The Crushes (8 page)

Rule 16:
Be interested in things that interest him!

Rule 37:
Learn to listen! Do not just talk about yourself!

“Hey, Sydney?” Quin said from the doorway to the media room. “Can you grab me”—he looked at a sheet of paper in his hands—“
Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers, Peter Pan
, and anything Care Bears?”

“Sure,” she said and went to the movies lined up neatly on the shelves. She scanned the spines of the movie cases and found the Scooby-Doo one quickly.
Peter Pan
was a harder find—it was all the way on the bottom shelf next to the Bob the Builder movies. What was it doing there? Maybe someone needed to alphabetize so the movies were easier to go through.

A project for another day? She’d have to talk to Quin about it. He might think she was a huge dork for enjoying something so methodical, but if it’d help the West Wing, who cared?

Movies in hand, Sydney went to West Two and found Quin in room 412 with the new patient staying overnight after surgery.

“Boo Brothers right here,” Quin said, turning on the TV.

The little boy, Seth, clenched his hands into fists and waved them about in the air excitedly. “I love this movie,” he said. “It’s my favorite,” he said to Sydney.

“Oh yeah?” She handed the case to Quin, and he put the disk in the DVD player.

Seth hit the button on the bed to bring his head up. “Yeah. This is the funniest Scooby-Doo one. Probably. Well…I like
Zombie Island
, too.”

“Cool,” Sydney said.

Quin hit the
PLAY
button and a movie preview came on. “My favorite Scooby-Doo,” he said, “is the one with Johnny Bravo.”

Seth laughed. “Oh yeah! Johnny is such a dork.”

Quin nodded emphatically. “Right on, dude.” He dimmed the overhead lights. “Enjoy your movie. If you need anything else, let us know.”

“Okay,” Seth said, snuggling into his blankets.

In the hallway, Sydney turned to Quin. “You watch Scooby-Doo?”

He cleared his throat. “Well…you know…Scooby
is
pretty cool.”

Sydney grinned.

They passed out the other two movies and officially ended their shift.

“Want to grab something to eat with me in the cafeteria?” Quin asked after they’d punched out.

“Um…”

She
was
rather hungry. And she’d been planning on getting something fast-foodish anyway. Her mom was in Hartford for the night, and her dad was going to some dinner for work, leaving Sydney to fend for herself. She’d talked to Drew earlier on her break in hope of making dinner plans with him, but he had already agreed to go to the movies with Todd.

“Sure,” she said to Quin. “I’m starving.”

The cafeteria at Children’s Hospital had the best salad bar ever. Sydney hadn’t checked it out before, instead going with something quicker like a pre-made sandwich, but was she going to change that.

She’d gotten a Styrofoam container full of lettuce, grilled chicken pieces, bacon, hard-boiled eggs, sunflower seeds, and croutons. And they had their own brand of ranch dressing that—as Kelly might put it—made it awesome.

Quin had gotten a club sandwich and now sat across from Sydney in one of the booths along the huge floor-to-ceiling windows on the back side of the cafeteria. The sky was dusky outside and smoke-gray clouds covered the sun, turning it into a white glowing orb off in the distance.

“I wish I had my camera on me,” Quin said just as Sydney was thinking the same thing.

“You’re into photography?”

He looked at her, furrowing his brow. “You are, too?”

“Yeah. I actually won the amateur photo contest that the hospital put on.”

“Yeah!” Quin pointed a finger at her and smiled. “I thought my sister said you won, but I was talking to her on my cell at the time and she kept breaking up. Congratulations.”

Sydney couldn’t help but grin. “Thanks.”

“That contest is a huge deal around here,” Quin said. “I couldn’t enter it because my sister works here. You should be proud of yourself.”

Sydney hadn’t talked about it much, but she
was
proud of herself. The feeling she’d gotten that day was better than any feeling she’d had from passing an academic test.

“So, how long have you been a photographer?” he asked.

“I just started this year, but I have hundreds of photos already. I haven’t yet mastered the art of distinguishing between good and bad, so I’ve kept them all.” She shrugged. “But I think eventually it’ll be good to have them around. Then I can see how much I’ve learned and changed.”

Quin nodded. “You’re right, there. We are our own worst critics, but after a few years you’ll look back and see that you’re better than when you started. That should count for something.”

Sydney took a bite of salad, then a drink from her Coke. “So, do you do photography on the side or—”

“No.” He smiled. “My sister would love for me to go to medical school, but I’d rather be a starving artist than a starving resident. I’m actually going into my sophomore year at the Brooks Institute in California.”

Sydney’s mouth dropped open. “Serious?”

