Faking Perfect (15 page)

Instead of missing him like before, I felt grateful that our relationship seemed to be fading out. Things were getting way too messy. I didn’t want to be the slut Tyler Flynn was banging. And I certainly didn’t want to be the one girl he cared enough about to defend.

Chapter Fourteen

M
y mother was so preoccupied with Jesse lately, she failed to notice the sudden frequency of my visits to the spare room. Or maybe she thought I was in there playing Solitaire or writing my memoirs for hours at a time. No way in hell would I ever tell her I was actually emailing back and forth with my father.

In the four days since his reply, a total of nine emails had been exchanged between us. For me, it became easier after that second one. We didn’t talk about anything too heavy. Mostly, I wanted to know about Willow and Jonah.

Do they know about me?

I’d asked that in my third email. He said they did, and they knew about my recent contact, too. Apparently, they were as curious about me as I was about them. So, in my fourth email, I’d attached a current picture of myself. Eric answered an hour later with his own picture, a shot of the four of them posing in front of a Christmas tree.

The young father from my pictures had turned into someone who looked like my friends’ dads. His hair was short now, and darker, and lines bracketed his eyes and smile. Long sleeves covered the tattoos I assumed were still there. He looked healthy and handsome and genuinely pleased with life. Renee had shoulder-length, honey blond hair (real blond, by the looks of it, not dyed like Mom’s) and a pleasant, heart-shaped face. The girl, Willow, was her clone. But the boy, he looked a lot like his father . . . and me. Different color hair, but the same sky-blue eyes, same pointy chin, same oval face with a dusting of freckles. Looking at them, my brother and sister, I felt a new kind of stirring in my chest. A kinship with people I’d never even met. A belonging. Family. Each time I studied their faces, my defenses weakened just a little bit more.

When I couldn’t risk using the computer at home, I checked and sent email—slowly and laboriously—on my phone. I’d had to resort to this method on Thursday afternoon because my mother was at home with a horrible cold. Being sick bored her, so she’d probably be camped out at the computer when I got home, trolling Jesse’s Facebook page or searching his name to see if it popped up on any dating sites. I’d figured I’d better get my email-checking out of the way after school.

A couple crotchety, anti-technology teachers known to confiscate phones and iPods—even outside of school hours—had been prowling around, so just to be on the safe side, I’d found a quiet little alcove near the service elevator and settled on the floor.

Just as I turned my phone on, the sound of footsteps echoed through the empty hallway. I leaned sideways until my head was sticking slightly out of the alcove. When I saw the source of the footsteps, I yanked myself back into hiding. Ben and Tori stood several feet away from me in the middle of the hallway, facing each other and talking. Actually, it sounded more like
fighting
. Uh-oh. I pressed my back against the cinderblock wall behind me and kept perfectly still. Neither of them could see me.

“ . . . so sick of this.” Tori’s words were sharp with anger. “You always make me feel so . . .”

The next few words were too low to hear, but I did catch the deeper murmur of Ben’s voice, seemingly placating her.

Then Tori’s voice came again, loud and clear, easily reaching my ears. “Stop telling me what to do, Ben. You aren’t my father, okay? God, you’re such a—”

When her words broke off into a sob, I couldn’t stop myself from taking a peek. They were still in the same spot, facing each other. Ben’s face was close to hers. He held her forearm and spoke to her softly, firmly, his expression stoic and controlled. Even from where I sat, I could plainly see Tori’s face darkening more and more with each of his words, until finally, she snapped.

“Leave . . . me . . .
alone
!” she screamed, and quick as a flash, her hand flew up and connected with Ben’s nose.

He yelped and jerked away from her, his hand moving up to his face, while she turned and stormed off down the hall, her back to both of us. I sat there on the floor, looking at him, looking at her, too stunned to even move.

Tori is
psycho
, I thought when Ben took his hand away and gaped down at his palm, eyes wide with shock. Bright red blood covered his hand and the lower half of his face. I wondered if it was the first time someone had ever hit him.

Without thinking, I threw my phone in my backpack and scrambled to my feet. Ben was still planted in the middle of the hallway, staring at his hand, as I approached him. When he heard me coming, he glanced up, on guard like he thought Tori had returned to finish him off. He relaxed slightly when he saw it was me.

