The One That I Want (9 page)

I laughed and said, “Just keep her away from the cobbler.” But when I’d said there was a gym at my house, I hadn’t meant my mom bought exercise equipment. I’d meant that my house contained a gym. It was a big house.

He must have read my mind. As a truck rumbled by, he turned to me and asked loudly over the noise, “So, your dad used to own part of the Falcons? Like, the wide receiver and a couple of tight ends?”

“More like half the cheerleaders, knowing him.”

Instantly I wanted to take back that bitter joke. Max was making polite conversation while we waited for my mom. He probably regretted it now.

He played along, though, scooting closer on the bench like he was interested in what I was saying. “That’s why your parents got divorced?”

I nodded. “When I was ten. He and my mom were big on the country club, dinner party, charity ball scene, because it was good for his business. But then it got back to my mom that he had a girlfriend.”

Max nodded.

“So now—it’s kind of weird, if I think about it—they’re both doing half of what they used to do. My dad moved to Hilton Head with his girlfriend, but he still runs all his businesses and makes a lot of money from there. My mom got the house, so she still throws huge dinner parties for charity. They just don’t do it as a couple anymore.”

“Did you realize that when you talk about this, your breathing speeds up?”

I held my breath, looking at Max. I had not realized this. But yes, my chest felt tight and my head hurt, and I swayed a little on the bench, slightly dizzy.

He reached toward my chest, like he was going to touch me.

His hand stopped in midair.

Two bright spots of pink appeared on his cheeks, apparent even in the fading light of dusk, and I felt my face coloring too.

He put his hand over his own heart. “Do this,” he said.

I put my hand over my heart. It was racing. Talking about my dad made me anxious, but what made my heart race now was Max himself.

“There’s my mom,” I said quickly, recognizing her car at the intersection down the block. I did not add,
Damn it!
I wished she’d had something important to do and had been running late for once. I turned to Max to say good-bye.

He was staring at the car. Generally girls at my school thought it was a nice, expensive car, but boys knew exactly what it was and how much it had cost. Their faces showed admiration mixed with envy. Max wore the same expression as he asked, “Is that an Aston Martin?”

“Yeah,” I said as casually as I could, pretending I didn’t understand his astonishment. “It’s six years old. Before my dad left, he wanted to make sure my mom had a safe, reliable car so she and I didn’t get stuck somewhere with engine trouble, since he wouldn’t be around to help anymore.”

“He could have done that for a lot less money,” Max said, eyes still on the car. “That is
not
why your dad bought your mom a car that cost six figures.”

I glared at Max. I wasn’t stupid. He was right, of course. My dad had given my mom the house and bought her a ridiculously expensive car so she would feel special, could keep up her image, and would agree not to fight the pre-nup that prevented her from going after half of everything my dad had ever made. Sure. But just because it was true did not mean I wanted to discuss it with Max.

“I’m sorry,” he backtracked immediately. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” I said more loudly than I’d intended—loudly enough that I heard my words echoing against the concrete MARTA station curving around us. I was too angry to care. “You read people really well, Max, and I enjoy it up to a point, but you can’t just blurt out everything you see.”

He pointed at me. “Remember Addison asked me why I don’t have a girlfriend? This is why.”

I laughed shortly. “You do now.”

As my mom stopped in the pull-off, the engine rumbling at our feet, he gave me a hard look. “You are a very interesting person, Gemma. Very different, in a good way.” He stood, dragging his bag with him.

I tried to smile. “Do you want my mom to drop you off at your parking deck?”

He grinned. “Are you worried about my safety? That is really cute, Gemma.”

“I’m serious. You were worried about
my
safety. That’s why you’re here.”

His dark brows shot up. For the briefest moment, I wondered if that really
was
why he was here.

But of course it was. He shrugged. “Like you said, this is probably the safest place in Atlanta. And I look mean, don’t I?”

He didn’t look mean. His face was open and sweet, like the friendliest person I’d ever met. But he
was
at least six feet tall, which was probably what he meant.

