Time Between Us (3 page)

I look past them, watching him. If he’s noticed the three of us talking about him, sizing him up, he never lets on.

“I know!” Danielle says, and I peek up at her with optimistic eyes. “Go up and ask him.”

I roll my eyes at her encouraging smile, but before I can even reply, I hear Emma say, “Good idea.” She slaps her palms on the table and pushes herself to standing, with an emphatic “Let’s just go get this sorted.”

“What? No!” I shove my hair behind my ears. “Please don’t. I swear if you go over there, I am not speaking to you.”

She stops and turns on her heel. “I’m helping.”

I grit my teeth and stare her down. “Emma. Atkins. Seriously; please don’t.”

Emma walks back to our table. “Look, he was watching you and he creeped you out and now he’s acting like it never even happened. I want to know why.” She turns and starts back toward him, and before I have time to consider bolting from the room, she reaches his table. Danielle and I watch, frozen and lame, as Emma invades his space with a little wave. They shake hands and exchange a few words before she points back in our direction.

He dog-ears his page and stuffs the book into his backpack, then grabs his tray and follows a beaming Emma to our table. I’d probably get more than detention if I reached out and strangled her upon arrival, but that doesn’t stop me from considering it.

“Ladies”—Emma extends her arms toward our guest—“this is Bennett Cooper.”

He smiles at the two of us and then looks expectantly back at Emma.

“Take a seat here.” She pulls an empty chair out from the table and returns to her own. “So, Bennett, this is Danielle. And this”—she pauses in a pathetic attempt at dramatic effect—“is our track star.” She gestures toward me, and Bennett’s eyes follow until they rest on mine.

“Cross-country,” I correct her.

“Whatever.” Emma shrugs at me and turns her attention back to Bennett. “She’s a runner.” She twists in her chair to face him straight on. “But you already knew that, right?” Her accusatory glare is fierce and unrelenting.

Oh. Dear. God.

He looks at her, then back at me, then back at her. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Didn’t you two see each other at the Northwestern track this morning, Bennett?” she asks, sharp and critical, like a lawyer cross-examining her witness. Emma rests her hand on my shoulder. “She runs there at the crack of dawn. She saw you there. You were watching her.”

Yes. Emma is going to die.

“Northwestern?” He furrows his brow and stares at us. Like he’s never heard of the university that dominates this town. “I’m sorry, but that’s impossible. I just moved here over the weekend. I’ve barely seen
this
campus, let alone the university.” He looks straight at me and smiles—kind and sincere, like he’s telling the truth—and even though it’s not the same smile, it’s much closer to the one he shot me at the track. Close enough to make me all the more certain I’ve got the right guy. “You must have me confused with someone else.”

I don’t. I stare at him with nervous anticipation, waiting for him to tell me he’s just kidding and reach across the table to give me a friendly punch in the arm. But he just sits there. Looking at me like this is the first time he’s ever seen me. And like maybe I’m nuts. “Are you sure? You were wearing a parka,” I finally say.

There it is again. His smile is still tinged with confusion, still lacking any sort of recognition, but it’s warm. Sweet. The
same
. “I’m sorry, I don’t own a parka,” he says. “It wasn’t me.” I want to believe him, but I can’t, and when I look over at Emma, she’s still wearing a questioning expression that makes me think she doesn’t either.

Still, I decide to let him off the hook, and I try to match the warmth in his eyes. “You just look…exactly like him. I guess I was mistaken.” I hope my expression is masking my lie. And my embarrassment. I reach across the table. “I’m Anna.”

He was already reaching his hand forward to meet mine, but it stops midway. “Anna?” He stares at me in disbelief. “Your name is Anna?”

“Ummm, yes.…Should it be something else?” I say, surprised to hear a flirtatious inflection creeping into my voice.

“So now her
name
rings a bell!” Emma says to Danielle, far too loudly.

He’s still staring at me, and for just a split second, I see a trace of recognition in his expression that reminds me of the look he gave me at the track this morning. But then he snaps out of it and reaches for my hand again.

