Fearless (16 page)

Liam had this adorably perplexed look on his face. “Justin, it’s cool. For serious. I just didn’t think.”

I shrugged a little, allowing a slight glimmer of optimism into my world. “It’s not a big deal.”

“No, I know, but I still feel bad for making you uncomfortable.”

I retrieved my smile from the dark hole it was hiding in. “When has that ever stopped you?”

Liam’s lips quirked. “So, we’re cool?”

“Well, I am, but you need work.”

“Ha! I knew being a jock would go to your head.”

He was granting me the only thing I asked for—a free pass out of the conversation. It didn’t matter that I had a crush on him. It wasn’t going to go anywhere. Talking about it sure wasn’t going to make anything better. So it was for the best to just drop it and never, ever bring it up again—
ever
.

Chapter 17

I
DON’T THINK IT COMES
as a surprise to hear that by Monday, I was a nervous wreck. My pessimistic nature imagined about thirty disaster scenarios that ended with the team demanding I commit ritual suicide.

Making matters worse, my mom was there, and Liam and Kanoa. I was grateful for their support, of course, but I didn’t feel I needed anyone witnessing the catastrophe that was going to befall me. Knowing they were there only made the lead in my stomach even heavier.

So I was not doing at all well when the meet started. I found myself fantasizing that the school would catch fire or Martians would invade or something—
anything
—to get me out of the competition.

Then the strangest thing happened. Kanoa pulled me aside and just his smile was enough to make my knees stop quaking.

“You feel like you’re going to puke?”

I nodded. “If I’d eaten anything today, I would.”

Kanoa grinned at me. “I felt the same way my first meet.”

I gaped at him. “Really?”

“Seriously.”

I didn’t feel better, exactly, but some of the mind-numbing terror receded. “What did you do?”

“All that adrenaline you got pumping through you right now? Use it. Go out there and show them what you got.”

I stared at him, baffled by how he could be so confident in me. I also couldn’t quite figure out why he cared. It wasn’t like my performance mattered to his life in any way.

“You got this,” he told me and slipped his arm around my bare shoulders and
that
sent fireworks off in my brain, let me tell you.

“Okay,” I said, gnawing on my thumbnail. “Okay, I can do this.”

As weird as it was that Kanoa was there to buck me up, that wasn’t even the strange thing that happened. The really bizarre thing was that when I got up on my springboard, all of the stress and all of the anxiety just went away. I was in a familiar place, since the meet was held at my school. I was doing something I had done dozens of times already. My mind went into hyper focus and I blocked out the crowds and Coach Lancaster and my own team.

I was, as they say, in the zone.

I didn’t jump before the gun, as so many of my nightmares had predicted I would. My suit did not disintegrate like tissue paper. And Ms. Warner didn’t yank me out of the pool to go to a final I hadn’t studied for.

I shot into the water like I’d been fired out of a cannon. My limbs fell into the rhythm they had grown so used to. Though I’d only been working out for a little over a month, my muscles had hardened enough that I was able to knife through the water like I was a dolphin or something.

Kanoa had taught me that I wasn’t competing against the other swimmers—that I was competing against myself. That was an important lesson, because there was no way I could keep track of the other guys in the water. I would lose precious time trying to figure out if they were ahead or behind me.

But there was one guy in the lane next to me that I was neck and neck with and so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to at least try to leave him in my wake. He was fast, though, and every time I took the lead, I only held it for a second or so before he took it back.

I was
not
going to let Kanoa down, though. I was going to give this everything I had, even if that wasn’t enough. This wasn’t like the beach. Here, I had no reason to hold back. Here, I was going to make Kanoa proud.

My muscles burned as I pushed myself to my very limits and beyond. My useless, clumsy feet chopped into the water in a relentless staccato rhythm. The smell of the chlorinated water filled my nostrils, and its familiarity invigorated me.

When I touched the edge of the pool for the last time, I quickly ripped my goggles off so I could see how I’d done.

Please don’t make me have sucked too bad,
I begged the Flying Spaghetti monster.

