The Trouble with Dating Sue (Grover Beach Team #6) (2 page)

“Um, I brought you the CD,” she continued, while I was still trying to figure out if I should know her. But I didn’t hang out with girls from the geek squad, so who the hell was she?

The weirdest thing happened then. She offered me a CD case. What on earth was I supposed to do with that? I took a step back from Lauren and fully turned to the strange girl. Instead of taking what she held out to me, I shoved my hand into my pocket and tightly wrapped the other around the strap of my backpack. Being chatted up in the corridors of my school was normal for me—just not by strangers. I knew all of the senior girls and probably up to sixty percent of the rest. This face was new to me. My gaze roamed down her body and back up to her eyes.

My being quiet must have made her uncomfortable, because she cleared her throat. “Listen—” It was almost a croak. There was nothing left of the confidence she’d showed ten seconds ago. “I can’t meet you at three today, something’s come up. So maybe we can postpone the date until a little later? Would five work for you?”

Sorry,
what
?

I tried very hard to keep my composure, but a surprised laugh escaped me anyway. I certainly wasn’t one to decline a date so easily, but this was ridiculous. With my arms folded, I asked, “Sweetness, what made you think you and I would be going out together?”

She gulped. Oh boy, had I embarrassed her? My friends chuckled behind me while I bit the inside of my cheek to keep a sober expression. Claimed by a nerd; it was too funny.

A moment later, the girl sucked in a breath that sounded like bravery and squared her shoulders. Was she going to summon her magic wand to blow me up now? “Obviously I got it wrong. Sorry, my bad,” she stated in a wry voice. As she spun on her heel and stomped away, she flipped me the bird.

Holy cow! I didn’t know if I should be offended or impressed.

There was no time to think about it because as soon as she was gone, Lauren smacked me on the chest. “What was that?” she demanded. Like the others, she had to control her giggles. “Are you dating that girl?”

If I said yes, even just to mock her, she wouldn’t be coming to my place later today. Instead, I feigned being hurt by her words and clutched my chest. “Ow, you’re breaking my heart, Lauren! You’re the only one I’m dating tonight. I don’t even know who she is.” Then I wound a tendril of her straight black hair around my finger and grinned at her. “See you after five?”

Lauren looked after the stranger for a moment, then she turned back to me and cracked a smile. “Sure.”

MY ROOM STILL smelled of Lauren’s perfume the next morning. No matter what hot memories that scent brought on, I was getting sick of the sweetness. As I came back in after a shower, I had to open both windows to get some fresh air inside. I should have done that right after she left last night.

The late November wind brought a morning chill to my room, but that was as cold as we got here in California in the winter. In a couple of hours the sun would be so strong again that a jacket wasn’t even necessary. I put on a white sweatshirt and the same ragged jeans from yesterday. As I packed my school bag, Ethan knocked on my open door.

“If you want a ride, hurry up. But just so you know, I’ll be training with Hunter and the guys again today, so you’ll have to walk home after school,” he informed me.

Soccer practice again? Did that mean he was part of Ryan Hunter’s team now? Ryan was a good friend of mine, and apart from sitting behind him in trig and him being my lab partner in biology, I had already spent countless nights at his house when he gave those epic parties. Since I wouldn’t see much of Ethan today—we had no classes together whatsoever—I might ask Ryan what the deal was with my brother suddenly being so interested in soccer.

“You go ahead,” I told Ethan, finishing up with my school bag. “I’ll borrow Mom’s car.”

“All right. See you later.”

Grover Beach had the crime rate of a convent, yet our bungalow made it kind of easy for interested thieves to take the opportunity. From an early age, my brother and I had been drilled by Mom to close the windows when we weren’t home. There was actually something very dear to me in my room that made me heed her advice extra carefully.

Backpack over one shoulder, I checked my perfectly chaotic hair in the bathroom mirror and went looking for my mother in the living room. “Morning, Mom. Do you need the car today?”

She swiped her brown hair off her forehead as she looked up from rearranging the pillows on the couch and gave me a smile. “I don’t have any clients. You can use it.”

Her not having any clients for an entire day was rare. She was a real estate agent and spent a lot of time on the road, meeting people in and outside town to show them pretty houses up for sale. The job didn’t make her a millionaire, but it made her happy. She earned enough that we never had to worry about bills, and she didn’t have to ask my dad—who’d replaced her with his secretary when Ethan and I were twelve—for support either. Only a new car for me wasn’t in the cards, and since I’d refused to work like Ethan last summer, the amount in my bank account was missing a digit needed to afford a decent one.

On the plus side, Mom’s black SUV was easy to handle and great for off-road trips when we went camping in the woods.