He nodded. “I know, it’s big. Sometimes I think it’s bigger than I can handle.”

“Yeah, it’s only like the best photography school in the country. And also extremely hard to get into.”

A blush fanned across his cheeks. “Well…”

“Are you into any other art, then? Or just photography? Because I know the Brooks Institute offers degrees in graphics and film, too.”

Quin nodded. “They do, but I haven’t taken much of them. I’m into almost all kinds of visual art, so I wouldn’t close myself off to the idea of something different. I mean, I like all art. Including the less accepted forms.”

Sydney frowned. “What does that mean?”

“Let me show you.” He unbuttoned his white Oxford shirt. He had on a plain black T-shirt beneath it.

Sydney wondered what he was getting at when he pulled the Oxford shirt off and she gasped.

His arms, from the line of his short sleeve all the way down to his wrists, were covered in black tattoos.

“Oh my god.”

Setting the Oxford shirt aside, he said, “I’m not supposed to let my tattoos show here, for obvious reasons.”

Sydney grabbed his hand and held it up, turning his arm so that she could see every angle of it.

There was a lotus flower on his forearm and a Buddha above it. There were Latin words and dates, stars and strict linear patterns.

“I never would have guessed.”

Well, he did have the long black hair, which was sort of odd coupled with the formal dress he wore to work. Still, Sydney had figured the long hair was something he liked. If he’d never taken his shirt off, she never would have known he was covered in tattoos.

Now that he was in a black T-shirt, several strands of long black hair hanging along his face, Sydney felt she really saw him, that she was looking across the table at the
real
Quin, and she respected him even more.

“How was work tonight?” Drew asked, stooping down to kiss Sydney’s forehead.

She stilled, wondering if she should tell Drew about Quin. She felt she should be honest with him. If he was hanging out with someone at work, she’d want to know about it because keeping it a secret made it seem that much worse. Even if the situation wasn’t like
that
. Which it wasn’t.

Sydney grabbed two spoons out of the dishwasher and handed one to Drew. He slipped it into his bowl of ice cream.

“It was good.” Sydney and Drew went into the living room to sit. She went into a big explanation about how she met a young mother who seemed to know everything about the hospital and the machines in her daughter’s room and how Sydney was impressed with her. Drew nodded his head at all the right moments, but Sydney could tell he’d started to tune out most of her long-winded explanation.

She ran through the Crush Code in her head, trying to think of a rule to use for this situation. There was one about listening. Maybe she was talking too much, making the conversation only about her.

“So how was the movie?”

Drew shrugged. “It was pretty good, but nothing really that you’d like.”

See, she thought, Drew is used to you not giving a crap.

“Tell me about it anyway,” she encouraged.

He looked at her oddly, then, “Okay. Well, the main plot point of the movie is that it’s set in 2100 A.D., right, and robots have taken over…”

What followed was a fifteen-minute conversation about the difference between robots and alien movies and how CGI was bringing sci-fi into the next generation of movies. Sydney hadn’t heard Drew so excited in a conversation since…well, since he’d adopted Bear.

Sydney asked questions when she needed to, nodded her head when she was supposed to. For the most part, she just listened, despite the fact that she wasn’t, like Drew said, interested in anything sci-fi.

Did that matter, though? She could sacrifice fifteen minutes if it meant making Drew happy.

Rule 35:
Get to know your crush slowly! (You may discover that you don’t like him!)

Rule 36:
Do not pretend to be a different person when your crush is around!

“What should I wear?” Kelly said to her closet, wishing she had a personal stylist to tell her the answer.

She decided to go with a pair of American Eagle khaki Bermuda shorts and a smocked puff-sleeve shirt the color of a banana.

She sat down on the edge of her bed to slip on her brown flats, when her brother walked by the open door, their little sister, Monica, hurrying behind.

“Give it back, Todd! Mom!”

Todd held a pad of paper over his head with one hand and his cell phone at his ear with the other.

“Mom’s not here,” he said. “She went to get some coffee.”

Kelly tossed her shoes aside, came up behind her brother, and grabbed Monica’s notebook from him. “Quit being such a jerk.”

“Thanks,” Monica said when she took her notebook off Kelly’s hands.

Todd brought his cell up to his mouth. “My sisters are picking on me,” he said. He waited for a response and nodded. Then, “Drew says you two should leave me alone.”

Kelly rolled her eyes and snatched the cell phone out of Todd’s hands.

“Hey!”

“Drew?” Kelly said.

“Yeah?”

“Did you really say that?”

He laughed. “No.”

“I didn’t think so.” Kelly gave the cell back. “Now go away, Todd, please. I have to get ready.”