I stared in disbelief, not quite comprehending what I was seeing on the board. It just didn’t make any sense to me. I was sure it had to be a mistake.

But the roaring of the crowd behind me only confirmed the impossible.

I came in first.

No, seriously, I came in
first
.

I climbed out of the pool and instantly I was surrounded by my teammates, who patted me on the back and called me “the man” and crowed and generally acted like I was a hero.

And that was all great and everything. It really was. But it was when I looked up at the stands and I saw Liam grinning at me and giving me a thumbs-up of approval that I really felt like screaming in triumph.

The team overall did pretty good. Jimmy, Chad and Bailey all took first place too. So the team’s mood was really good. I mean, it wasn’t like we were suddenly school royalty or anything. We were still the Frosh-Soph swim team, so it wasn’t like people showered us with presents wherever we went, but we got a few fist bumps and high-fives in the halls.

With things going so well, the dread I used to experience every time I awoke for school disappeared. It was a new and very comfortable feeling and I basked in it. I was tripping a lot less and I’d gotten much better at catching myself, so I was much less of a localized disaster waiting to happen. Being on friendly terms with my teammates meant I could give them those silent nods we guys like to exchange that mean stuff I can’t explain without being cited for violating the guy code. Those little nods made other people see me as something other than the weird kid, and that made school much easier to deal with.

Training with Kanoa continued, which surprised me. I figured he would tell me he needed to focus on his own training or something. I wouldn’t have held it against him. He’d done so much for me and it wasn’t like I could cling to him forever.

But he didn’t ditch me and I sure wasn’t going to ask to be sent away. I mean, seeing him in a Speedo several times a week was kind of like live-action porn. Okay, no, I’ll be honest. As hot as
that
was, the best part was just hanging out with him.

The only thing that soured it was the way his girlfriend kept showing up and intruding on my Kanoa time. I’m an only child. I don’t really do well with sharing. Couldn’t she restrict her drama to when she had him the other twenty-three hours a day?

When I saw them together, they always seemed to be arguing. And that annoyed me. Kanoa was about the most laid-back, chill dude I have ever met. So I couldn’t imagine what she did that got him so upset, but I was sure he didn’t deserve it.

Finally, I got annoyed enough that I said something. We’d been hanging out for weeks now, so I thought maybe it would be okay. Someone sure had to tell him he could do better.

“So, your girlfriend seemed upset,” I said as we stretched before our run. The girl in question had just left after another argument.

“Huh?” he asked.

“Sorry, I didn’t overhear. I just saw you two arguing.”

Kanoa frowned. “Justin....”

I forced a shrug as my confidence crumbled. Maybe I really
didn’t
have the right to say anything. I didn’t want to piss him off. And I really didn’t want him thinking it was because I was jealous of her, even though I was, but he wasn’t allowed to know that.

“It’s none of my business.”

“Dude, Aolani’s my sister.”

I stared at him and felt a stupid rush of relief. So what if
this
hot girl wasn’t his girlfriend? What difference did that really make? That just meant there was some
other
hot girl somewhere I had not yet met.

“Oh,” was all I said.

“Her boyfriend just dumped her. She’s always doing this. She picks out the absolute worst guy and then is all shocked when he turns out to be a loser. I swear, we may be twins but I sometimes have no idea what goes on in that head of hers.”

“Twins?”

“Yep.”

It took me a little bit to remember that Aolani was the girl Liam was interested in. So the fact that she was single
and
related to Kanoa meant I had two reasons to celebrate. That brightened up my whole morning.

“I have good news,” I told Liam in English.

“Yeah?”

I explained to him about Aolani and that she had just been dumped. “You could swoop in, you know? Be her knight in shining armor, like.”

Liam bit his lower lip. “Maybe.”

“What do you mean, ‘maybe’?”

“Dude, you don’t ask a girl out right after she’s been dumped. Then you’re just the rebound guy.”

“But—”

“Just drop it, Justin,” he grumbled.

It sounded like a lame rationalization to me. Of course, I had to admit I knew nothing about dating and even less about girls. Liam could be right. I didn’t even know there
was
such a thing as rebound.

