Autumn's Kiss (11 page)

Is he…flirting with me? In the middle of the stanky boys' locker room? I'm so thrown I giggle and try to lean enticingly against the nearest surface, but then I imagine what horrors could be
on
the nearest surface and trip a little bit trying to avoid it. Sean reaches out to catch me—
taking both hands off the towel
—but he has clearly mastered the art of the wrap-and-tuck because it stays in place.

His arms, however, are wrapped around me. He's holding me much closer than he needs to if he just wanted to steady me. My heart threatens to thud through my chest, and my limbs are spaghetti.

He's tractor-beaming me in with those eyes. And his smile. “I've missed this,” he says softly.

“Holding me in the boys' locker room while you're wearing a towel?” My voice quavers.

We both hear the footsteps coming from the direction of the gym. I jump out of his arms and scramble for the main door. “See you at lunch!” I hiss. “And maybe we just, y'know, keep this between us.”

I don't wait to hear what he says; I just zoom out the door. I'm so late to my fourth-period class now that I may as well just skip it, so I slip outside and find a place to tuck myself away and I text Leo.

You blew me off! WHERE WERE YOU???
I write, which is technically the wrong question.

I know where he was—he was in the boys' locker room getting ready for PE. The real question is why was he there and not at the theater where he was supposed to be? Still, I think I get the point across. Part of me is so annoyed with him I'm ready to leave him on his own to blow it with Taylor, but the two of them are my project, and they're making Taylor happy. Her peace and happiness depends on them working out. I need to keep it going until Leo's ready to continue without my help. So as long as I have my phone and some time, I sit and text him some more ideas for things to say to Taylor. Then I remind him:

MEMORIZE THIS STUFF THEN ERASE THIS TEXT SO SHE DOESN'T EVER SEE IT!

Once I'm done, my mind drifts back to Sean in his towel.

Okay, I admit it, my mind never really drifted
away
from Sean in his towel.

But it's not just how amazing he looked in the towel. What I can't get out of my head is the way he made me feel. When J.J. kissed me at Reenzie's party, it felt nice. When Sean had his arms around me—even in a disgusting boys' locker room—it felt atomic.

J.J. told me I deserve someone who knows how amazing I am…but don't I also deserve atomic?

If it weren't for the Reenzie thing, it would be easy. I'd be all about Sean. But I can't figure out if he's real. He says he loves that I surprise him with random acts of weirdness and he misses his arms around me, but what if he tells Reenzie he loves that she
doesn't
surprise him because he knows her so well, and he misses his arms around her?

Okay, he doesn't miss that because they were never together and they seem to throw their arms around each other a lot, but the point's the same. He's giving the same signals to both of us.

If it were me and Taylor or Ames instead of Reenzie, I'd talk to her and we'd unite to confront Sean and make him tell us the truth, but that would never work with Reenzie. I need to talk to Sean alone.

Hey,
I text him.
Can we talk, just us? LMK.

I add,
P.S. excellent choice in towelry.

Lunch that day has me squirming. It's not the food; it's that all my friends and I are sprawled on the lawn like always, but every time I look at Sean, I see him not in his shorts and T-shirt, but the way he looked in the locker room. And when that happens, I get sweaty, my breath comes faster, and it seems like I'm having a mild heatstroke. To avoid this, I barely look at him. If I meet his eyes, mine skitter away a second later.

I don't think J.J., Jack, Reenzie, or Taylor notices. Sean, however, totally does. He hasn't texted me back yet, but he won't take his eyes off me, and he looks highly amused by my squirming. He even makes it worse by bringing up the morning's incident in a million different ways, just to make me crazy.

“It's so hot out,” he says, flexing his biceps as he stretches his arms high. “I feel like I could use a shower.”

“You had PE,” Reenzie says. “Didn't you already shower?”

“Did I?” he asks, looking right at me. “I guess I forgot.”

“Has anyone seen Ames?” I ask, changing the subject.

“She texted me and said she's off campus with Denny for lunch,” J.J. says.

“That's weird,” Taylor says. “She didn't go to the Halloween party, she didn't hang with us this morning, and now she's not at lunch.”

“She has a new boyfriend,” I say. “She wants to hang out with him.”

“So he can shower her with affection,” Sean says.

I blush and squirm.

“You don't see Taylor choosing her new guy over us,” Jack says.

“That's because he has sixth-period lunch,” Taylor says. “Otherwise I totally would.”

“Would you, though?” Reenzie asks. “Or would you bring him here to eat with us?”

