Shifting Gears: The Complete Series (Sports Bad Boy Romance) (31 page)

I smiled back. How could I not? “I’m good,
thanks. I have a really…sensitive stomach. That’s what the diet’s about.”

“Me too,” she said. “Believe me, I
understand.”

“If anyone else said that, I would think
they were just being nice. But somehow I believe that you really do
understand.”

“You don’t think I’m being nice?” she
said.

“No, I mean…That’s not what I meant, I
said it wrong.” She laughed then. She was just yanking my chain. I loved the
sound of her laugh.

“I think you’re nice,” I said.

“I’m a wonderful person,” she said with a
grin.

CHAPTER
SEVEN

MOLLY

“So, is this a real date?” Megan asks me
that every time I see Brock. We have been hanging out a lot for the past month
or so, but each time she asks me that I say, “No, Meggs. We’re still just
hanging out.” She grins at me, like she knows something that I don’t know.
Maybe she does. There are a lot of things I don’t know. I mean, I did tell her
that I didn’t even want to meet this guy in the first place. Now I look forward
to his phone calls and even to the times I go over to his apartment and help
him with his homework. Sometimes he even helps me with mine. He’s very
“right-brained” and I’m not. I work from the left side of my brain almost
always. If it doesn’t have a logical equation, I’d prefer to not have anything
to do with it. So, when I have to draw an abstract sketch in art class, Brock
is my man. Well, not my man, more like the man. Anyways, he’s awesome with
creative stuff and I’m better at the logical things like math and science.
Maybe together we make one brain?

Are we dating though? It’s still a no.
That one brain thing isn’t like two hearts make a whole. I’m sure every two
people who work well together are like that. But it’s not dating. We don’t hold
hands, although the one night we danced at the club and he held my hands and
pulled me in close, I have to admit I had a hard time catching my breath. He
looked down at me; like he was afraid I was going to pull away. I did think
about it, but I didn’t want to. It felt…comfortable, so I stayed there until
the song was over and we went back to our table. We held hands for the dance,
but we don’t walk around holding hands.

Another thing that proves we’re just hanging
out and not dating is that we have never kissed. Megan and Jake are dating, and
they do an awful lot of kissing. So much it kind of makes me sick sometimes. I
mean, there is such a thing as too much PDA, am I right?

Have I thought about kissing him? Oh,
yeah, I’ve thought about it. That night when we were dancing, sometimes when he
leans in close while we’re working on our homework, or in the middle of Benny
and Joon last weekend when he quoted Joon, “Having a Boo Radley moment are we?”
I mean really, what nineteen-year-old guy knows Benny and Joon that well? It’s
one of my favorite movies; Grandma and I used to watch it together all the
time. That one and
Untamed Heart
. I
think I would have to kiss him if he quoted Marissa Tomei, “He doesn’t make sense.
I don’t make sense. Together we make sense.” Yeah, I’d probably kiss him full
on the lips for that one… Maybe I’ll rent it next week…Anyways, I’m pretty sure
that the fact we’ve never kissed still means we’re not dating.

“He’s taking you on a haunted train ride
for Halloween. That’s pretty romantic for a couple that’s not dating,” Megan
was still going on. I sometimes wonder if Megan wishes she was dating Brock.

“It just sounds like fun,” I said. It’s
Halloween. What are we going to do, trick or treat? Go to some lame sorority or
fraternity costume party? I found out, since we’ve been hanging out so much
together, that Brock doesn’t drink either. The fact that he stays on a really
strict diet and doesn’t drink alcohol helps me out a lot. That’s what happened
with my first and last college boyfriend. They were the same guy. He kept
taking me to parties and I finally told him I didn’t want to go to anymore
parties where the main focus was the keg in the middle of the room. He told me
that maybe if I had a beer every once in a while, I wouldn’t be so uptight. I
admit I played the cancer card that night. I was pissed and I wanted him to
feel bad. He felt bad alright, all the way out the door.

“It will be fun, and it’ll be cold so you
can snuggle up against one of his muscled-up tattooed arms.”

“It will be what?”

