Fireworks: A Holiday Bad Boy Romance (60 page)

“Uh,” I start again,
beginning to become increasingly aware at just how foreign an entity these
people think me to be. “Most people don’t know that I once caught my dad hiding
money for one of his clients. I think the guy was a drug dealer or
something—never came by the house or anything, but I used to go to my dad’s
office after school when I was younger, and when I got off the bus and into his
office that day, this crazy-looking guy with all these scars and just insane
muscles was coming out of there and my dad was stuffing a duffle bag full of
cash. I don’t know if the guy ever got his money back or not, but I know my dad
lost the case. I’ve always kind of wondered if he blew the case just so he
could keep the money, but the police don’t like to investigate—”

“And let’s move on,” the
professor says, and I sit down, hardly able to contain my laughter.

Apparently, nobody here
thought I was joking. Either that or nobody here thought the story was funny,
but that can’t be it. I’m hilarious.

Class goes on and ends,
and I remember something about a big project coming up, but once those magical
words, “We’ll start next week…” came out of her mouth, I just naturally tuned
out.

Out of class now, and I
decide to forego my scheduled skate home to nap and go straight to the skate
park near the college.

There are a few guys
tooling around, but this park only really ever gets busy after everyone’s done
with classes for the day. This is my favorite time to come here.

If I ever woke up early
enough, I could probably get in some time with the park all to myself, but
mornings are death and coldness and burning eyes and certainly not the kind of
comfortable dream or well-furnished nightmare I could otherwise be experiencing
at six AM.

I hate mornings almost as
much as I hate the coffee most people drink to cope with their own hatred of
mornings.

It’s a tortured
existence.

My problem right now
isn’t the street part of the coming competition, it’s the vert portion. Some
jackoff got it into his stupid head that it would be great to have an
all-around competition rather than three separate competitions. That way, the
dickhead no doubt theorized, the best all-around skater would win.

It’s not that big a deal.
It’s just something that I should have learned before now that I just never
quite got around to.

I mean, I’m a street
skater. What the hell do I know about vert? The parks around here don’t have
vert ramps. How the hell am I supposed to practice for that?

Everyone says it’s not
that different. Once you roll in, it’s just the same board on the same wood.
They never say what you’re supposed to do if you can’t roll in.

There’s a concrete portion
that equals out to be comparable to one side of a vert ramp, but I’ve always
just done wall rides on it. It never occurred to me to climb to the top and
practice dropping down. I guess I’ve just never really thought of this as a
suitable substitution for a full vert ramp, but it’s close enough for what I
need.

I cruise around the park
a bit, pulling a few tricks here and there, but mostly just eyeing that tall
concrete fall into a curve which is supposed to allow for a person to become
vertical again without crashing. I’m going to see if it’s really that simple.

I come out at the
quarter-pipe near the vert section and I climb the makeshift ladder all the way
to the top.

It’s kind of nice up
here. There’s a good view of the park. It helps that I’m not afraid of heights.

Now I’m looking down and
everything’s changed. From where I’m standing, the bottom of the concrete where
there’s supposed to be a nice, gentle curve to ease one from going straight
down to straight across is a barely perceptible inverted bump. I drop in from
here and I may as well be taking a swan dive straight onto the ground below.

“What up, shithead?” a
voice I really don’t want to hear right now says as that stupid head comes up
above the level of the concrete.

“I need to get used to dropping
in,” I tell Rob. “Vert’s part of the Midwest Championship and it’s not like I
have a halfpipe at my house.”

I should really have a
halfpipe at my house. Why do I not have a halfpipe in my house?

“You’ve never dropped in
before?” he asks, pulling himself to the top and standing next to me.

“I’ve dropped in,” I lie.
“It’s just the one part of my game I haven’t really developed.”

“It’s easy, man,” he
says, “watch.”

I watch, and he drops his
skateboard to his side and moves it to the edge with his foot until only the
tail is keeping the board from going over the edge. Rob holds the board in
place at the tail with one foot and, with the other, he steps further up the
board. The nose of the board drops as he shifts more of his body weight to the
front foot and now he’s going straight down the incline, dipping down a little
as the concrete curves beneath him and he rolls out without issue.

