The One That I Want(40)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“Good to know.” He found his shirt balled on the floorboard, turned it right side out, and jerked it on. “I’m sorry to have put you through all this trouble, Gemma. I can tell now that it’s not going to work out.” He got out of the car.

“What?” Alarmed, I shoved open my door and met him at the hood. “What do you mean it’s not going to work out?”

He kept walking around to the passenger side. “I make girls mad. I make you mad too, but you kept coming back for more. You understood me. That’s what I thought, anyway.” He opened the passenger door. “I fell in love with you, Gemma. I’ve been waiting to tell you that every waking moment for the last three weeks. I love you. And all you can focus on is that you’re angry at Addison!” He slammed the door behind him.

I stood there in a huff, trying to calm down, staring at his scowl through the windshield. With a sharp breath I looked up at the tops of the oak trees towering overhead and disappearing into the starlight. He was right. I was so angry at Addison that there was hardly room in my brain for anything else. She had fooled me and used me and tricked me out of being with the guy I wanted most in the world. But if I didn’t snap out of it, I was going to lose him permanently.

A cool breeze swept through the trees. I shivered, then realized I was standing in a public park with my shirt unbuttoned and my bra showing. I buttoned up, glancing once at Max. He was watching me.

I walked to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel. Starting the engine with a roar, I said, “We have got to solve this, Max, but it’s a school night and I have to go.”

He waved his casted arm in the air, dismissing the problem. “There’s nothing to solve.”

“Don’t say that,” I insisted, turning onto the road to his house.

So he didn’t. But he didn’t say anything else, either. We sat in stubborn silence all the way back to his house. My lips still tingled from kissing him. My skin tingled where his hot hand had touched me. I could not believe Addison had made me wait three weeks for Max, and tortured me by making me think I would never have him.

And now I never would.

As I parked in Max’s driveway, I didn’t want my anger to get the better of me. The more times that happened, the angrier I got at Addison, which just fed the fire. I took a deep breath and tried one more time.

“Max. Just because you think you have it all figured out doesn’t mean it’s true. You’re not always right.”

“Really?”

“Really. What we did for the past hour . . . that was real between us. That was not some scheme to get revenge on Addison, at least not on my end. Didn’t it feel real to you? I could not fake that with you.”

He nodded. “So you’ve liked me all this time, from when we first met at camp. You weren’t trying to get back at Addison. You liked me for me.”

“Yes!”

“Just like it was real and you didn’t fake it when you made out with Carter last Friday, and the Friday before that.”

I took a breath to tell him the truth. When I’d been with Carter, I’d been trying to make the best out of a bad situation.

“You’re not going to be with me,” Max said, his voice a sexy, menacing rumble over the roar of the engine. “You won’t win your game with Addison this time. By next year, all the two of you will remember is that you had an argument about some guy, but you won’t remember me or exactly why. I’m not even a real person to you. To you, it’s all about getting one up on Addison.”

“That is not true, Max,” I whispered with tears in my eyes, because it wasn’t. I reached across the car for him.

He opened the door and backed out, pulling away from my hand. “You thought you were hungry, but then you decided, no, you really just wanted something to eat.” He slammed the door behind him.

14

Friday was such a big day for me. That night I would perform for the first time ever as a majorette! I’d ironed my clothes for school several days beforehand, and caught up on my homework so I could sleep as long as possible the morning of my big day. And wouldn’t you know, I hardly slept at all. I woke up hours early, all with one thing in mind: telling Addison off.

By that time I’d obsessed all night and planned the attack carefully. I did not want to wait until band. That would mean I had to live with the anger cycling over and over in my mind for almost the whole school day. I didn’t have any other classes with her, so I had to catch her before the first bell rang, when everybody walked from their cars or the buses and gathered on the grass in front of the school.

I found a parking space—not as easy as it sounded, since it was my first time driving myself to school—and jogged around the building to the front lawn. Addison was laughing with the other majorettes, chatting them up before the vote. That made me even angrier. On top of everything else she’d done to me, when she won head majorette–elect that night, she would officially be the boss of me!

I felt like I was on some trashy, staged reality show as I headed for her, like everybody on the lawn was watching me and laughing at me. But probably nobody was actually looking at me until I stomped up to the majorettes and told Addison, “I need to talk to you alone.”

She looked at me and blinked her eyes innocently. “Why?”

I had been friends with Addison for a long time. I usually knew when she was lying to me. I hadn’t known when she told me that Max had asked her out—maybe because I wasn’t in a mental place where I could believe he liked me then—but I knew now that she was guilty. Something in her eyes gave her away. Either Max had told her about last night, or she had figured out that we were together.

“You know why,” I said quietly.

She gestured to the other majorettes, who looked at us curiously. “There’s nothing you need to say to me that you can’t say to my friends.”

So now they were her friends, not mine.

I glanced at the five of them, watching me expectantly. My gaze rested on Delilah, whose black eyes were huge and full of horror. If Addison wanted me to say this in front of them, so be it.

“You lied to me.” Those words felt so good to say that it was easy for me to keep going. “You told me Max asked you out when he didn’t. You knew I liked him first.” I heard my own voice rising. I sensed people from across the school yard crowding behind me to watch this spectacle, which was exactly what I hadn’t wanted. Some wise-ass yelled, “Fight!”