Back to You (6 page)

D
el stood up against the lockers in the East Building, waiting for his friend Jay so they could cut fifth period and go down to the deli to grab something to eat.

The other students skirted past him, giving him a wide berth, and he watched them, the way they chattered mindlessly, the way some of the girls flirted pathetically, the way a few of them eyed him like they didn’t know if they should acknowledge him or run.

And then she walked past, glancing over at him and smiling softly before she stopped at her locker a few feet ahead.

She had been doing that for a while now. Ever since he had defended her against that arrogant asshole in Health class a few weeks ago, anytime she saw him or passed him, she would smile.

Once, when she had been entering the building as he was leaving, he held the door for her, and her shoulder brushed his chest as she smiled up at him and thanked him.

And now she was at her locker, balancing her books in one arm as she worked the combination of her lock, blowing her breath out the side of her mouth every few seconds to get the veil of hair out of her eyes. He couldn’t stop watching her.

She wasn’t like any of the other girls.

It wasn’t just because of the sweet way she acknowledged him. It was more than that. She didn’t carry herself like a freshman. Or a teenager at all, for that matter. She dressed trendy, but managed to do it with class, while other girls wore things that were tight and low-cut and made them look trashy instead of sexy. She seemed sophisticated, but not arrogant. She was quiet, but not withdrawn. He could tell she watched everything; she took it all in, assessing everyone and everything around her.

And because of that, she shouldn’t have been smiling at him the way she did. She should have been afraid of him.

Even that Jenn girl who was always with her gave him an uneasy look whenever he’d pass, or she would whisper vehemently in Lauren’s ear in either disgust or horror when Lauren would acknowledge him.

Yet she still continued to do it.

Lauren opened her locker, jumping back suddenly as a book tumbled out, and as she struggled to catch it, the other books she was holding scattered to the floor.

Without thinking, he pushed off the lockers and walked toward her. She was crouched on the floor gathering her things, and he knelt down beside her, reaching out to grab the last of the books.

Advanced Biology.

“Here you go, Red,” he said, handing her the textbook, and she glanced up at him and smiled.

“Thanks.”

“You’re in Advanced Bio?” he asked as he stood. “Aren’t you a freshman?”

Lauren stood on her tiptoes as she placed some of the books back on the top shelf. “Yeah. I’m a year ahead in sciences. It’s kind of my thing,” she said with a shrug, brushing the hair out of her eyes before pulling a notebook off the shelf.

He leaned back against the locker next to hers, folding his arms. “Are you in Wendt’s class?”

“Yep. Good ol’ Wendt,” she said with an eye roll, and he smiled. It was the first real conversation they’d had, and he found himself scrambling for a way to keep it going.

“You ready for that unit test next week?” he asked.

“I think so,” she said. “You?”

Del laughed as he absently ran his fingertips over the vents on a nearby locker. “Me? No. I’m screwed.”

She turned then, looking up at him with dark green eyes. It was the first time he noticed what color they were.

“Do you want me to help you?”

It took him a second to answer. “Do you
want
to help me?” he finally asked, genuinely confused.

“Sure,” she said casually as she turned away for a moment to close her locker. When she turned back to face him, she pulled her books into her chest and looked up at him. “I can help you after school for a bit. I have practice at three, but if you’re free before then, we could go over some stuff.”

He straightened up as he ran a hand through his hair. He had no idea what to say to that.

She blinked up at him, waiting, and at the look in her eyes, he felt his shoulders soften. “Yeah, that’s cool. We can meet up for a bit after school today if you want.”

“Okay.”

“Alright, see you then,” he said, turning quickly as he walked way from her in a stupor.

“Wait, Michael?”

He froze as the oddest feeling settled over him. No one called him Michael. Ever. Not even his teachers called him by his real name. The only one who ever had was his grandmother. It should have bothered him that she didn’t call him Del. Michael was too familiar.

But for some reason, he realized, Del wouldn’t have seemed right on her lips.

He turned, and she was still standing at her locker, looking at him. “Where do you want to meet?”

She’s actually serious about this
, he thought before he finally said, “Um, you know where Palace Pizza is?”

“Yep,” she said. “See you then.” And then she smiled her quintessential smile before she turned and walked down the hall, leaving him staring after her.

By the time Del was walking up the sidewalk toward Palace Pizza, he had convinced himself she wouldn’t be there. She had been put on the spot back at her locker and felt obligated to offer him help. But after she’d had time to think about it, she’d change her mind. It was one thing to smile at him in the halls; it was another to spend an afternoon alone with him.

She’d come to her senses by the end of the day, he assured himself.

But as he reached the glass door of the pizza parlor, there she was, sitting with her back to him in one of the booths and twirling a strand of hair as she read something in her notebook.

After a baffled second he walked in; Lauren turned when she heard the bell ding above the door, and when he hesitated, she waved him over.

“Hi,” she said as he sat across from her.

“Hey,” he said, still feeling caught off guard. “I didn’t think you’d be here.”

She pulled her brow together. “Why? Didn’t we say we’d meet here?”

He looked at her then, and he saw that she genuinely didn’t understand why he thought she wouldn’t show up.

“Can I take your order?” the waitress asked as she approached their table with a pad in her hand. Del pulled his attention away from Lauren to look at the waitress as he gestured for Lauren to go first.

“Um, I’ll just have a plain slice, thank you.”

“Me too, but make it two,” Del added.

“Three plain. Got it. Help yourselves to a drink,” she said, motioning to the beverage refrigerator on the far wall as she walked back toward the kitchen.

