Adrian Lessons (20 page)

“Adrian!” shrieks some girl with bigger zits than eyeballs. “Is it true you’re dating Naomi Senekal?”

Who, now?

“Will you take a picture with me?”

A girl yanks open her shirt. “Will you sign my—”      

“Class,” barks Professor Newbury, possibly remembering that he’s on track to get tenure. “Please settle down.”

Adrian takes advantage of the momentary respite to slide into his usual seat, in front of me. What’s the normal behavior protocol for a guy you cut off immediately before he tied you naked to a wall?

Professor Newbury valiantly starts droning about confirmation bias, but everyone’s so zoned in on Adrian that I don’t dare whisper to him. So I write him a note.

I’m glad you went and did that shoot with White Steel.

I tap his shoulder. His eyes widen as he takes the slip of paper from me. The exchange is missed by nobody, and I’m fairly sure the number of people in the room plotting my death goes up by twenty-five.

After a minute, he passes it back.

I promised, didn’t I?

I scribble,
They must have liked you if they used you to launch their whole season.

I hear him snort as he reads it. He writes something and hands it back to me.

I told them I wouldn’t work with them again, but they want me back. They think if they make me the face of their brand I’ll have to come back. It’s a stupid gamble and a waste of their time.

Why not work for them again?
I write back.
You obviously have a knack for this.

Not interested in being a professional pretty boy.

I’m not sure what to say to that, so I twist the note absently between my fingers until it’s shredded. All we’re doing in class today is listening to Professor Newbury compare our results from our last experiment, so I’m left with nothing to distract me from the back of Adrian’s head. Is he angry with me? Has he accepted the idea of us just being friends? Or—worse—is he over me?

Does it make me a horrible person, to hope he’s not over me even when I told him that’s what I wanted?

Ten million years later, class ends. Adrian’s desk is mobbed so quickly that I don’t bother trying to get a word in edgewise. I simply gather my things and wander out the door. I glance back just in time to see a particularly confident, particularly gorgeous freshman shove everyone else aside and saunter up to Adrian.

“Take me out to dinner this weekend?” she asks bluntly.

I freeze. She’s gorgeous and he has no reason to say no. He’s the Sex King. Not the type of guy who says no to girls like her.

“No,” he says.

I let out a breath I didn’t know was trapped inside me.

He stands up. And looks directly at me. “Just so all of you know, I’m not interested in getting together with anyone right now. There’s only one girl I want to be with. And I’m going to wait until she’s ready for that.”

My hear melts through my toes onto the floor. I feel bad for the janitor who’s going to have to clean that up.

Adrian won’t look away, and I’m being sucked into his green eyes like a rubber band into a vacuum cleaner, so I make my escape into the hallway. And I end up basically running across campus.

He wants to wait until I’m ready for that.

Will I ever be ready for that?

I don’t even realize how hard I’m running until I stop and my insides burn up. I bend over, panting, ignoring the stares. My heart is still pounding so hard it’s probably ruptured, and that has less to do with the exercise and everything to do with the look Adrian gave me.

My phone rings, distracting me from my damaged organs. I answer. “Hello?”

“Hi, Cleo, it’s your sis. You can have Adrian if you give me a ride to the airport.”

I spill orange juice all over my crotch. “Shit!”

“No, no—just, what? I thought you were really into him.” I leap up, trying to sound casual while simultaneously keeping the juice flood from seeping onto the couch. It looks like I had a bright orange period.

“Well,” she hesitates. “Pick me up and we’ll talk? I’m flying to Nevada for a nursing conference and my plane leaves at six.”

“Uh, sure. Be right there.”

My mind is a thousand miles away as I change into clean jeans and grab my keys off the kitchen counter. Could this be a trap? Has Therese dug a pit outside my apartment door for me to fall into so she can complete her claim over Adrian? I tap my feet apprehensively twice on the ground in front of the door, but the ground doesn’t give way.

All my life, Therese has been grabby about her boys. She’s never given one up without copious amounts of hair-pulling and rumor-spreading. I’ve always known that if anything would end our relationship, it would be a boy. Which is why I was smart and dropped Adrian like a hot potato.

Family always comes before boys.

Right?

