Not me, obviously.
But other girls.
Okay, sometimes he made me drool too. Like when he took off his shirt off for practice. Or when he stopped smirking for long enough to flash a real, genuine, heart-stopping smile. But mostly, he made me consider murder in the first degree.
Unphased by my tone, he leaned forward and I got a whiff of him. I wrinkled my nose, expecting the strong smell of booze. Instead, I inhaled clean soap and the faint hint of laundry detergent.
“This isn’t your scene, Ruby. What are you doing here?”
Again, anyone else in our class would have been aggressive when kicking me out of their party, but he was only openly curious. Not that it would last. Eventually, our moment of neutrality would break and one of us would strike.
Hopefully, it would be me.
Hopefully, I would draw blood.
“Congratulations,” I deflected. “Salutatorian. That’s a big deal. I thought for sure Kristen had it in the bag.”
He narrowed his eyes. I could have sworn it was to stop the eye roll I knew he wanted to let loose. His perfect, perky, popular cheerleader girlfriend was probably the very last on the list of award-winning candidates and he knew it.
“Make fun of her all you want, Dawson. But we both know she would have given a hell of a speech.”
His gaze flicked to where she stood in a group of clones, pumping her fist in the air, shouting, “Chug! Chug! Chug!”
Sucking in my bottom lip, I felt the sting of his subtle insult. He was referring to my valedictorian speech. And how badly the short, insincere, mumbling I’d managed had bombed. What could I say? Public speaking was so not my thing.
Being in public, in general, wasn’t my thing.
Maybe it was time to start drinking. Er, continue drinking.
Reading my mind like he was sometimes unexplainably able to do, he added, “Don’t feel bad, Ruby. That’s what everyone expected.”
God, I wanted to kick him in the shins.
And then the balls.
But I refrained. Because, despite my upbringing, I was a lady.
Also, I had no backup. My best friend Coco had abandoned me for a junior she’d been flirting with for the last three weeks. I was all alone in a sea of people that barely tolerated my existence, let alone my presence at one of their prestigious parties.
“You invited me,” I reminded him, trying to keep the panic from invading my careful disdain. If this had been a prank for him to humiliate me one last time, I would kill him. Or at least spread a rumor about his tiny penis and the three different types of STDs he carried.
“Oh, right,” he said, snapping his fingers.
I waited for more, for the shoe to drop or the guillotine to fall or something to happen, but he just stood there looking at me. “Why is that?” I finally asked. “Four years of parties, Levi, and this is the first one I’ve gotten a formal invitation to.”
“That’s not true. You’ve been invited before.”
“Not seriously.”
“Always seriously,” he countered. It was hard not to believe him when he looked at me like that, with his mossy green eyes intensely flashing and his jaw ticking with impatience.
I shrugged, pretending it was no big deal. “I came to see Logan,” I explained casually. “It’s probably the last time I’ll see him before I go off to college. I wanted to say goodbye.” My throat dried out at the possibility of seeing Levi’s older brother. He’d skipped college and enlisted right after high school. Two years our senior, he was everything this town looked up to. The Coles had given Clark City two celebrities. And now Logan was a war hero, at least in our small town’s eyes, which made him a demi-god or something.
Yet he wasn’t those things to me. He was just a friend and a nice guy that had always been kind to me.
Oh, and the love of my life. Maybe. Okay, I wasn’t totally sold on that. But I’d had a crush on him for as long as I could remember. Once I left for college, I had no plans to return to this town and so that meant if something was ever going to happen with Logan, it would have to happen now or never. Tonight was likely the last time he and I would happen to be in town at the same time before I left forever.
My last chance to cross the biggest item off my bucket list. Actually, two items. It was a short enough list that this party pretty much took care of everything. As long as I remained proactive.