Monica came into Kelly’s room and flopped down on the bed, her long, strawberry blond hair sliding along her bare shoulders. “Where are you going?”

“Yeah,” Todd said, “where are you going?”

“None of your business.”

Kelly sat down next to her little sister and slipped on the pair of brown flats she’d set aside a few minutes ago.

“I’m going out.”

Monica raised a brow. “With who?”

Kelly looked from her sister to her brother, both of whom were staring at her expectantly.

“With a friend,” Kelly said, checking her reflection in the mirror on the back of her bedroom door.

She sighed to herself. This was the exact reason she’d thought the Crush Code was a bad idea. Adam and she just weren’t a good fit. He probably needed someone
who could climb Mount Everest while reciting the national anthem backward and skydive without blinking once.

And here she was, little ol’ Kelly Waters, clothing aficionado, animal shelter volunteer, going out with the God of Iron Bodies.

It was so ridiculous.

But Adam had asked her out, after all, and she had promised her friends she’d give the Code a try, if only to prove them wrong.

Like Rule 35 said,
Get to know your crush slowly!
You may discover that you don’t like him!

And, Rule 36 was an important one for the night:
Do not pretend to be a different person when your crush is around!

That was exactly what Kelly was going to do. If Adam didn’t like her for who she was, then she didn’t need him. She’d learned that from going out with Will.

So the plan was, hang out with Adam, get to know him, and then move on when Kelly had all the reasons they were wrong for each other lined up in a neat row to present to Alexia.

Because they were wrong for each other even if Adam had a face that made girls weep. Kelly knew what kind of guy she needed; she needed someone she could get along with. She needed someone like Drew. He was attractive, but not too attractive. Smart, but not arrogant about it. And most importantly? He
got
Kelly. All her little quirks, her obsession with clothing. He didn’t seem to mind that Kelly was a girly girl.

Too bad Drew was taken.

Jordan Valenti met Kelly and Adam at the front entrance to Bershetti’s when they arrived.

“Hey, Kel!” she said. “A table for two?”

“Yes, please.”

Jordan grabbed two menus and led them away from the host’s podium. Kelly walked alongside her while Adam brought up the rear.

Jordan leaned over to whisper in Kelly’s ear as they wound through the restaurant tables. “That guy you’re with is really hot.”

Kelly nodded. “He is, isn’t he? His name is Adam.”

They both shot a glance over their shoulder at him. Whereas the other night he’d been in his usual workout clothing—Adidas pants, Under Armour shirt—tonight he was in a pair of faded blue jeans and a blue pinstriped button-up shirt, the top three buttons of which were undone to reveal a white T-shirt.

Jordan sat Kelly and Adam in a booth in the back of the restaurant. They ordered waters and pasta dishes; Adam ordered the spaghetti, Kelly ordered the Italian chicken and couscous.

Surprisingly the conversation came easily and soon their meals arrived. The conversation continued over eating and somehow got onto the topic of Adam’s love of poetry and his hobby of writing it himself.

“You have to give me a line or two of something you wrote,” Kelly said.

Adam blushed and hung his head. “I told you I was a closet poet and for good reason. I’m not very adept.”

“Fine,” Kelly teased. “But maybe someday?”

“Sure.”

They finished their meal and Kelly excused herself to use the restroom. Finding it empty, she stole a minute to check her cell for any new messages or texts. She’d shut the ringer off since a chirping cell phone over dinner was always rude.

She flipped the phone open and was greeted with an alert that said:
5 New Text Messages.

“Five?” she said to herself. She’d only had the phone quiet for an hour!

The first one was from Raven:
Ur with the hottie!!

Jordan must have texted Raven as soon as she had the chance.

There was a message from Alexia that said:
Remember the Code
.

And one from Sydney:
Drew told me u were on a date. good luck.

Todd:
Dont tell boytoy u eat crayons. he migt think ur weerd.

Kelly rolled her eyes. Her brother was such an idiot sometimes.

And the last one was from Drew. It said, with perfect punctuation and word usage:
Be yourself and Adam will fall for you. He won’t be able to help himself. And if he doesn’t see how great you are, Todd and I can beat him up. Just say the word. Later.

Kelly smiled as she read the message again. Drew had to be the best guy friend ever.

For some stupid reason, tears stung her eyes. She sniffed and laughed at herself. Drew was so good
to her, so good that it almost hurt. Why couldn’t she be on this date with him instead of Adam?

That wasn’t fair to Adam, but it was true.

A few tears escaped from the corner of her eye. She wiped them from her chin.

Get it together, she thought. Drew isn’t yours and never will be.