Del slid out of the booth, walking over to the glass doors of the fridge. “What’s your poison, Red?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Iced tea, please,” she said, and he grabbed a can of iced tea and a can of root beer before he sat back down and placed it in front of her.

“Why do you keep calling me Red?”

He blinked at her for a second before he leaned over and took a strand of her hair in between his fingers and held it up in front of her face.

“Yes, I get that part,” she said with an eye roll, and he couldn’t help but grin as he let her hair fall from his fingers. “Do you not know my name?” she asked.

He felt his smile drop, and she quickly added, “It’s no big deal. People don’t really know me. And I mean, it’s not like we’re even friends or anything, so…” She trailed off, busying herself by digging in her backpack.

“Why do you call me Michael?” he countered, and she froze, glancing up at him.

“Isn’t that your name?”

“No one calls me that. Everyone calls me Del. I don’t think anyone even knows my real name is Michael, except for the principals here. How did you even know that?”

Lauren bit her bottom lip, and if he didn’t know better, for a second she almost looked guilty. “I can’t remember where I found out,” she said, looking down and going through her backpack again. “Do you want me to stop?”

He spun the can of root beer in his hand and looked at her. “You don’t need to ask anyone’s permission for anything in this life. You can do whatever you want.”

At that moment, the waitress brought over their slices, and Lauren glanced up and thanked her as she slid her notebook to the far side of the table to make room.

She opened her iced tea before looking up at Del, tilting her head as she watched him lift his slice and turn it around, taking a bite out of the crust first.

“The crust is the best part,” he explained around his mouthful of food. “If they made an all-crust pizza, I’d be a pig in shit.”

Lauren took a delicate bite of her own slice. “I’m pretty sure they do. It’s called bread.”

He stopped chewing as he looked at her, and a smirk lifted the corner of his mouth.
She’s a wiseass,
he thought with equal parts amusement and appreciation, and she smiled to herself before she took another bite of her pizza.

“Okay,” she said after she’d followed it with a sip of iced tea. “So, did you get the notes on the evolution of microbial life?”

She seemed so at ease with him. It didn’t make sense. He found himself watching her face, her movements, constantly appraising her. If it was an act, he would have seen through it by now.

“I don’t know what I got,” he said, leaning down to grab his notebook from his bag. “I definitely don’t have all of them, though. That man is a goddamn lunatic.”

Del placed his notebook on the table between them and flipped it open, and she leaned across the table to get a better look, bringing herself closer to him in the process.

She didn’t even flinch. Not the slightest hesitation.

The words were out of his mouth before he’d even decided to say them. “You’re not afraid of me.”

A beat of silence passed before she spoke. “Why would I be?” she asked, her eyes still on his notebook as she tried to decipher his notes.

“Most people are.”

She didn’t react to his words at all, and he found himself wondering if it was possible she hadn’t heard about him, that she didn’t know the rumors. But even if she didn’t—and the chances were small—she should still have her own reasons for being uneasy.

“And I mean, after what I did on the first day of Health…”

She looked up at him, her expression smooth before she looked back down at his notes.

“You know why I did it?”

He watched her take a small breath as her tongue darted out to wet her lips, but her eyes remained on the paper in front of her. “No, I don’t know why you did it. But I know you’ve had some bad things happen to you.”

So she
had
heard the stories. She knew all about him: no father, dead brother, angry kid with a vendetta against the world. And God only knows what other embellishments. And yet she was still here with him, calm and casual.

He didn’t understand.

People either kept their distance from him or grilled him for information about his ugly past, information he had no intentions of sharing with anyone. Avoidance or scrutiny, that’s how people handled him.

But she did neither.

And he hadn’t expected to like it as much as he did.

“Anyway,” she said, her voice indicating she was changing the subject. “Wendt always adds more notes after the fact. He’s totally unorganized. I swear, I think he plans his lessons at the stoplights on the way to school,” she said with another one of those eye rolls that made him grin. Instead of looking annoyed, she looked adorable. An angry kitten.

“I just leave a few lines in between the notes as I take them,” she went on. “This way when he starts skipping around, I can go back and fill them in where they actually belong. Otherwise, your notes end up as unorganized as he is.”

She tilted her head, looking back down at Del’s notes as she absently tore the crust off her pizza.

And then she reached across the table and handed it to him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

He glanced down at the crust and then back at her; her eyes were still on his notebook as she flipped a page and began reading again, and he felt something settle in his chest. It was pathetic, but that was probably the nicest thing anyone had done for him in a long time.

“Here,” she said, reaching to pull a pen out of her bag, “let’s just rewrite these so they make sense before we start trying to figure out what you missed.” She spun his notebook so it was facing her fully before she flipped to a clean page and began to write.

He watched her with a small smile of appreciation. “I like how you act around me.”

She lifted her eyes, and when she looked up at him that way, he noticed her lashes were so long, they brushed just beneath her eyebrows. “How do I act around you?”

He shrugged. “Normal.”

Lauren stared at him for a second before she smiled softly. “Hand me that textbook,” she said, nodding toward the book sitting on the booth next to him.

As he placed it on the table, Lauren squinted at the page in front of her, pointing to his notes. “What’s this?”

“What?” he asked, tilting his head to see what she was pointing at.

“Pair-a-ballis?” she asked, sounding it out slowly like a child learning to read.

He pressed his lips together, fighting a smile. “Parabasilids,” he said. “I think pair-a balls is a different unit.”