How to Get Ainsley Bishop to Fall in Love With You (14 page)

“Get out of here, you little creeper!” I pushed him out the door and slammed it behind him, locking it securely.

“I’ll get to the bottom of this!” he shouted through the door. “Indubitably!”

I leaned back against the door, my head thudding against it lightly. My newly crunchy hair made a crackling sound, and I sighed.

Sometimes I wondered how this could be my life.

8.
Be Complimentary, but not Obsequious

Let her know she’s special, but don’t overdo it. You don’t want to be that creepy guy who won’t stop falling all over the girl, telling her how pretty she is. And don’t forget to let her know you admire her inner beauty as well.

Things I Know About Ainsley

1. She’s beautiful

2. She’s smart

3. She’s funny

4. She’s an only child

5. She writes and acts in plays

6. She has a
really
nice smile

7. She likes boy band music (no accounting for taste)

8. Her hands are always cold

9. She loves mochas, but always spills them

10. She can cut hair

11. She’s devoted to her family

12. She wants to go to college

13. She wants to be a graphic designer

14. She wants to travel the world (Seven Wonders)

I smiled at the list, feeling pretty pleased with my latest additions. It was Saturday afternoon and, after putting in a couple of hours at the Center, I was at the Madison Falls Mall in hopes of finding a better gift than the calculator and the pair of green mittens I had stashed in a drawer in my bedroom. I wasn’t sure if I could bring myself to buy a boy band CD, but I thought I might have enough information to at least come up with something suitable. And thoughtful. Thoughtful was important.

I shoved my List Notebook back into my backpack and got up to wander through the mall. Viney was supposed to join me—more for moral support than anything else—but he was running late, as usual. It was hard to be on time when you biked everywhere you went.

He showed up about a half hour later as I was flipping through the CDs at Target and burst out laughing when he found me frowning at the disc of one floppy-haired, pretty-boy band in one hand, an almost identical group in the other. If they didn’t have different names, I wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart.

“Shut up,” I muttered. “She likes this stuff, but I have no clue which one she’d want. Maybe I should get both.”

Viney’s eyes widened in horror. “No way. Their fans hate each other. It’s one or the other, man. Never the twain shall meet.”

Now it was my turn to laugh. “I don’t even want to know how you know that.”

Viney shrugged. “I have sisters.” He started to look through some of the CDs then turned to me with a frown. “What happened to your hair?”

I shrugged. “Got it cut.”

“You look like you belong on one of those,” he said, waving at the disc in my hand. “Ah,” he said slowly, an obnoxious grin on his face. “Part of the Ainsley plan, huh?”

“No.”

“Yeah, right.”

I sighed in annoyance, reaching up to flatten my hair a little. “Actually, Ainsley did it.”

“Did what?”

“She cut it.”

His eyes grew comically wide. “Ainsley cut your hair? You mean she, like, had her hands in your hair?”

I almost shouted victoriously at the idea that somebody finally understood the magnitude of that, at least to me. I played it cool, though. “No biggie. Just, you know, paying me back for helping her study.”

I could tell Viney wasn’t buying it, but he let it go and turned back to flip through the CDs.

“What you need to do is get one of those new reality show boy bands out of the UK,” he said after a while. “A group that hasn’t really hit big in the states yet. Better chance she might not already have it.”

I blinked at him. “That’s . . . a really good idea, actually.”

“I’ll ask Angela. She’s into all that stuff.” Angela was Viney’s younger sister. Well, one of them.

“Thanks, man.”

“Don’t mention it.” He shot me a significant look. “Seriously. Don’t mention it. To anyone.
Capisce
?”

I laughed. “You’ve got my word on it.”

With the CD on the back burner, I picked up a spill-proof coffee mug from a shop that painted Ainsley’s name on it for an extra two dollars, and then we made our way to the Book Stop. I figured a bookstore was always a good bet, especially since Ainsley was so smart. Smart girls always liked to read.

Okay, maybe it was a cliché, but clichés became clichés for a reason, right?

“You can’t be serious,” Viney said as I looked through a copy of
SAT for Dummies
.

“What? She wants to take the SATs.” I might have sounded a little defensive.

“You really think calling her a dummy is the right message?” Viney asked, grabbing the book out of my hands and putting it back on the shelf.

Okay, maybe he had a point.

“Well, how about one of these others?” I started to pull out a different SAT book, but Viney slammed it back into place.

“Dude. You don’t want to give the girl of your dreams an SAT prep book. Seriously.”

I hitched my backpack up higher on my shoulder, huffing in irritation. “So what do you recommend, then?”

Viney led me across the aisle to the fiction section, eyeing the shelves with interest. “This,” he said, handing me a paperback with a man in a kilt on the cover.

A kilt and little else.

“
The Highlander’s Passion
? Really?”

“Sure,” he said, leaning back against the shelves. “Girls love that kind of stuff.”

I flipped through a few pages and read aloud. “ ‘The door flew open, bouncing against the frame as Calum loomed in the opening, his carved chest glistening with sweat. Angelique’s heart skipped a beat, a hand flying to her bosom in reflex. Calum’s eyes followed the movement, his full lips lifting in a teasing smirk. “Is that fer me, lass?” he asked, his brogue thick and deep. “Fer I’ve come t’ claim it.” He reached for his belt and unbuckled it slowly, his plaid slipping to the floor— ’ ” I slammed the book shut and shoved it back on the shelf.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” I muttered.

