The Trouble with Dating Sue (Grover Beach Team #6) (4 page)

“Maybe he
is
interested in her. But that doesn’t mean you should get your hopes up. Don’t push him, Mom,” I warned. Especially since he hadn’t seemed in the least concerned about Susan Miller five minutes ago.

As I opened the fridge and retrieved a can of Sprite, a random thought journeyed through my mind. Would he have been be a little more excited if I’d told him about a
guy
wanting him to call? That was probably a topic neither of us would ever stop speculating about. Not until he told us the truth about him being gay—or came home with a girl on his arm, for that matter.

I popped the cap and took a long drink, then wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “You know how he’s going to crawl back into his shell if you bring it up again.” We’d had
silent Ethan
long enough after Will’s accusations last spring. I really didn’t want a brother who wasn’t talking to anybody again. Things had just gone back to normal in the fall. Comfortable. “I want to keep happy Ethan.” The brother who loved playing basketball with me in the yard, not the mulling and hiding one.

Mom needed to accept that she couldn’t help him make a decision in this. Whatever that decision was going to be, she would love Ethan all the same. And if this was only about the grandchildren Mom hoped for one day, I would give her a barn full, if it made her happy. Just not before I was forty, I decided, as I abandoned the mother ship and returned to my room.

“I’m off to work in half an hour. Last-minute call from a client,” her voice drifted after me. “You guys have to fend for yourselves tonight, but I’ll leave you some pizza money.”

“Okay!” I shouted back before closing the door. My finger on the computer mouse, I was about to restart the CD when I remembered I still had to send Ethan the nerd’s number.

I flung myself into the dark purple, comfy chair in the middle of the room and scrolled through the entries on my contacts list down to
Weird Geek
. Hmm, what would Ethan talk about with this crazy little imp? I’d never actually seen him do it, so I just couldn’t picture him flirting with a girl. And snappy Susan Miller could definitely do with a little flirting to loosen up.

In fact, she also deserved a little something for stamping her graffiti on my arm today and forcing me to almost scratch my skin off.

Here was her number—who said
I
couldn’t use it?

I chuckled to myself and, instead of sending Ethan her number, pressed the call button.

SUE’S ANXIOUS VOICE drifted through the line. “Hello?”

“Hey, sweetness,” I drawled in greeting, knowing she’d recognize me straight away with that form of address. Talking to her this time would be fun, but I wanted her to know who I was and not confuse me with Ethan again.

Her disappointed groan, though, cut the fun immediately. “Why are you calling me, Chris?”

Really, it should’ve been obvious. “Because you gave me your number.”

“I didn’t give it to
you
.”

“No?” I stared at the faint blue remnants of her phone number on my skin. “The handwriting on my forearm objects.”

A pause, followed by a deep sigh, then she elaborated, “Fine. I didn’t give it to you to
call
me.” Yes, that much I’d figured, but it didn’t matter. I enjoyed speaking to her. Probably more than I should. “Where’s your brother?” she demanded.

“Last time I checked, he was in his room.”

“Get him on the phone, please, will you?”

Nuh-uh. She wasn’t getting rid of me that fast, not when I hadn’t had a chance to bring up the painful scrubbing of my arm as of yet. “That means I have to get up and walk over there. I don’t think I’m in the mood to do that just now.”

“Then why did you call me?” She sounded close to giving up and tossing the phone out her window.

Her sweet frustration made me laugh. “I told you, because you gave me your number.”

“Not that again,” she whined.

“Fine…” Lowering my tone, I reverted to a seductive voice. “Then maybe to ask you to go out with me?”

“What?” she screeched into the phone. Then, in an exasperated huff, she added, “You must be kidding me!”

Of course, I was. What would I do with a nerd on a date? But taunting her was fun. “Nope. Why would I?”

“Because I want to talk to your brother and not you, to begin with. And aren’t you supposed to be dating Lara?”

“Hmmm, who’s Lara?” Did she think I had a girlfriend? Because I didn’t.

“Asian supermodel?” Sue snorted. “Long black hair?”

“Oh, you mean Lauren?” I concluded. “Well, I did date her yesterday. And I might again sometime.” Although the word “dating” probably had a different meaning in my books than in hers. “But there’s always a free spot in my calendar to squeeze you in, sweetness,” I kept teasing.

“Are you actually mental?” she blurted, putting real emphasis on the words:
are
,
you
,
actually
, and
mental
.

“I hope not.” Biting back a snicker, I said in the most serious tone I could manage, “Why? Are you not a safe girl to date?”

