that’s dangerous.”

  He took off his hat, wiped his brow with his forearm, and put his hat back on. “Depends on whether you’re from Minnesota.”

  I laughed heartily at this. “I could be wrong. Maybe they’re just a bunch of guys named Ray. Plumbers.”

  “And their logo is an exposed butt crack.”

  I pointed at him with one drumstick. “Perfect! We should clue Sawyer in. That would make a great look for the team mascot.”

  Will squinted at me over the top of his sunglasses. “Sawyer?”

  “Yeah. He’s the school mascot, our dangerous pelican.”

  “Sawyer, your boyfriend?” He gave me what I imagined was a steely glare through his shades.

  I’d made clear last night that I didn’t have a boyfriend. And I thought I’d made clear—as clear as I could make a relationship when it was admittedly a bit cloudy to begin with—that if I did acquire a boyfriend, Sawyer wouldn’t be it.

  But in Will’s voice I’d heard that same bitterness from a few minutes earlier. He pressed his lips tightly together. I was doomed to stand next to this guy for the rest of the year, and he was making sure that I knew at every turn how jealous he felt.

  I didn’t want a guy acting like a boyfriend any more than I wanted the real thing. But as we watched each other, tingles spread across my chest as if he was kissing my neck.

  An electronic beep interrupted us. “Hold on,” he said, raising one finger. Obviously he thought it was important that we come right back to this stare-down when he finished his other business. He pulled his phone from his pocket and glanced casually at the screen. As soon as he saw it, though, his jaw dropped. He tapped the phone with his thumb again.

  “Fuck!” he shouted in a sharp crack that bounced against the bleachers. He turned toward the goalpost, reared back, and hurled his phone—quite an athletic feat, considering he was still wearing his snare drum.

  “Oh, God,” I exclaimed, “what’s the matter?”

  Travis said, “Nice arm,” and Jimmy agreed, “Forty, fifty yarder.”

  Will pointed at them with both drumsticks. Afraid he was going to launch into a tirade and get in trouble with Ms. Nakamoto, I put a hand on his chest to stop him.

  Too late. Everyone in the band had turned around to gape at him. The ones who hadn’t heard his curse whispered questions to the people standing next to them about what he’d said. And Ms. Nakamoto had definitely heard him.

  “Hey!” she hollered, hurrying over from a row of trombones. She must have forgotten Will’s name, because if she’d known it, instead of “Hey!” she would have shouted an outraged Mr. Matthews! She hustled right up to the front of his snare drum and frowned at him, hands on her hips, whistle swinging on a cord. She was at least a foot shorter than him. “Is that how you talked during band practice where you came from?”

  “No.” He should have said “No, ma’am,” but I didn’t think that was how people talked in Minnesota either, and he hadn’t been here long enough to know better. I hoped she wouldn’t hold it against him.

  “Do you think that’s appropriate language for the drum captain?” she demanded. “Do you think you’re a good role model for freshmen when you lose your cool like that? Because I can give the responsibility right back to Ms. Cruz if you can’t handle it.”

  “Let’s not be hasty,” I spoke up.

  “I’m really sorry,” Will told her. On top of his drum, he gripped his sticks so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “I got this . . . this . . .”

  “Upsetting message on your phone, when phones aren’t allowed in band practice?” she prompted him.

  Officially we had a rule against phones, but Ms. Nakamoto didn’t normally enforce it because a lot of band camp was spent hurrying up and waiting for something to happen. She wouldn’t have come down on him like this if he hadn’t hollered the F-word an hour after
becoming drum captain.

  But I could save him. Placing one hand on his back, I leaned forward and said quietly to Ms. Nakamoto, “We’ll just go for a short walk, okay? Will moved here yesterday all the way from Minnesota. It’s a big adjustment, and things aren’t going smoothly.” I assumed from his reaction to the message that this was the understatement of the century.

  Ms. Nakamoto turned her frown on me, then pursed her lips. I couldn’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses, but I hoped I’d caught her off guard with my offer of help, which was probably a first for me in three years of high school band.

  She muttered something and turned away. Not wasting any time lest she change her mind, I gave Will a little push in the direction of his phone.

  “While you’re over there, see if you can find some change I dropped at practice last year,” Jimmy said.

  Will turned to him angrily, his drum knocking against mine. He was beyond caring, obviously, and anything was liable to set him off now. The bad-boy hockey player I’d seen in him hadn’t been entirely my imagination.

  I whispered to Jimmy, “Shut up. You don’t want me back in charge, do you?” I put my arm around Will’s waist—the way he’d touched me at the party the night before—and steered him downfield.

  4

  WHILE MS. NAKAMOTO WENT BACK to issuing orders through her microphone, and the giggles of the clarinets faded behind us, Will and I walked toward the goalpost and ditched our drums. I spotted his phone in the grass and pointed it out to him. He didn’t move any closer but instead stared at it in distaste, his nostrils flared like he didn’t want to touch it. I plucked it out of the grass for him. It wasn’t his phone, though. It was one half of its plastic cover, emblazoned with a logo of a sunset behind evergreen trees and the words MINNESOTA WILD.