The One That I Want(26)
Author: Jennifer Echols

They bailed out of the car, met in front of it, and laughed about something. I could hear them through the windshield and see her fingers touch a Japanese character on his T-shirt, over his heart.

I looked at Carter. He was watching me. And he would watch me for the rest of the night if I let him, just like he could maintain stony silence for hours on end if I didn’t say something. My queasiness grew. So did my frustration.

I unfastened my seat belt, slid across the seat, and kissed him.

He made a soft noise, something between a groan and the word no. I paused, wondering if I’d heard wrong. I definitely didn’t want to kiss him if he didn’t want to kiss me. I must have misheard him, because he put his hands in my hair and kissed me back.

But only for a few seconds. The kiss didn’t come to a natural end. He stopped in mid-kiss like he’d suddenly remembered something. He pulled back against the door and looked me in the eye. “Same time next week?”

I had pledged at the restaurant that I would not go out with this group again. I would extricate myself from this strange, silent boy and his gorgeous friend. Addison could find her own way to convince her mother to let her out of the house. People would stop talking about me in band, and I would sink back into the hole I’d crawled out of.

As I looked into Carter’s blue eyes, I knew that was not going to happen. My heart was beating ninety to nothing. That had not happened since . . . every conversation I’d had with Max. And before that, majorette tryouts.

I was not willing to let that rush go.

“Yep,” I said. “See you next week.”

Carter should have given me one last peck on the cheek then, because he liked me and we’d bonded. But he just took off his seat belt and backed out of the car. I got out on my side to move to the front seat for the ride home.

Max and Addison still stood in front of the car. He gave her a peck on the cheek, and they laughed and parted. Max followed her over to Carter’s truck. He patted Carter on the back guy-style, then punched him on the shoulder, hard enough to hurt from the looks of it. Carter glared at him.

Max folded himself into the driver’s seat and watched as Carter’s truck sped across the empty parking spaces.

We sat there in silence for longer than was comfortable, way longer than was normal for Max. I wondered what he was thinking. He was angry with Carter for something, obviously.

Finally I broke the silence. “The band was amazing.”

He turned to me with a grin. “They were, weren’t they?”

“Thanks for planning the whole thing. I’m glad we went.”

“Me too.” He bit his lip. “Addison didn’t like them very much.”

“Carter didn’t either.” I paused. “Sometimes I feel like Carter doesn’t like me very much.”

I expected Max to reassure me and tell me I was wrong. Instead, he started the car. We were all the way across the parking lot and turning onto the road before he said, “That didn’t seem to matter too much to you when the two of you were going at it.”

His eyes met mine. He looked like a stranger now, much older than me, his goatee rugged.

“Going at it?” I croaked.

“You and Carter hardly ever say anything to each other. I can’t imagine how you’ve gotten close. But every time I looked over at you during the concert, or in the backseat, you were letting him put his hands all over you.”

“If it bothers you, don’t look,” I snapped. Then I processed what he’d said. “He had his hands all over me, Max? You’re exaggerating a little. We kissed at the concert, and we kissed in the car. Carter was my date. Isn’t that what we were supposed to do?”

“That’s just it. I don’t think you’re supposed to do any particular thing, but you seem to think so. You think girls let their dates maul them, so that’s what you do. Have you ever dated anyone before?”

I glared at him. “Why do you ask? You think bigger girls never date?”

His lips parted, and he glanced over at me before turning his head to the road again. “You’re not bigger.”

“I was bigger.”

He settled back in his seat then, relaxing, retreating out of the attack mode he’d been in since Carter and Addison had left the car. “I asked because you’re fifteen years old—”

“Excuse me, Mr. Sixteen, but you’re not that much older than me!”

“—and because you’re acting like you just got released from a girls-only reform school in Antarctica.”

We were on a darker winding road. I puzzled through what he’d said. He had no reason to insult me about kissing Carter unless he was jealous. If he wanted me for himself, he would not go out with Addison instead. Maybe my fantasy had come true, and he’d realized he’d asked out the wrong girl.

Testing this theory, I said, “You have the opposite problem. Addison says you hardly touch her. But that must be because you’ve dated before, and you have limitless experience. You know how this works.” My words came out more bitter than I’d intended. I hadn’t meant to attack him. I was fishing for information, dying to know why he hadn’t made a move on Addison, even when she was wearing that shirt.

I was disappointed when all Max said was, “Exactly.” He carefully turned the long car into my driveway.

I hadn’t noticed we were so close to home. I didn’t want to get out of the car. I wasn’t sure where this conversation was going, but I felt like we had something else to say to each other.

He must have felt that way too, because he rolled down his window to let the warm, humid night inside, and turned off the engine.

He scooted his back against the driver’s-side door, facing me. The spotlights on the corners of my house slanted weirdly across his smooth face and his goatee. “There’s a reason why you and Carter hardly spoke all night, but you were perfectly okay with sucking face with him. I have a theory.”

“Oh no,” I said. This was not how I’d wanted to finish our conversation. “You know how you make girls mad? You’re about to do it again. I can feel it.”

Max leaned in and looked straight into my eyes. He concentrated on me like he was trying to see into my mind.

My heart raced and my cheeks burned like we were sharing a long look for another reason. Because we were in love.

“You’ve said Addison didn’t want you to lose weight,” he said, shattering my little romantic dream. Max was deconstructing me. “Your other friends didn’t want you to lose weight either. Even your mom didn’t. That means your relationships with all of them were affected by what you looked like. If you lost weight, your relationships would change, and you knew it.”