P.S. I Like You (2 page)

I held up my notebook and nodded at Isabel. “It’s okay. This will be my chance to work on a new song. You know I don’t get any alone time at home.”

Isabel nodded. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him. And I froze.

Lucas Dunham. He was in the middle of a group of other senior guys on a bench, his hoodie zipped up, his earbuds in, staring into space. Like he was present and not present. A feeling I could relate to.

Isabel followed my gaze and sighed. “You should talk to him, you know.”

I laughed, feeling my cheeks warm up. “You remember what happened last time I tried that.”

“You got nervous, that’s what happened.”

“I couldn’t say anything. Nothing at all. He and his cool hair and his hipster clothes scared me,” I finished in a whisper.

Isabel tilted her head while she looked at him as if disagreeing with my assessment of his appearance. “You just need practice. Let’s start with someone you haven’t been pining over for the last two years.”

“I have
not
been pining over Lucas … ”

I trailed off when she leveled me with her knowing stare. She was right. I had been pining. Lucas was probably the
coolest guy I knew … Well, I didn’t really know him, but that probably made him more cool. He was a year older than us. He wore his dark hair long and his clothes consisted of band tees or old-school polo shirts, a contrast that made me unable to put him in a category.

“Double with me and Gabriel next Friday!” Isabel announced suddenly. “I’ll find you a date.”

“Pass.”

“Come on. It’s been a while since you’ve been on a date.”

“That’s because I’m awkward and weird and it’s not fun at all for me or the poor soul who agrees to go out with me.”

“That’s not true.”

I crossed my arms.

“You just need to go out more than once … or twice … with someone so they see how fun you are,” Isabel argued, adjusting her backpack straps. “You’re not awkward with
me.
”

“I’m totally awkward with you but you’re not under pressure to eventually kiss me, so you put up with it.”

Isabel laughed and shook her head. “That’s not why I put up with it. I put up with it because I like you. We just have to find a guy who you can be yourself around.”

I put my hand over my heart. “And on that hot fall day, Isabel started on the impossible quest of finding a suitor for her best friend. It would be a lifelong quest. One that would test both her determination and her faith. It would lead her to the brink of insanity, and—”

“Stop,” Isabel interrupted, bumping my shoulder with hers. “It’s that kind of attitude that will make this impossible.”

“That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to say.”

“No, I’m not going to accept that. You’ll see. The right guy for you is out there.”

I sighed, my gaze drifting over to Lucas again. “Iz, seriously, I’m fine. No more setups.”

“Fine, no more setups. But be open or you might miss something right in front of you.”

I flung my arms out to the sides. “Is there anyone more open than me?”

Isabel gave me a skeptical look. She started to answer when a loud voice called out from across the grass. “There she is! Happy anniversary!”

Isabel’s cheeks brightened and she turned toward Gabriel. He jogged the rest of the distance separating them, and lifted her into a hug. They looked gorgeous together—both dark-haired, dark-eyed, and olive-skinned. It was weird seeing Gabriel at our school. He went to the high school across town and I associated him with after-school and weekend events.

“Hey, Lily,” he said to me as he put Isabel down. “Are you coming with us?” His invitation seemed sincere. He really was a nice guy.

“Yeah, is that cool? I heard you were paying and I said,
I’m in
.”

Isabel laughed.

“Great,” Gabriel said.

“It was a joke, Gabe,” Isabel said.

“Oh.”

“Yes, I’m not a charity case.” I was beginning to think they thought I was.

“No, of course not. I just feel bad for not letting you know earlier,” Isabel said.

Gabriel nodded. “It was a surprise.”

“You guys are going to run out of time to actually eat if you keep coddling me. Go. Have fun. And … uh … congratulations. I recently read a book about how two-month anniversaries are the start of forever.”

“Really? Cool,” Gabe said.

Isabel just rolled her eyes and smacked my arm. “Be good.”

I stood on the path alone now, watching the groups of students around me talking and laughing. Isabel’s worry was unfounded. I was fine alone. Sometimes I preferred it that way.

I
sat on the school steps with my notebook in my lap, drawing. I added a few flowers to the sketch of the skirt, then shaded in the tights with a green colored pencil. My earbuds were in, and I was listening to a song by Blackout. The lead singer, Lyssa Primm, was basically both my style and music idol—a genius songwriter who rocked cherry-red lips, vintage dresses, and her ever-present guitar.

“
Stretch out your wilting petals and let the light in
,” the song played in my ears. I tapped one foot to the beat. I wanted to learn how to play this particular song on my guitar. Hopefully, I could practice later.

The sound of the minivan was loud enough to drown out the music, and I didn’t need to look up to know my mom had just arrived. I closed my notebook, stuffed it into my backpack, took out my earbuds, and got to my feet. I could see the two heads of my brothers in the backseat. Mom must’ve picked them up from school first.

I opened the passenger door, an old One Direction song filling the air, only to find the seat taken by my mom’s bead organizer.

“Can you hop in the back?” Mom asked. “I have to deliver a necklace to a client on our way home.” She pushed a button and the side door slid open, revealing my two little brothers fighting over an action figure. A plastic cup rolled onto the ground. I looked around to see how embarrassed I should be. The parking lot wasn’t too full anymore. A few kids were getting into their own cars or shouting to their friends. No one seemed to be paying attention to me.

