Flawless (15 page)

I looked through your pictures and

I stop midsentence. Maybe Kristen actually knows about the sisters. Maybe she's already talked to him about his Facebook pictures. I go back and delete the last sentence. Better play it safe. Instead I ask my next question.

I definitely want your answer to the biography question, too. So send that!

But my new question is this … “If you were forced to give up everything you own in exchange for one thing, what would that be?”

About that weird comment last time … I wrote that post right after I discovered the beginning of a zit. You know how that is … you're sure it's going to be the size of Everest once it erupts. But I totally whipped it into submission.

Thanks for a great night.

Love, Kristen

I quickly scan what I wrote, careful to make sure there are no traces of me in the message. So what if the excuse is pretty lame? It's the best I can do at two o'clock in the morning. If Kristen wants an answer that sounds better than that, she'll just have to write it herself.

I click Send, ready to end this farce and force myself to sleep. Maybe a plan to graciously end this disaster will come to me during the night.

Maybe.

By the time I make it to the cafeteria on Monday, I've done a fine job of evading Kristen and Rock. I arrived just as journalism and lit started and was the first one out the door, eliminating any chance of chitchat. The last thing I need is a bunch of questions about how I feel about Jay.

But there's positively no escaping them at lunch.

“You okay?” Kristen asks when I finally make my way to our table. “You were awfully quiet this weekend.”

I nod, thinking how busy I'd been Friday night being her on Facebook. “Yeah, I had a ton of homework.”

“So …,” Kristen says with a sly smile, the very one I've been avoiding all day. “What'd you think?”

There's no way I'm making this easy for her so I totally play dumb. “About what?”

“You can't be serious,” she says, rolling her eyes dramatically. “Jay, that's what.”

I shrug. “He's nice. We already knew that, though, right? It's not like that was my first time to meet him.”

“You know exactly what I mean, Sarah Burke. Do
not
start playing games with me.”

Rock is watching me intently, setting my stomach to doing flips.

“What do you want me to say, Kristen?” I ask. “That I'm head over heels in love with him?”

“Are you?” Rock asks.

“Not hardly,” I mumble. “I had fun. The play was phenomenal and you know how I feel about P.F. Chang's.”

Kristen slaps her hands on the table, fed up with my vague answers. “Are y'all going out again?”

“Geez,” I say, looking around to make sure no one else heard her. “Calm down, already. He asked if I wanted to go out next weekend, but I never really answered him.”

“Omigod! That's awesome, Sarah!” Kristen squirms in her seat, doing her own little happy dance.

Alone.

She doesn't bother to notice that I'm not even fractionally as happy about it as she is.

“Are you going to say yes?” Rock asks, halting Kristen's celebration.

“Of course she's going to say yes,” Kristen argues, then looks to me. “You
are
going to say yes, aren't you?”

I shrug again. “I don't know. I think maybe Jay and I make better friends than a couple.”

“That's absurd,” Kristen scoffs.

“If it's how she feels …,” Rock says with the smallest hint of a grin to me, like we both know the same secret.

“Before you do anything or say anything to Jay, you need to really think it through. Maybe another date is all you need to make that connection. The
love
connection.” She wiggles her eyebrows in a totally ridiculous way that makes me want to laugh.

“Maybe,” I concede, knowing she's wrong.

Dead wrong.

“So we'll see,” she says, satisfied I haven't totally given up on Jay.

“We'll see,” I lie.

I'm not proud of it, but by eight that evening, the curiosity kills me and I shamelessly peek in on Kristen's Facebook. Just to see if he's responded to her—well, actually
my
—message. It's wrong and only serves to further torture me, but I can't stop myself. I'm definitely on what Mom would call a “slippery slope.”

I look through her home page and see the usual people and quizzes filling the screen, save one. I'm simultaneously satisfied and disappointed when I see Rock hasn't replied. I log out of Kristen's Facebook account and log in to mine. It's noticeably less busy than Kristen's but I do have something she doesn't.

A message.

Okay, it's not really a
message
. But it's something. It's a friend request. From Rock.

Despite the fact it took him so long to friend me, I click Confirm.

To further torment myself, I sit and wait, thinking maybe … just maybe … he'll be waiting for me to reply like he was when Kristen confirmed him.

