Breaking Rules (15 page)

“But if I’ve never wanted it before, why in the world would I want it now?”

“Maybe this guy’s different.”

“He
is
different, I’m not disputing that. But that doesn’t matter.”

“Again, give me one good reason.”

“It doesn’t matter how much I like the guy, Gabe,” I said. “I don’t know that I even know him well enough to make a judgment one way or another.”

“Okay, so what
do
you know?”

“I only know
how he makes me feel, and that’s not much to go on. I know that every time he looks at me, my heart does this little pitter-patter thing,” I said. “I know that the one time that he held me, it was the first and only time in my life that I’ve ever felt truly safe.” I kept walking, but I closed my eyes for a brief second and remembered how protected I felt when Gabe showed up at the house and held me, despite the fact that I treated him so poorly.

“I feel things,” I finally said,
trying to bite back tears. “I’ve never felt anything remotely like it in my entire life. There’s something about the way he looks at me, something about his eyes that knock me off my feet. When I’m with him, my palms get sweaty; I stumble over my words. I
do
get tense. I make a complete idiot of myself in front of him, and then I’m always so rude and mean and distant when he’s around because I’m too afraid of what will happen if I’m nice. The things I feel with him contradict everything I’ve ever believed in. He represents the idea of breaking my number one rule, and that terrifies me, Gabe. I’m scared senseless.”

“
What’s your number one rule?”

“To never fall in love,” I said, looking down to the ground. “And I never thought that would
be a problem, but this guy… he’s really something.”

“Hmm,” was all he said before we rounded another corner, bringing us back full-circle right where we
started at the Sugar High Bakery.

Gabe walked with me to my parked car just at the edge of the small parking lot, and we both stopped short of the door. It would
’ve been a great opportunity for me to say something else, to ask him more about his life, his fears, and his future—to turn those questions into answers. But I knew that asking anything would only open another door. I knew he’d feel obligated to respond, and nothing he could say would make me like him less. In fact, it would only make it harder for me to move forward.

“You didn’t have to come all the way out here,” I said, choosing to keep our departure light and simple. I leaned back against my car door, and dropped my hands to my sides. “I almost wish you
hadn’t. I told you I’d be okay.”

“And not so convincingly, either,” he said, dropping his head and deliberately holding my gaze a bit longer. He studied my expression for a moment before he leaned a little closer and whispered, “
And I
did
have to drive out here; you yourself said that you’ve spent too long pushing people away, Mandy. I wasn’t going to walk out and not come back. I’m not so easy to push around.”

“But Gabe, you seriously didn’t
—”

“Y
ou’re right,” he interrupted me. “I didn’t have to come out here to check on you, but I wanted to. Okay?”

I stood a little straighter,
and the lump in my throat only grew thicker.

I watched Gabe for a few
, long beats, and he stared at me as if he was waiting on me to say something. I felt that I knew exactly what it was that he wanted me to say. Did he want to hear that I was thankful that he’d been able to look past my lies and that I really had wanted him to come back? Did he want me to say that I’d been happy to see him standing in the bakery earlier, that he was, in fact, the
him
that made my heart pitter-patter at every vague glance?

What would he say if I told him that
Jones was right, that Gabe was ‘the dude?’
He
was the one I was so hung up on, the one who made me realize that maybe I really did want everything I’d always sworn I’d never want.

Would he want to hear the truth?

When another minute swept by us and neither of us said another word, Gabe reached forward, took my hands in his, and squeezed them gently.

“You’re too hard on yourself, Mandy
.” He raised my hand to his lips and brushed a warm kiss across my knuckles. “You’re in your head. Quit over-thinking everything, and break a rule once in a while. You might get hurt, or you might find that you’ve been resisting some of the things you need to truly make yourself happy. Why would you ever want to resist happiness, Mandy? You deserve everything you want from life.”

Eleven

“Excuse me, were you ever planning to tell me about Gabe, or were you hoping to keep that little love affair a secret for the next ten years?”

Bailey
’s voice blazed through me like fire.
Not now… please!
As if all of Gabe’s questions on the street earlier hadn’t been enough, now I had to deal with my sister, too? She just had to bust through my bedroom door as I was settling in for bed? All I wanted was some sleep. I needed a break from reality, and the last thing I wanted was to think about
him
for another second.

“Tell you what?” I asked, turning over in bed to set my alarm.

“Gabe came here looking for you earlier,” she said, leaning in the doorway. “And then Jones called and said that he showed up at the bakery.”

“Yeah, so?”

“What’s going on with you two?” she asked. “Jones said you went all dopey-eyed and nervous the moment Gabe walked in the door. He said you left together and that you hadn’t come back before he and Julia had to lock up and leave.”

