No Easy Way Out (16 page)

When she returned to the table she’d started at, where Maddie and Ginger sat gawking at her like hungry dogs, Maddie had grabbed her wrists and said, “Details.”

“He’s nice.”

Maddie faux fainted, dropping onto the bench of the picnic table.

“
Nice
is not going to cut it,” Ginger said.

So Lexi told them. Every word. Every facial expression. About their rendezvous for later that night. She wanted them to know because then they could tell her if she was reading things right. “So that was a date, right?” she asked when she got to the end.

“That was lunch in the cafeteria, not a date,” Maddie said with authority. “A date involves the potential for
badness
.”

“Badness?”

“She means hooking up,” Ginger clarified.

This took Lexi back a few lines of code. Did Marco expect her to “hook up” in the office later that night? She was in way over her head.

“I think I need help,” Lexi mumbled.

“Well, sister, you have come to the right place.” Maddie clapped her hands like she’d been waiting all day for this moment.

“I think we ask to be assigned to clothing for the afternoon?” Ginger was consulting with Maddie like Lexi was not even there.

“You take Miss Thang to clothing,” Maddie said, slinking her hands through both Ginger’s and Lexi’s arms, “and I will check out what’s available in the lingerie department.”

M
arco had found it less awkward than he’d expected to talk to the pale, lanky, goateed
pendejo
identified by Ryan as the guy he’d thrown out, who was also assumedly the perpetrator of the assault on Jessica McClintock. It was bizarre how easily he’d transitioned from silent and pissed-off outcast to mouthy assholio. All Marco did was turn up the volume, so to speak. He said all the crap that went through his mind every day: Every snarky remark, every insult, he just let them fly. Okay, not every insult, but for a guy who’d maybe said three words total to anyone his own age in years, his current facility with conversation was astounding.

However, the real surprise was that no one had kicked his ass yet. Being an assholio opened you up to certain dangers of retaliation. Call a guy a douche, and he is likely to respond, either verbally or with his fist. Maybe it was just that he’d grown taller in the last year. Maybe it was harder to kick around a skinny kid when he had four inches on most guys.

Or maybe it was simply that Marco had approached the guy with the offer of his own private party in an IMAX theater. “All you have to do is spread the word and show up,” he’d concluded.

The guy had looked at him like he was selling magic beans. “Are you for real?”

“Completely real.”

His friends had started fist bumping and slapping shoulders, so Marco assumed they were in agreement with his plan. He explained that he’d leave a trail of glow-in-the-dark stickers from the Lord & Taylor to the place.

“What’s in it for you?” the
pendejo
asked, still wary.

Marco aligned his frame into his best Mike Richter–esque posture. “The pleasure of sharing the wealth with my friends.”

The guy raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. “Why the hell not?”

There was power in that posture, in copping an attitude. You didn’t necessarily have to feel confident to act like you were. What an awesome revelation. Sparks crackled along Marco’s veins.

During a bathroom break, he found Mike and Drew in the bowling alley storage room. “I spoke to Ryan,” he said by way of a greeting. “He’s heard a rumor that people are going to crash this place tonight, searching for another party, so you should clear out before Lights Out.”

“Not happening,” Mike said.

Marco had already turned to leave, not expecting a debate. “You actually want to deal with a bunch of randoms?”

“No, Big T,” Drew said, hopping off his perch on a pile of machinery. “We want to host another party. Last night was fricking awesome.”

“How’d you know about the party?” Mike was eyeing Marco like a hawk targeting his prey. “You know who got the keg?”

Crapcrapcrapcrap . . .

“I just heard about it in the dorm from this guy.”

“Then why was Ryan under the impression you were running the party?” Mike leaned closer.

CRAP.

“I don’t know,” Marco said, covering, his armor of confidence rattling at the seams. “Maybe because I told him about it? Who cares? The fact is I have no idea where the keg came from.”

“Then I think it’s time we went back to the Grease’n’Suck and relieve it of some of its liquor.”

Marco had to haul ass if he was going to make it back to work without anyone complaining. Luckily, Mike and Drew were eager to get their hands on the stuff and hauled ass right alongside him. It was easy enough getting into the Grill’n’Shake; the only problem was that once there, they were faced with an empty liquor cabinet.

Mike checked the door twice before slamming it shut. “Why the hell would they move the booze?”

Marco was as clueless as Mike. “Beats the crap out of me.” The entire bar was emptied out, and even the fridge had been busted open and relieved of its remaining kegs.

Drew punched the wall, then kicked a chair for extra measure. “This place freaking sucks!”