“Nice to meet you, Anna.” Now his voice sounds forced, his handshake is stiff, and anything that looked like recognition has been replaced by a certain stoniness. He lets my hand go and turns to Emma and Danielle, giving each of them a formal nod. “Nice to meet you, too.” He stands and carries his tray to the garbage bin in the middle of the room, and I see him shake his head as he walks out through the double doors and disappears into The Donut.

“Okay,
that
was weird.” Emma sighs. “But at least it’s done.” She brushes her hands together as if she’d just completed a nasty chore.

I know she only wanted to protect me, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about looking like an idiot. Words like
beyond awkward
and
mortifying
and
why?
pop into my brain, and I want to turn them into cohesive sentences and spit them out; but I can’t think straight. Besides, Emma knows that I’m nothing if not true to my word: I’m no longer speaking to her.

The little bundle of bells that has been hanging on the bookstore door as long as I can remember makes its jingle, and Dad looks up from behind the counter. I lug my backpack over to him and let it land with a thunk.

“What happened to you?” His voice is full of concern.

I left without saying good-bye to Emma and walked two miles through the frozen tundra. My teeth are still chattering, my face is red and chapped from the wind, and there’s not a pencil on earth large enough to wrangle my curls into place at this point. “Nothing.” I smooth out my hair and distract him with a question. “Has it been slow all day?”

He glances around the empty bookstore my grandfather bought when he retired from teaching at Northwestern fifteen years ago. “Typical March. It’ll pick up after finals.”

Dad watches as I remove a T-shirt from my bag to change into, then extract textbook after textbook and pile them on the desk. “Good God, how many books can you fit in there? That backpack’s like a clown car.” He laughs, but I know he’s genuinely perplexed by how different my high school experience at Westlake Academy seems from the one he had at Evanston Township.

“You’re the one who wanted me to go to that fancy school,” I remind him as I wave one of my heftier books in the air.

He grabs it, grimaces like it’s far too heavy for him to lift, and lets it crash onto the desk. “You’re a rock star.” He kisses me on the forehead and heads for the door. “It’s supposed to start snowing soon,” he says, zipping his parka and wrapping his scarf around his neck. “Give me a call if you want a ride home, okay?”

“It’s only three blocks, Dad.”

“And I know you’re fearless and indestructible, but call me if you change your mind, okay?”

I roll my eyes. “Dad. Three blocks.”

He’s just about to push the glass door open when I realize that tomorrow morning’s walk will be much longer. And colder.

“Hey, Dad.” He turns around, one hand resting on the metal bar of the glass door. “I’ll take a ride to school in the morning…if that’s okay?”

“Oh. Does Emma have a doctor’s appointment or something?”

“No.”

He looks like he’s about to ask me what’s going on, but he must decide against it, because he just shrugs and says, “Sure,” and the little bells jingle behind him.

“What am I doing?” I ask out loud as I add a second layer of lip gloss. Staring into the girls’ bathroom mirror, I apply a coat of mascara, then roll my eyes at my reflection.

So he’s cute. That hardly makes him worth the considerable effort it took me to decide on lip gloss this morning. I’m not a makeup-in-the-bathroom kind of girl, and I feel like I’ve lost it completely. Yesterday, I thought I was crazy because I was seeing things. I think I prefer that crazy over this one.

As I leave the bathroom and head to fourth period, I start to feel it—the adrenaline rush that I usually associate with the last half mile of a race. I stop outside the classroom for a moment to catch my breath and remind myself to enter the way I planned—looking cool and disinterested. I shake out my arms, rock my head back and forth, and take one last breath before I walk through the door.

I spot Bennett right away. He’s reclining in his chair, twisting his pencil back and forth between his fingers. I expect him to look away when we make eye contact, but he doesn’t. In fact, his face seems to brighten, like he’s happy to see me or something. Then he looks down, still smiling to himself, and starts doodling. He doesn’t look up again.

I take my seat and let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. For something to do, I start extracting my homework from my backpack while everyone else ambles in.

When the bells rings, Argotta throws his arms high in the air and shouts, “Pop quiz!” Thankfully, the chorus of collective groans and the noise of paper being ripped from notebooks drowns out the sound of my heart pounding against my rib cage.