“What’s your point
?”

“My point is that you got really defensive last weekend when you thought we were attacking Gabe,” she said. “You were being overly sensitive, which isn’t like you at all. And then you went on this whole
, big spiel about how you love RI, and you even mentioned Gabe by name when you told me you’d made new friends.”

“And your point is what, again?”

“You like him,” she said. “Like… like-like him. And you’re being all rude and distant because you think it’s, like, some uber-sin that he gets you all hot and bothered.”

“Oh for the love of God.”
I sat up and stared at my sister, and she finally took a step forward into the bedroom. She crawled up on the corner of my bed and tucked her feet beneath her.

“It’s not going to do you any good to keep it all bottled up,” she said.

“Well, now you just sound like him.”

“Tell me about him,” she said, sounding genuinely intrigued.
“Besides the fact that he’s kinda cute.”

“
Kind of
cute?” I asked. “Come on, Bailey. You’re kidding, right?”

“Okay,” she said. “He’s gorgeous. But that’s never mattered to you before. You’ve been around hot guys your entire life.
So why him? What makes this guy so special?”

“You mean besides the fact that he gets me all hot and bothered?” I asked, and she cracked an immediate smile. “He doesn’t, by the way. It’s not like that
at all. If anything, he just gets me all nervous and flustered.”

“Yeah?”

I could hear the surprise in her tone; Bailey knew me better than anyone, so she knew that even being nervous and flustered around a guy was a pretty big development for me.

“Gabe is kind and compassionate,” I said. “He’s humble, and he’s sweet. He’s so warm and welcoming, and it’s endearing. His smile is contagious, and
it’s kind of dorky in its own right. And when Gabe laughs, when he’s truly amused by something, it’s just captivating.”

“
Yeah, I don’t think it’s just
something
that he’s amused by; I think Gabe is amused by
you
,” Bailey said. “I think that’s why you see this side of him that nobody else seems to see. Jones knew Gabe back when, don’t forget. And when he called, he was baffled by how much Gabe had changed since high school; not only did he look different, but he was almost a different person entirely. He said he’s never seen a guy watch a girl the way Gabe watched you.”

“That’s bogus.”

“When he showed up here tonight looking for you, I answered the door and didn’t say one word to him.”

“Okay?”

“I simply opened the door and looked at him,” she said. “And he immediately introduced himself, asked if you were home, and didn’t seem to bat an eye twice at the fact that
I
could’ve been
you
standing there at the door.”

“He knows we’re twins,” I said. “He knows
you’re my sister.”

“But how many times have we been mistaken for each other over the years? Only Dad has ever been able to tell us apart at first glance. Most people have to talk to us for a few minutes before they can tell a difference. Gabe just knew.”

“That’s great, Bailey, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means he likes you, Mandy. He
knows
you. I mean, even Jones can’t tell us apart half the time, don’t forget,” she said. “You have no idea how many times he’s shown up here asking for me when it was
me
answering the door. Gabe didn’t hesitate for a second, and that does mean something.”

T
hough I tried to pretend that it didn’t warm my heart to hear her say those things, I knew I couldn’t hide the giddiness in my expression. Bailey was right; no one besides our father (even our own mother) could tell us apart at first glance, and yet Gabe had been able to?

I thought back to the conversation I
had with him earlier on the street.

He
listened to me, talked with me. He came all the way from Desden just to check on me. And what was up with the way he kissed my hand? Was that just Gabe’s way of saying that the feelings were mutual? Sure. Of course, that was the easy, obvious answer. But maybe I’d simply read into something and let Bailey’s influence cloud my view of reality.

“I wouldn’t have sent any random guy to track you down at work, you know that right?” Bailey asked. “I only told him where he could find you because he told me that he’d been here last night
, and you were really upset. He drove down from Desden just to check on you. I couldn’t send him away; anyone willing to make that kind of drive just to check on someone has to at least
kind of
like the person they’re coming to see.”

“Okay, so what, Bailey?” I asked. “Even if Gabe does like me—and I’m not saying that he does—
what does it matter
? We’re probably going to leave within the next month, Gabe’s not planning to stick around much longer himself, and that just makes things harder than they have to be.”

“Whether or not we actually leave,” Bailey said,
sounding as though she might have a reason to doubt that we would, “it’s not going to change the fact that you like him. If you like him now, you’ll still like him when we land in California. But if you don’t tell him, or at least act on your feelings, you’ll never actually know how he feels. And do you really want to leave Sugar Creek not knowing? Do you really want your memories of this place to be riddled with regrets?” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Do you really want to look back at our time here and feel those same, distant, hurtful feelings you have when you think of Mom and everyone we left back in LA?”

