Avra's God (2 page)

“All right!” Cisco fended himself up from the
bench and rubbed his hands together. “Come to Papa.” He waggled his
eyebrows.

Jesse laughed. He had missed Cisco’s humor,
the hero-worship in the younger girls’ eyes. This was living. The
girls’ breathless chatter, their short shorts, captivated him.

Billy stepped into the group, hit knuckles
with Jesse, then Cisco. The girls giggled. Billy’s shower-damp hair
curled on top of his six-foot frame. His cheeks glowed pink as if
he’d over-scrubbed his acne.

The crowd swelled beyond Jesse’s group.
Students gathered under the clock tower, shouting to friends headed
across Echo Plaza. Others milled on the grass, squinting into the
sun. Some guys tossed a Frisbee around. A peal of laughter erupted
from the cheerleaders’ bench.

Ah, Sleeping Beauty Kallie. Jesse shot a
smile at the girl wedged on the wrong end of the cheerleaders’
bench. Her face was pale, her body rigid. Her gaze clamped on his
like a lifeline in a sea of unfamiliarity. If she was trying to
disappear, she failed―in those traffic-cone-orange jeans and green
Converses. But she looked smokin’ hot just the same.

The basketball team camped around the
cheerleaders. Jesse frowned. Jocks. He nodded at Kallie and settled
his gaze back on the faces in his circle. “It was so boring in New
Smyrna Beach this summer…”

Cisco, Billy, and the girls glanced curiously
at the cheerleaders’ bench and back at Jesse.

He ignored their interest. “…that the
Hometown News ran a half-page article on mosquitoes…”

When Jesse’s crew scattered for their
classes, he shot a glance at Kallie’s cascade of straight blonde
hair that slipped over her shoulders like silk. Eyes averted, she
clenched a salmon-colored class schedule in her hand. He should
welcome her to Daytona State, but he hadn’t recovered from meeting
her last Thursday when he caught her eavesdropping on his solo jam
session. In three minutes, she’d slipped into his soul.

Someone jostled into Avra as she funneled
through the doorway after Humanities. She pushed a tress of hair
behind her ear and looked up. Cisco. Oh, great. He was going to
think she ran into him on purpose. “Sorry.” Feeling the heat rush
to her face, she ducked her head.

“Make cookies the other night?” Cisco asked
as they pressed into the hall and melded with the stream of
students.

She resisted the urge to look around to see
if he was talking to her. They walked in step, shoulder to
shoulder. “Yeah.”

“Chocolate chip?”

She nodded. The hottest guy in Humanities 301
was making polite with her. What was wrong with this picture?

“Quite the conversationalist, aren’t
you?”

She shrugged. She wasn’t practiced up on
small talk.

“Have it your way.” He held the glass door
open for her. “Next time you bake cookies, invite me over.”

Her eyes popped open like Garfield’s Odie.
Her mind whirled. He was kidding, right? “You don’t know where I
live.”
That was inane.

“If you invited me,” Cisco said in a singsong
voice, “you could tell me your address.”

She laughed. “We’ll see.” She shuffled away
in a fog. Maybe there was something to “the way to a man’s heart is
through his stomach
.
” Who’d a thunk it? She should have tied
a chocolate chip cookie around her neck eons ago.

She glanced back over her shoulder. Cisco’s
dark curls, bleached white in the sun, bobbed away with the current
of students flowing toward the theater building.
I guess he
remembered me.

Cisco threaded through the flotsam of
students toward the theater building. We’ll see?
I don’t think
so, Avra Martin.
He didn’t get
maybes,
only
yeses
. The girl had family, cookies, and legs you’d have to
be in a coma not to appreciate. He bet a lot went on under those
blue eyes of hers. Suddenly, he wanted to find out.

Avra chewed on the end of her pencil, the
metallic-wood taste on her tongue. Across the aisle, Kallie Logan’s
green Converse bobbed time to the scritch-scritch of Professor
Martinez’ dry erase marker against the whiteboard. Blonde hair that
must have spent serious time with a straightener spilled over
Kallie’s shoulders nearly to her waist.

Kallie’s elbow slipped and her calculus notes
swished to the floor. Her chair creaked as she bent to retrieve the
sheets, swiveling the heads of every male within ten feet.

Avra checked her answer against the one on
the board. Correct, as she expected.

