Biggest Flirts (Superlatives #1)(29)
Author: Jennifer Echols

News to me. I wondered whether I should call Will to pass along the information. This would violate our new pact to cool it. Angelica would interpret phone call as hot sex and Will would hate me. No, I would not call him. I could go into the yearbook under the heading Biggest Flirt by myself.

As we approached the antiques store, Harper waved and said brightly, “Ta! See you Monday,” as though the coming photo session sounded like good times.

“Ta.” I didn’t want her to look back and see me watching her mournfully. I locked my bike in the rack and went into the shop.

When we’d first started riding our bikes together, and I’d been headed home instead of to work, I’d always begged Harper to come inside with me—if she would be very, very quiet and not wake my dad—or I would suggest we hang out at her mom’s bed and breakfast. She’d explained that I was an extrovert, and extroverts got their energy from being around other people. She was an introvert, and introverts got their energy from being by themselves. She needed to go home, be by herself, and work on her photography project of the moment so that the next time we saw each other, she would have more energy to give me. This scenario made me sound like an alien sucking her brains out through a straw, but it also kind of made sense. It explained why, now that my sisters had moved out and my dad was always at work or asleep, I felt so down at home. But that knowledge wouldn’t do anything to fix a long, lonely weekend.

Luckily I was super busy at work, dealing with customers while simultaneously finding things in inventory for Bob and trying to explain to Roger how computers worked. Three hours flew by. Then we closed, and I was out on the sidewalk again, unlocking my bike. I gazed down the street at the salon where Izzy worked. I could forgive her, I supposed, for what she’d said to me months ago about watching her kids. But Izzy could be harsh, and the idea of her saying something else snide was enough to keep me away. Besides, if she’d been at work to cut Will’s hair at seven this morning, she was long gone now.

I rode to my house, lifting my bike over the front lawn so I wouldn’t crash through the magnolia leaves and wake my dad. The house was deathly quiet, and I hated it. Much as my sisters had annoyed the crap out of me while they lived at home, I would have given anything to ignore Izzy’s orders as I walked in the door, and tease Sophia about the fantasy novel she was reading on the sofa, and yell at Violet because I caught her stealing a shirt out of my closet in the room we shared.

It wasn’t going to happen. With a deep sigh that nobody heard but me, I nuked a frozen dinner, cleared off a space at the kitchen table, and drew my calculus book out of my backpack. This actually happened. I thought about Will, and what a good student he was, and what a good student old Angelica was, diligently ciphering in anticipation of that bright, shining day in spring when she could take the AP test. Maybe Will would like me better if I wasn’t so lame in school.

But I knew I shouldn’t do stuff just because Will would like me better for it. That was exactly why I didn’t want a boyfriend. There were other reasons to do my calculus homework, such as not flunking. I pulled out my notebook and turned to the page where I’d written down the assignment. This was more difficult than it sounded. Usually I wrote things down on whatever page I opened to rather than starting from the beginning and working through to the end like some academically obsessed drum captains. I took a bite of dinner, started the problem . . . and then lost myself in it. I had a hard time starting my homework because I dreaded it, but once I got into it, I forgot what I was doing and didn’t mind so much. Until—

HOOOOOOOOOOONK.

I scraped back my chair and ran outside without even looking to see who’d pulled into the driveway. The only important thing was to get the horn stopped before it woke my dad. I rushed blinking into the dusk. When I was halfway across the lawn, I saw Sawyer grinning at me from the cab of his truck.

I sliced my finger across my throat. “My dad’s asleep.”

Sawyer took his hand off the horn. “Sorry.” He wagged his eyebrows at me. “Does that mean I can come in?”

“No.” I didn’t have to think about that one. Except for Harper, my friends always assured me they could come inside my house and be quiet. They were wrong. They always forgot, somebody laughed really loudly, and my dad woke up.

“You’re afraid we’ll make some noise?” Sawyer asked.

“I know we will.” Bantering with him was easier than explaining that no, I was serious, my dad actually had to work tonight, and this was the last sleep he would get. Sawyer understood a lot about life—way more than he probably should have at seventeen—but he didn’t understand factories that ran all night, or trying to support a family on third shift.

“Why’d you give me such a hard time about Biggest Flirt today?” I griped. “And you called me your girl in front of Will. What was that about?”

“You need to stay away from that guy,” Sawyer said. “He’s a player.”

“He’s not,” I said. “You are.”

“But you like him,” Sawyer pointed out. “That makes him dangerous. I don’t matter. So come out with me.”

“Can’t,” I said. “Homework.”

“You?” he asked, astonished. “Are doing your homework?”

Normally I wouldn’t have been offended by a comment like that, but what Will had said about me making so many mistakes—that must have gotten to me. “It’s been known to happen,” I said haughtily.

“I’m more fun than homework,” Sawyer said.

I was about to point out that cleaning the toilet was also more fun than homework, and I had no intention of doing that, either.

Then an airliner roared over us, bringing the last of the season’s tourists. Labor Day was coming up in two weeks, signaling the end of summer—for Yankees, anyway. I cringed at the noise, crossing my fingers that it wouldn’t wake my dad.

Yeah. Sawyer was better than homework. He was way better than another night of staying very quiet until my dad finally dragged himself up grumpily, refused to eat what I’d heated for him because he wasn’t hungry when he first woke, and left. It was like living by myself except for an outdoor cat we’d once had that passed through the house only to use the litter box.

“Come on,” Sawyer said. “My brother’s bartending tonight. Come sit on the back porch of the Crab Lab and get wasted with me.”