Geek Girl (9 page)

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“Wanna go swimming?” Trevor asks about three weeks later, and I figure this is a good opportunity for me to really swing him my way. My body is one of my strong points.

He picks me up and lets me drive his cool car, which I’m revved about. I do like cars. I’m not wearing makeup because water on the kind of makeup I wear makes for some ridiculously large black streaks down the face. I have on a T-shirt and skirt over my swimsuit because I plan to make the most of the unveiling.

Trevor carries our stuff and finds us a spot on the grass in the sun.

“This okay?” he asks.

“Great.”

Once he has the blanket spread out and sits down, I stand casually in front of him and slowly peel my T-shirt off. He is leaning back on his hands, sunglasses on, but he is very still. I have his full attention now, though he pretends otherwise. It’s not good manners to stare, after all. I deliberately untie the wrap-around skirt and let it drop to the ground. He still hasn’t moved. I bite back my smile.

“You gonna sit there all day or are we gonna swim?” I ask, hands on hips.

“Uh, sw . . . swim. I . . . I think swim.”

I smile and hold out my hand. He looks at it for a minute, then places his hand in mine, and I pull him up. He throws his sunglasses back on the blanket, and I’m pleased to see his eyes are a little unfocused. Trevor takes his own T-shirt off; now it’s my turn to be stunned.

Trevor actually has muscle, tight pecs and abs, and nicely rounded biceps—a pretty nice physique. Not at all the skinny, pale, shapeless wonder I expected him to be.

His bright yellow trunks are just what I would have expected. All they need is a Spiderman print to be complete.

We walk to the pool, and I slice in neatly with a dive. I come up and look back at Trevor, who then cannonballs next to me, dousing me.

“Nice,” I tell him when he comes up for air.

“One of those talents I was telling you about,” he says. “Race you to the other side.”

He lets me win. He is a strong, clean swimmer. I tell him I’m on to him.

“Swimming lessons from age three to thirteen,” he confesses.

“Self-taught.” I’m smug. He looks impressed.

After swimming for a while and having a water fight that he easily wins, we climb out and walk back to our blanket. I’m unused to the lack of attention I’m getting from the other swimmers. Though my swimsuit is covered with black skulls, without my outrageous clothes and makeup, I don’t particularly stand out. The anonymity is somewhat nice because I can relax and not worry about keeping the act up.

Trevor walks over to the snack bar and buys us water bottles and Popsicles, the official foods for swimming geeks everywhere. When he comes back, he pulls the sunscreen from his pack and offers it to me.

I start rubbing it on my arms and legs, but when I get to my belly I happen to glance over and see that Trevor has put his sunglasses back on, frozen in the act of watching me, not even noticing his Popsicle melting in streaks down his arm. So I slow it down, make a show of it.

“Can you rub some on my back?” I ask. He doesn’t answer, just throws his Popsicle onto the grass.

“Be right back,” he says, then jumps up and runs into the locker room. He’s back out almost immediately, and his arm is dripping, but with water now instead of Popsicle juice, though his arm is still streaked with red stains. He hurries over and sits behind me. He squeezes the lotion onto his hands, rubbing them together to warm the lotion up before putting it on me, taking longer than necessary to rub it around. He is most definitely affected by touching me.

So am I.

“There you go.” His voice is unsteady.

“Okay. Here, I’ll do you.”

“Wha—?” his voice catches.

I lift up the lotion.

“Oh. Yeah. Okay.” He turns around, and I squeeze the cold lotion directly onto his back. He jumps a little and breaks out in goose flesh. I rub it in, surprised again at the hard muscle beneath his warm flesh.

“You work out, Trev?”

“No. Isn’t that apparent?”

“No, not really. I thought you’d be skinnier than you are.”

He laughs. “I’m confused. Is that a compliment or an insult?”

“Yes,” I say, and he’s grinning as he turns back to face me.

“It’s natural,” he says in his Schwarzenegger voice, flexing his arms and chest, bigger muscles than I expected popping up.

