The Trouble with Dating Sue (Grover Beach Team #6) (3 page)

He cocked his head. “Can it be that you, for once, don’t have an answer, Mr. Donovan?” he mocked, implying, correctly, that I was usually a little smugger than right now. Some of the kids around me snickered.

“Yeah, I’m obviously below par today,” I admitted, to the amusement of my classmates, throwing a smirk his way.

“I can see that.” Mr. Swanson liked me, because he was also the basketball coach and I was one of his best players. No one else would have gotten away with a sigh and a grunt in trig. He gave me one last pointed look and then turned to my neighbor, Alice. “Miss Hart, would you give us the right answer then?”

I aimed a sheepish look at her. Alice returned my glance with a smile and was soon blabbering away about Pythagoras and stuff, but I didn’t listen. I caught Ryan’s entertained gaze on me, as he’d turned around in his chair. I gave a helpless shrug, then lowered my eyes, and started working on the problem.

Once I concentrated on the subject again and banned a pert geek from my mind, I had the answer before everyone else. The rest of the class would certainly need a few more minutes, so I leaned back in my chair and relaxed. It didn’t take long for Coach Swanson to nail me with a speculative look.

“Twenty-seven,” I mouthed the result. I promptly received his approving nod in return. Free to my thoughts again, I started reveling in the memories of Lauren and the things she’d done to my neck with her teeth yesterday. A pleasant shudder traveled down my spine. I was
so
up for a repeat of that.

Green!

Dammit, the geek girl’s eyes were gummy-bear green.

I swallowed, dragging my hands down my face. Why the heck had my brain spit out that bit of information when I was thinking about a vixen in my bed?

Because she gave you her number
, a twisted part of me pointed out. Yep, she had. The edges of my lips wanted to curve up. Girls had given me their phone numbers on countless occasions, but never like that. Much to her credit, Susan had style. If Ethan really liked her, he’d actually missed out on something this morning.

Before everyone else was done with the math problem, I pulled out my cell from my pocket and hid it under the desk. Twisting my arm so I could read the digits there, I saved the number in my contacts. There was already a Susan on the list, so I typed
Weird Geek
instead.

Because I had gym next and didn’t want to look like someone had printed a barcode on my arm, I made a detour to the restrooms with Hunter on my heels. While he went to the stalls in the back to take a leak, I dropped my backpack on the tiled floor and started rubbing my arm under the faucet.

Water alone wasn’t enough to get rid of the scribble. By the time Hunter returned to the sinks, I was scrubbing at the ink really hard with soap and paper towels. “What’s wrong with this stuff?” I muttered. “Did she use a fricking sharpie on me?”

“Who? Miller?”

Was that her name? Susan Miller? Suddenly it seemed too innocent a name for a little beast like her. “Yeah, the girl with the charming personality,” I gritted out as the skin on my arm turned a vibrant red under the remaining smudges of blue ink. Great, now I looked like an idiot who’d wiped his arm across wet ink rather than a supermarket product with a barcode. Not a hell of a lot better.

“You just got on her bad side. She can be really nice.”

I made a wry face at my friend. “When she’s sleeping or someone duct-tapes her mouth shut, right?”

He laughed but gave me a commiserating look for my hurting arm.

“Any idea how to get this off?” I groaned.

A shrug rolled off Hunter’s shoulder. “Turpentine?”

Ah, too funny. “Don’t you have an English class to go to?”

“Sure. See you after lunch.” He left with an amused chuckle.

All my fighting against this resistant ink merely led to a burning forearm, so at the point that only fine hues of blue were left, I stopped scrubbing and rushed to the gym. I didn’t know if the red or the blue was now more apparent, but Justin Andrews, an old friend, was the only one to comment on it as we did a hard workout according to the lesson plan.

“Try to graffiti yourself?” he mocked.

“If only. I got badgered by a stray member of the geek squad this morning.”

“By
what
?” Choking with laughter, he almost fell off the bar on which we were both doing pull-ups.