My palms are sweating, and I’m pretty sure the heat from my body alone is about to make my curls frizz up. Without thinking, I sweep my hair back, gather it into a ponytail, twist it around my finger, and hold it in place at the top of my head with one hand while I search through my backpack for a clip. I feel books, a collection of gum wrappers, a roll of Certs, a jewel case, but no clip, no hair band. I look over at the pencil on my desk, which always works in a bind, but I have only one and I need it for the test. My elevated arm is falling asleep and I’m just about to give up when I hear a noise behind me.

“Pssst.”

I whirl around, still holding a handful of hair.

Maybe it’s because he’s leaning so far forward he’s practically lying on top of his desk, but he seems so much closer to me right now than he did yesterday. Or perhaps it’s not only his physical proximity; it’s also the combination of the distance and the expression on his face. His eyes aren’t vacant like they were when I stared him down in class yesterday, or confused like they were when my best friend accused him of being a creepy stalker. Today his eyes are soft, like they’re smiling completely on their own, and I notice that they’re an interesting shade of smoky blue, dotted with little gold flecks that catch and reflect the light. When I finally realize what I am doing—staring into his eyes like a complete moron—I lower my gaze to his mouth to find that it’s not only his eyes that are smiling. His mouth is too. Like he’s amused. Like he’s laughing at me. And that’s when I realize I’m missing something.

He points with his chin, attempting to direct my attention away from his face and toward the hand he’s been extending in my direction this entire time. The one holding a pencil.

I look at it, and then back at his eyes, puzzled. Then understanding takes over, and I reach forward and take it from him.

Thanks
, I mouth.

I turn toward the front of the room, stick the pencil through my hair, and get self-conscious when I realize that in the process I’m revealing the flush creeping up the back of my neck. I take a deep breath and force myself to pay attention to the quiz, which has already begun, but I can’t stop the smile creeping onto my face.

He
was
paying attention to me yesterday. He noticed me put my hair up.

It’s probably just a plain yellow Dixon Ticonderoga number two pencil—exactly the same as the one I’m using to complete this ridiculous quiz—but perched in my hair, holding the strands in place, it feels a lot like what we had at the track yesterday: a connection.

Somehow I’ve managed to go all day without running into Emma. Until now.

I just finished track practice and I’m walking out of the locker room, heading for the student lot and chatting with a few of my teammates, when I see her. She’s striding toward her car with her field hockey stick swinging by her side as she moves, and even though I assume she broke into a sweat at some point you’d never know now. Her makeup looks perfect, and her knit cap and gloves match the piping on her warm-up suit. I look down at my sweats. I came straight out of the shower, towel-dried my hair, and piled it under a baseball cap to keep it from freezing on my walk home.

“I’ll get the heat going!” she yells when she sees me. After she opens the door and starts the engine, she gets out of the car and relaxes against the hood, waiting for me.

I take a quick look up at the sky and see a mass of dark clouds moving into formation, preparing to send down fury in the form of hard snow. I look down again and see Emma, smiling and beckoning. For just a split second, my resolve melts a little and I picture myself collapsing into the heated seat. I really don’t want to walk home. But there is no way,
no way
, I’m letting her off that easy.

I keep walking with the group, straight past her car.

“Anna!” I can hear the shock and hurt in her voice. “Wait.” The sound of her tennis shoes padding cautiously behind me closes in and I pick up my pace a little. “Seriously, can’t you just stop and talk to me? I’m trying to apologize.” My teammates look at me and then at one another. I wave them on and slow down so Emma can catch up.

She grabs me by the shoulder. “I really am sorry.” Her remorse looks genuine and her British accent makes her sound so sincere that I’m tempted to throw my arms around her and forgive her without another word. But I haven’t forgotten how mortified I felt yesterday, how she made a fool of me. And so instead, I just stare at her.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats, and hugs me. I want to hug her back but instead stand rigid.

Her grip loosens, and when she steps back from me I can see how hurt she looks. But then her expression softens and she reaches forward, takes my face in her hands, and squeezes my cheeks in a soft-mittened vise grip. “I was an ass. Please don’t be mad at me anymore. I simply can’t take it.”