Why did Kallie have to be in Avra’s direct
line of vision three times a week? And why did the girl pick her to
chat up before class? This morning Kallie said she transferred from
the University of Miami—a good fifteen steps up the college food
chain from Daytona State.

Maybe she should move to a new town to drum
up some male attention. Like that would happen. Dad said her
stick-straight hair and high cheek bones gave her classic beauty,
that she was the only one who noticed her spotty complexion. But
dads were supposed to say things like that. Of course, Morgan had
followed her around for as long as she could remember. But that
eyedropper of male attention was
it
for the two decades
she’d been alive.

She was over the whole Harry Potter
invisibility cloak she prayed for in elementary school.
You can
pull it back now. Puleeese.
She stomped her foot under her
desk.

The girl with purple hair at the next desk
shot her a sideways glance.

Avra shook her foot as though it had gone to
sleep.

A snippet of Sunday’s sermon flitted through
her mind—love your enemies, pray for them. She rolled her eyes.

Avra took a deep breath. Okay, she’d pray for
Kallie Logan Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays when she got to calc.
God knew the prayer was more about her than Kallie.
So, would
you work on my jealousy—maybe make me content? And for Kallie—I
don’t know—whatever she needs.
But she doubted a girl like
Kallie needed anything.

Avra slumped in her seat. God either would or
wouldn’t take away her jealousy. It was up to Him.

Avra wiped the flour off her hands onto her
soccer shorts. “I don’t know what the big deal is about cookies. If
you can read, you can bake. You could do this at your place.”
Stress made her irritable. And Cisco standing in her kitchen
defined stress. Why was he here anyway?

Cisco held the cookbook in one hand and waved
the other at her. “What? Are you kicking me out?” His mop of
sun-bleached ringlets bounced as he moved. “First you invite me,
then you uninvite me.”

She smiled for the first time since he got
there. “You invited yourself.”

“Yeah, well ...”

She cocked her head at him. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you invite yourself over?” she
said.

“Two cups brown sugar.”

“Okay, okay.” She reached for the sugar
canister. “Answer my question.”

“Cookies.”

“What? You don’t have an oven?”

“Yeah, I got an oven.” He pressed his lips
together. “But no can do. Idiot sisters. Kitchen trashed
twenty-four seven.”

“So, why my house?”

“Two cups granulated sugar.” Cisco set down
the cookbook and leaned against the counter. His arm brushed hers,
toasting her pale skin with the Cuban brown of his. “It was kismet.
Life happens. I like the family—the mom, the dad, the bros—you.”
The mischief seeped out of his eyes as he held her gaze.

She sucked in a breath. “Butter, we need
butter.” She yanked open the refrigerator. Cool air spilled over
her, clearing her mind. She turned Cisco’s words over in her brain.
Just as she thought—Cisco was into her family, not
her
. She
kneed shut the refrigerator door .

Sweat trickled down the back of Kallie’s neck
under the blanket of her hair. The toes of her sneakers kicked up
dust clouds on the berm of the road as she wound her way toward
home, part of a sparse string of students moving away from the New
Smyrna Beach campus of Daytona State College. At least her
Tuesday-Thursday classes were in town.

A faded maroon Neon rolled to a stop beside
her. Jesse poked his head out and motioned for her to get in.

His ignoring her on her first day of classes
still stung. Jesse had been the only person she recognized all
week. She peered through his window, shielding her eyes from the
afternoon sun. “Thanks, but walking places is the only exercise I
get.”

“So, what did you think of my songs the other
day—before they put you to sleep?” He grabbed the back of his neck
with one hand.

If the guy didn’t have cocky written all over
him, she’d think he was nervous.

Sun glinted off the chrome of his rearview
mirror as she sang, “I’m sliding down the pain. Sliding down the
pain.” She eased into another tune, “Your breath’s on my lips, a
memory settling there to stay, but you’ve gone away.” The notes
floated in the heat.

Jesse’s light brown eyes widened. “You nailed
those lines exactly the way I wrote them. How’d you do that?”

“My sister calls it songographic memory.”

Jesse leaned out the window. “Cisco!” he
yelled at a guy on a bike whose white-brown curls whipped in the
wind as he flew toward them.