When I pull up to Therese’s apartment, she flies out exactly on time, which is surprising on its own. Usually I have to wait upwards of twenty minutes while she finds her lost lipstick, or finishes writing an email. Today she’s ready—suitcase on her arm, hair in place, and a smile on her face.

Not what I was expecting.

“Hey, beautiful!” she says, popping into the passenger seat and planting a kiss on my cheek.

“Hey,” I say cautiously, rubbing my cheek in case her lipstick was poisoned and that’s how she plans on killing me.

She blasts Katy Perry on the radio for the first ten minutes of the drive, singing along so loudly that my skull cracks open and my brain leaks onto the dashboard. When the ads come on, I take my life in my hands and turn it off. “So, Therese…”

“So, Cleo,” she repeats, reaching over and tweaking my nose. Her hand momentarily blocks my sight and I nearly swerve into an oncoming car.

“No tweaking when I’m driving!” I yell.

She shakes her head. “There’s a reason it took you three tries to pass your license test.”

I remember in crystal-clear detail why Therese annoys me so much. I try to clear my head. “So. Therese. On the phone, you said…”

“That you could have Adrian King if you drove me to the airport,” she supplies when I’m too wimpy to finish my sentence. “And he’s all yours. At least, he will be once we get there. If you dump me on the side of the road it’s no deal.”

There is a funny absence in this conversation. The absence of Therese’s usual declarations whenever a boy comes up: the color scheme their wedding will have, their first child’s middle name. “You don’t like him anymore? Just like that?”

“Nah,” she says, checking her chin for zits in the car mirror. “I figured it was time little sis got a crack at the prime rib. Especially after Eric. That was hilarious, though, when we both showed up thinking he was our date. Something out of a sitcom.”

“So…you’re not going to decapitate me?”

“What do you think this is,
Game of Thrones?”

“And your lipstick isn’t poisonous?”

She frowns at me. “If you’re on drugs I must object to you driving me to the airport after all.”

“Sorry,” I say, still stunned. “It’s just—you have to admit you have a competitive streak. Remember you made me pinky-swear that if you called dibs on a boy, he was yours, and I had to back off or you’d never speak to me again?”

“That was ninth grade,” she laughs. “I can’t believe you’ve taken that seriously for this long.”

“You also held my head over the toilet during this conversation and said you’d flush me if I didn’t agree.”

“Oh yeah.” She gets a little misty-eyed. “We had some good times as kids, didn’t we?”

I roll my eyes. I have to confirm this is real approximately one thousand more times before I can get my hopes up. “So you just came to this decision suddenly. For no apparent reason.”

“Well, Adrian did also email me.”

I swerve again and we both scream as we’re nearly pulverized by a truck.

“I’m taking back your license,” Therese gasps, bright red nails digging into my faded upholstery. “What did you do, blow the instructor? I always had my suspicions.”

“Shut up,” I say, full of noble suffering. “Tell me about Adrian’s email.”

“It was very polite. He apologized, said he wasn’t interested in me, which annoyed me for a bit, after all that money I invested going to his gym. I don’t even like the gym. I was going to delete it, but he said quite a few things about you.”

“Tell me the things. I want to know the things,” I say, not quite casually.

She looks at me sidelong. Her typical airy Therese expression is gone. “This guy really cares about you, Cleo.”

There’s a screech as I pull away from the highway divider at the last second.

Therese flattens herself against her seat. “Okay. No more romance talk in the car. Here’s a fun new topic of conversation! Driving safety!”

“Wait,” I yelp. “Tell me what he said.”

“I prefer to live, thank you.”

Which I guess is fair.

By the time we get to the airport, dark stormclouds have rolled in. The least promising kind. I glance skyward as I park. “I hope your flight doesn’t get delayed.”

“It better not.” Therese glowers at the clouds so threateningly that I think they recede a little. Then she pecks me on the cheek. “Thanks a lot. You officially have my permission to go out with Adrian.”

“I didn’t need your permission,” I lie.

She winks at me before letting the door close. “Yes you did.”

I take the back roads home. I need time to think. Part of me wants to call the Sex King immediately and tell him that everything can go back to the way it was.

