The Way to Game the Walk of Shame (7 page)

Once the spoiled rat Oreo was fed and I had nothing left on my napkin except crumbs, I knew I couldn’t put off the call anymore. I closed my eyes and counted to ten, then punched in the numbers before I lost my nerve. The phone rang twice before Evan picked up.

“Hello?”

My fingers traced the condensation on the glass. “Hi, Evan? This is, um, Taylor.” Silence. “Taylor Simmons? You know, the girl who, hm, we—uh, we—”

A throaty chuckle stopped my stuttering.

I realized I was gripping the glass with both hands and forced myself to let go.
Just breathe, Taylor. You can do this.
I rubbed my palms on my jeans to dry them. “Listen, I think we need to talk about the other night.”

“What happened to ‘Don’t talk about what happened to anyone’?”

Jeez, I could practically
hear
the smirk in his voice. “I’m … not just anyone,” I said lamely, unable to think of a better comeback.

“That’s for sure.”

Was that a compliment or an insult? I shook my head even though he couldn’t see me. “Let’s start over. I need to talk to you. Now. Can you come to my house?”

“You’re not at school?” The surprise was evident in his voice.

“No, I had a free period this morning.” I shook my head, forgetting that Evan didn’t take extra classes throughout the year like I did. He probably didn’t have any free periods. “I guess I could meet you after school somewhere.”

“That’s all right. I’m not at school, either.”

“Really? Why not?”

There was some rustling as if he was moving the phone around. “Let’s just say you have your secrets and I have mine. I’ll meet you at your house.”

“Okay. Do you have a pen? I can give you my address.”

“Don’t worry about it. If I’m lucky and it’s fate, I’ll just find your house somehow.”

I let out an aggravated sigh because he wasn’t taking me seriously. Maybe it
would
be easier to just hire a hit man. I was sure Dad would be happy to defend me in court. If I was caught, that is. I’d learned a thing or two from watching
CSI
. “What do you—”

Evan snorted. “Keep your panties on, I was just joking. I know where you live, and I’m on my way now.” I turned away from the phone to curse, but he must have heard me, because I ended up having to hold the phone several inches away before his booming laughter made me permanently deaf. “Sorry, I forgot that no underwear talk was allowed. I won’t do it again.”

Oreo nudged my leg for more food, and I sank down beside him on the cold tiles. My fingers played with his floppy ears as I stared at the silver fridge. “Uh-huh. So I’ll see you in a half an hour?”

“Make it twenty minutes. And don’t worry, I’ll be sure to jump the fence so no one will see me.” He laughed again and hung up without saying bye.

Evan was only five minutes later than he said he would be. And he did show up at my back door—although I’m not sure how he managed to jump my five-foot steel fence—with two large branches on either side of his head. Even his cheeks were streaked brown and black with mud and dirt for camouflage.

Despite my mood, I couldn’t help but give him a reluctant grin. “I hope those branches didn’t come from my yard.”

“’Course not. Who do I think I am?” He grinned as he tossed the branches aside. His teeth seemed even whiter than usual against the mud. “I took them from your neighbor’s yard.”

“That’s a relief.”

As soon as I let him in, loud, fierce barking filled the room. Evan looked around, but Oreo was nowhere in sight. I smothered my snicker with a cough. He may have sounded like he was going to rip Evan limb from limb, but I knew he was probably cowering somewhere safe and out of reach. He was always like this whenever a stranger came into the house. The perfect definition of all bark and no bite.

I didn’t tell Evan that, though. Instead, I wet a couple of napkins and handed them to him. “Here.”

“Thanks.” His eyes kept flickering around the room as Oreo’s barking turned into a low, demon-from-hell growl. God, I loved that dog sometimes. “Okay, either your dog is really small and that’s why I can’t find him, or he’s a ghost dog and I’m going crazy. Which is it?”

“What dog?” I asked with wide eyes. At his freaked-out expression, I couldn’t keep the laughter in for long. “He’s probably squeezed between the edge of the chair and the corner over there.”

Evan dropped on all fours and ducked underneath the kitchen table. Immediately the room got quiet. “Oh, there he is.”