Knowing I can't very well sit in front of the computer until—and IF—he sends me a message, I leave the laptop and busy myself by picking up Ringo's toys off the floor and dropping them into the little white basket sitting on the hanging swing.

I open my phone, check to make sure the ringer's on and that I haven't missed any messages from Mom or Kristen, then put it back on the nightstand.

After what seems like an eternity, I go back to my laptop and refresh my Facebook page to see if there are any new messages. I don't know what I expect him to say other than “Hi” and “Thanks for sharing your scorching-hot BFF with me.”

But I check it anyway.

And there's nothing.

Not even so much as a “Thanks for friending me.”

What did I expect? It's exactly what I deserve.

Later that week, I walk into Jacobi's room seconds before the bell rings, something he thoroughly disapproves of. When I give him a quick apologetic smile, he scowls, leaving me to shuffle off to my desk like a scolded dog.

Rock gives me a small grin before I drop into my seat. “Cutting it close, aren't you?”

I nod, knowing I don't have a decent answer. I mean, it's not like I can just come right out and say “Well, you know, I'm totally avoiding you because I'm shamelessly in love with you.”

Jacobi saves me from humiliating myself with his booming voice. “You should have read chapters ten through thirteen last night. Does anyone have a question or a comment about what you read?”

Normally, I'd throw out a comment, but I'm not exactly at the top of my game these days.

The room remains silent, no one willing to be first to step out and offer their thoughts. Thankfully, Jacobi doesn't push it—like he so often does—and moves on.

“Well, then, this assignment should be a snap. Let's begin by returning to our partners from last week. This week you'll be dissecting a quote from the novel and comparing it to real-life situations. You are expected to show me exactly how that quote applies to your life today. Right here in these halls, or at home, or at work. I assure you every single quote I'm assigning has modern-day applications. So no excuses.”

I turn my desk around so that it's face-to-face with Rock's. Despite the effort I've put into ignoring him all day, I can't stop myself from smiling. Just seeing his face makes me happy. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Jacobi drops the quote on the desk in front of me.

“Want me to read it aloud?” I ask.

Rock nods. “Go for it.”

I pull the paper closer to me and read our assigned quote from
The Scarlet Letter
.

“Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable fortune … when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality.”

When I finish reading, I look up to find Rock's eyes on mine.

Nervous and unsure of what to say, I start rambling. “It's a biggie this time, that's for sure. I mean, it sounds pretty easy to understand, we just need to figure out how we can apply it to real life today. I mean, not
today
today, but ‘today.' ” I end with the finger quotes when I say the last “today,” making me inwardly cringe. I seriously hate myself.

Instead of laughing at me, Rock puts his hand on mine, setting off a series of firecrackers in my chest. Now
this
is the kind of spark I was talking about.

“Let's just start with the quote,” he says, then abruptly removes his hand. The warmth falls away with his hand, but the electricity continues to jump beneath my skin. “Can you read the first sentence again?”

I quickly put my eyes back on the paper and read the sentence, willing myself to read slowly, like a
sane
person. “Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart!”

Rock clears his throat before speaking. “He's saying you shouldn't want the hand of a woman—marriage—unless you have her passion as well. I guess that really applied to the era Hawthorne was writing about. These days, most people only marry because they want to. At least in America, arranged marriages are a thing of the past.”

I nod, but then stop. “I think I see how it can apply today, though. I mean, don't you think people get married for the wrong reasons, without the passion Hawthorne's talking about? Think of all the people that marry for money, or stature, or because they got pregnant, and then leave that spouse for someone else. Someone with the ‘mightier touch.' ”

“Good point,” Rock says, his crooked smile knocking my socks off. I'm literally expecting my shoes to just fly right off my feet and club Jacobi in the head. “What about the next sentence?”

“Else it may be their miserable fortune … when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality.”

“Okay,” Rock begins. “So he's saying that if you marry someone without passion you'll be miserable.”

“Right,” I agree. “And when you realize you've kept that person from being with someone they truly feel passionate about, you'll have to answer for that.”

Rock nods, brow furrowed. “What about the marble image of happiness?”

“It's fake. She looks happy on the outside, but it's just an image. It's not real.”

“I've never thought of that before. You?” Rock asks.

“I don't know. I guess I think about what it'd be like to be with the wrong person,” I say, then instantly wish I could rewind time and take it all back.

“Like with Jay?” he asks, serious eyes penetrating me.