Breaking Rules (9 page)

Sure, I was excited
about the program, about winning the scholarship—something I desperately needed. But had it unconsciously been about something bigger than that all along? Had I just signed up to compete in hopes to fill some gaping void in my life that could only be filled by my sister? Had Bailey been right at the diner this weekend? Had I really become so desperate for social interaction that I’d signed up to get involved with something that I would’ve normally turned up my nose at? Was that really how it happened?

So much of my life in the past
few days had just gotten lost inside a thick fog of uncertainty. Had I tried so hard to hide the truth from everyone else that I’d even started fooling myself into believing the lies?

After a few seconds of listening to the buzz of conversations happening around us, Gabe scoot
ed his chair right up next to mine and leaned in closer to me.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said, wiping the single tear that had made its way to the corner of my eye.

“That was brutal honesty, Mandy,” he said, and his hand landed gently on the top of my back.
I raised my shoulders to my ears, feeling the tension kick in the moment his hand brushed across the back of my shirt.

“Yeah
, well,” I tried to ignore the way that my body responded to his touch, “I’m distant, judgmental, carry a chip on my shoulder, and I hate to be challenged, but I never said I wasn’t honest.”

H
is thin lips quirked into a smile.

“You only have to be alone as long as you want to be,” he said. “You have a hundred
, potential friends sitting all around you right now, and one friend,” he said, narrowing his gaze, “sitting here talking to you now.”

“Oh, l
et’s not pretend we’re friends,” I said, trying to force a smile.

“You can change the subject and try
to cover it up with a laugh if that makes you feel better,” he said, patting my back. “But that doesn’t change the facts. People aren’t going to just walk into your life and stick around if they’re not invited to do so. If you’re eager to fix things with your sister, tell her so.” With a couple gentle taps, he moved his hand and backed away. My shoulders slowly fell again. “I’ve got to get to that meeting now,” he said. “But think about it, okay? If you want things to change, then
you
have to change them.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding once. He stood and pushed his chair back in place, and with one last look in my direction, he turned on his heel and headed for the door.

I sat there watching as Gabe walked further away from me, weaving in and out of the tables and making his way closer to the door. My heart grew heavier the farther he moved, and I knew what the heaviness meant: I didn’t want him to walk away.

His
final words kept echoing inside of my head:
if you want things to change…

“
You have to change them,” I said, feeling something spark inside of me. I sprang from my chair and sprinted after him.

“
Mandy
?” I heard Georgia say as I jogged around her table. I saw her perk up out of the corner of my eye, but I never stopped to respond. I just kept moving closer to Gabe, and just as his hand landed on the door, I grabbed his arm and stopped him from stepping out.

“Gabe,” I said, and he turned back, widening his stare. I took a few deep breaths, trying to catch the ones I’d lost on my sprint over to him.

“Mandy,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“I forgot to ask you about the interview,” I said, still panting.

“Yeah, I gave you my number,” he said. “You can call any time.”

“
But you were right,” I said, swallowing hard. “Something like this interview is better done face-to-face. Are you still up for dinner at Shae’s? I’ll let you pick the date and time. Whatever works for you.”

His wor
ried expression faded, and his lips widened into an amused smirk.

“Yeah,” he said
. “Absolutely.”

“Perfect.
” I stood tall again. “Okay. Go. Don’t miss your meeting. Mr. Davies despises tardiness.”

“Thanks for the heads up.”

“Yeah.”

As Gabe turned to walk out the door, he looked back over his shoulder and
smiled, an expression that made me curious to know if maybe he’d thought all along that I would change my mind about the article, the interview, and the possibility of getting together to have dinner.

“Have a
great day, Mandy,” he said, and with that, he was gone.

I knew right then and there,
if there had ever been any doubt before, there wasn’t any more. I was most certainly in a heap of trouble. Gabe had a hold on me.

Eight

I hung up the phone after a short conversation with Georgia. I needed to let her know that I’d decided to tackle the original article and interview with Gabe, and after a dozen promises not to keep her waiting forever, I hoped that I’d hear from him soon.

I sat cross-legged on the front porch swing, dressed in my RI volunteer shirt
. I was outlining a series of interview questions, if and when we nailed down a date and time for the interview. I’d left that ball in his court, so while it seemed that it was entirely up to him whether or not we’d see each other again before Friday, I knew that I’d have to push to set something up if he didn’t initiate the next move.

Because we were all headed to the same place, Carla, Fletcher, and I decided to carpool to the diner. The other eight volunteers from our school were coming out to support the cause as well, and it wasn’t until our group arrived that we realized how quickly word had spread. People were coming from all over town for a quick car wash, and most of them were donatin
g quite generously to the cause.