“Maybe you’re right.”

In the end, I opted for a coffee table book with some pretty amazing pictures of the Seven Wonders of the World—a good number of them, anyway—and spent an inordinate amount of time in the art section looking at graphic design books before deciding against them. None of them seemed quite right, and I thought I might have had a better idea anyway.

“I don’t get it,” Viney said as we grabbed a Coke in the food court. “You’ve got a bunch of presents already. Why are you still looking?”

I shrugged. “None of them is right. None of them is
perfect.
But I don’t want to have
nothing
. So I’m gathering possibilities. When I decide which one is right, I’ll return the rest.”

Viney slurped his pop. “Dude. You’re putting way too much thought into this.”

“Isn’t that the point? It’s the thought that counts and all?”

“I guess. My dad pretty much sticks to jewelry,” he said. “Seems to work well for him.”

I glanced at him sideways. “I think that would make Ainsley more uncomfortable than the kilt book.”

Viney shrugged and crunched on his ice.

“Hey, Dad. Got a minute?”

He looked up from the desk in his office, his glasses a little askew. He was pretty absorbed in what he was working on, because it took a minute for him to say, “Oliver! Sure, yeah. Come on in. What can I do for you?”

I took a seat across from him, gnawing on my lip. “I kind of need a favor.”

“Favor?” He sat back and pulled off his glasses to clean them with the hem of his shirt. “What kind of favor?”

I leaned forward on the desk. “You know how you got me that copy of Visual Basic from work?”

“Yeah.”

“And you said you could maybe get me other software with your discount if I needed it?”

“Yeah.” My dad put his glasses back on and focused intently on me.

“Well, I need it.” I squirmed a little under his scrutiny. “Please.”

“What kind of software?”

“Umm . . . graphic design. I’m thinking maybe Photoshop? Or something like it.”

 
“Since when are you interested in graphic design? 
Oh
.” He sat back, lacing his fingers over his stomach. “This is about the girl, isn’t it? The birthday present?”

“Umm, maybe?”

“And you want to give her Photoshop for her birthday?”

I cleared my throat and forced myself to meet his eyes. “Or something like that. She, uh, thinks she might want to be a graphic designer, maybe. Possibly. So I thought . . .” When I said it out loud, it sounded kind of stupid.

My dad pursed his lips, narrowing his eyes at me. “Pretty expensive gift.”

“That’s why I’m asking,” I said, the words falling out in a rush. “I figure if you can get it for me at a discount, it won’t be too much, you know? Or maybe a starter version or something that’s a little outdated? That way she can try it out to see if she really likes it, but so it’s not, I don’t know, too overwhelming?” I swallowed, glancing at him nervously. “Is it too overwhelming? Crap. She’s going to think I’m a creepy stalker guy, isn’t she? I might as well give her a diamond ring.”

Dad coughed. “Well, I don’t think it’s
that
bad—”

“She’s going to get a restraining order.”

“Oliver—”

“I’ll be voted Most Likely to End Up On
America’s Most Wanted
.”

“Son, I think you’re overthinking this,” he said with a laugh. “Nobody’s going to get a restraining order. I’m sure this girl . . .” He paused with a pointed look.

“Ainsley.”

“Ainsley. The girl with the math homework?” When I shrugged, he nodded. “I’m sure Ainsley will appreciate the thought that went into the gift. I’ll talk to our supplier to see if I can get an older version that they’ve upgraded, and it shouldn’t cost too much.”

“You sure?” I still wasn’t convinced about the restraining order. “It won’t creep her out?”

My dad leaned forward onto his desk and looked me straight in the eye. “Did I ever tell you about the first Christmas gift I gave your mother?”

“No. I don’t think so.” I sat up a little straighter. Now this was information I needed.

“We’d only been dating about a month,” he said, his lips curving into a smile. “I was crazy about her, but I had no idea what she’d like for Christmas. I wanted to give her something nice, but not
too
nice. I didn’t want to, as you so aptly put it, ‘creep her out.’ ”

“So what did you do?”

“Panicked for a while,” he replied, with a laugh. “Then I went a little nuts stockpiling presents. I bought anything I thought she might like, but I kept thinking I’d find something better. I was ridiculous.”

I coughed, my face heating. My dad didn’t seem to notice.

“So it was about a week before Christmas, and I was meeting your mom at a coffee shop to study. I walked in, and she was sketching in this little notebook. She did that a lot—doodling and drawing on scraps of paper or the back of worksheets, whatever was around. She still does that, actually . . .” He looked off into the middle distance, lost in thought for a moment before he shook his head as if to clear it.

“Anyway, I went to the art store in town and picked up a decent sketch book and a set of drawing pencils and took everything else back. When she opened it, she burst into tears, and I thought I’d really screwed up.”

My stomach churned. If I made Ainsley cry, I didn’t know what I’d do. Would Photoshop make Ainsley cry? Wow, I was bad at this. “So she hated it?”

My dad grinned. “No, she loved it. Once she could get words out, she told me she’d always loved to draw but she didn’t understand how I knew. I told her I’d noticed . . . that I noticed
everything
about her, and she burst into tears again.”