“Nice,” I say with a laugh, but my eyes tell him I’m serious. He drops his pose.

“I played basketball and soccer for a long time,” he says with a shrug.

“Why don’t you anymore?” I ask, trying to picture Trevor as a jock.

“My classes at school. I have a lot of homework. And since I’m pretty sure I’m not going to get into college on a sports scholarship . . . or on my looks,” he adds facetiously. “I need to depend on my grades.”

“Don’t knock your looks, Arnold. The killer combination of your eyes and dimples could probably get you into a place or two.”

“Two compliments in one day? That
has
to be a record.”

“It’s in my nature to be kind to the poor and downtrodden.” I sigh dramatically.

“I’m neither, so you’re going to need a new story,” he says.

“I don’t have one. That’s the best I can come up with. So tell me, college boy, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“A writer.”

My eyebrows lift at this. “Of what? Comic books? Bad sci-fi movies?”

“Novels.”

“I could tell you stories that would curl your toes,” I mumble, but he hears me clearly.

“Tell me.”

“No, I don’t think so. I like you having this clean view of me.”

“Clean?”

“Yeah. You don’t know my dirt.”

“You won’t tell me?”

“Someday I might,” I say, thinking of the day when he becomes like me and sees me in my real life. He’ll know most of my dirt then, but not all. Some things I’ll never tell him. I lie down on the blanket next to where he sits.

“Can I ask you something?” he says.

“I’m not telling you my dirt, Trev, dimples or no.”

He leans back on his elbow, turning to face me.

“Not that. You’ll tell me when you want. It’s something else.”

“Sounds serious,” I tease.

“Kind of.” He slips his hand under mine, lightly rubbing my knuckles. “You keep putting out all of these conflicting vibes.”

I look up at him, then lean up on my own elbow so that we are eye to eye.

“What do you mean?”

“We’re friends, right?” he questions. I nod. “And that’s nice. Unexpected, but nice. But we spend a lot of time together.
A lot
of time. I’m with you more than I am with all of my other friends combined. And I’m guessing it’s the same for you.”

“I like hanging out with you, Trev,” I say hesitantly, not sure where he’s going with this. “But I don’t mean to hog all your time. You don’t have to be with me so much if you’d rather be with your friends.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I’d
rather
be with you. I like hanging out with you also. I like it a lot. I like you a lot.” He drops his eyes, watching our hands that are still held together.

“Ditto,” I say, confused. He looks frustrated. I’m not sure what he wants.

“But then you do things that put out the vibe like you want to be more than friends.” He’s looking directly at me now, refusing to let me hide from him.

“Like what?” I ask flippantly. I’m trying to turn this conversation, put him ill at ease. It doesn’t work.

“Like today. Your little undressing act for me.”

I open my mouth to deny it, but in the end I don’t. I can’t when he’s looking into my eyes like that, demanding honesty. I look down, chagrined.

“You noticed that, huh?”

“How could I not?” He laughs roughly. “And telling me you’re jealous of Mary Ellen, touching me all of the time when you know what it does to me.”

I want to be flippant and demand he tell me just what it does to him, but I’m afraid that he
will
tell me. After all, Trevor is nothing if not honest.

“What are you saying, Trevor?” I finally ask.

“I want to be with you.”

“You are.”

“You know what I mean. I want to know how you feel about me. Honestly.”

I look at our hands folded together on the blanket. And just for now, I want to drop the game. For just a little while I want to be what he wants of me. Just for a little while.

“We’re holding hands,” I say, looking back into his gorgeous green eyes.

“Yeah, so?”

“I don’t hold hands with my friends, Trev.”

His eyes change, darkening a little at that. He kisses me then, leaning toward me as we lie on the blanket holding hands. A sweet kiss, asking nothing. It isn’t anything like the demanding full-of-expectation kisses I’m used to. I can’t help but smile at him when he pulls away. His answering smile is dazzling, taking my breath away.

