Someone Else (16 page)

“I don’t mind messes.”

He didn’t mind messes. That settled it. This guy was the total opposite of Michael in every way.

Maybe it was the peaceful feeling that had spread through me after my mini breakdown, or maybe it was the jolt of caffeine from the coffee, but all of a sudden I felt more alive than I had in weeks. “Ask me again,” I said.

He rewarded me with one of his rare, deep-dimpled smiles. “What would you say if I told you I wanted to ask you out?”

I smiled back at him, feeling myself approaching the corner and then—finally—turning it. “I’d tell you to go for it.”

Chapter 14

I scuffed into the kitchen one late Saturday morning at my dad’s house, still half asleep, to find a strange man standing by the pantry. He was huge, bearish, with dirty hands and about twenty years worth of beard. He looked like one of those psychos who kept female hostages in a dilapidated cabin in the woods. I screamed, reeling back against the fridge.

“Taylor?”

I was so relieved to hear my father’s voice in the distance. He would save me from this lunatic.

“Miss, I’m—,” the lunatic said, holding his hands up as if he were letting me know he wasn’t armed.

“Taylor, what’s wrong?” Dad came up beside me and touched my arm. “Are you okay?”

The beastly man had the nerve to laugh. “I think I surprised her.”

“Honey, this is Mr. Pruett. He’s here to take a look at the basement bathroom.”

A plumber? I should have known. Gruff-looking strangers had been marching through the kitchen on their way to the basement for the past six months. And the longer the basement remained unfinished, the more these strangers tended to pop up.

But usually they didn’t send me into cardiac arrest before breakfast.

“Oh,” I said, my face prickling from embarrassment. Not only had I screamed like I was about to be axe-murdered, but I was also sporting Smurf pajamas, fuzzy blue slippers, and major bedhead.

“Sorry for scarin’ ya, there,” the plumber told me before following my dad downstairs.

Once my heart rate had returned to normal, I made myself a bowl of instant oatmeal and ate it standing up. If I didn’t hustle I’d be late for work, prompting one of those pointed, quietly-disapproving looks from Mr. Moretti that could make even the ex-con dishwasher burst into tears. My day hadn’t exactly started out on a stellar note, and I knew it would set the tone for everything else.

I made it to the restaurant with two minutes to spare, thanks in part to my car, which was working properly again. Last week my father had taken pity on me, again, and helped pay for a brand new ignition switch, pushing my debt up to the four digit mark. If it kept up this way, pretty soon I’d be handing my whole paycheck—plus tips—over to Dad.

“Taylor, hey,” Danielle—another server on my shift—said as she brushed past me in the back hallway. “Can you get some drinks to table five for me? Two Cokes, one diet, and an iced tea. Some brat just coughed all over me and I have to go sterilize myself.”

I secured my hair in a ponytail. “I’m on it.”

“Thanks.”

She race-walked toward the washroom with her hands facing up, like a doctor who’d just scrubbed in for surgery, while I got the drinks. Carmen had done it again. Danielle’s disdain for children had become a running joke around the restaurant, and whenever possible Carmen—Moretti’s diabolical hostess—put the families with children in Danielle’s section, just to piss her off. Carmen had three kids of her own, but Danielle was the party-girl type, a sophomore at Kinsley who came to work hungover more often than not. Because we were both students, we worked mostly the same shifts, and she was the one who had trained me. Her other claim to fame was that she’d worked at Hooters for a year before coming to Moretti’s, a fact she’d managed to insert into our very first conversation.

Because it was Saturday, the restaurant was consistently packed for my entire shift. At around five, a hockey team—little kids, which almost made Danielle pop a vein—showed up for pizza, and the next two hours whizzed by in a blur of spills and refills. When they were finally gone, Danielle bolted outside for an extended smoke break while I helped clean up the cataclysmic mess.

As I was piling Coke-soaked pizza crusts onto a tray, the door opened and in walked Robin, her cheeks rosy from the cold. This made her look extra beautiful, and every head in the vicinity turned to stare at her as she scanned the restaurant, looking for me. When she saw me, she grinned and waved her gloved hand.