“We're a good group,” Sean says. “Excellent manners.” He takes a napkin from his lunch tray and spreads it across his pelvis…so it looks like a towel. Then he smiles and raises his eyebrows at me.

I can't even look…or not look.

Lunch continues on this way. Reenzie takes off early for an AP study group, J.J. lists a million road trips he wants to take in his new car, Jack is all about some superhero show on TV that's apparently having an epic episode tonight, Taylor tells us all about the play…and Sean makes me squirm. When we all split off to go to our sixth-period classes, he falls in step next to me.

“You left so fast,” he says. “You really made a clean break of it.”

“Shut up!” I say, smacking his arm.

He laughs. “I got your text. Yeah, let's talk.”

“Great. Want to hit the food court after football practice?”

He shakes his head. “Play-offs start next week, so Coach is working us pretty hard. What about Saturday?”

“Food court Saturday?”

“I'll pick you up Saturday afternoon and we'll figure it out. Two o'clock?”

“Great.”

We split off and I'm almost to class when I see Leo running my way.

“Hey!” he says. “I didn't blow you off, I promise. I wouldn't. I was there, outside the locker room. I waited as long as I could.”

“Outside the locker room?” I ask. “You told me outside the
theater
room.”

Leo scrunches his face. “ 
‘Theater room?'
I wouldn't even say that. You must have read it wrong.”

Not a shocker. I can't even push back on it. “I probably did,” I admit. “But you got the stuff I wrote?”

“And deleted the text, just like you asked. Thanks, Autumn. Taylor's…” He shakes his head, unable to find the words. “I never in a million years thought I'd get someone like her to even notice me. To have her as a girlfriend…you're amazing.”

Aw. That makes me feel really good.

“Just bring her peace and happiness,” I say; then I continue to class on a cloud of joyful satisfaction. I realize I'm not so much a superhero as I am a fairy godmother, which is probably even better. Less spandex.

The rest of the week is pretty normal, though I keep my eye on Sean and Reenzie. I know about the pictures and texts he sent us both all summer, and I know Reenzie thinks the two of them are on the brink of coupledom, but I want to gather even more evidence so I can throw it in his face on Saturday and see what he does. Normally I'd analyze everything with J.J. each morning in the car, but now that he's waiting for me to decide about him and me as a couple, there's no way. Right now things are great and normal between us; they'd get ugly if I asked for his help getting another guy, especially a guy J.J. specifically said he doesn't think is good enough for me.

Taylor and Ames can't help either, because they're too caught up in their own relationships. I don't even see Ames all week. None of us does; she's always with Denny. He drives her to school, they have lunches off campus….I barely even see her in the halls because the two of them stay tucked away until the last second whenever there's a break, and they zip off for football and cheerleading right after school. Ames and I don't have any classes together either, so it's like she's disappeared from my life. We do text, though, and she tells me she's over-the-moon happy, so that's all that matters.

Still, I'd be feeling pretty alone if I didn't have the map. I use it to visit Jenna every night. We hang out in her room, eat snacks, listen to music, do homework, and dissect everything that happened each day in both our lives. If Dad's gifts are all about bringing peace and harmony to my little corner of the world, the map hit it out of the park.

There's one other pet project of mine: I visit Century Acres every day to pop in on Eddy. I don't stay for long, just enough time to say hello and let Eddy know how much I love her and show her what a terrific granddaughter I am.

And…you know…to look for Kyler Leeds.

So, yes, I tend to show up there a little later in the afternoon, after I come home from school, shower, reapply makeup, product up my hair, and put on one of my most flattering outfits.

In other words, I show up after dinner, in old-people time.

Mrs. Rubenstein has apparently figured out how to outsmart Eddy, because she's always in the comfy chair. That means I know within the first second whether Kyler's there because he'd be with her, but I can't turn and leave right away because then she'll know what I'm doing.

“Hi, Mrs. Rubenstein,” I chirp, a huge smile on my face. “You look wonderful today.”

“You're dressed up,” she grouses. “Pretty fancy just to visit your grandmother.”

It goes down like that pretty much every time. I think she's on to me. She never tells me what Kyler's up to or if he was there or when he'll be there, and I don't ask. I never see him, though, so either he's out of town or he's visiting “Meemaw” while I'm at school. Hopefully not because he's specifically avoiding me.