Of course that
’s not what I wanted. But telling Gabe how I felt—that I liked him, and I didn’t really know why—that was a risk. What if he laughed in my face? What if he didn’t feel the same way? What if he watched me with pity as I walked away, feeling nothing but idiotic for actually spewing my guts and spilling my heart?

Maybe Gabe was just a nice guy. Maybe he didn’t like me at all. And i
f he didn’t like me, and Bailey and I had both read way too far into his actions and words, I’d make a complete idiot of myself.

But on the other hand, if Gabe
did
return my feelings and I never told him how I felt… would I regret keeping it to myself?

I woke up bright and early the next morning, feeling strangely different for the first time in years. The familiar lump in my throat had only thickened, my muddled thoughts were more muddled than ever, and I couldn’t do anything—not even tie my shoe—without thinking of Gabe. The combination of all those things shouldn’t have made for a good start to the day, yet I couldn’t quit smiling.

Even in the car on the
way to school, I couldn’t focus. I kept thinking about the things Bailey had said, and I couldn’t help but wonder what all of Gabe’s gestures had meant. I kept playing every possible scenario in my head, and I only wished I had a clearer idea of what both Gabe and I wanted from one another. Of course, wishing led me to look down at my hand every few seconds to study the place on my finger where he’d pressed his warm lips, and that definitely brought about another goofy smile.

I swore I could still feel my skin tingling, numbed by the remnants
of his touch.

It was a good thing Bailey offered to drive that morning, because I doubt I would’ve been able to keep the car on the road. As it turned out, Gabe had the power to distract me worse than any cell phone ever could.
Even when he wasn’t around, he was all I could seem to think about.

As we headed down Highway 6, I kept staring at my hand
. My sister didn’t say much of anything. After our conversation the previous night, she knew I had a lot of thinking to do, and I think it actually impressed her to know that I was considering an alternative to the life I’d always promised myself.

It wasn’t until Bailey slammed on the
brakes that my eyes snapped up from my fingers, and I felt the familiar jerk forward as the car came to a screeching halt. For the second time in a matter of days, Gabriel Raddick was standing in the middle of the road, blocking the street just in front of the park gates.

This time, though, Gabe wasn’t looking off to the side. His eyes were fixed straight forward, looking through the glass at my sister and me. He wore a pair of faded blue jeans, a gray hooded sweatshirt, and a ball cap
. He looked about a million times better right then than he had when I’d first seen him standing in that very spot on Saturday morning.

Thankfully, though, my sister had quicker reflexes, and we
didn’t come anywhere near hitting him.

Without waiting for either of us to get out of the car or muster any kind of reaction, he managed a quick
walk over to the passenger’s side door and opened it.

“What are you doing?” I asked, stepping out. I looked down the road behind us to make sure there wasn’t any oncoming traffic. The road was clear for
at least a mile, so I knew I had a couple of minutes to spare before we had to get off the street. “Didn’t you learn your lesson the first time around? This highway isn’t exactly a playground, Gabe.”

“I wouldn’t have let her hit me,” he said, walking around me. “I just needed her to stop.”

He dipped inside the car and reached for my purse. He said a quick ‘hello’ to Bailey before standing tall again and turning to me. Clutching my purse between his hands, he nodded up at the sidewalk. “All right, let’s go.”

“Go where? Gabe, what are you doing?” I asked, looking between him and Bailey. My sister leaned over to watch us, and he stopped and turned back to me. “Gabe, come on. I need my purse. I’m going to be late for school
.”

“You’re not going today.”

“I am,” I said, looking back to the car. “We’re on our way there now, and we’re going to run late if—”

“Sp
end the day with me,” he said, nodding back at the park.

“Spend the day with you?”
My jaw unhinged. “What are you talking about? It’s the middle of the week. I have school.”

“Skip it,” he said, shrugging a shoulder.

“Skip school?”

“Yeah,” he said.
“Why not?”

“Because it’s one of the rules,” Bailey yelled from the car, and her agitation was apparent in her tone. “She’s never been late for a single class, so you can imagine blowing off a
n entire day doesn’t really qualify as a bucket list item for Mandy.”

“She’s right,” I said, nodding. “I can’t skip school.”

It didn’t matter how much I’d gotten swept away by the idea of getting closer to Gabe, I knew better. Making a move like that would be wrong and irresponsible, and that’s just not who I was. There was a reason for
Rule #6: Be accountable. Never blow off your responsibilities
. It was, yet again, the only way I could prove myself to everyone; I had to ensure that everyone could trust me.
My
word meant something.