The bike’s brakes screeched as it fishtailed
sideways and came to a stop in front of Jesse’s car. “Hey.” The
guy’s chest heaved a couple of times as he caught his breath. He
motioned toward the bike. “Ran out of gas before payday.”

He leaned close to her and squinted. “And you
must be Kallie with the evergreen eyes.” He stood upright and
smirked at Jesse.

A smile crept across her face. “Yeah, that’s
me.”

Jesse eyed his friend. “Get lost.”

Cisco laughed and nodded at Kallie. “Nice to
meet you.” He grinned at Jesse and sped off.

She turned a smug look on Jesse.

Jesse coughed. “You sing, huh?”

“A little.”

“How much is a little?”

She twisted her hair up in a knot and stuck a
pencil through it. “Ten years of voice lessons.”

Jesse’s lips made a silent circle. “So, what
did you think about my stuff?” His elbow rested on the door, and
his hand massaged the back of his neck.

“The music rocks. Lyrics remind me of Boxer
Rebellion. Voice—pure, natural talent—”

“Yeah, baby!”

“—
A little rough, could use
some training.”

Jesse pursed his lips and studied her. “You
could teach me.”

“Join Norton Christeson’s concert choir.”

Jesse shot her a not-in-this-decade look and
rolled the Neon ahead a few feet.

“Maybe I’d turn you into a soprano.”

“Right.” Jesse pulled away from the curb and
stopped. “How about you give me a lesson on Friday?” He shouted
over his shoulder as he drove away, “Show up at six in the
shed.”

Her mind drifted to the day last week when
she met Jesse Koomer. She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop on his personal
jam session in the church shed. A dragonfly buzzed her head, and
she shooed it away. Jesse would get his singing lesson.

Avra nudged the screen door open with her
hip, watching the cocoa slosh in the mugs she carried. Her brothers
and Cisco had piled onto the back porch after a game of mud
football in the park. The three-hour rain still dribbled off the
roof.

Lester, their pit-bull-in-a-poodle’s-body,
tangled in her feet. She shoved him out of her way and heard his
toenails dance across the porch. He growled at Cisco, then walked
past. Even Lester had nearly warmed up to Cisco.

She’d been right—Cisco was into her family,
not her. In fact, he’d been over to hang with her brothers a
half-dozen times since they made cookies.

Cisco slouched against a post. “That’s what
I’m saying. How come Drew always gets to QB?”

Kurt leaned against the siding with his long,
muddy legs sprawled across the gray-painted boards. “He’s fast and
little.”

Avra handed Kurt a mug.

Drew poked his grimy T-shirt with a thumb and
took the cocoa she held out to him. “I the man! Two TDs!” The spike
had gone out of his hair, and brown dirt smeared across the
freckles on his cheeks.

She put a mug into Cisco’s dirty hand and
wrinkled her nose. “You guys are gross.” She surveyed his
mud-slicked jeans and T-shirt and shook her head.

Cisco leaned toward her. “Aw, Avra, how ’bout
a hug?”

She gave him a saccharine smile and planted
her feet in front of him, body language daring him to follow
through with his threat—a trick she’d learned dealing with
brothers. “I pass.” Avra studied the mud streaked across one cheek
and into his hair as the seconds ticked by. She was so close she
could trace the few proud hairs on his chin, the fullness of his
lips. His eyes warmed like hot fudge, and she couldn’t look
away.

Cisco blew his breath out and sat back
against the post. She’d won.

Before she could move away, he ran a muddy
finger the length of her nose. “Gotcha.” A wide, innocent smile
crawled across his face.

Avra laughed. “You’re like having another
brother.”
But I’m glad you’re not.

Kurt stretched to high-five Cisco. “Hey,
Bro!” Sludge smeared through his short brown hair and down his
neck.

“Hoo, buddy,” Drew croaked, “you better watch
your back! Avra will get you when you least expect it.”

Thanks, little brother
. Smirking at
Cisco, she spun and retreated to the kitchen. She swiped the mud
off her nose and rubbed it between her fingers. Just how would she
get Cisco back?

Jesse lagged behind while the other students
jockeyed out the door. A veil of hair blocked his view of Kallie’s
face. Her long fingers snapped the clasp on her backpack, and she
scooped it into her arms as she stood. Jesse grabbed the back of
his neck for a fraction of a second and took a deep breath. He set
a handwritten sheet of music on her desk.