Mike grabbed Marco’s arm. “You have the magic key, you find us the drinks. They had to have moved the liquor somewhere.”

Marco agreed, more because his bathroom break had now stretched into the double digits than anything else, and rushed the two back to the bowling alley.

“Vodka,” Mike said, “and beer if you can carry it.”

“I’m not promising anything,” Marco said.

The look on Drew’s face suggested that the failure to procure booze for their shindig might result in the revocation of his get-out-of-a-beat-down-free card.

Marco had little time to ponder Drew’s scowl. He bolted back to the HomeMart and checked in with one of the supervisors. “Sorry,” he said, clutching his stomach by way of further explanation.

“I hear ya, kid,” the guy said, and pointed him to the plumbing section. “Johns on two near the food court need unclogging.”

With the amount of crap he was dealing with, both in the literal and figurative sense, Marco wondered if letting Mike and Drew kill him was really the worst-case scenario.

• • •

Ruthie was not nearly as grateful as Ryan thought she should have been. She took the Pepto tablets and asked, “Then what?”

“Then Jack will feel better.”

“But what if he doesn’t?”

“Then I try to get something else to help him.”

“But what if there is nothing else?” Tears sparkled along the edge of her eyes. Ryan couldn’t deal with girls crying.

“Don’t think about that. Just give him the Pepto and I’ll come back when I can and figure out what to do then.”

“Why do you have to keep leaving?”

Ryan imagined spending the rest of the day with them in the SUV.
Absolutely not.
It’s not that he didn’t want to care for the two kids, but he had other stuff he had to do. Like see Shay. He promised to visit her after lunch. It was after lunch.

“I just do,” he said. He rumpled her hair the way he remembered his brother doing to him. Only Ruthie didn’t smile. It had always made Ryan smile to have Thad rumple his hair. She just didn’t get how much he was doing for them.

“Why can’t we come with you?” she asked. “It smells down here.”

The Dumpsters were lined up on the outer wall of the parking garage nearest the SUV, and after all these days trapped in the mall, they were more than overflowing. New garbage was simply being piled on top of the nearest cars.

“I’ll try to find you guys a new place,” he said. “Keep the door closed.” He pressed it into place, Ruthie staring at him through the smoky glass.

As he rode the escalator up to the second floor, he had this crap feeling in his stomach like he’d failed Ruthie and Jack when he’d really been like a freaking superhero to them. Why didn’t Ruthie see that? Why did she constantly ask for more?

Ryan tried to push those thoughts out of his head. He had to get into a Shay headspace. The images from Victoria’s Secret popped into his mind, only now, all the girls were Shay. And she looked good. Very good.

This was not the way to walk into a meeting with your would-be girlfriend who was also maybe the girlfriend of your sort-of friend. Then he remembered—
her book.
He hoped it was still in the Abercrombie.

He collected the book, which thank god was still on the shelf where he’d left it, and began tackling the other problem he faced: What the hell was going on between Shay and Marco? He decided he should just address the whole Marco thing up front, get that out of the way, and then try to get back to where he and Shay had left off. So when she hopped over the counter of the Magic Wok, Ryan was prepared to simply hit her with “Are you dating Marco?” only she looked kind of sad. So instead, he led off with “Are you okay?”

Shay shrugged. “Are any of us really okay?”

She was not usually sarcastic with him. Maybe she
was
dating Taco.

Ryan tried to smile. “I’m okay,” he said. “You look okay.” She raised her eyebrows. He pushed the mask off her face; she let him tug it loose from her hair. He corrected himself: “I mean, better than okay. You look great.”

Shay glanced down at her shirt. It was splattered with paint, as were her sweatpants, and her hair hung in strands around her face. “I think
great
is an overstatement.” She plucked at a splotch of green paint and half smiled.

“Maybe this will make you feel better,” he said, and held out the book of Tagore poetry she’d given him when they met.

Her face melted, and Ryan worried he’d screwed things up. She reached a hand out as if afraid to touch it, then, holding the book, looked up at him, a real smile lighting her face.

They were leaning toward each other and somehow, the distance just disappeared and his lips were on hers. The touch was electric. She kissed him back, opened her mouth to let him kiss her deeper. He felt something blaze inside him. This kiss had gone from zero to sixty in two seconds.

He pulled back to catch his breath.

Shay’s eyes were wide. She bit her lip. “Holy crap,” she said.

Ryan shifted to hide a direct consequence of their kiss. “Just to be clear, you’re not dating Marco, right?”

She pushed her lips against his instead of answering. It was better than answering.