“I’m the
perfect
girl to date, just not for you, dumbass!” she barked into the phone.

Dumbass? Really? Now I couldn’t hold back the chuckle any longer. “Aw, don’t say that, little Sue. You don’t know me yet.”

“And God willing, I never will. Please, go get Ethan now and stop wasting my time.”

Oh, so curt and professional. She could be a great lawyer in a few years. “All right, you win.” I laughed and added just for good measure, “But tell you what. If it doesn't work out between you and Ethan, which I know it won’t”—
because he just doesn’t seem interested in girls the way you’re hoping for, Little Miss Sunshine
—“you let me take you on a date. Deal?”

Sue’s voice was stone-cold as she told me, “When hell freezes over.”

As far as that went, last summer Theresa Alber had asserted that she’d only let me do her when hell froze over, too. Since I slept with her on Halloween, I supposed hell was a chilly place by now. “That happens more often than you think, sweetness,” I drawled. Rising from my chair, I walked out of my room and knocked on Ethan’s door.

Without waiting for an invitation, I entered and tossed him the phone. “Call for you.”

Ethan, who seemed to have started his homework after the shower, leaned back in his swivel chair and held the cell to his ear, giving me an odd look. “Hello?” he said somewhat curiously into the phone.

“By the way, she said thanks for the latte,” I shouted over my shoulder before I left the two sweethearts to themselves. Pulling the door closed behind me, I couldn’t bring my legs to move. Normally not big on eavesdropping, this time I just couldn’t resist. My possibly gay brother had a girl on the phone. I needed to know what was happening. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear much because Ethan spoke so low. Did he suspect I was listening in? Nah, doubtful.

When the door suddenly opened, my heart gave a start. I stood guiltily frozen in the hallway and met Ethan’s gaze as he came out of his room. He studied me for a moment. Then he cracked up laughing and held out my cell. “Are you spying on me?”

“Umm…” At least he took it in good humor. “I was—”

“Snooping?” Ethan finished as I tucked my phone into my pocket. “I can see that. So to make it easier for you, Susan is coming over now.”

My eyes grew wide with surprise. “You invited her?”

“Yes.”

“Over
here
?”

“Yes.”

“To do what?”

Ethan shrugged. “Hang out. Watch some TV maybe. Why? What do
you
do with the girls you have over?”

Oh, brother… I pursed my lips, arched a brow, and let Ethan figure out the answer for himself.

“Ah, right. Well, I’m not going to mack on her all evening, if that’s what you want to hear.”

“Not even a little?” I heard myself say, even though that was not what I wanted to ask. Or it was, but it was also the wrong thing to
say
.

Once again, Ethan surprised me by laughing, totally untouched by my probing. “No, I don’t think even a little. Susan’s a girl I met just this week. You do know that boys and girls can hang out and have fun without dropping their pants, right?”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.” I was serious. When I wanted to play foosball or watch a movie without making out in the dark, I invited one of the guys over, not a girl. How could Ethan—the person I’d shared a womb with for nine months—be so much different from me? But I didn’t quite yet believe he had absolutely no intentions with this girl, so I gave it one last try. “You really aren’t interested in her in any way?”

“She’s a friend.”

Right, let’s put that theory to the test. “And if, let’s say, someone else asked her out?” Tucking my hands into the pockets of my sweats, I shrugged. “Would that bother you?”

He gave it serious thought for exactly two seconds. Then he shook his head. “Nope. She’s free to pick whoever she wants.”

That was fairly disappointing news. I spun around and walked back to my room, but he called out my name, making me glance back. “Can I have Susan’s CD now?” he asked, still amused from our very disillusioning conversation.

Like he had, I gave it two seconds of serious deliberation, then said, “Nope,” and grinned. “But I’ll turn up the volume again, so you and Sue can listen, too.”

Ethan rolled his eyes, slightly less amused.

With the music blasting from the speakers, I popped a mint, which I had a box of sitting on my desk, in my mouth, sprawled out in my comfy chair again, and opened my Spanish book to prepare for next week’s test and the informal lesson with Lauren tomorrow. Gee, learning Spanish was so not what I wanted to do right now.
Estoy aburrido. Estas aburrido. Es aburrido.
Snorting, I continued to conjugate in my mind how bored everybody was. When I had that down pretty well, I tried to conjugate how lame my brother was next.

A loud bang jerked me out of my studies a little later. I looked up and was completely stunned. The textbook nearly slipped from my fingers. It took me a moment to catch myself, then an intrigued smile pulled at the corners of my mouth.