An equally large part wonders if I wasn’t just using Therese as an excuse to pull away.

I really loved Eric. Gay or not. The thought that Adrian might be using me too is enough to make me want to stay in bed and never date again. Although Adrian has done pretty much everything it’s possible for a guy to do to prove he’s not using me.

These thoughts are still chasing themselves in useless circles around my head when the sky vomits water all over the place.

It’s the sudden kind of rainstorm we don’t often get in Minneapolis, a drizzle to a monsoon in three seconds flat. I’m on a back road surrounded by tall, tall trees and the rain catches me by surprise. I fumble with the windshield wipers, putting them on the fastest setting, but they barely make a dent.

Poor Therese. Her flight’s definitely delayed by now.

I’m trying to keep my mind on the road and not on the Sex King when a huge bolt of lightning splits the sky in half. The boom of thunder is immediately followed by another earsplitting cracking sound. Much closer this time. Through the rain and the haze, I see a tree crash into the road, directly in front of me.

“Balls!” I scream and twist the wheel. I miss the tree by bare feet, but I skid off the road, bumping and bouncing until I feel like a ping-pong ball in a blender. The terrifying tailspin comes to a halt when the back end of my car slams into a tree trunk.

For a few seconds, I sit there panting, feeling my arms and legs to make sure I’m still alive and not, in fact, a ghost. Then I step out into the rain. I’m instantly soaked and instantly dismayed to see that my car is mired in about three feet of mud. That sucker ain’t going anywhere.

And neither am I.

At least I won’t die of thirst.

“Balls, balls,
balls.”

I climb back inside my car and pick up my cell. I
knew
I should have gotten Triple A. But I have the next best thing. Marie. She may be insane, but she’s reliable in times of crisis.

Except when she doesn’t answer her phone.

I bonk my head on the dashboard. “Baaaaaaaalls.”

Tanisha doesn’t answer. Neither does Elise or June-Ann. Therese is stuck at the airport. My parents are across the state. Superman doesn’t exist. Nor do teleportation powers.

I could go into the woods and become a wild woman, living off beasts and the land, or I could call the Sex King.

As hot as I would look in a fur pelt, stabbing fish in rivers isn’t really my thing. I suck it up and call him.

“Hello? Cleo?”

“Adrian.” I lean against the window, totally chill. “How are ya? How’s the fam? Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

“It’s pouring outside.”

“Ah, so it is. Actually, about that…”

The minute I tell him what happened, I can practically hear his jaw tense. “Stay right where you are. I’m coming to get you.”

Click.

I settle down, trying to calm myself by listening to the pounding of the rain, and fix my wet hair as best as I can in the mirror. I hear the poodle-thrown-into-a-pond look is a big thing in Paris this year.

Do I want Adrian back in my life?

Am I brave enough to take that chance?

I don’t have too much time to think about it, because headlights flood my car barely fifteen minutes later. It’s a thirty minute drive from Westby, so it can’t be Adrian. Most likely a serial killer. I’ll hit him in the face with my damp ponytail and make a run for it.

I’m preparing myself for the deadly ponytail strike when the door opens and the serial killer pulls me into a fierce embrace.

“Adrian,” I gasp, and I really do gasp, because he’s squeezing the air out of me. His fingers dig into my back and he’s holding on like if he lets go, I’ll fly into a million pieces. The rain sweeps in through the open door and douses both of us, but I can’t bring myself to pull away. I wouldn’t mind living as a wild woman if Adrian would be beside me, in a matching pelt. Now there’s a sexy image…don’t get distracted, Cleo. “What’s wrong?”

“Have you seen the back of your car?” he says into my hair, his voice tight. “You could have been killed.”

“I wasn’t, though.” I’m shocked by his intensity.

“Thank God.” He gives me another tight squeeze before pulling back a little, keeping his hands on my shoulders and looking me over. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” I say, somewhat distracted by the look in his eyes. “A tree hit the road in front of me and I performed a brilliant evasive maneuver, since I’m such a pro driver and all…really. Don’t worry. I’m fine.”

“I don’t know what I would have done if anything happened to you,” he says evenly, keeping his eyes on me as if to confirm that the sight of my non-mangled body isn’t a mirage.