This was nothing like kissing other girls. With them, Ryan had used the kiss as a way to achieve other goals—cop a feel, feel some more, encourage her feeling. Not so with Shay. With Shay, the kiss was an end in itself.

She leaned into his chest, was almost straddling him. The intensity went through the roof. Her fingers snarled in his hair and his arms pressed her body to him. They broke apart for a second, both heaving breath.

They stared at each other in silence. Ryan was afraid to say anything.

“Shay?” The guy Shay taught with poked his head over the edge of the counter. He glanced at them both, then pointed to the mask on the floor. “Miss Dixit? I hate to interrupt,” he said, grinning like he knew what was up, “but I could use your help. Kaylee got a wad of Play-Doh stuck in her hair.”

Ryan’s and Shay’s eyes remained locked, his breath matching hers.

Seconds, minutes, days later, she broke eye contact and fumbled for the mask. “Yeah, sure, okay,” she muttered, pulling the strap over her head.

Ryan gained the courage to speak. “I’ll see you?”
When?
He needed her every freaking second of the day.

“Tomorrow?” she asked. “Same time, same place?”

“Tomorrow,” Ryan said, the word feeling like a punch in the gut.

Shay grabbed the poetry book
before sliding over the countertop. “Tomorrow.”

Ryan slumped to the floor like he’d just run a 10K. It took him several minutes to regain the ability to stand. Why did that jerk Marco have the magic card key that let him go anywhere anytime he wanted? If Ryan had the key, he could sneak into Shay’s dorm tonight, he could take her anywhere, hide with her until the morning, until forever.

But Ryan did not have the key, so tomorrow it was. He pushed himself to standing, tried to catch Shay’s attention, hoping to at least see her smile again, but he couldn’t find her in the crowds, so he slunk back through the Magic Wok kitchen and made his way up to the bowling alley to find Mike.

• • •

Marco cut straight to it with the senator. “I found the vandals for you and got them on board with the whole party thing.”

“Wonderful.” She wasn’t even paying attention. Windows clicked across the screen in front of her.

“But I need more alcohol.” It was his one shot.

“What?” She glanced at him. “For what?”

“Last night they ran out. I confirmed it with the vandals. So we need more than just the keg.” He tried to recall Drew’s order. “Maybe some vodka? A six-pack?”

“I’m not having glass bottles at a party full of unsupervised teenagers.” She scratched some notes on a scrap of paper. “I’ll have security dig up a plastic thing of vodka. But don’t expect a fully stocked bar. This isn’t an all-inclusive resort. It’s a stop-gap, that’s all.”

Marco threw up his hands. “I don’t even drink.”

The senator snorted like she thought he was full of it, but truly, the one throat-full of beer he’d had confirmed the rightness of his decision to remain dry.

She turned back to her screen as if to dismiss him.

“I saw something you might want to know about.” Marco got comfortable with the lie before speaking it. “While I was fixing toilets on the third floor, I happened to pass by the Grill’n’Shake and I swear I saw people in there.”

The senator returned her attention to him. “Food collection team?”

“It didn’t look like it,” he said. “The security gates were down.”

The senator considered his words for a moment. “I’ll check into it.” She twisted back to the computer screen.

Marco stood to leave. He’d done all he could to solve the mystery of the missing bar.

“Marco,” the senator said as he reached the door.

He looked back at her.

“Thank you.” She was smiling like a real person, not her usual lizard-y smile. “I’m sorry if it feels like I’m dumping on you,” she continued. “You’ve been a huge help.”

“Okay.” He was not sure where this was going.

“I just wanted you to know you’re appreciated.” She smiled again, then turned back to her screen.

As Marco walked down the hall, he felt like crap. He wasn’t helping the senator. He was helping himself. And even though that was how it had to be, that this was a live-or-die situation and he’d be damned if he let this crap mall kill him, he let himself feel bad for the time it took him to reach the outer door. He wished he could be the kid she thought he was, a helpful guy, a guy who was on the right side of something. But when you choose a side, there’s always a chance you choose wrong and end up a loser. So Marco would keep playing all the angles. He was not a loser. He survived.

• • •

Shocks sparked from Shay’s body for a whole hour after that kiss. She felt alive, buzzed. The energy must have been radiating off her, because the kids asked her to help them—her, not Kris.

“You’re not mean anymore,” one little girl said as Shay helped her with a cookie cutter.

The words fizzled away the dregs of Shay’s energy. The kids had thought her sadness was mean?

“Thanks,” she managed.

She could not survive until tomorrow, wait that long to feel good again. She couldn’t make it through to dinner without another kiss.