Carla, with her
understandable fear of being soaked by an army of teenage boys, all heavily armed with water hoses and wash buckets, spent most of the event walking around and collecting donations from the drivers as they pulled up. Fletcher and I, though, were both elbow-deep in water, suds, and damp towels for the better part of two hours. Everyone really chipped in and did their part, and our first shot at raising money had gone over better than any of us expected. I even heard Carla mention in passing that she estimated we’d pulled in just short of five-hundred dollars in a few, short hours.

“Mr. Raddick!” Carla squealed from the other end of the parking lot, and my head jerked up at the sound of his last name. “Oh my goodness! It’s so good to see you.”

I turned my attention away from the blue Prius
I was washing and looked up to see Carla bopping up and down as she talked to Gabe over by the building. She twirled her long hair around her finger, looking as though she was purposely doing whatever she could to catch his eye. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but the two of them remained engaged in conversation for five minutes. She kept touching him and giggling as they chatted, and I felt a stabbing pain twist deep in my gut every time her scrawny fingers landed on his arm. I hated how comfortable she was around him, and her confidence sickened me beyond belief.

Why couldn’t I
be that breezy every time Gabe dropped by? Why was I always the one getting tongue-tied, nervous, and flustered? Why couldn’t talking to Gabe come as easily to me as it did to her? She didn’t have to mask anything with an argument or with forced laughter. She didn’t get emotional; she didn’t tear up. It was so natural. Whatever she had, whatever it was that I didn’t have, it made being around Gabe look so incredibly easy.

Trying to ignore my insecurities and keep my mind focused, I eventually finished spraying down the car, trying to put the image of Gabe and Carla behind me. Just as I
backed away to pass the hose off to one of the other volunteers, Gabe stepped up next to me and managed a half-wave.

“We’re seeing
you a lot around here lately,” I said, bending down to get my sponge out of the bucket.

“You
mentioned the car wash earlier.” He squatted next to me. “I thought I’d check it out.”

“I thought you would,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said. “After all, it is the first big event for the district, and you’re heading up our team.”

“Right.”

“
Of course, I thought you’d show up with a mud-covered car and expect us to make it look shiny and new, but I guess even I’m capable of being wrong from time to time.”

“
Wow,” he said, stifling a half-laugh. We stood in unison and he let his hands fall to his sides. “I thought we called a truce.”

“We did.”

“Then what’s with the hostility, my friend?”

“No hostility
.”

“I don’t know,” he said, and a boyish smirk got the best of him. “From the sound of that last comment, I’d say you still
think I’m just a big, fat jerk.”

I
gnawed on my upper lip. “To be perfectly honest, I haven’t quite figured out how I feel about you yet.”

“Ah, but I didn’t ask you how you feel. I asked you what you
think. Feelings and thoughts are two different things, Mandy,” he said, looking up at me as he hinged forward to pick up my soap bucket. “Dump this?”

“Yes
, please,” I said, wringing out the sponge. I dropped back down to the ground and sorted all of the supplies I’d used over the last two hours. I kept my hands busy, and I tried to ignore the whole notion of feelings and thoughts being two separate entities. I much preferred to believe that I could use my mind to manipulate my emotions however and whenever I saw fit.

After Gabe had dumped the water and passed the bucket off to Fletcher, who was now collecting all the supplies he’d borrowed from home, he kneeled down next to me at the edge of the pavement and
flashed a look at me from the corner of his eye.

“Yes?”
I kept my hands busy organizing the soaps, waxes, and unused rags inside the plastic divider.

“Where’d we land on that dinner?” he asked, picking up the organizer just as I finished filing away the last bottle of soap. We stood again, and the car supplies hung at his side
as we walked back toward the group.

“I thought I left that ball in your court,” I said. “You pick the time and date, remember?”

“You free tonight?” he asked, tucking the supplies into the back of Fletcher’s beat-up truck.

“Tonight?”
I asked. “Yeah, I guess, but,” I looked down at my wet and soiled RI shirt, “I’m a mess. And I’d have to catch a ride home so that I could—”

“I’ll take you. We can swing by your place so you can get cleaned up,” he said. “I’m not in any hurry.”

I tried to imagine letting Gabe come to my house, but then all I could picture was Dad and Bailey nearly killing each other as they ran to the door, ready and willing to tackle the poor guy and interrogate him to no end. If I brought the founder and president of RI into our home, Dad may never let him leave. And if Bailey was there…oh no. That definitely wouldn’t be good. That would only feed right into her suspicions, and that was definitely the last thing I needed.

“You know what?” I said. “
That’s probably not the best idea.”

“The dinner or
letting me take you home?”

