Heartbreaker Hanson (5 page)

CHAPTER 11

After
babysitting I came home to an empty house. Mom had gone with my dad on a
business trip. She started doing that as soon as Nick and I turned
sixteen—off she went with Dad on his never ending work trips. They were
like vacations—only it was Dad’s work. It was all fine, really, I guess—except
Nick had started a new band, and some of the guys in it were … questionable.

I
liked the guys in his old band way better. And really, I’d liked it when he and
Drew were best friends. But, sadly, I didn’t get to dictate my brother’s life.
I just wished my parents would do it more. Or at all. Though really I just
wanted Nick to stay away from his creepy drummer—Kenny.

Anyway,
I got home from babysitting kind of early. Barely after ten. Still, even so, I
was glad I didn’t go out with Ethan. Shrugs. Though what I
did
do was kind of pathetic for a Friday night … I guess. But I
didn’t mind. What did I do? I read a book. (Shocking, right?) Actually, I was
itching to finish it, and I was tired—and well, since Rachel died, I’ve
been kind of a hermit. So, I changed into my pajamas and got settled
comfortably in bed to finish the last couple chapters of my delicious book.

I
heard Nick and his friends come home around eleven, but then I heard them leave
again soon after. I didn’t go downstairs to talk to them. I was bawling as I
finished my book. It was a tragic love story, my third time to read it. Every
time I cried.

Good
book!

I
pulled myself out of bed and went downstairs to get something to eat still
sniffling mournfully about the book. As I was in the fridge shooting whipped
cream into my mouth straight from the can, I heard a noise.

Yikes!

Someone
was in the house!

A
chill running down my spine, I snapped around, my heart pounding wild. I
yelped, terrified to find a figure standing in the dark kitchen doorway.

“Ahh!”
I screamed, so startled I almost dropped the can of whipped cream.

Then
I groaned, “You scared me!”

“Sorry,”
Drew smiled with amusement. “I should have said something, I guess.”

“I
almost had a heart attack,” I grumbled as I put the whipped cream back in the
fridge and wiped my mouth off on the collar of my tee shirt, trying to get a
grip, and … breathe. Both from terror, and shock. I mean, DREW—in my
kitchen. What the—??

Drew
eyed me closely and his brow lowered. He seemed instantly concerned, obviously
noticing my leftover sniffling, and red nose.

His
amused smile immediately turned into a worried frown. “Have you been crying?”

“I
was reading a book,” I explained, cursing myself for getting ready for bed so
early on a Friday night. I was dressed kind of like a dork—what I always
wore to bed, an over-sized tee-shirt and a pair of comfy pajama shorts. But
they were
short
. (Drew’s eyes noticed.
They kept peeking down at my bare legs, though I could tell he was trying his
hardest to keep his gaze strictly on my face—but he wasn’t succeeding. In
fact, he was failing big time.) It made my face burn—well
that
, and the fact I’d been crying over
a book. “It was kind of sad,” I explained weakly.

I
quickly changed the subject. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m
spending the night,” he answered, smiling slightly.

Heat
sizzled through me and my heart completely spazzed out.

It
had been a long time since Drew had spent the night at our house. Drew and Nick
were still friends, sure, but not nearly as close as they used to be. They didn’t
hang around with the same circle of friends anymore. Drew hung around with his
football teammates whenever he wasn’t with Laurie, which wasn’t often on a
Friday night. Nick hung around the members of his band, and whatever girl he
happened to be interested in that week.

“It’s
been a long time since you spent the night,” I murmured.

“Yeah,
it has,” Drew agreed. He raised his eyebrows, “I think maybe I’ll start doing
it again more often,” he said around an adorable teasing grin.

I
could feel my face blush to the color of a beet, since he was obviously pleased
and referring to catching me in my absurdly short dorky pajamas. Groan.

“Where’s
Nick?” I abruptly asked, suddenly acutely aware we were completely alone, which
meant completely devoid that key-player. “I thought I heard him go out again.”

Slowly
Drew nodded, his eyes on mine. His gaze staying off my legs with great
effort—it seemed. “He went over to Ken’s for a while.”

“Kenny
Hacket’s?” I asked with an anxious groan.

That
guy was nothing but trouble and I hated that Nick had taken him up as a friend.
He was the new drummer for Nick’s band, and I guess he was good, at least that’s
what I had been hearing, but I really did
not
like the guy at all. He gave me the creeps. He had just recently come out of a
drug rehabilitation center. But Nick said Kenny was clean now and that he
deserved a chance to prove himself just like everyone else. I would have been
more eager to give Kenny a chance if he didn’t stare at me so much. I hated the
way he looked at me, and whenever he came over to the house that was all he
would do: look at me. He never said a word, at least not in my presence.

Nick
told me Kenny had a “thing” for me. When I heard that, a chill went through me
and I told Nick to keep Kenny and his thing far away from me. He obliged, no
problem, saying Kenny was a little weird.

Drew
watched me now as I cringed about Kenny.

He
nodded with a lowered brow, “Yeah, Nick is at Kenny Hacket’s. When’d he start
hanging around that guy?”

I
shrugged distractedly, as I had a different question swimming around in my
brain, since his eyes kept lingering on me, making it hard for me to
concentrate on the conversation. “Why didn’t you go with Nick?”

Face
it, it was weird that Drew was spending the night in the first place, since it
had been so long since he’d done that, but it was even weirder that he would
stick around while Nick went somewhere else, right?

Drew
gave me this look. “I was over there, but Nick came home to get some stuff, and
I decided to just wait here for him … that guy Kenny’s kind of weird.”

I
raised my eyebrows. “Yeah,” I agreed.

“You
should stay away from him Brooke,” Drew said, sounding concerned, which was
odd.