I parked the car next to Ethan’s in front of school, but he’d already gone inside and none of my friends were around, so I went to first period alone. In the hallway, I bumped into Ryan. Since I’d completely forgotten to ask him about the soccer thing yesterday in trig—or biology for that matter—and my brother told me jack shit these days, I stopped him for a moment.

“Hey, what’s the deal with Ethan and—?”

I didn’t get to finish my question, because Ryan grabbed my collar with a mixture of hysteria and relief. “Man, you’re just the one I wanted to see. Would you let me copy your trig homework? I totally forgot to do that, and Mr. Swanson’s quite an ass when it comes to undone stuff.”

“Sure, no problem. It wasn’t that much. Come to trig early and you’ll have plenty of time to do it.” But Ryan not doing his homework? That was indeed a little strange. “What got you so distracted?” I asked, even though I had a good idea of the answer.

Ryan shoved a hand through his black hair and gave me a smug smile. “Lisa had free run of her house the past few days. Homework wasn’t my top priority, to be honest.”

“Ah, dude, you’re so shitty!”

“What? Don’t tell me you would’ve done anything less in my place.”

“Probably not.” We both laughed at the truth. “You owe me, though.”

“Whatever you want.”

I was about to tell him that our next trig assignment would be his to do, so I could get an afternoon off and copy it in the morning, when I saw her. The geek girl. She rounded the corner and came straight for us—no, straight for
me
. Her determined stride awoke the urge in me to back away a step. Yet I stood my ground, even when her nose was almost in my face. A soft coconut scent came off her skin. Utterly forgetting what I wanted to say to Hunter, I simply stared at her.

“Okay, explain,” she snapped at me.

Equally surprised, Ryan turned toward to her, but her hard glare rested on me alone. What in the world did this girl want from me?

“Explain
what
exactly?” I asked in a somewhat condescending tone. But hey, she asked for it. And then something dawned on me. This feisty little thing probably had a crush on me. That was just cute. Especially when the nerdy girl had no idea how to handle her hormones at age…what? Seventeen? With a slight tilt of my head, I tried to sound flirtations, even if the geek squad wasn’t—and would never be—a place I hunted in. “Sweetness, are you stalking me?”

“Oh my
God
! What’s wrong with you?” she barked in all seriousness, her eyes bright with anger.

Uh-oh. Did I misread her? But there was no reason to get loud with an audience around. “Excuse me? You’re the one who keeps chatting me up.”

Steam was nearly blowing out of her nose. Fascinated with the weird girl for a moment, I barely registered Hunter’s chuckle. But when he said her name—Susan—I wondered where he knew her from. It took him putting an arm around her shoulders and calling her name again for her to finally notice him. Annoyed, she turned to his side and growled, “What?”

Jeez, someone was cranky this morning. Her chest rose and fell under that lemongrass-green t-shirt with her angry breaths. She might start stomping an impatient rhythm with her slender legs any moment.

Ryan grabbed her firmly by her shoulders and turned her around to face me again. “Meet Chris.”

So it was introduction time. Fine with me. But all she snapped was, “Chris who?”

“Donovan,” I told her, a little miffed.

“Ah, right.” With her arms now folded over her chest, she staked me with a cynical look. “And you’re Ethan’s alter ego, or what?”

Alter ego? Was she crazy? “Brother,” I answered with a sly grin, adopting the same cynical stare as her.

Susan’s face turned pale. “Brother…”

Much too amused by this whole damn situation, Ryan leaned closer and whispered the word “twins” in her ear.

“Twins,” geek Sue reiterated in a stunned whisper. Then she blurted again, “
Twins
?” like such a thing meant we were two horsemen of the apocalypse. What she did next was just sweet, and it coaxed a smile from me. She spun to Ryan and knocked her head against his chest, whining, “Nooo…”

Shit, was that it? She’d confused me with my brother? It had to be, and now I could hardly stand upright from rippling laughter. “So you met Ethan? Hell, now I get it.”

She didn’t bother talking to me again, which was a shame. Almost. In a low huff, she told Ryan, “See you later,” and stalked away with her head held high. My gaze was still fixed on her. To say she’d made an impression was quite the understatement. A few steps down the hallway, she came to a sudden stop and whirled around. My laugh died in my throat, my attention wary in an instant, as she stormed toward me once more.

Without a word, she fished for something in her backpack until her hand reappeared with a pen. Next she grabbed my wrist. I was too stunned to object when she shoved up the sleeve of my sweatshirt and started writing something on my inner forearm. What the hell?

Motionless, I watched her until she lifted her head again and locked her smug gaze with mine. “Tell Ethan to call me.”