“Weird girl. Weird story. Maybe I’ll tell you one day.” I pulled myself up once more, chin over the bar, let out a lungful of air, and lowered myself back down. When I was done with my twenty-five reps, I hopped to the ground and wiped the sweat from my forehead with the front of my muscle shirt. If nothing else, the sweating today would take care of the remnants of geek Sue’s ink on my skin.

At the teacher’s whistle, the two of us moved on to the next station. Skipping rope for three solid minutes. This was pretty hard cardio, so we didn’t talk during that task.

I showered quickly after gym and practically ran to Spanish class. I wanted to catch Lauren before fourth period started to ask her for an extra lesson later at her place.

Her face split with a smile when she saw me coming. She skimmed her soft, slender fingers over my temple. “Your hair is still wet. I like that.”

Yes, I knew that from after-shower experiences with her, but that was not the reason I hadn’t toweled it thoroughly. There just hadn’t been enough time. “Say you’re free this afternoon, and I’ll have it wet for you again,” I offered with a smirk. Then something behind Lauren’s shoulder tore my attention away from her.

Twenty feet down the hall, Susan Miller slammed the iron door of her locker shut and disappeared around the corner. It was her plain ponytail and glasses set against the slender move of her hips clad in tight-ass jeans that snagged my brain into a temporary knot. Could there actually be sexy geeks? Because that girl clearly walked the border.

“Hey?” I heard Lauren’s voice and felt her fingers on my chin. She turned my head back to her and waited until I looked into her dark eyes. “Are you listening?”

“Sure.” I knitted my brows. “Umm…what did you say?”

Suspicious now, she looked down the hallway but of course found nothing that explained my distraction. “Are you all right, Chris?” She laughed her flirtatious laugh, though it sounded somewhat abrasive.

“Of course.”

“You seemed a little sidetracked for a moment.”

If we included trig in my record of mental absence today, it was not just for a moment, it seemed. “It’s nothing,” I lied, not intending to ruin a possible date with Lauren by mentioning another girl. “So, this afternoon?”

Head tilted to the side, she deliberately cleared her throat. “I just said I can’t this afternoon. How about tomorrow?”

Tomorrow. Right. Not as good as today, but at least it was something to look forward to. “Tomorrow then.”

“Chris…are you really okay?”

“Absolutely.” I shook my head with a grin, mostly to forget the swaying hips of geek Sue, slung my arm around Lauren’s shoulders, and steered her to our seats in the back of the classroom.

At the beginning of the lesson, Mrs. Sanchez returned our homework assignments, dropping the papers on everybody’s desks. When she gave me back my homework, she nodded, positively surprised. “I knew it was a good idea to team you up with Miss Parker-Lee as your tutor,” she told me with a proud smile.

I couldn’t stop wondering whether her smile would waver just a tiny bit if she actually knew how much body contact was involved in that tutoring. Subtly turning my head to Lauren, I waggled my brows and knew by her suppressed giggle that she was thinking exactly the same. Yep, definitely a good idea to
team up
with her.

After Spanish was lunch. Finally. I took a relaxing breath and walked to the cafeteria to eat with my friends. A table behind the swing doors to the right was dedicated to the geek squad. Walking extra slowly, I checked them out and tried to catch what they were talking about. Their excited chatter had never made it to my attention before, mostly because nerds didn’t do it for me, and now that I was actually listening in, they bored me to hell. All about Newton and theories about freezing milk. Because that was so important when you were a teenager trying to spend the undoubtedly best years of your life in an unforgettable way.

I watched them for another minute, silently munching my burger as I sat with my team around a table close to the entrance. Strangely enough, the nerd table was full, but Susan Miller wasn’t with them. Maybe she was on a different schedule and her lunch break was an hour later or even earlier than mine.