If I admitted how daunting he’d look to a would-be attacker, I would sound like I liked him. I didn’t want to insult him, though. So I asked, “Are we back on the serial killer thing again?”

He threw back his head and laughed. Then he put his hand on my shoulder. “See you next Friday night, Gemma.”

And then, before I could react, he reached past me and opened the passenger door of my mom’s car. I climbed in, dragging my baton bag after me. He closed the door with a thick
thud
.

As my mom drove away from the curb, I watched Max in the side mirror. He stood staring after us for a moment, looking straighter and thinner and taller now that I could see all of him, not just his expressive face. He shook his head as he slung his bag over his shoulder and walked up the sidewalk toward the parking deck.

“And who was that?” my mother asked expectantly. She stopped at the next intersection, by the mall and restaurants and high-rise hotels. Smiling couples held hands as they crossed the street in front of us.

Willing the tingle in my shoulder where he’d touched me to fade away, I sighed, “Max. Addison’s date.”

“Addison’s date!” my mom exclaimed.

“Yep.” I barreled through an explanation so she wouldn’t ask me twenty questions. “He’s a junior too, and he’s a kicker for the football team at East. We met him today at Tech. His dad is a professor there. Max was in football camp while we were in majorette camp. Addison’s going out with him next Friday, and I’m going out with his friend Carter, if that’s okay with you, to a concert. Max is picking me up because he lives around here. He was just waiting with me until you came.”

“That was nice of him,” my mom said. She peered into the rearview mirror as if to give him another once-over, even though he was long gone. She looked out the windshield again. “He has such good manners.”

“Yep,” I said.

“He’s very handsome,” she said.

“Yep,” I said.

I felt her watching me across the dark car. I’d never been on a date, but I’d assumed I would go on one now that I was a majorette and looked the part, except for my hair. Maybe my mom had been waiting for this too. She would have laughed if I’d explained to her how badly I wanted Max to be my date, and how far that was from happening.

She gave a little gasp. “What happened to your nose?”

I’d forgotten all about my injury after my nose had stopped throbbing. I touched it tenderly. It was sore. That’s probably what Max had been staring at the whole time I thought he was looking right through me to my soul.

“Addison hit me with her baton,” I said.

My mom raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment. I had suffered many injuries at Addison’s hands. Most of them had not been accidents, but I’d always claimed they were so I wouldn’t lose my only friend.

I was having second thoughts about that policy.

“So, you ate at the Varsity?” my mom asked. “What’d you eat? Not what you ordered, but what you
ate
.”

“A grilled chicken sandwich,” I said. “I ordered it and I ate it.”

“Is that all?” she exclaimed. “Are you still hungry? I made lasagna and kept it warm for you.”

“That sounds so good,” I said truthfully. “Maybe I’ll have some tomorrow.” But I knew tomorrow she would cook something else and press me to eat that. I couldn’t eat everything. Not anymore.

“How about some fresh peach cobbler with vanilla bean ice cream?”

Now she had me. Sweets had always been my weakness. I mean, food in general had been my weakness, but dessert was the worst. My mouth watered at the thought of cold ice cream melting over the flaky brown crust, sugar sparkling in the light from the kitchen chandelier, and all those sweet peaches. Georgia was the Peach State, and peaches were in season. My mom and I would sit at the table together and eat and say
mmmmmm
and feel like a family.

But I couldn’t do it. As I’d told Max, in the past nine months, I’d learned the difference between wanting food and being hungry. I was not hungry.

“Maybe tomorrow,” I repeated.

My mom was quiet, probably thinking about whatever charity ball she was planning at the moment. My thoughts drifted to our over–air-conditioned mansion ahead.

After the day I’d had with Addison, it was ridiculous of me to miss her. Yet I felt a horrible dread as my mom turned onto our street, passed the Campbells’ house and the Browns’ and the Khans’, and pulled into our brick driveway. If Addison were driving me home, she would be blasting the sickly sweet pop station specifically because she knew I hated it. But when she parked in my driveway, I never wanted to get out of her car. Addison was rude, selfish, and spiteful. She was also full of life, and she made noise.

