Biggest Flirts (Superlatives #1)(48)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“It’s worse lately,” Sawyer said. “I used to think surely she would get tired of him telling her what to do and break up with him. That’s when I would make my move. But the closer we get to graduation, the clearer it seems they’re not breaking up. Being back at school with her makes it excruciating. The mascot travels with the cheerleaders to every school event, you know. I thought I wanted to be near her, but it turns out I’m just putting myself through hell.”

I nodded. “I know what you mean.” I remembered marching through the halftime show next to Will on Monday, so close to him physically, but so far away. My stomach turned over. And my heart went out to Sawyer. I couldn’t imagine living with that pain for a couple of years.

“I’m blowing this joint,” Sawyer said, easing up from the swing so it didn’t shift and send me flying. He could be courteous, but Kaye would never believe it. “I’m sure I can find a better party.”

“I hope you have a good night,” I called as he headed for the stairs.

Descending into the darkness, he called back over his shoulder, “I hope you don’t fall in love.”

Walking back into the party, I tried to shake the uneasy feeling he’d given me. I’d had a great time with Will that night. Just like my very first night with Will, I counted it as one of the best experiences of my life. The key to enjoying myself with Will was making sure I didn’t think too hard about it. I wanted that euphoria back again.

Will was exactly where I’d left him, talking hockey with the football team. He was even speaking as I approached. But his eyes cut to me and stayed on me. When I reached him, he encircled me with one arm and whispered, “Angelica watched you follow Sawyer out.”

Tingles spread across my face as I whispered back, “Then you and I need to look like we’re finally having that good time we talked about.”

14

I TOOK HIS HAND AND tugged him farther into the living room. I’d thought we could claim a couch in the corner or—if push came to shove—one overstuffed chair. But the night was growing old, and the comfy furniture was occupied by couples getting to know each other better. Will saw this too. He walked through the stately arched doorway of the living room and kept walking until we reached the kitchen table.

I stepped closer to him and spoke in his ear so he could hear me over the video game music and the laughter. “We can’t flirt here. All the surfaces are hard.”

He turned his head slowly. His eyes were wide and his mouth was twisted to one side to keep from laughing while he pretended to be outraged at me for uttering the word “hard.”

“Damn it,” I said, “you know what I mean.” Surely he did. Settling in for flirting (or more) at a party required plush seating.

“We’ll make it work.” He pulled out a chair for me from under the table. After I sprawled in it with a dispirited sigh, he sat in the chair next to mine. We might as well have been doing our calculus homework together, the turn-on nobody could deny.

And then he reached around my sides, grabbed the seat of my chair, and dragged me toward him until we were facing each other, knee to knee. “There,” he said.

That did seem better for flirting. But all of a sudden, I felt shy around him. I found myself looking toward the cabinets—nothing more interesting there than a state-of-the-art microwave—and then the other way toward the crowd in the living room, where, on the couch, Brody and Grace had not gotten into it sufficiently to draw anybody’s attention for real.

Will put two fingers on the side of my chin and pointed my face toward his again. “Hey. You’re supposed to be flirting with me.”

“Oh, suddenly this is my job? You’re supposed to be flirting with me.”

“I did flirt with you,” he insisted. “I touched your chin just now.”

“Oooh!” I said, raising my eyebrows and pursing my lips to show him exactly how impressed I was, which was not.

“I touched your chair,” he said.

“If that counts for flirting, I’m going outside to touch the right rear fender of your car. That will count for getting to third base.” I started to get up.

“No,” he said, grabbing both my thighs just above the knee.

While the shock of his touch shot through me, I eased back down in my chair. He slowly took his hands away, a horrified expression on his face. He started to put his hands up in the air to show me he hadn’t meant to touch me quite so high—and then realized this didn’t look very flirtatious. He put his hands back on his own thighs.

After another silent thirty seconds of staring at the design on his T-shirt, I said, “I don’t know why this is so hard.”

Then I realized I’d said the H-word again. He gave me the fake-outraged look, which should have broken the ice but didn’t. Nothing could. We sank into another excruciating silence. The more our flirting mattered, the worse we were at it.

The song on the video game changed, from an emo classic to a funky groove. Will relaxed as he always did when the beat was good, transforming from an uptight faux-boyfriend to my friend the drummer. His shoulders settled against the back of his chair, and his fingers tapped out the beat on his thigh, his right pointer finger on the snare downbeat and his left finger on the bass drum.

I relaxed too. My unease fell away, and all that was left was the usual desire to be around him, talk to him, joke with him, capture his attention, bask in his glow—coupled with the fun of sitting so close to him, our knees touching.

Slowly I reached across my thighs, across his, and put my fingers on top of his hands. I moved his hands from tapping on his thighs to tapping on mine.

Still drumming his beat, he glanced up at me, flashing those blue eyes, and gave me a sly smile.

I kept coaxing his hands up my thighs, so high that if Angelica had looked in, I might have gotten called a name.

Will was aware of this too, apparently. His lips parted like he couldn’t believe I was so forward and he wanted out.

Now I wished I hadn’t done it. I’d only been teasing him, frustrated that we were reduced to this awkward silence. I hadn’t meant to chase him off and make things worse.

He turned and glanced into the living room. With his eyes still on the front door, he leaned toward me and said, “Angelica just left with Xavier Pilkington.”

Inside, I burst into laughter. Of course Angelica was finally going to get it on with Xavier Pilkington. They would be rocking his car with their synchronized typing as they spent the end of their Saturday night working on the English paper that wasn’t due until two weeks from Tuesday.