“The latter,” I said, knowing the dinner
had
to happen, sooner rather than later. “It’s not you, I swear. It’s my dad. And my sister.”

“Your dad and your sister?”

“My dad
has this weird obsession with influential people,” I said. “So naturally, he has this crazy notion that you should be his best friend. I guess he’s been eager to meet you for a long time.”

“Ha,” he said, almost laughing. “Eager seems like such a
gentle word.”

“Oh?”

“He leaves a message for me at least once a day,” he said. “Twice if it’s the weekend. Apparently I’m pretty special to your father.”

“So I heard,” I said, and we both shared a smile.
“Sorry about that, by the way. He never knows how to take a hint.”

“
Ah, it’s nothing. I’ll have to schedule a lunch with him soon,” he said, probably because he knew it would be better to get it over with than to keep prolonging the inevitable. “And what about your sister?” he asked. “Is she hell-bent on meeting me, too?”

“Not quite, but Bailey requires a
n elaborate explanation,” I said. “And I’m not sure
I’m
prepared to prepare
you
for what you’re in for with that one.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding once. “Well, I think I’ve ignored your father about as much as one person can.
If it’ll buy you a little time this evening to get ready for dinner, then I can’t say I would mind entertaining his questions for a while. And I’m sure your sister isn’t as bad as you let on.”

“Then you have more faith in her than you should
.”

I
felt that Gabe sensed that I wasn’t ready to let him come into my home—whether it was because of my dad, my sister, or my own insecurities because he let his smile fade into something a little more serious.

“How about this?” he said, pulling his keys from his side pocket. “I’ll drop you off at your place so you can clean up—”

“And grab my notes—”

“So you can clean up and grab your notes
, and then you can just shoot me a text when you’re ready. I’ll come back and pick you up.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “I can meet you at Shae’s. I
t’ll save you the drive.”

“Nonsense,” he said as we walked to the edge of the parking lot.
Stopping at the back of a black Corolla, he lifted his keys just high enough to unlock the doors. “Let’s do this.”

My return home had been a quick and
painless one. Neither Bailey nor my father had been home, so I was able to drop inside, change my clothes, and grab my stuff—all in a matter of minutes. In no time at all, we were already seated and ordering our food at the nicest restaurant in town.

“Okay, this is weird.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re just sitting there watching me eat.”

“I’m not, though,” Gabe said, nodding at my uneaten sandwich. “You haven’t taken a bite in over twenty minutes.”

I felt my lips pull over to the side, amused by his point. I
hadn’t touched my food for a while, for a good reason. It became increasingly difficult to eat anything in front of Gabe, and not because I was self-conscious, but because Gabe was full of questions that required an endless string of answers. I may not have always had the best attitude in the world, but I had manners. And I wasn’t about to sit there and talk with my mouth full. Besides, not even considering the concept of manners, I couldn’t imagine I’d look too flattering trying to communicate anything with lettuce flapping between my lips. Of course, I knew it didn’t matter how I looked in front of Gabe, but I still found myself caring. That was enough to keep me from taking a single bite.

We
managed to make it through our first forty minutes together unscathed. He hadn’t said anything remotely rude, and I managed to keep my opinions and bad attitude at bay. It seemed that our truce held up on both ends. And while I understood that this dinner was supposed to act as an opportunity to interview him for the school paper, he didn’t seem to understand that. Every time I asked him a question or tried to get back on track, he’d crack a goofy joke or start talking about anything but the project.

And as we sat there and talked, I kept watching Gabe, observing every little thing I could about him. He moved his hands a lot
to convey a point, and I couldn’t quite tell if it was for emphasis or if it was simply a nervous habit. But Gabe didn’t have any reason to be nervous, so I pegged his hand gestures as another one of his so-called ‘character traits.’ As he sat there talking, I couldn’t help but let my mind wander back to Saturday afternoon, back to the diner when I’d had lunch with Bailey and Jones. I vividly remembered the things my sister’s boyfriend had said, the way he’d described the man sitting right in front of me. For someone Jones had so easily pegged as a social misfit, Gabe didn’t really fit the bill; he just didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d ever had any kind of problem fitting in. He was handsome, respectable, and successful, but above all of that, he was comfortable in his own skin. And if he wasn’t, he had an incredible way of disguising it.

“I’m afraid I don’t really have much to go on at this point,” I said, looking down at my digital voice recorder. Gabe had been willing to let me record our interview, but since we hadn’t really gotten around to that part yet, all I’d really recorded was the first half-hour of our dinner conversation.

“Oh, right,” he said, sitting a little straighter. “I guess we should get to that, huh?”

“That’s probably a good idea,” I said, looking down to the small notebook I’d kept next to my plate. I picked up my pen and let it hover over the page.