My mom parked in the spotless garage with three of the four spaces empty, and sighed. “I have a lot of work to do tonight, honey. A
lot
. But when I get through, I want to hear all about majorette camp and these boys.”

“Okey-doke.” I unlocked the door into the kitchen and galloped upstairs. My mom promised all the time that we’d chat, then got absorbed in what she was doing. She’d be working until I fell asleep. She would not ask me about camp. Neither of us would say anything for the rest of the night.

I closed the door of my room and waited for her to get her cobbler and ice cream and shut herself in her office, so I wouldn’t be tempted. When the coast was clear, I unzipped my bag, took out my batons, and ran back downstairs, through the kitchen where the scent of peaches and sugar still hung in the air. I let myself out the French door, into the hot, humid night, a relief after the supercooled air inside the house. I crossed the marble patio to the big back lawn.

One of the instructors at camp had advised us first-time majorettes that the biggest hazard of our halftime show would be the bright stadium lights. If we weren’t careful, we would toss up a baton, lose it in the glare of the lights, and drop it. In the band formation I would be in front of the student section. I could
not
drop a baton. Facing the spotlight on the corner of the roof, I threw baton after baton into the glare and practiced catching them by feel instead of by sight, until my hands were sore. And then kept going.

I didn’t see Addison for the rest of the weekend. She was doing charity work for her debutante ball, which was coming up in October. Most people understood the debutante ball as a place where rich girls made a lot of affected movements and got “presented” to the rich boys who went to the same country club. All of that was true, but the girls needed community service hours too. It was kind of like training to become my mother, so when they turned forty-five, they too could be single mothers, live alone in a mansion, and plan charity balls for other people. That’s what I called living.

I guess it was kind of strange that Addison was a debutante and I wasn’t. Addison’s mom was stretching to scrape up the money. They lived in what was jokingly referred to as the “slum” of this part of Atlanta, which meant the houses were made of brick, not marble, and had four bedrooms instead of fourteen. But Addison’s mom was still trying to make up to society for her embezzling husband.

And me, I’d never wanted to be a debutante. I’d been overweight when I had to decide. I didn’t want that kind of attention. I probably would have had to dye over the streaks in my hair. It just wasn’t who I was. Astonishingly, my mom had brought up the idea only once. And unlike Addison bullying me into things, when I said no, my mom had let it go.

So a lot of weekends without Addison stretched before me. I felt a mix of relief that I wouldn’t have to put up with her, and stir-craziness that there wouldn’t be any driving around town looking for Hot Male Action (by which Addison meant whistling to boys shooting hoops at the park). The silence in my house was broken only by the sound of my mom tapping on the computer keyboard in her office, which echoed down the hall and around the marble stairwell. I could only stay so long outside in the ninety-five-degree heat, practicing baton.

Finally, on Sunday afternoon, I asked my mom to drop me off at the library while she ran some errands. This branch sat between Max and Carter’s high school and mine. I figured it would have their high school yearbook from last May.

I was right. I snagged it from the shelves. I told myself I was only making sure that Max and Carter were who they said they were, and that they had not in fact been attending serial killer camp at Georgia Tech. I could have looked them up online, but social pages were easy to fake. I was smarter than that. I had to protect Addison, because she was too trusting to say no to any handsome stranger who asked her out. Or too horny.

The thought of Addison being horny for Max made me so tense that I accidentally ripped a page as I turned it. I took a deep breath to calm down, and looked around to make sure a librarian wasn’t about to kick me out for destroying the collection.

I thumbed through to the football team pages and found Max and Carter in the junior varsity group photo. They were also in the varsity photo. Lots of varsity teams dressed out their junior varsity players in case the juniors and seniors got hurt, and to make the team look bigger and more menacing. The boys’ faces were so small in both photos that I wouldn’t have recognized them except for their names in the fine print. To make sure they hadn’t looked up a couple of real students and given Addison and me false names in an elaborate serial killer ploy, I paged through to the individual pictures of last year’s sophomore class.