“Are you okay?” I asked stupidly. Clearly, he wasn’t. Blood was dripping onto his shirt, staining the white fabric with circular red dots.

“I think she broke my nose,” he said, sounding amazed by the possibility.

I slung my backpack over my shoulder and stepped closer to him. “Let me see.”

He kept very still as I examined him, not even flinching when I pressed my fingers to his nose, feeling for anything abnormal. My nose had been broken during a game of volleyball in fifth grade, so I knew what one looked and felt like. Aside from some swelling that would surely get worse, Ben’s nose seemed intact.

“I think it’s fine, but maybe you should go to the office. I’m sure someone is still there.”

He shook his head quickly. He was embarrassed, obviously, about taking a hit from a girl half his size. “Did you, uh”—he looked sideways at me—“witness that whole thing?”

“Some of it. She’s got a mean right hook.”

He laughed, releasing another trickle of blood. We needed to stop the flow before he bled to death or something.

“I’ll go get some damp paper towels.”

He nodded, and I noticed how pale he’d become in the last few minutes. I did not want to come back to find him passed out and bleeding on the just-buffed floor, so I took his non-bloody hand and towed him toward the nearest girls’ washroom.

“Seriously?” I said when he hesitated at the door. “It’s four o’clock. Almost everyone has gone home. There’s no one in here. Look, I’ll even check.” Leaving him there, I slipped inside and peered under each stall, then opened the door again. “Empty,” I assured him. He walked in, slowly, glancing around like he was expecting tampons to drop from the ceiling.

I ripped off several lengths of paper towel and held them under cold water until they were just partially wet. As I did this, Ben leaned over one of the sinks, examining the damage in the mirror.

“Damn,” he said to his reflection. He did look rough. Like he’d just been smashed in the face with a frying pan. Tori really did have quite the arm on her.

I waited while he scrubbed the blood off his hand and then ordered him to turn around. When he obeyed, I pressed the cold paper towels to his nose. He flinched. It was starting to swell. I wished the bathroom had an ice machine alongside the feminine hygiene dispensers.

“Hold that there,” I said, and his hand replaced mine on the wad of towels. I soaked another batch and used it to wipe away the blood on his mouth and chin. Soon, his skin was clean enough so I could make out the fine blond stubble on his jaws.

“I used to get nose bleeds sometimes when I was a kid,” he said, sounding like he had the world’s worst cold.

“Yeah?” I rinsed the bloody paper towel under the tap, squeezing until the water was no longer pink. “Hopefully they weren’t caused by blunt force trauma like this one.”

Again, he laughed, but without the red trickle. We’d staunched it, finally. “No, they just happened randomly. I’d have to sit with my head tilted forward and pinch my nose until it stopped.”

I told him about my run-in with the volleyball in fifth grade. “I needed to wear a splint,” I said as I used the clean towel to wash off the rest of the blood. “And I had two black eyes. I looked like a prizefighter.”

“Really.” His eyes flicked over my face and focused on my nose, which still had a small, telltale bump on the bridge. “Well, you healed perfectly.”

My skin tingled and all of a sudden I realized how close we were standing to each other. My chest grazed his bicep with each swipe of the soggy brown towel and my hair brushed against his shoulder. The freshness of summer mixed with the metallic tang of blood surrounded me, making me feel dizzy. Clearing my throat, I drew back and gently pulled the other clump of paper towel out of his hand. “I’ll make this cold again.” I turned on the freezing water, wishing I could splash some on my burning cheeks.

I made sure to leave a few inches between us as I pressed the fresh, folded paper towel to his nose. Ben lifted his hand, and just as I was about to let go so he could take over, he wrapped his fingers around my wrist and held me there. Startled, I stared first at his hand and then shifted my gaze to his eyes. The expression in them—admiration mingled with a trace of surprise—made my heart race, then stumble, then race again, like a clumsy sprinter. He’d never looked at me like that before.

“Lexi,” he said softly.

I couldn’t tear my eyes from his, even as he slowly slid his hand down my arm, ran his fingertips along the crease of my elbow, and then reached up to touch my hair. “We’ve been friends for so long,” he said, taking the paper towel off his face, “sometimes it slips my mind that you’re beautiful. Then you do something nice like this and I remember.”