I glanced down. A series of blue digits glowed on my skin. The damn little geek spun around, about to head off. However, she changed her mind without a warning and had already fetched something else from her bag when she faced me a third time. Somewhat forcefully, she shoved the CD from yesterday against my chest with another order. “Give him that and tell him thanks for the latte.”

Pushy. Weird. And cryptic. The dictionary doubtlessly held a picture of her next to each of those words. Slightly out of breath and out of things to say, I blinked several times in wonder. And why the heck was Hunter so quiet? Now would be a good moment for him to shelter me from this crazy attack. If only. The moron just grinned and watched me struggle for a reply.

Oh, this girl wouldn’t get the better of me. After a cough to find my voice again, I drawled the word “pleeease” with a smirk at Susan, to show her that nothing from me was free.

“Pleeease,” she repeated nicely, even mirroring my smile—fake of course. I wouldn’t have expected anything less. Then she headed away, for good this time. Well, she would have, if she hadn’t bumped into Hunter’s girlfriend. Her schoolbag slipped from her shoulder, and though she reached for it with a good reflex, she missed it and the backpack dropped to the floor. Both girls squatted down and whispered to each other. Hunter’s girl cast me a quick glance. I returned it with a slight lift of the corners of my mouth, just to say hi. We hadn’t yet had the pleasure of talking to each other, even though Ryan had been in a relationship with her since last summer.

When the little geek rose to her feet again, she threw one last crabby look at me over her shoulder. I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to be the one who looked away first.

“So you know that crazy chick?” I asked Hunter when Susan was gone and his girl came toward us, flinging her arms around his neck. She turned to me and flashed me with a smile I’d only seen from a distance so far.

“I’m Lisa, actually, his girlfriend,” she said with a funny look, holding out her hand to me. “And you must be Chris Donovan.”

I let go of the laugh she stirred in me with her introduction and shook her hand. “Nice to finally meet you. But I meant
her,
in fact.” I nodded in the direction geek Sue had disappeared and put her CD in my backpack to give to Ethan after school.

“Yeah, I was getting to that part,” Ryan explained, rubbing his neck. “Lisa told me yesterday there was something odd going on between Ethan and Susan. Some confusion over a missed date apparently.”

“Yes, your brother asked her out, but then she ran into you, and you pretty much threw her off balance,” Lisa clarified.

I chuckled. “Off balance?” I’d been known to do that to girls from time to time.

“Yeah. In the absolutely worst sense of the word, you know,” she muttered, clearly not impressed with my hookup successes.

Remembering my first meeting with Sue yesterday morning, when I’d had no freaking idea what the girl wanted from me, I could just picture how easily I’d rattled her. But had Ethan really asked her out? Weird. For the first time in months, I wondered if I’d been wrong about him liking guys. Was he really just shy with the chicks?

Though I was dying to hear more about this girl and my brother, the bell ringing sprang our little group apart, and I made my way to history. Maybe I would get some answers from Ryan later in trig. Only, I forgot about our deal with the homework. There was no time to speak with him before the teacher came in for second period and silenced the class.

Biology then, I decided, while Mr. Swanson started writing a problem on the blackboard that we were supposed to solve by ourselves in the following fifteen minutes. It took him some time to copy everything from his notes. My mind started to wander out of class and back into the hallway where geek Sue had nearly bitten off my head this morning. Leaning back in my chair, I let go of a breath and replayed the strange encounter in my head.

Ethan’s alter ego.
Hah! The girl was quick with a comeback. How charming. It made her sweet somehow.

I pulled back my sleeve. The number she’d written on my skin flashed like a celeb’s signature on a crazy fan’s arm. My thoughts wandered off to how cold her hands had felt on my skin. Too damn cold. Tracing the numbers on my arm one by one, I frowned. Her eyes had been really sharp. I’d half expected her to vaporize me with them like Superman. As to their color, nope, I didn’t remember if they were brown, green, blue, or even a glowing red.

Did Ethan really have a date with that cannonball of a geek?

That meant my first assumption hadn’t been so far off after all. She might not be crushing on me in the precise sense, but she obviously found my brother quite likable. We looked exactly the same—she proved that herself by talking to the wrong twin, twice. Ergo: She found me attractive, too.

Worshipped by a geek. That one was missing on my dating record as of yet. I laughed quietly, because it was kind of cute.

A chalk piece hit me straight in the chest and landed on my desk, ripping me out of my musings. “Mr. Donovan,” my trigonometry teacher said, standing in front of the class with his arms folded and his inquisitive look pinned on me. “Would you care to answer my question, since you’re already using your arm as a cheat sheet?”

Question? Cheat sheet? Dammit! I swallowed, at a loss for words, looking down at Susan’s number, which surely wasn’t what Mr. Swanson wanted to know. Clearing my throat, I slowly pulled my sleeve back down. “I—umm…”