Okay, so I was watching
and taking notes. I multitask.

It really seems simple
enough, and lord knows I’ve seen people do it on video enough times. This is
just one of those moments where I have to swallow my fear and just make my body
go through the motions.

There are a lot of
moments like this in skating.

They usually come right
before an injury. Sometimes, though, these moments come right before you learn
something big, and I need to be comfortable doing this. The foundation of my
future, as my dad would call it, is going to be built or it’s going to crumble.

So, I ease the board
forward with my back foot and I try to keep from shaking with the adrenaline
that comes as the back trucks pass the concrete and the tail of the board comes
down hard on the lip.

Okay, just lift my front
foot, keeping most of my weight on the back for now, and set the front foot on
the other half of the board. Now I just transfer my weight from back foot to
front foot, I’m tilting forward and…

I open my eyes to see Rob
standing above me, bent over with laughter.

“That was the greatest
thing I’ve ever fucking seen, bro!” he says. “You didn’t even put your arms out
to catch you. Just straight deadpan like you didn’t even see the ground rushing
up toward—you’re not really hurt or anything, are you? I almost don’t even care
because seriously, dude, that. Was. Awesome.”

I look at him and I look
down at the sourceless drops of blood on my t-shirt and I ask him, “What do you
mean? What did I do?”

Chapter
Three

Smoke

Mia

I really hope he’s not
here today. He’s always late, but it’s never easy to tell whether he’s actually
going to show up or not.

Ian hasn’t really tried
to talk to me all that much since class started, but today’s the day that
Professor McAdams assigns us partners for the final class project. Whoever I
get paired with, I’m going to be stuck with for the next three months or so,
and I really don’t want to endure the hyper-ambivalence that I have toward him
with any kind of increased frequency.

It might be simpler if I
didn’t like anything about him, but after seeing him skate, that stupid portion
of my brain that’s shaped like a skate deck has been trying to convince me that
all of the reasons I thought he was an annoying moron at the competition were
misperceptions.

The reality, and I’m sure
of this, is that Ian is nothing more than a tattooed guy with no personal
skills that just happens to be about the best skater I’ve ever seen in real
life, but being in that kind of proximity with him—I don’t know. That stupid
part of my brain has won the battle before, and it’s not usually a brilliant
idea when it does.

Class starts, though, and
Ian’s nowhere in sight. I’m not ready to pop the champagne cork just yet, but
it’s a good sign.

“All right,” Dr. McAdams
says, “today, as you’ll know if you’ve been paying attention, we are going to
put you in teams of two for your final project. During class today, I want you
to talk with your new partner and come up with a few ideas you might want to do
and hand them in on a paper that contains your names—I can’t believe I still
have to say this to people. You’re adults, most of you, and you should know how
to write your name at the top of a piece of paper for class. I’ll look over
your ideas and select the best two. Of these, you must pick one and that will
be your final project. If you do not have two viable options on your paper, you
can either try again on your own time, bringing something we can actually use
at the beginning of next class, or I can assign you something.”

Oh, just get to it, will
you? The longer you talk, the greater the chances that Ian walks through that
door and I’m stuck between my standards and a hard place, if you’ll forgive the
pun.

“I’m not vindictive when
it comes to assigning projects, either, so if you and your partner are
genuinely having a difficult time, don’t hesitate to ask for ideas from me.
That said,” Professor McAdams says, “why don’t we get you paired off and we’ll
get going?”

He’s still not here, but
I’m not uncrossing my fingers yet. I’m in the fourth column, third row and the
professor’s taking her sweet time writing down everyone’s partner assignments.
The good news is that she seemed to skip over the other empty seat on that side
of the room. The bad news is that I can’t remember if that seat actually has a
person that goes with it or not.

“Mia, you’ll be with
Riley,” Professor McAdams says, and I turn around to face my new study
partner—project partner, whatever.

Riley is about my age,
dirty blonde hair and glasses. She doesn’t say a whole lot in class, but then
again, I have been noticing that participation within the classrooms in our
institutions of higher learning is waning prodigiously.

