Biggest Flirts (Superlatives #1)(15)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Harper and Kaye muttered their disbelief. Because they were talking over each other, I couldn’t hear everything they said, but I picked out “sunscreen” and “bullshit.”

“But you probably got an eyeful last night,” Kaye told me.

“Well, somebody got an eyeful of somebody,” I admitted.

Kaye raised her eyebrows. Harper emitted a cute, embarrassed snort, wringing her hands as if the whole prospect worried her. “Is he like Sawyer?”

Girls at my school were captivated by Sawyer. He was fun to watch. He was likely to fly off the handle at any moment. And when he chose to be, he was downright sultry. One time he’d talked dirty to me during an assembly in the high school auditorium, just for fun, in a way that made me want to rip my clothes off for him right there in front of Mr. Moxley and the championship tenth-grade robotics team.

But most girls wouldn’t hook up with Sawyer, in the same way that they wouldn’t hook up with a train wreck. That task was left to me. And Harper and Kaye didn’t want me hooking up with him either. They’d gotten very upset the first time they’d caught me with him in a compromising position at a party. Kaye told me that if she ever found me with him again, she and Aidan would not be my designated drivers anymore, and I would have to ride home from parties with the trumpets, who listened to a lot of lite jazz.

Kaye and Harper had gotten used to the idea of Sawyer and me after a while, and now, frankly, they were fascinated by our relationship. Harper was more obvious in her enthusiasm. Kaye listened quietly to my Sawyer stories. That told me she was more interested than she wanted to let on, since she was used to asserting herself in student council meetings and was rarely quiet about anything.

“Will is like Sawyer,” I said, “but better.”

“Better!” Harper exclaimed. “Better how?”

Better in that I felt myself flush every time Will looked at me. Sawyer and I had agreed a long time ago that we were too much alike to have any real chemistry. That didn’t stop us from making out when nobody else was available, of course, but it had kept us from trying for anything more than friends with bennies.

The thing was, I didn’t want more than that out of a relationship with Sawyer. Or even with Will.

“Better . . . taller,” I said. Sawyer had only half an inch on me. It wasn’t often that I encountered a guy who made me feel downright dainty. I thought of Will looking down at me during band practice, and wondered again what he’d been thinking when I couldn’t see his eyes behind his aviators.

“It doesn’t matter, though,” I said. “Will’s out to lunch right now with old Angelica.”

“Angelicaaaaaa!” Harper and Kaye moaned in despair. Once, in ninth-grade science class, they’d been passing a note back and forth about Kaye’s crush on Aidan. Angelica, instead of passing it along the row like she was supposed to, had turned it in to the teacher, who had read it out loud. That had led to Aidan asking Kaye to homecoming. So the outcome could have been considered a good trade-off if you thought Aidan was a prize, which I didn’t.

Or if you had not been completely mortified by the incident, which Kaye had. I could hear it in her voice still as she cried, “How could you let Angelica have Will?”

“It wouldn’t have worked with Will and me,” I told them honestly. “He would get as exasperated with me as you are right now.”

They both opened their mouths to say awww, they weren’t exasperated with me (Harper), or they were exasperated with me but only because I consistently sold myself short (Kaye). I was saved by the cowbell on the door. After petting the shop dog, a customer asked to see the women’s jeweled watches I’d posted to the shop’s website. That was going to take a while because we had fourteen, which was why I’d been trying to move them out of inventory. I waved good-bye to Kaye and Harper and led the customer back to the display case, with the dog following.

And I tried to shake the uneasy feeling my friends had left me with. Will and I had shared an unwise night together. Okay. We’d had another argument this morning, yes. But we’d made up, and when things had gotten awkward between us again, that was probably because he was preoccupied with asking Angelica out. Things would be better tonight, and for the next three days of band practice. By the beginning of school on Friday, we would have no problem getting along in the drum line.

I honestly believed this, because I was not the best at foreseeing trouble and planning ahead. I had no idea our friendship was about to go south.

5

BAND CAMP WENT OKAY AT first. I had ten times more fun with Will than I’d ever had standing between a past year’s seniors. They’d taken their shirts off, all right, but they hadn’t looked as good as Will did, or laughed like he did at my jokes. And they hadn’t had an earring. I’d become a big advocate of the earring.

The thing about Will was, he took being drum captain very seriously, and he seemed determined to prove his worth to Ms. Nakamoto after his Monday-morning meltdown. A lot of drum lines I’d talked to, from high schools on the University of South Florida side of town, had student teachers as percussion instructors. Up here in our far corner, we were on our own. And that meant when the drums broke off from the rest of the band, Will ran rehearsal, with Ms. Nakamoto occasionally peeking her head into the palm-tree grove where we’d retreated for shade, making sure we hadn’t all killed each other yet.

She would have been right to worry if I’d been in charge. I would have pulled out my braids the first hour I had to deal with these people. But Will was an amazing drum captain. Jimmy and Travis might give him a hard time when Ms. Nakamoto reprimanded him on the field, but they didn’t cross him in drum sectionals. Maybe it was because he obviously knew what he was doing and cared that we got the music right. When the bass drums got tangled up in their complicated rhythms, he took the time to figure out exactly which sophomore was tripping them up and why, and he taught that guy a new, less confusing way to count off the measures. He was equally patient with the cymbals and their crashing-at-the-wrong-time issues.

More likely, nobody crossed him because he seemed so serious most of the time, with the worry line between his brows visible behind his shades. And that’s what made it all the more delicious when I got a giggle out of him. Sometimes he looked like he wanted to shush me on the field when Ms. Nakamoto or DeMarcus frowned in our direction, but he couldn’t shush me if he was too busy laughing.