I leaned against the counter and waited for him to get up so I wouldn’t have to talk to his butt the whole time. It took a few minutes, but I didn’t mind.

He muttered something to Oreo. I didn’t know what he was saying, but it wouldn’t have made a difference. Oreo never went to strangers unless he’d been around them for a few hours or they had sausages or bacon in their hands.

Of course, considering the disappointment of the past couple of days, it should have been obvious that the dog I’d had for over two years wouldn’t do what was expected of him. It wasn’t long before Evan was able to pull him out and settle him happily on his lap. I thought Evan only had a way with girls. I guess he had a way with dogs, too.

“So you wanted to talk?”

I crossed my arms, trying to look anywhere but at the gorgeous boy in front of me and my traitorous dog. The butterflies in my stomach multiplied. My mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out. Not because I didn’t have anything to say, but because I was distracted. Again.

It really wasn’t fair. Evan was a surfer, so he had the body. But did he really have to have the soulful I-understand-and-feel-your-pain eyes, too? I’ve always been a sucker for dark-gray eyes.

All my earlier confidence faded. I turned my head away to help lessen the power of his eyes. “Okay, so I thought about what you said after lunch, and I think you were wrong. About the rumor and everything. Because even if everyone forgets, it doesn’t matter. The damage would have already been done. Memories can never be totally forgotten. So the only solution is to alter their memories into something you don’t want to be forgotten. You know what I’m talking about?”

At the blank look on his face, it was obvious that he didn’t have a clue. “Do you?”

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure. “What I mean is that I think we should just roll with it.”

“Meaning?”

I let out a deep breath. It was now or nothing. “Meaning I think we should start dating. What do you think?”

5

-Evan-

What did I think? My first thought was that she was crazy. My second thought? That she was super crazy. Knock-on-her-head, tripping-on-cracks crazy.

I held up a hand. “Hold on, just the other morning you were very,
very
insistent that we
didn’t
know each other, and now you want us to start dating?” The dog on my lap let out a sharp bark and dug his claws into my shorts. “Ow. See? Even the dog thinks this is a stupid idea.”

Taylor flushed and took him from me. “His name is Oreo, and that’s not what I meant.”

I eyed his two black ears and white face. “Clever name.”

“Thanks. My little sister thought of it.” She scooped him up and set him outside in one fluid motion. He stood at the door and stared at us for a minute or two before trotting off to lie on the deck and sunbathe, belly side up.

“So what did you mean about the dating?” My gaze ran up and down her body, taking in her wrinkled, baggy, purple-and-blue-striped PJs. The pants were so long that they covered her toes and practically doubled as socks. “’Cause, no offense, but you’re not exactly my type,” I said with a wink.

Her nose flared twice before turning as red as the rest of her face. She scooted around the countertop until the bottom half of her was out of sight. “None taken, because god knows
you’re
not my type, either.”

Ouch. Apparently the Ice Queen had claws like her dog. “You still didn’t answer my question.”

She leaned back and stared at her nails in deep concentration. “I just meant that we should
pretend
to date.”

I lifted a hand to my chest and sighed with pretend relief. “Thank god. I thought you remembered how incredibly sexy I was and realized that you loved me after all. Or that you’re pregnant and you want to raise this child right. You know, I think Elizabeth’s a nice name for a baby. We could call her Lizzie. I dated a waitress named Lizzie once. Real sweet girl.”

Her entire face was purple now. Taylor leaned forward. Her dark eyes seemed brighter than usual as she glared at me. Her hands gripped the counter to keep her balance. “I do
not
love you. And we do
not
have a baby. We didn’t even have sex!”

“Ah, but you’re not denying that you think I’m sexy.”

Her mouth dropped open, and I thought she was going to yell at me again. Instead, she covered her face with both hands and laughed. A loud, uncontrollable laugh that was both deep and squeaky at the same time, weird as it was. Weirder was the fact that I liked the sound. It made me smile.