“I need to tell you something, though . . .” I say. “Don’t be offended, but, uh . . .”

He’s patient, waiting for me to find the words. His thumb rubbing the back of my hand is such a pleasant sensation I almost don’t want to say the words. But say them, I must.

“I really like you also, Trev. Completely unexpected, but there it is. I’m not quite ready to, you know, go
public
. Not with your friends and definitely not with mine, you know?”

I wait for the anger, but he goes against the usual grain again and smiles at me.

“Got a rep to protect, huh?”

“A
rep
?” I ask. “What, one night in leather and suddenly you’re all hip and cool? You don’t really use words like that, do you?”

“Of course not. It wouldn’t fit in with my geekiness.”

“Trev, that’s not what I meant . . .”

“It’s okay. I know what I am, and I’m okay with it. Maybe someday you will be too.” He squeezes my hand. “I’m okay with not going public. I don’t think my friends would be any more thrilled than yours. So until we see where this is going . . .”

“Kiss me again,” I say softly.

“Isn’t this public, though?”

“We don’t know anyone here, not that I saw.”

He obliges, ever courteous.

The freak and the geek.

What did I get myself into?

I’m going on a camping trip with my family.”

We’re lying side-by-side on the trampoline behind Trevor’s house, holding hands between our safely distanced bodies. His mom is still not thrilled about me hanging out with Trevor, especially now that she’s seen him holding my hand and putting his arm around me. That definitely makes her skittish. But after our bowling excursion, Trevor’s parents and mine have become quite social, and so she’s marginally accepting. His dad
is
accepting and always seems slightly amused by us. Todd, of course, is always happy to see me, and I find that the more time I spend with him, the less uncomfortable I am. He’s kind of growing on me.

“What? When?” I ask.

“In a couple of weeks.”

“For, like, the weekend?”

“No, we’re going for a week.”

“A
week
?” I sit up, and he follows. “But . . .” I trail off and look around his yard as if it might suddenly spring up with little signs answering my questions. “What am I supposed to do without you for a whole week?”

I feel a little panicky at the thought and tell myself it’s only because I’m going to have a hard time continuing my campaign with him gone.

“I don’t know. How did you survive before me?” I give him a dirty look and shove him in the chest. He dramatically rolls away from me, doing an entire backward flip over. I try not to laugh, but he’s such a geek I can’t help it.

“Ow,” he moans. “Don’t do that. You don’t know your own
strength
.”

“You’re such a dork,” I tell him, rolling my eyes.

“Yeah, that’s why you love me.”

“In your dreams, my little Goldum.”

Now it’s his turn to laugh.

“You mean
Gollum
.”

“Whatever.”

He’s been trying to convert me into a sci-fi geek, but it seems I’m a hopeless case. His mother, Mrs. Brady/Cleaver comes walking out to the tramp, carrying two lemonades. I almost groan at the all-American-ness of it. She makes her presence very well known whenever I am over, always bringing us treats or suddenly having chores to do wherever we are.
You would suppose the woman didn’t trust me,
I think wryly.

“How are your parents, Jennifer?” She always calls me by my full name even though Trevor has told her repeatedly I prefer Jen.

I almost think she does it to annoy me—and it does—which might explain my automatic flippant response that I have honed over the years for the amusement of my friends.

“Dead and in prison, thanks for asking.”

Only as she freezes in the act of handing the lemonade over do I realize what I’ve said. I glance at Trevor and see a pained look on his face.

“Oh, sorry, you meant the
fosters
. I mean, the Grants.” I laugh nervously. “I just realized I live with the Foster Grants,” I babble uneasily. “You know, like the sunglasses?”

She’s still staring at me, stricken, and Trevor’s expression isn’t far off. I decide it’s a good time for retreat.

“I gotta go, Trev. Thanks for the drink, Mrs. Br—Hoffman.”

I scramble off the tramp, shoving my feet into my flip-flops, and make a quick exit through the gate.