“Hi,” she said when I walked over to her, still holding my tray. “When are you done?”

“A half hour.” I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Mr. Moretti wasn’t watching. It wasn’t that he was mean, or that I was scared of him, exactly…I just didn’t want to disappoint him by slacking off. “What are you doing here?”

“Just thought I’d stop by and say hi. Izzie dropped me off. She…well, we’ll talk about it later.” She unwound a scarf from her neck. “Can I wait for you in here? It’s too cold to wait in your car.”

“There’s nowhere to wait out here. You’ll have to sit down and order something. I’ll buy.”

“Can I get some of that yummy tiramisu?”

I nodded and went back to my work as Carmen led her to a small table by the window. The next half hour dragged. It had been a long day, and my feet were killing me. All I could think of was a hot shower, so I wasn’t really listening to what Robin was saying as we left Moretti’s and walked to my car. Only a handful of words registered—Izzie, fight, bitch.

“You and Izzie had a fight?” I collapsed gratefully into the driver’s seat. “What about?”

“She thinks I slept with her boyfriend.”

“Did you?”

She shot me a sideways glance. “Well, he wasn’t exactly her
boyfriend
. They went out, like, twice.”

I burst out laughing. I’d missed hanging out with Robin like this. We’d drifted apart so much over the past year, it was hard to remember us ever being so close. Like sisters. Now we were more like distant cousins who reconnected at weddings and funerals. Or when Robin needed a drive.

“When is Alan going to buy you a car?” I asked as we pulled out onto the street.

“I’ve been hinting. He just bought Mom a huge SUV so I’m not holding my breath.”

“Why does your mom need a huge SUV?”

“Search me. Hey,” she said, spinning her upper body toward me like she’d just remembered some crucial information she needed to share. “Guess who texted me yesterday.”

“Who?”

“Michael.”

The car strayed to the left. I yanked it back quickly before we merged with oncoming traffic. “He texted you?” My gaze alternated furiously between her face and the road in front of us. “Why?”

“To check up on you, of course, though he wouldn’t admit it.”

What the hell? After all these weeks of silence, he gets in touch with
Robin
? Who I hardly hung out with anymore? I was so flustered, I almost missed the turn for Redwood Hills. “Did he ask about me?”

“No, but I read between the lines. He wasn’t texting me to see how
I
was doing.”

“What did you tell him?” I tried to sound like I didn’t really care, but failed miserably.

“The truth.” She raised her chin and flicked her hair back. “That you’re blissfully happy, marvelously successful, and dating a cute soccer player.”

“You did not.”

“Well, not in so many words. But that was the gist.”

Suddenly I felt way too hot in my winter coat. I reached over to turn down the heat. “What did he say?”

“He said he didn’t need to hear about it and changed the subject. Then I asked him if he was seeing anyone.”

Now I was cold again. I jacked up the heat to maximum and waited.

“He said ‘No one special’. Whatever
that
means.”

My grip tightened on the wheel.
No one special
? Why couldn’t he have said
No, I’ve been living like a monk for the past six weeks and haven’t left my room except to shower and go to class
? Just how many non-special girls was he dating? I felt so pissed at him for contacting Robin
now
, six weeks later, just as I was starting to get on with my life. What did it mean? Had he been fishing around for info about me, hoping to hear the same chaste-like things I’d been hoping for? Maybe his curiosity had gotten the better of him, or maybe it was even simpler than that. Maybe he just missed me like I’d never stopped missing him.

“Taylor?”

“Hmm?” I glanced up and realized we were parked in Robin’s driveway. I had little memory of driving here.

“Do you want to come in? We could make hot chocolate and watch Brat Pack movies, like old times.”

“I wish I could,” I said, meaning it. It had been years since we’d done that. “But I have plans tonight.”

“The cute soccer player?”

I grinned. “Dylan. Yeah.”

She leaned over to give me a quick hug before abandoning the warmth of the car. “Have fun.”

“Thanks.”

I drove home with both hands clamped tightly on the wheel, wishing the beastly plumber from this morning had turned out to be an axe-wielding murderer after all.