“Sorry I’m late,” Mom added.

“It’s fine.” I shut the front door, swiped the cup off the asphalt, and patted my brother on the back. “Scoot over, Thing Two.”

I wiped some Cheez-It crumbs off the seat and sat down. “I thought Ashley was picking me up,” I said to Mom.

My older sister, Ashley, was nineteen. She had her own car, a job, and went to college. But because she still lived at home (stealing my opportunity of having my own room) she had to contribute to family obligations. Like picking me up from school.

“She’s working at the campus store late tonight,” Mom reminded me. “Hey, are you complaining about your super hip mom picking you up?” She smiled at me in the rearview mirror.

I laughed. “Do super hip moms use the word
hip
?”

“
Fly
?
Bomb
?
Awesome
?” In the middle of her list she turned to my brother and said, “Wyatt, you’re ten, let Jonah have it.”

“But Jonah is seven! That’s only three years younger. He shouldn’t get everything.”

Jonah elbowed me in the stomach in his attempt to steal the Iron Man figure.

“It’s mine now,” I said, causing an outraged cry from both my brothers as I took the action figure and flung it into the trunk.

My mom sighed. “I don’t know how helpful that was.”

“My intestines appreciate it very much.”

My brothers both stopped mid-whine and giggled, the desired result of my declaration. I tousled their hair. “How was school, Things?”

My mom slammed on her brakes as a black BMW cut into her lane. I reached over to keep Jonah from hitting his head on the seat in front of him. I didn’t have to look at the driver to know who it was. But I could see him anyway, his wavy dark hair styled to perfection. Cade had the boy-next-door looks—tall, big smile, puppy-dog brown eyes—without the personality to go with them.

“Someone didn’t learn safe driving skills,” my mom muttered as Cade drove away. I wished she had laid on her horn.

“He didn’t learn a lot of skills.”
Including the ability to make chants rhyme.

“You know him?”

“That’s Cade Jennings. People call him Jennings the Jerk though.” Now
that
was catchy. Alliteration. Magnet …
Lily
? How did anyone remember that?

“They do?” my mom asked. “That’s not very nice.”

“They don’t,” I mumbled. But they should’ve. It had a nice ring to it.

“Cade … ” My mom’s eyes narrowed in thought.

“Isabel used to date him. Our freshman year.” Until Cade and I fought so much that my best friend basically had to pick a side. She’d claimed the breakup wasn’t my fault, but I knew it probably was. Half the time I felt guilty, the other half I figured I had saved her a lot of heartache.

“I thought that name sounded familiar,” Mom said, making a right turn. “Did we ever have him over to the house?”

“No, we didn’t.” Thank goodness. Cade would have no doubt mocked me about our constantly cluttered house. With four kids, it was in a never-ending state of disaster.

Isabel had dragged me to Cade’s house once, for his fourteenth birthday. When we’d knocked on the door and he’d answered, his face had shown how he felt about me tagging along.

“Great birthday surprise,” he called in a sarcastic voice as he headed back into the house, Isabel and I following behind.

“Believe me, I didn’t want to come either,” I’d answered back.

Isabel had hurried to catch up with Cade. Meanwhile, I’d come to a standstill in the entryway. The inside of the house was massive and shockingly white. Even the furniture and decorations were white. Nothing would have stayed white for a second in my house.

I’d turned a slow circle, taking everything in, when Isabel poked her head around the corner and asked, “Are you coming?”

My brothers’ voices brought me out of the memory and back into the car with my family. They were now fighting over a fun pack of M&Ms. “I found it under the seat. That means it’s mine,” Wyatt said.

I pulled out my notebook and got to work on sketching the skirt again. “Hey, Mom, can we get some black thread? I’m out.”

Mom turned onto the main street. “Can it wait until the end of the week? Your dad is finishing up a job.”

My dad was a freelance furniture designer. The amount of work he got could be unpredictable, and so was our family budget. Basically everything about my family was unpredictable.

“Yeah, of course,” I said.

Back home, I stepped over the pile of backpacks just inside the door and made my way to my room. “I’m borrowing the laptop,” I called out to anyone who wanted to listen, and grabbed the computer off the hallway desk.

Nobody responded.

I walked into my room … Well, half of it was my room. The clean half. The half with fabric samples and color palates pinned to the walls. Not the half with magazine clippings of makeup ideas and cute celebrities. Although I had found myself appreciating that half every once in a while.

But with Ashley not here now, I was free to flop down on my bed and pull up YouTube. I searched for an instructional video for the Blackout song. It wasn’t a well-known song so I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find someone teaching the guitar part for it. I had to scroll through several pages, but finally I found one. I positioned the laptop on my dresser.

I kept my guitar stowed under my bed in a hard case. It wasn’t a precaution. With two younger brothers, it was a necessity. I slid it out and opened the case. This guitar, my baby, took me six months to earn. I had given up every Friday night to watch the neighbors’ two-year-old twin boys. They were more difficult than any kids I’d ever watched. And considering the nickname I had for my own brothers, that was saying a lot. But it was worth it. This guitar was everything I’d dreamed it would be. Its tone was perfect. And playing it made me feel like I wasn’t as awkward as usual. It made me feel like there was something I was meant to do. This
.
It made everything else disappear.

Well, it made everything disappear for a little while. I was positioning my fingers for the first chord when the door to my … our … room slammed open.