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She questioned him, “What are you doing? I didn’t even know you were at the party.”
Taylor stuffed his hands into his jacket and shrugged. When he turned his face away, her gaze fell onto his profile, his square jaw, and those impossibly long eyelashes against his masculine features.
He faced her, and she dropped her ogling gaze, listening to his words. “Everyone was coming, so I figured why not? But then I saw you leave.”
“Oh,” she whispered. “You followed me?”
He shrugged again. “Were you seriously going to walk home, or is someone picking you up?”
Analise hugged herself and stared at her muddy second-hand sneakers she’d found at Goodwill. “I was going to walk to the gas station and call my mom.”
“Why not borrow a phone?”
Because she was hoping to find the nearest bus route and avoid calling Ulla altogether.
But she didn’t need to explain because he said, “Can I take you home?”
She nodded, and he opened the passenger door for her.
When settled inside, Taylor handed her his iPod. “Pick something.”
Analise fumbled through it, hoping to hide her lack of tech-savviness. His music tastes were vast, many artists she didn’t recognize, but finally chose Evanescence.
“How are you doing, you know, with the concussion?”
“Okay, I think. Bright lights hurt a little, like the awful ones Ms. Camach keeps on in Civics, but otherwise . . . ” I feel like crying all the time. Like now. She blamed the morose lyrics of “My Immortal” and lowered the volume on the iPod.
He cleared his throat. “I hope Dave treats you well. That you have a good time with him. He’s . . . I don’t know.”
Analise watched his solid, sinewy hand shift the gear stick. “You convinced him to ask me out, didn’t you?”
His laugh was sharp and disbelieving.
“What?” she asked in defense.
“You really have no idea.” He shifted into fifth gear and accelerated the Jeep onto the freeway.
“Guess not.”
“Fine. Dave was giving me a hard time about knocking you out. All the guys were. I said he should ask you himself how you were doing, and then he reminded me, and everyone, how untouchable you are. So I bet him if he asked you to Homecoming, and you said yes, then he’d owe me a hundred dollars.”
Heat and pressure threatened to spill tears. “Did you get your money?”
“What? No!” said Taylor. “You both got what you wanted. I told him to keep it.”
Analise focused out the window on billboards and green exit signs affixed to overhead street bridges.
Taylor downshifted on a cloverleaf exit to change freeways. “He’s got a reputation for being a dick.”
“I thought you two were best friends.”
“We are. That’s how I can verify the reputation.”
Analise chewed her lip, the discomfort increasing, tightening her throat. “Untouchable? What does that even mean?”
Taylor accelerated into the merging lane. The freeway lights bobbed and weaved, passing over his face. “Who are your friends? I see you hang out with Missy, but that’s Missy, and maybe the cross-country team, but do you actually have any friends?”
“Why?” she said, hugging herself tightly, pinching her ribs to distract from what felt like a total insult. But Taylor’s tone conveyed the opposite. “I know that you must have open-enrolled to get into our school, so maybe it’s hard to hang out with people from Wayzata, but no one really knows you. You hang onto people like Missy Halverson, who’s nice enough, but let’s face it, her only aspiration in life is to be Homecoming queen. She’s more like a politician than a real friend.”