Whatever the case, she’s
not Ian, so there’s nothing complicated, no competing feelings of attraction
and disinterest, just simple partner work where I’m probably going to end up
doing just about everything and Riley will scribble her name at the top of any
paperwork as her contribution to whatever groundbreaking research we decide to
conduct.

The professor finishes
pairing everyone up and I finally breathe easy. Even when Ian comes into the
room while Riley and I are putting our desks together, I’m feeling a lot better
about everything.

“Hold on,” Professor
McAdams says, “we just had someone come in, so we have an even number. What’s
your name?”

This isn’t happening.

“Ian Zavala,” Ian says.

It doesn’t matter. I’m
already paired up. We’re really very close to beginning talk about what we’re
going to do for our project. We’re locked in.

“Okay, and where do you
sit?” Professor McAdams asks.

Oh, you’ve got to be
kidding me.

No, I’m sure it’s not
going to matter where he sits. I don’t even think the professor ever bothered
writing down assigned seating. The fact that he’s set up camp directly behind
me long enough that people just assume that’s his seat doesn’t mean it’s his
seat, and even if it did, it wouldn’t mean that I’d have to give up my
partnership.

If I have to give up my
partnership, everyone who was paired up after me is going to have to give up
theirs and there’s no reason to make this whole process that much work. She’ll
just pair him with whoever was going to be on their own before and that will
be—

“Why don’t you and Mia
team together, and Riley, you and Patricia can be a pair,” Professor McAdams
asks.

Okay, so being that
Patricia was the only person after Riley, I guess technically it makes just as
much sense to pair Ian with me as it would to pair him with her, but I really
wanted this to be my easy class.

Psychology fascinates me.
It’s my wheelhouse. This should be a class where I breeze through and solidify
my foundation in the more general concepts before I go into more field-specific
classes starting next semester.

Now, as Ian smiles
sheepishly as he makes his way past my desk to sit in his usual spot, the
experiment has become me.

How will Mia handle being
paired with a guy she’s simultaneously turned on and off by? What kind of
stress and psychological strain will this new situation put on our young
heroine?

Tune in next week.

“So, what are we doing?”
Ian asks.

“We’re supposed to come
up with ideas for some sort of experiment to do as our final project,” I tell
him.

“You were at that
competition a while ago—” he starts.

“You know what?” I ask
him. “You and I are going to be working together for a while, and we don’t know
each other, although I think it’s safe to say that we do both remember meeting
one another when you were staring at my breasts right before you went out and
skated in front of a few hundred people.”

“Yeah, that was a pretty
good day,” Ian says.

“Glad to hear it,” I tell
him, “but as we’re working together, you will either look me in the eyes, in
the direction that I’m pointing, or not at me at all, do you understand me?”

He laughs. “Sure thing,”
he says. “What’s your name?”

“Mia,” I tell him.
“You’re Ian.”

“Remember my name from
the big screen, huh?” he asks.

“You just said it to the
professor about forty-seven seconds ago,” I tell him.

“That was really
specific,” he says. “You kind of strike me as the uptight type, only the
uptight type doesn’t usually hang out at skating competitions. The only people
that really hang out at skating competitions are skaters, wannabe skaters, and
skate groupies. Are you a wannabe skater?” he asks.

“Could we possibly focus
a little bit here?” I ask. “I know we have some time before the project is
going to be due, but if we don’t plan this thing out, we’re going to find
ourselves with a week left and nowhere near enough time to do anything that we
might want to do, so could we just…?”

“Sure,” he says. “What
did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know,” I tell
him. “I think one of the first things we’re going to want to consider is going
to be the method of collecting data. As this is a psychology class, not a
chemistry class, we’re going to be working with people, so collecting data is
going to have to have some aspect of getting information from people about a
particular topic. Is there anything you can think of?”

“We could always try to
reboot what they did at Stanford,” he says. “You know, when they put all those
students into a warehouse or something, made half of them guards, the other
half prisoners, and watched as half the people started humiliating and abusing
the others: We could do that.”

“I know what you’re
talking about,” I tell him, “but first off, that’s not quite what happened.
Second, someone already did it. Why would we want to repeat an experiment when
we can try something new?”

“Don’t scientific
experiments have to be repeated before results can be considered valid?” he
asks, tapping the end of a pen against his full, bottom lip.