 
Poor Megan. I wasn’t listening to her.

“Fun and cold! I said use it, snuggle
time!”

I couldn’t help it, I had to ask. “You
wouldn’t like to date him, would you, Meggs?” She threw me a look and her
pillow. I think the pillow was supposed to hit me in the side of my head, but I
caught it. I knew Megan too well. I was expecting it.

If I was going to date someone, it would
definitely be someone like Brock. He was funny, and obviously good-looking. He
was smart, although I don’t think he realizes it most of the time. He’s always
making comments when we do homework about how smart I am. He can do his math
when he applies himself, he just doesn’t usually want to.

I will say this though, the boy can sing.
I went to the club with Megan and Jake last weekend to hear him and his new
band play. He can belt out a song let me tell you. His voice kind of sounds
like a cross between Justin Timberlake and Bob Dylan. I know it sounds weird
but you’d have to hear him for yourself to understand. He’s incredible. And
then there’s the guitar playing. I watch his fingers sometimes when he plays,
and it amazes me how it just looks like they’re moving up and down on the
strings. When I try to do it, it sounds something like, “Dum, dum, dumb, and
dumb.” When he does it…well, let’s just say I think even the angels who play
those pretty harps might be jealous.

I know that sappy stuff sounds like I’m
talking about a guy that I’m dating. It’s exactly why I don’t say any of it out
loud. People, and by people I mean Megan and Jake, would take it the wrong way.
Thinking it in my head just means that I think he’s a really cool guy. Saying
it out loud would make me sound like I was in love. Which I am not. Absolutely,
positively, not.
 

“You spend more time at their apartment
than I do. Jake says he sees you more than he does me.”

“I’m tutoring him in math,” I said. It was
true. I have always been good at math, and he was struggling. We’re friends and
that’s what friends do for each other. If Megan or Jake needed to be tutored, I
would tutor them as well. It’s not like we’re in one of those silly teenage
movies where we gaze at each other across the table over the math book and
realize we’re made for each other. We do his math, we cook and we talk.
Sometimes we play video games or watch movies. We do lots of things that people
who are just hanging out do. He’s easy to talk to. Sometimes I find myself
almost saying too much. Last week we started talking about our childhoods and I
told him about my grandmother and how grateful I was for everything she’s done
for me. I was so comfortable talking to him that I almost said the “C” word.
Whew!

“Are you guys taking the bike?” Megan
asked.

“Yes, we’ll be taking Suzie.” Suzie, now
that’s the real love of Brock’s life.

Megan laughed, “Do you call it that in
front of him with a straight face?”

“Yes,” I said, “And don’t call her an
“it”. He hates that.”

“Ohh,” she said, “We wouldn’t want to say
anything that upsets Molly’s boyfriend.”

“Megan.”

“Yes?”

“Shut up,” I told her as I pulled my warm
sweater over my long-sleeved shirt. As we have already established the night of
the football game last month, I hate to be cold. At least when we ride Suzie,
Brock’s body blocks most of the wind. He tells me to put my hands around his
waist and hide my face down behind him. Some people, and again I mean Megan and
Jake, might think that we looked like we were dating, but it’s just about
staying warm. And since I’m not saying this out loud, he always smells really good.

“Are you and Jake going tonight?” I asked
Megan, hoping to distract her from worrying about me and my “not a date”
tonight.

“Yeah, but he has a study group until
nine, so don’t worry, we won’t interrupt your date.”

“Megan, you are incorrigible!”

“Is that a fancy word for pretty?” She
said it with a smile. I just shook my head at her. Sometimes no words will do.

I was saved by a text message from Brock.
I grabbed my jacket and told Megan, “See you later!”

As I was going out the door she said, “He
really should come to the door and pick you up.”

I told her, “He would, if it was a date.”
I think I heard her pillow hit the door as I closed it behind me.

Brock was sitting on the circular brick
walk in front of the dorm on Suzie. Suzie looked great, and so did he. He
grinned and said, “Hey, you look nice.” I think I blushed, or at least my face
felt hot.