Friday night is the last regular-season football game of the year, so I let Jenna know in advance that I won't pop over because I'll be out late. Reenzie, Taylor, Jack, J.J., and I all sit together at the stadium like always, only now Leo's with us too. I get the sense he knows as much about football as I do, because like me, he always reacts a half second or so after the crowd. Mainly he's there to hug and kiss Taylor after big plays and get popcorn for all of us, so I think he's a fantastic addition to the group. He joins us at the beach after the game, but he and Taylor disappear on some romantic walk and I don't see them after that.

What's harder to take is that Sean and Reenzie disappear too.

I don't see when exactly it happens. We're all at the Shack getting ice cream; then my friends and I end up melding in with this whole group of people who want to walk down the beach to a mini-golf place, which sounds goofy and fun, so we all go. Sean and Reenzie are with us when we start the walk, but by the time Jack, J.J., and I are lining up at hole number one, they're gone.

I don't play a very good game of mini-golf. I hit the ball too hard. I can't help it. I keep pretending it's Sean's smiling face, telling me about how much he missed me, then swooping Reenzie off to do who knows what on the beach at night. Hypocrite. By the time we get back to the cars, his is already gone, and I'm sure Reenzie's with him. They'll probably stay up all night at one of their houses, curled up on a couch watching movies, his arm around her until they fall asleep right there…then Sean will wake up just in time to roll out and come to my house, thinking he can do the same thing with me.

Gross.

I consider calling him to cancel our meeting, but I want to tell him face to face how slimy it is to string Reenzie and me along. I build a whole speech in my head. I go to bed Friday thinking about it. I dream about me delivering it, though in the dream I have seven arms and I'm purple. When I wake up, it's pounding in my head, and once Jenna's awake I even use the map to write myself to her and practice it on her. I pop home in time to get myself extra cute, because I know the hotter I look, the worse it'll be for Sean to get dropped.

I suit up for battle in simple-but-sexy-sweet: little camouflage shorts, little butter-yellow tank top, hair long and loose. When he rings the doorbell, I'm ready. I fling open the door with major attitude.

“Hey, Autumn,” Sean says. “You look beautiful.”

“Thanks.” I say it like the compliment doesn't even affect me, though I do notice that Sean doesn't look like he just rolled off the couch with Reenzie. He looks clean and fresh and rested. And he smells good.

And he's holding flowers. Tulips. In a bunch of different colors.

“Here,” he says. “These are for you.”

“Thanks,” I say again. But I say it gruffly, and I don't elaborate. I'm sticking with the one-syllable answers. I have a speech to deliver, and I'm not going to let some flowers and a clean, great smell throw me off. Still, I can't just toss the flowers down to die. I let Sean in while I go to the kitchen and dig out a vase.

“We could really just talk here,” I say, concentrating on the flowers and not looking into his eyes. Easier to stay on task that way. “My mom's at work and Erick's at his friend Aaron's.”

“Actually, I already made plans…if that's okay.”

There's something almost shy in his voice that makes my heart flutter…until I remind myself that his “plans” included disappearing with Reenzie last night too.

“Sure,” I say, but I don't let myself sound excited. When the flowers are all set up, I grab my bag and head out to his SUV, which after his summer road trip is held together with more duct tape than ever before. He won't tell me where we're going, just drives for fifteen minutes until we pull into this park area I've never been before. Lots of trees, giant rolling lawns, and a massive body of crystal blue water that branches off into little rivers that look like they run forever. Little kids run around on the grass, couples hold hands and walk their dogs…there's even an ice-cream truck playing a tingly tune.

If I weren't about to totally tell Sean off, I'd be seriously charmed. Especially since it's November. Last time I popped over to visit Jenna in Maryland, it snowed there. For sure there are advantages to Florida.

But Sean's not going to win me over with pretty scenery. Not when I know what he's really up to.

He stops the car and I turn in my seat to face him. “We need to talk.”

“We will.” He gets out, pulls a backpack out of the backseat, and slings it on, then opens my door and helps me out. I don't need his help and I remind myself I don't want his help, but it would be rude to completely blow him off, so I take his hand and let him help me down…but I whip my hand back the second I'm on the ground.

He leads the way as we walk, and even though I try to start my speech a few times, he always asks me to please wait. “We'll talk, I promise—just not yet.”

We get to a little dock. It's empty, except for one blue-and-white pedal boat—one of those two-person boats you sit in and pedal like a bike. There's a park near my old house where Jenna and I used to rent boats like these. This one has the two seats up front, a little storage space behind that, and a small deck at the back of the boat.