I let out a sigh. “That was really uncool.” My voice comes out garbled since she’s now squeezing so hard my lips are pursed in a fish face.

“I know. But you love me anyway, right?” She wiggles my cheeks. “Right? Just a little?” And that’s all it takes. Because I do. When I try not to laugh, my lips must look even funnier, because Emma lets out a snort, and that makes us both crack up.

She finally stops squeezing, but keeps holding my face. “I really am sorry. I just got carried away. I wasn’t trying to embarrass you.”

I bite my lip. “You did.”

“I know.”

“Please don’t do it again.”

“I won’t,” she says with a smile and a hard shake of her head. She grips my shoulders and air-kisses each of my cheeks. They still feel red from all the squeezing. “Can we get in the car now?” She clenches her jaw and shivers.

When I nod, she leads me to the Saab. She even opens my door and ushers me in before going around to her side and taking her place behind the wheel.

“Where to?” she asks. “Want to grab a coffee?”

“I can’t. It’s Tuesday.”

“Right, family dinner night.” She backs out into the nearly empty parking lot. We’re silent for a few seconds, and I think she’s going to reach over and crank the stereo like she always does, but instead she turns to me. “So, do you still think the new guy was the one watching you at the track?”

I shrug. “I don’t know.” I start to tell Emma about the pencil, but I stop myself. To someone who already considers him creepy, it might sound weird rather than charming. Come to think of it, perhaps
I
should have found it weird rather than charming. I reach up and touch the top of my head, having forgotten that I’m now wearing a baseball cap and the pencil is tucked safely in my backpack.

“Do you want my opinion?” Emma asks.

“Do I have a choice?”

“No. Stay away from him. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something…off about him.”

“Oh, come on. That’s just because of the track thing. He made it clear he’d never been to Northwestern. I must have been wrong.” I’m not sure why I’m defending him, and I’m still sure I am
not
wrong, but I think I sound pretty convincing.

“What about how he reacted to your name?”

Yeah. That was weird. I shrug.

“Look at you. You think he’s cute.” She draws out the words as her accent intensifies.

“I don’t even know him.”

“You don’t have to know him to think he’s cute.”

“Sure I do.” I glare at her. “I’m just…curious about him, that’s all.” But if I’m being completely honest, Emma may be right. I exchanged a few meaningless glances and a pencil with him, and that somehow gave him the right to creep into my head and settle there.

The car skids to a stop in front of the house, leaving a two-foot space between my door and the snow-covered sidewalk. Emma turns to face me. “I missed you this morning, by the way.”

“Me too.” I finally reach over and hug her. I get out of the car and shut the door behind me, and she peels away, kicking up a flurry of dirty snow.

“Grab a knife!” Mom’s singsong holler carries from the kitchen into the hallway, over Pavarotti’s booming tenor. I follow the tantalizing smell of roasting peppers and onions and see Mom hard at work in the kitchen.

“Hi, honey!” Mom looks up with a smile and returns to her sauce. She’s wearing a black apron over her scrubs, and her dark curls—the ones she passed down to me—are piled into a clip on top of her head, though a few loose ringlets have escaped to frame her face. She hums along with the Italian music as she draws a blade through ripe tomatoes. “Can you start slicing the mozzarella?” She uses her knife to point at the ball of slimy white cheese on the counter. “How was school?”

I twist around to watch Mom slide the last of the tomatoes into the stockpot, give them a little stir, and take a seat on one of the bar stools facing me. She rests her elbows on the counter, and I stop cutting to glance up at her. She’s waiting for me to tell her everything, because it’s Tuesday—the day we cook and I tell her who’s dating whom, who’s fighting with whom, and who’s not quite cutting it on the track. Then I ask her what’s going on at the hospital, and even though I imagine it’s all fairly mundane, and often a sad place to spend a day, she makes it sound like she works on the set of
ER
, crafting dramatic stories about people who have pulled through even when there seemed to be no hope, and doctors who flirt with nurses, and patients who flirt with doctors. I’m glad she enjoys her job, especially since I know the only reason she went back to work was to help cover my Westlake tuition. It was my parents’ idea to send me there, but it takes two salaries to pay for it. Tuesday-night dinner is pretty much all they ask for in return.