The idea irritated me. I would have loved to catch a glimpse of her interacting with my brother, and lunch break was the only time of the day that Ethan and I were in the same room. Curiosity killed the cat, all right, but seeing them together could help me solve the to-be-gay-or-not-to-be-gay riddle about him.

Well, no such luck. She wasn’t sitting at his table, and I didn’t see her for the rest of the day either.

Since I didn’t have basketball practice on Wednesdays, I went home after seventh period, changed into black sweatpants, practiced some dunking in the backyard, and started doing homework an hour later. It wasn’t until I’d finished my English essay that I remembered the CD in my backpack. I hadn’t even taken a closer look when Susan had given it to me, so I was curious what she wanted Ethan to listen to and rummaged around between my books to find it.

Volbeat
. What the hell was that?

I put the CD into my computer. Moments later, a few rocky chords blasted from the surround sound attached. A metal band. And they were actually good. If that was geek Sue’s taste in music, she had me just slightly impressed—again.

The second song hadn’t finished when I heard my brother coming home from his newly found after-school activities, aka soccer practice. I paused the CD and headed out into the hallway. Leaning against the wall while he slipped out of his shoes and tossed his sweaty shirt into the laundry basket in the bathroom, I said, “Hey, E.T.”

“Hi, bro,” he replied with as much interest as he had in turnips. Well, he didn’t yet know what stunning news awaited him.

“Who’s Susan Miller?” There was just a hint of teasing in my voice.

“A girl from school.”

What? That was all? No looking up, no curiosity, no emotion whatsoever? He so wasn’t into this girl.

“Wow. I thought you’d have a little more to tell about her.”

Now he did look at me, head cocked, interest spiked just a little. “Why? Do you know her?”

“Ran into her yesterday. And again today. Wild little thing, isn’t she?”

“Maybe. I don’t know her that well.” He shrugged it off and that was that. Ethan actually passed me in the hall and went to his room.

“Wait!” I shouted after him. “Don’t you want to know what she said?”

His look more skeptical than nonchalant this time, he turned around once more. “
Should
I want to know? Since she ran into you, I guess you’re hooking up with her now.”

What the hell? “No, I’m not. I thought
you
were.”

The next words he mumbled so low that I couldn’t be sure if I’d heard him right. “She stood me up.”

“Well, she gave me her number today. Said I should pass it on to you.”

There was a definite lift in his gloomy look. “Really?”

“Yep. And she gave me a CD, too.”

“Cool. Can I have it?”

“Umm…in a little while. I started listening to it while you were gone, and I’d like to finish.” Ethan couldn’t help that. If he wanted the CD now, he would have to fight me for it, and I was simply the stronger brother. However, I wasn’t a complete asshole and added with a grin, “But I’ll turn up the volume extra loud so you can listen as well.”

“Why did I know it would go something like that?” He laughed and went to get fresh clothes from his room to take with him to shower. When he came back, he asked, “Are you going to give me her number then?”

“I have it on my phone. I’ll send it to you in a minute.”

“Okay.” He slammed the bathroom door in my face, and three seconds later the sound of water raining down on the tub drifted out.

I turned around, about to walk back to my room, but instead I faced a beaming, red-cheeked mom.

“Is that true?” she whispered. “Is Ethan dating a girl?”

Oh man, the
mom
ster was awake. “No, Mom, I don’t think he’s dating anyone. But that girl seems to be interested in him, and she told me to tell him to call her.”

“Oh! At long last!” She clasped her fingers together, very obviously trying not to clap her hands in excitement.

“Get a grip, Mom!” I laughed, not bothering to be as quiet as her. But then I pushed her back into the kitchen, where she’d emerged from. “The girl’s weird. I’m not sure you’d really want her as Ethan’s girlfriend.”

The edges of her mouth sank. “What do you mean ‘weird’?”

“Well, I talked to her today, and she was really…unfriendly.”

“Oh.” She pivoted to the sink and wiped her hands on the dishtowel lying on the counter, even though her hands weren’t wet. “But maybe that was just a mistake. What if he really likes her?”