What the deuce did Susan Miller want in my room?

I couldn’t even ask her because the music was so loud, but since she’d shut the door, I was sure she’d sought me out for a reason. My eyes fastened on Sue’s shy face, I rose from the chair, dropped the textbook, and went to turn down the volume. Her gaze followed like it was glued on me—and it was focused on my bare chest for a good deal of that time.

“Um, hi,” she croaked when we could hear our own words again.

The first thing I noticed was the absence of her glasses. Her eyes really were a vibrant green. They were beautiful. Big, warm and, right now, a little insecure.

“Sorry for breaking into your room.” Her shoulders twitched with a reluctant shrug as she grimaced. “Sort of.”

I prowled toward her. Where was Ethan? Did he send her for the CD?

Since she stood there, all lost and lonely in my room, I took a moment to let my gaze roam over her body. She wore the same lemongrass-green tee from school. Not exactly revealing, that rag. The girls I usually spent time with made an effort to show as much of their curves as possible. Sue presented nothing. At all. Her collar was cut wide and loose, but she wore it so that it showed more of her bare shoulders than the upper curves of her breasts. It left a lot of room for imagination. Weird how that imagination kicked in right now.

After taking a deep, encouraging breath, she told me, “Your mom let me in.”

And there I knew. She hadn’t even seen Ethan yet. Once again, she’d found the wrong twin, and she was totally clueless. I suppressed a chuckle as she explained, “She called you, but with that noise fending off the cats and dogs of the neighborhood, I get it that you didn’t hear—”

This time, with a little mercy, I placed a hand over her mouth before she could shoot herself in the foot again. Science club or not, this girl had lips as soft as cotton candy. Putting my index finger in front of my lips, I made it plain to her that she’d said enough.

Deep breaths through her nose feathered against the back of my hand. The shock in her eyes was priceless. Having her in my room like this, I just couldn’t resist teasing her. I took my hand away from her mouth and said in a low, seductive voice, “I didn’t expect you to jump at my offer so fast.” My lips stretched into a smile. “Especially after you turned me down so mercilessly on the phone.”

First she just stared at me, incredulous. Then she moaned. “Nooo. Chris?”

“The very same.”

Sue took a step back to distance herself from me and demanded with fierce reproach, “Why are you listening to my CD?”

Oh, that was a good question. “I could tell you, but you might not like the answer.”

Completely ignoring my good intentions, she arched her eyebrows, demanding I tell her anyway. So I closed the distance between us again and leaned down to speak softly in her ear. “Because you gave it to me.”

When she sighed with exasperation, her breath tickled my bare chest. “That, as well as my number,” she snarled, emphasizing every word, “you should have passed on to Ethan. Why didn’t you?”

Well, her annoyance, if nothing else, spurned me on to taunt her a little more. I rubbed a strand of her hair between my fingers, feeling the silky softness. It made me think really strange things. Things that I’d never done with a nerd before. “I wanted to learn what taste you have in music, so I know what to put on when we make out on my bed.”

Sue swatted my hand away. “In case you haven’t figured it out all by yourself, let me make it clear now: You have a screw loose.”

To put it mildly
, I thought as I pictured how I was going to silence that girl with a hot kiss she certainly wasn’t used to from her former geek boyfriends.

“More importantly, it’s considered rude to hit on someone who actually came to see your brother.”

No worries about that, sweetness. Ten minutes ago, he was totally fine with you hooking up with someone else.

“Why? You think he’ll be mad?” I teased, grinning at her obvious and unrequited interest in my twin brother. My possibly
gay
twin brother, to be clear. “You think he’ll date you?”

For the first time, worry crept into her eyes. “Why, don’t you?”

At this point it was really hard to say, but I doubted it very much. I couldn’t say that straight to her face, of course. That was Ethan’s job. I wasn’t going to
out
him to anyone. What kind of brother would that make me?

Deliberating a respectful retreat, I stroked my chin with my thumb and forefinger. “In fact, I think I’ll just watch for a while and let myself be entertained by how things go from here.” Should be quite an interesting show. I winked at her, then took her by her shoulders, and turned her around to face the closed door. Gentleman that I was, I even leaned forward and opened it for her.

Sue let me steer her out of my room and five steps down the hall to Ethan’s door. I opened that for her as well, because by now I deemed her too shocked to manage by herself.

Ethan lounged on his bed, playing Wii. He looked up when I gently pushed our guest into his room, but his smile was noncommittal. They really were only friends—at least as far as he was concerned.