My mouth felt like the dental hygienist had vacuumed it for hours with her suction wand thing. Ben Dorsey had just called me beautiful. In a disgusting school bathroom on a Thursday afternoon with the smell of disinfectant in the air and blood-streaked paper towels all around us. It was the most romantic moment of my life.

When I didn’t say anything, he let go of my hair and turned away, his cheeks reddening to match his nose.

Oh crap.
He thought he’d
offended
me. As if. As if I hadn’t been waiting for him to say something like that for two years. I thought again about how he was leaving for college in the fall. Time was ticking. In less than five months, we’d be in different places, living separate lives. It was now or never.

Desperate, I blurted out, “I’ve had a crush on you since tenth grade.”

To my relief, he turned back to me, intrigued. His nose had stopped bleeding, but the swelling kept getting worse, making his features seem slightly unbalanced. Somehow, it made him look even more adorable.

“Really?” he asked with a faint smile.

I nodded, biting my lip. Had I really just said those words out loud? In the girls’ washroom? To a boy who’d just gotten his nose busted by his girlfriend? To a boy who possibly still
had
a girlfriend?

“Well,” he said.

“Yeah,” I replied.

He started to grin, but it quickly changed into a wince as the muscles under his nose attempted to stretch. “Ugh.”

I sincerely hoped the
ugh
was in response to his pain and not to my declaration of love. Or crush, as it were. “Does it hurt?” I asked. Captain Obvious strikes again.

“Not anymore.”

All of a sudden, I had a flash of him lifting me off Dustin Sweeney’s laundry room floor and carrying me all the way to the street and Shelby’s car. He’d helped me when I was vulnerable, and now I’d helped him. Karma. We were square.

“So.” He tossed the paper towel into the sink behind him, his hazel eyes never leaving mine. “Can I drive you home?”

Just by the way he asked, I knew his offer meant something beyond a simple drive home. The question felt loaded with possibility. “Sure. That sounds great.”

Chapter Fifteen

T
he next day, Ben and Tori were officially over. A week later, I took her place in the passenger seat of Ben’s Acura TL. I had arrived. Again.

Waiting a week before publically “coming out” was all Ben’s idea. And the reason behind it was purely logical and practical, like Ben himself. He thought it might look bad for him to be seen with another girl only a day or two after a break-up. I understood, even though it killed me to spend an entire week pretending nothing had happened between us and worrying he’d change his mind. Still, I did it. For him. In Ben’s world, seven days was an acceptable period of time between girlfriends. Any sooner, he explained, and the cheating rumors would start circulating. But as it turned out, in our case, a million years probably wouldn’t be long enough to satisfy the more imaginative busybodies.

The first time we walked into school together, hand in hand, the rumors quickly grew rampant. In one, Tori had hit Ben because she’d found out he was cheating on her with me. In another, Tori and I were involved in a catfight and Ben had intervened, taking an errant punch to the face. And the most ridiculous one,
I
hit Ben in a jealous rage because seeing him with Tori had driven me over the edge.

None of it even fazed me. My head had been stuck in the clouds since our little moment in the girls’ washroom. After Ben drove me home that afternoon, we’d ended up sitting in my driveway for over an hour talking about us. About why we’d never tried dating before, and if we should.

“I just never really saw you that way and I thought you didn’t see me that way either,” he’d said.

I told him the truth, that I’d hidden my feelings because I was so intimidated by him. Hearing this, he shook his head in amazement. He was totally unaware of the effect he had on people. Namely me.

By the end of the conversation, it was decided. If I was willing, he’d like to try being more than friends. See how it went.
If I was willing.
I felt like laughing from the absurdity of his comment and the sheer joy that erupted at the thought of me, Lexi Claire Shaw, dating wonderful, perfect Ben Dorsey. Being his girlfriend.
Me
.

Between the recent developments in my love life and the fragile-but-steady progress with my father, I was feeling pretty good about life for once. Confident, even. So when Ben and I made our official debut as a couple, I tried to copy his indifference to the raised eyebrows and stares we were garnering. I also tried not to feel insulted by the occasional expression of shock. Okay, so I wasn’t Ben’s usual type, but circumstances changed. People changed. Right then and there, with his warm fingers entwined with mine, I vowed to prove all the doubters wrong and be the best damn girlfriend he ever had.