“Thanks, so do you,” I said. He handed me
my helmet. I called it my helmet because lately I’d been using it a lot. But if
the truth was told, I was pretty sure it wasn’t my helmet. I mean I would be
willing to bet it was the one he had bought for all of the girls that he’s
taken out to wear. For tonight it was mine, so I slipped it on and climbed onto
the back of Suzie. He started her up and told me to hold on. I put my hands
around his waist as we took off and rested my face down low behind his back.
Suzie had really grown on me.

The haunted train ride was at a tree farm
about forty miles from the school. I had never been there but I had looked it
up online. It said that besides selling Christmas trees and fresh fruits and
corn grown on the farm, they used it for Halloween with a haunted train and a
haunted hay ride through a corn field. The whole place was decorated with scary
things and there were people who jumped out at you as you wondered through.
They had pumpkin patches and pumpkins for sale, face painting booths and food
booths. At Christmas time, it said they have a pajama train ride with a live
band and Santa Claus and Christmas trees. It sounded like a lot of fun, and I
was looking forward to tonight a lot.

It was a pretty ride out there too, with a
lot of curvy roads and pretty scenery. I liked that Brock wasn’t one of those
guys that thought he had to drive fast or like a complete idiot to be cool. He
took it slow and easy around the steep curves, and I wasn’t even scared.

The sun had just gone down when we got
there. We parked in the lot and it was a little hike down a dirt hill to where
the festivities were. I slipped a little bit as we were going down the hill and
Brock grabbed my hand to help me down the rest of the way. When we hit level
ground, he was still holding onto it, and I wasn’t pulling it away. Hmm…now
we’re holding hands. Megan would analyze this to death. I decided to be cool;
it comes naturally to me…really.

We walked down past one of the pumpkin
patches and I saw two of the biggest pumpkins I had ever seen in my life.

“How’d you like to make a jack ‘o lantern
out of that guy?” Brock said, pulling me over towards the bigger of the two.

“That would be so much fun!” I loved
making jack o’ lanterns on Halloween.

“I don’t think we could carry him on
Suzie,” Brock was saying. “If Megan and Jake get here before we leave tonight
though, I’ll buy us two and ask them to take them home for us. I’ll probably go
a little smaller than this guy here.”

I smiled; that was sweet of him. What
other nineteen-year-old guy wants to carve pumpkins? And, he was still holding
my hand too.

“That sounds like fun.”

From there we went and walked through the
corn maze. It wasn’t really hard, although that could be because I held onto
the back of Brock’s shirt most of the way through. I know they’re fake, but
those guys that jump out at you scare the crap out of me. After we made it out
of there alive, Brock said, “Do you want to get something to eat?”

I wasn’t really hungry, and as usual I was
worried that they might not have anything here I could eat. “They make these
really good fruit cups at the corn stand,” he said. I was sold. We walked
around some more as we ate our fruit. There was a giant old eucalyptus tree
that had a swing in it, and I sat down and Brock pushed me. That was fun; I
haven’t been on a swing in a long time. The announcer from the dark somewhere
announced that the haunted train ride would be leaving the station in fifteen
minutes, so we headed over there. On the way, we had to cross this old,
suspended wooden bridge. It was cool, except there was a twelve-year-old boy on
it with us that thought it would be fun to swing it back and forth. I hope he
had fun with it, because it didn’t sit well on my stomach.

We passed a castle playhouse with a moat
and an old schoolhouse playhouse that Brock told me had a slide that went
underground. I opted to try that one next time. It’ll give me time to think of
an out. We finally found the line for the train. It was long, and the cold was
horrible, but the employees had bonfires lit and a bizarre pack of clowns that
looked like Gene Simmons were handing out hot chocolate and cookies.

We had to wait for four trains before it
was our turn, so we got to hear the faint sounds of blood-curdling screams in
the distance, and we watched a few sweaty, shaky people get off the train as
well. It only increased the excitement factor. Brock let me pick the car we
would ride in. Being a huge chicken, I picked one in the middle. These cars
aren’t covered, and I’m guessing that when things jump out, the front and the
back probably get the worst of it.