She laughed so hard that tears streamed down her face and she was practically gasping for breath. Alarmed, I half stood up and reached for her, but Taylor just brushed me off and grabbed napkins to wipe her face. I couldn’t help smiling a bit as I watched her. She was so different from all the other girls I dated. Fresh-faced, simple, girl-next-door.

I waited until she drank more of her orange juice and swallowed before continuing. No need for her to shower me with orange juice and spit. “Okay, now that I know you’re not going to die from my one-liners, can you explain?”

“Well, it’s a fact that everyone knows that we were together the other night. Even though nothing happened,” Taylor quickly said when I opened my mouth with another pun about one-night stands. “Nobody’s going to believe us. So to save our reputations, I thought we could pretend that we’ve been dating all along. That way they won’t think there’s anything wrong with the fact that we were together at the party and that night.”

“Reputations? Seriously? Are we in the eighteen hundreds? Did my time machine finally work?”

To my surprise, she picked up a couple of stapled pages that I hadn’t noticed on the counter and handed them to me. “Everything’s listed here, so it’ll be easier if you would just read it.”

I flipped through the pages with wide eyes. There were freaking five typed pages. I repeat,
five
pages. She was kidding, right? What the hell did she need to talk about for this long? “You’re very thorough.”

She paced back and forth. “Thanks.”

“That wasn’t exactly a compliment.” I skimmed the first page. “So you want me to sign this contract and pretend to date you for the next couple of weeks?”

“It’s not really an official contract.”

“There’s a line for our signatures.”

“Well, it’s really more of a formality, so we’ll both know where we stand in this … relationship.” Taylor stopped and faced me. Her hands were on either side of her hips in a defensive stance. “Come on, this could benefit us both.”

I scoffed in disbelief. “Really? ’Cause all I hear is you, you, you. Honestly, I don’t see why I need to agree to this.”

“Because you’re a generous and helpful person?” She snorted at the shocked look on my face. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t even get through that. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Hm, touché. Apparently her sweet exterior was just a front. I wondered what other secrets she was hiding from the world. “If this is how you plan to convince me, I’ll tell you now that you’re failing miserably,” I said drily.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. Again.” She coughed and attempted to look serious. And failed. “Let’s just think of it rationally. Think of how much respect you’d get from the teachers once they find out you’re dating
me
. All the teachers at Nathan Wilks love me.”

“Okay, first off, you better rein that ego back. You are not as great as you think you are. And secondly,” I said loudly when she opened her mouth to respond. “Teachers like me just fine. I may not have a 5.0 or whatever crazy average you have with your extra classes and overachieving self, but I
do
have an average GPA. Above average, actually, since I usually get B’s.”

“You’re lying, right?”

“Why would I lie to you? You’re not my mom.”

Her eyes narrowed in confusion. “But how is that possible? I heard you don’t even go to half of your classes. You weren’t even at school today!”

“Don’t believe everything you hear. I only miss about a fourth of my classes. And the classes I do go to, I do damn good in.”

“Well.”

“What?”

“You do damn
well
in instead of
good
.” She gave me a bright smile. “I guess English isn’t one of the classes you have a B in?”

Huh. The more I was getting to see the snarky side of Taylor, the more I liked her. “I guess you can say that. So like I was saying before you rudely interrupted me for an impromptu grammar lesson, I don’t need to be there to understand what’s going on,” I said with a shrug. I could probably homeschool myself, if I didn’t have to worry about seeing Brandon’s face all the time.

Taylor continued to stare at me with an uncertain expression, as though she wasn’t sure if I was joking or not. I got this skepticism a lot when people found out that I was more than a playboy bum. I wasn’t a closet nerd, either, but it wasn’t hard to put a bit of effort into my schoolwork. Okay, a little more than a bit. I didn’t want my stepdad’s satisfaction regarding my bad grades to prove that he was right all along. That I was a no-good deadbeat like my dad. Don’t know what’s wrong with being a deadbeat, though. It sure beats being a pompous ass like him.

I leaned back in the chair, tapping the ground with my left foot. “So what else you got?”

She gnawed on her lower lip before snapping her fingers. “How about college? I could help you with your college applications. It’s kind of late to apply, but with my assistance, you could still get into any school you want.”

“Any?”