Really, I’m just
impressed that he has a vocabulary large enough to form the question.

“Yeah, but we’re not a
research lab,” I sigh. “We don’t have those kinds of resources. This is for a
class in which we are students. I don’t even know how we would put something
like that—”

“Yeah,” he says, leaning
forward, “I didn’t really mean that seriously. I was just hoping for a quick
chuckle at the schadenfreude of it all.”

“Where did you learn to
talk like that?” I ask.

“What do you mean?” he
returns.

“Schadenfreude,” I say.
“How do you even know what that means?”

“What?” he asks. “I
watched PBS when I was a kid, too. Don’t think just because I have all these
tattoos that I’m some kind of idiot—oh hey, Gooch,” he says to someone on the
other side of me. “Heard you got crabs from the old lady at that party last
week; bummer.”

I’m trying to find out
how this guy became so intelligent and now he’s talking past me to someone
about their rumored venereal disease. If it weren’t impossible, I’d honestly
think he was toying with my indecision about him.

This is one of those nice
moments when I get a free stare, though. He’s talking to someone behind me, but
we’re also in a conversation, so I get to just stay here and take in the
contradictions.

Still, after a couple of
weeks in class, I haven’t seen him without a beanie on his head, but a few
inches of medium brown hair poke out from under the bottom of the hat. The
tattoos stop well before his neck, and he seems to have remarkably clean teeth
for someone who comes off like such a lazy slob.

“…probably best to wrap
your guy up next time, don’t you think?” Ian asks and I shudder.

Being a skate aficionado,
I’ve grown used to the kind of crass talk that goes on in a skate park and,
although it’s not the way I choose to speak myself, I like to think I’ve even
become very tolerant of those who choose differently. Still, the uncomfortably
loud talk about VD in the middle of a college classroom is enough to make me
want to hide my face.

“So,” Ian says, turning
back toward me, and I could swear I see his eyes dilate before he reaches his
second word, “what kind of sampling method do you think would be best?”

“I’m open to ideas,” I
tell him. “Questionnaires can be useful because they can provide anonymity,
which you’d think would make people more likely to tell the truth, but that’s
not necessarily the case. Sometimes, immature people lie on questionnaires
because they think they’re funny or witty or—are you listening?”

Ian looks down at me, his
eyes having drifted to what I can only assume was the ceiling. “I’m sorry,” he
says, “what?”

“Where did I lose you?” I
ask, really trying to be patient.

“I think we should do
phone sampling,” Ian says. “It’s probably more likely to put people into
awkward situations while they’re supposed to be answering your questions, but
it would be hilarious to toy with them when you know you’ve got someone who’s
trying to be discreet.”

“You’re going to make me
do this whole thing, aren’t you?” I ask.

For the average slacker
guy, he has remarkable posture. I’m not sure that I appreciate the crossed arms
or the smirk on his face.

“I didn’t say that,” he answers.
“I just think we may as well have fun if we’re going to work. They say people
always perform better if they’re doing something they enjoy.”

“And that qualification
is met, for you, by making strangers uncomfortable over the phone?” I ask.

“It’s just a thought,” he
says. “Actually, as you say it, it does sound pretty dumb. What were you saying
about the questionnaires and how they’re racially biased?”

“What?” I ask.

“I’m just kidding,” he
says. “You still seem really tense. I’m just trying to get you to loosen up.”

He gives me a
self-satisfied grin, pointing a neon sign at the source of his smugness. He
thinks he’s doing me a favor, showing me that loosening up and having fun isn’t
the devil’s poison sent to wreak havoc on my soul, but the problem is that I’m
not an uptight person.

He’s putting this whole
avatar over me that fits his preferred experience and it doesn’t matter if it’s
anything to do with who I actually am or not.

That’s what pisses me
off.

“Listen,” I snap. “I’ll
figure out the sampling method, but let’s get together tonight and come up with
an idea, something we can really work on. When we’re done coming up with that
idea, we come up with another one and then another one until we’ve got
something that’s going to work and I’m not uptight and we’re not crank calling
people, either, and that does not, no matter what you might say, contradict
what I just said about being uptight. It’s not being uptight to give a crap.”