“I
plan to,” I murmured matter-of-factly, though this conversation seemed, well,
odd.

“Good,”
Drew nodded, like trying to emphasize that he was serious.

“Well,”
I faked a yawn. “I’m going to bed.”

It’s
not that I wouldn’t have loved to stay up all night talking to Drew, because I
would have—thoroughly. Obviously. But it felt weird having him be so
attentive to me, and he was being wayyy attentive.

 
It wasn’t like it used to be last year,
when we were relaxed and friendly. He looked at me so differently now, as if he
were interested in way more than just my friendship, which in a way was gratifying
and pleasing to me beyond belief, but it also made me feel all kinds of
uncomfortable. I really had no idea how to act. This was Drew, the boy I knew
all my life. The boy I couldn’t get to notice me if I had jumped off a ten
story building and splattered at his feet. The boy I had worshipped since the
third grade. The boy that had loved my friend Laurie with all his heart … until
recently.

It
all baffled me to no end and left me feeling awkward and uncertain how to
behave with him … so I faked the yawn. But my easy escape plan was foiled
because (to my shock and utter bliss) he grabbed my arm!

“Come
on, keep me company until your brother comes back.”

The
way his eyes peered into mine so exquisitely had my heart thumping wild.

“Drew,
I really am tired,” I lied again, and added another yawn to emphasize. I reminded
him: “I had to be to school at seven this morning to set up for the awards
banquet.”

“Oh
yeah, I saw you there with Ethan Philips.” His brow scrunched up. “Are you two
becoming a couple?”

As
he asked that he dropped my arm. Probably not out of displeasure at the thought
of Ethan and me getting together or anything romantic like that, but probably
more because he had forgotten that he was even holding it. My arm felt funny
(kind of cold and lonely) from having been gently held so long and then let go
like that—so abruptly, like he was just remembering that he had a
girlfriend and shouldn’t be holding another girl’s arm, especially when his
warm hand felt so nice and … perfect.

I
swallowed. “I don’t know,” I answered about Ethan hesitantly, but honestly. “I
used to like him, last year, but he didn’t even notice I was alive. Now he
treats me really different—special—but I feel kind of weird around
him.”

—
just like I feel around you
, I could
have added but didn’t.

Drew
peeked at me guardedly, like he knew what I was thinking.

He
cleared his throat and quickly changed the subject, “You want to play cards?”

Okay,
he didn’t have to twist my arm. This was Drew! It was exciting to me to have him
all to myself on a Friday night.

However,
during our game he quickly brought Ethan up again.

“So,
you used to like Ethan, but now that he likes you, you feel weird?”

“Ummm,
yes,” I answered.

He
made it sound perhaps abnormal, and I don’t know, maybe it
was
abnormal to feel that way, but it was the way I felt. So I
said, “Yeah. That’s basically it.”

“Why
do you feel weird?” he pressed sounding puzzled.

“I
don’t know. I guess because he acts kind of weird now.” I tried to answer him
as best as I could, but I already knew what his response would be to that, and
I was right.

“Describe
what you mean by weird.”

“I
don’t know.” I laughed nervously. “Can we change the subject?”

“Come
on Brooke, try to explain,” Drew coaxed. “I really want to understand.”

My
heart thumped.

I
really, truly liked talking with him, and I was frantically pleased and
flattered that he was so interested in my life. But come on, this was an uncomfortable
thing to talk about—well, anyway for
me
to talk about. I didn’t exactly even understand how I was feeling myself, so
that made it impossibly difficult to try to explain it to Drew. I mean, come
on,
Drew
, who I basically worshiped
as a God. And especially it was hard to talk about it right
now
, since he kept staring at me like
that—all lingering and longing.

But,
because it was Drew, I took a deep breath and tried to explain. “He’s changed,
and it’s weird. I know I use that word too much, but it describes how he’s
acting. He doesn’t act normal, like he used to. He acts like he’s trying to
impress me or something. It just makes me feel kind of weird. I mean when he
doesn’t act natural then its really hard for
me
to act natural, and I start feeling really uncomfortable, and
don’t want to be around him because I feel awkward around him. But it’s more
than that, really. The thing is, I like him fine. I mean he is a really nice
guy—but last year I liked him, and I went out of my way to be friendly to
him and he just couldn’t be bothered with me. Now this year he treats me as if
I am the most special person on the planet. It makes me feel really weird
because I haven’t changed. I’m still just the same person I was last year. But
all the sudden I’m just so fascinating to him.” I drew out a breath, scoffing
at my blundering. “Do you understand now?”

“Yeah,
I think I do,” he said, gazing at me thoughtfully. “It’s like when I started
playing football for the school. All the sudden people that never even talked
to me before started inviting me to their parties, and wanting to hang out with
me, and I had somehow become so incredibly cool, but it was weird because I
hadn’t changed at all. I was just the same guy I was the year before, except
that I was on the football team.”

I
gazed intently at my cards. He
did
understand how I felt. I may not have expressed it very well, but it didn’t
matter, because he got it. Completely. He understood.

I
swallowed, then dared to choke out, “Why are you here instead of at Laurie’s?”

I
blurted it out, totally changing the subject, but I had been curious about it
ever since I realized he was here, and right now I just really needed to change
the subject. So … I dared asked. Finally.

He
flashed me a curious look. “She went to her cousin’s for the weekend.”

He
answered it as though I should have known. It was possible that she’d mentioned
it to me, but if she did, I didn’t remember it at all. Not that I listened that
close to Laurie most of the time. (Sad, but true.) I mean, she talks a
lot
and I’m not really that interested
in most of the stuff she talks about since I’m kind of not up on the popular
people at our school, or fashion, or … Laurie stuff.