****

My first date with Dylan had taken place three days after he asked me out. We went to the movies, just the two of us, and sat in the very back row. We held hands over the armrest, our eyes glued to the screen as if it were about to reveal the solutions to all the world’s problems.

And then later, when I dropped him off, he gazed at me as if I were his dream girl come to life and then leaned in to kiss me. Kissing someone other than Michael felt strange and a little wrong, like I was being unfaithful to him even though I knew I wasn’t. But then my body took over as I remembered how good it felt to kiss someone.

In the two weeks following that first date, we’d gone out a few more times, both in a group and by ourselves, and saw each other every day at school. In fact, I spent more time with Dylan than I ever spent with Michael. And unlike Michael, Dylan was always around. He was there in the mornings, waiting for me at the school entrance. He was there between classes. He was there after school, at my locker. He sat next to me in chemistry and at lunch. He called every evening and even came to my house a couple of times, when Mom was around, to study. My mother liked him for two reasons: 1) he was around my age and 2) he was
here
and not hundreds of miles away at college.

Dylan was so reliable, so attentive, that it took some getting used to at first. I wasn’t accustomed to spending every waking minute with a guy. Before he went to college, Michael and I used to see each other only on weekends, and even though I missed him during the week, it was good to have that time with my friends. I guess I’d adapted to having that kind of relationship, because it didn’t take long for me to start feeling unnerved over Dylan’s constant presence.

But the dimples made up for all that. Since we’d started going out, people kept commenting on how happy Dylan seemed now, how often he smiled. It felt good to know that I’d been the one to provoke that change in him. Still, there was this dark cloud always lurking below, reminding me of the microscope I was under whenever Dylan and I were together, being watched and judged by all our friends. Dylan had liked me, had waited for me, for months, and now that he had me, I needed to live up to his and everyone else’s expectations. Everyone, including me, knew I held the power to easily and utterly break his heart. And I did
not
want to be the girl who broke Dylan’s heart.

So naturally, when I met up with him later that night, about an hour after dropping Robin off, not a word was mentioned about Michael’s recent texting and how pissed off I was about it. I had a feeling that even indirect contact with my ex would not go over well.

“Where have you
been
?” Jessica said when I finally showed up at Lia’s house, where the whole gang had gathered to celebrate Mallory’s birthday.

“Work,” I said, hanging my coat on a hook by the door. I was exhausted from driving home, showering at lightning speed, and then driving over to Rocky Lake. “You know, that thing I do every weekend to make money?”

“You should really rethink this job thing. It’s cutting into your social life. And you missed the presents.”

I followed her down to the family room. I spotted Dylan sitting in a plush chair and talking to Lia’s new boyfriend, Sam, who was a senior and on the basketball team. I left Jessica and went over to sit on the arm of the chair. Dylan smiled and made room for me to wedge myself in next to him. He liked to have me close. When we were together he was either holding my hand or putting his arm around me or sitting right next to me, like now. I couldn’t decide if I liked this or found it oppressive.

Sam moved off and Dylan grabbed my hand. “I’ve been waiting forever for you,” he said, and the way he phrased it made me think he meant it literally.

“Work was crazy.” I glanced over at the pile of opened presents in the corner. “How’d the gift card go over?”

Dylan and I had gone splits on a mall gift card for Mallory’s birthday. Neither of us knew what else to get her, and Jess offered no help, so we figured a gift card was a safe bet. We’d signed it from both of us—
Dylan and Taylor
. Like we were a couple.

“She liked it,” he said, and I squirmed in the chair. Assuming I was being squished, he moved over a little more. “Better?”

Instead of answering, I excused myself and scurried off to the bathroom. As I was coming out I nearly bumped into Jill Holloway, who was standing outside the door, waiting for her turn to go in.

“Hi, Taylor,” she said, offering me a tiny smile.

I was surprised to see her here, in Lia’s house. Jill still dated Austin Kerr off and on, but the girls usually made it a point to
not
invite her to any get-togethers. One of the guys must have told Austin about it, and he brought Jill along. I could only imagine how thrilled Mallory must have been to have Jill Holloway at her birthday party. And wearing
that
, I thought as I took in her skin-tight, low-rise jeans and cleavage-baring top.