So I left it alone, figuring I would just bug him about it later. It wasn’t like I could
force
him to ask her out.

Even with my life improving, I didn’t fail to notice that Liam’s mood continued to darken. I noticed because I wanted to share the good turn things were taking with him. He’d suffered along with all my stupid drama. I wanted him to share in the good times too. But he started blowing me off for our afternoon hang-outs and missing more classes.

He wouldn’t tell me why, which worried and confused me. I didn’t think we had any secrets left between us. I gave him his space, but I didn’t like being helpless. He had given me so much, I wanted to do something for him to show how grateful I was.

Inspiration hit one day when I spotted Aolani at the drinking fountain. Liam was still making excuses for not asking Aolani out, so I made a really bold decision. I would do it for him.

“Um, Aolani?”

She paused in her drinking and gave me the sort of smile that I knew would devastate any straight guy. “Hey, you’re my brother’s friend, right? Justin?”

My brain got sidetracked by the idea that Kanoa talked about me to his sister. I hadn’t dared hope that he thought of me outside of practice. What did that mean? And what all did he say? And we were friends? That was huge!

“What’s up?” Aolani prodded.

I glanced beyond her to her two friends. Girls and their packs, I just didn’t understand it. Jen was texting madly, her face so intent I had to assume she was telling someone how to disarm a bomb attached to a school bus full of kids. Keisha was checking her make-up, which seemed flawless to me.

“Um, can I talk to you a sec?”

“Sure.”

There was a smug confidence to her look, like she knew what was coming. I stepped away from her gang, leading her a few feet away so we could chat without her friends giving me the stink eye—or worse,
giggling.
In my experience, a girl can pack a lot of meanness into a giggle.

I hoped she didn’t think I was going to ask her out. I mean, if I was going to ask a girl out, it would probably be someone like Aolani. She was nice to look at, with the same bronze skin her brother had and pretty, gentle eyes. She also had curves—that is to say, she wasn’t fat, but she had meat on her bones, giving her hips and cleavage a little more definition. Personally, that waif look freaks me all the fuck out.

I can appreciate girls without wanting to do them, you know.

“Do you know my friend Liam?”

She looked confused. “The stoner?”

I sighed. Liam really needed to work on his rep. “He’s not…. He only does a little weed now and then.”

Aolani laughed. It was a pretty sound—honest and unrestrained. “Justin, I’m not a narc. I party too, with the right crowd.”

I lowered my hackles. “Liam’s a really good guy. He’s like, the best guy, really, though you wouldn’t know it to look at him.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“What? Why would you even say that?” I asked, terrified to even speculate why she might think that.

That smirk of hers was back. “No reason.”

I was completely off balance. I didn’t even want to go out with her myself and she’d turned me into a floundering idiot. How did straight guys ever manage it?

“Uh, anyway, he really wants to go out with you.”

Aolani studied me for a second. “For real? You’re asking me out
for
him?”

“Well, I was just seeing if you would be interested....”

Her eyes sparkled with mystery. “For serious?”

“Uh, is that bad?”

“No, it’s cute.”

Cute sounded bad, but I decided to not argue with her. At least she wasn’t being mean about it. I could see why Liam liked her. She wasn’t dumb or vain. She didn’t pretend to be anything but what she was.

“So…?”

“I’ll go out with him, if he asks me,” Aolani said.

I relaxed a little. “Okay,” I said, smiling anyway. “Thanks.”

“There isn’t anything else you wanted to ask me?” That mystery in her eyes deepened.

I gave her a blank stare. “Huh?”

She gave me another merry laugh. “Okay, I guess not. Nice to meet you, Justin.”

I watched her rejoin her friends, completely confused. I really did feel bad for straight guys in that moment. Girls weren’t just another gender, they were an alien race, with customs and language all their own.

I was glad that this was the closest I would ever come to having to ask one out.

Even though the whole encounter had left me confused and unsettled, I was at least happy that I had secured a date for Liam with his dream girl. At least one of us had a shot with their ideal date. I had no doubt Liam would charm Aolani easily with his Liam-ness.