CHAPTER 5 #2
I leaned forward, giving him my full attention. “Tell me about it. Tell me how you got started.”
Carter said it was simple. He’d seen other people do it and decided that if he had to study, he might as well enjoy it.
He’d said it’d been more fun than he’d thought, setting up a microphone to record himself flipping pages, scrawling along with his pencil, scribbling with his eraser.
It made him feel like he was accomplishing a lot, killing two birds with one stone, studying while also having fun.
“And it created a good habit when it came to studying in college,” Carter continued. “A good motivator. I can’t slack off, because I’m filming myself. I can edit out a sneeze, sure, but I can’t not study. Then I wouldn’t have a video.”
“You have no idea how much those videos have helped me stay consistent,” I told him as someone walked by. “I’m in the top five graduates of my class, and I give your videos the credit.”
Carter flushed further.
I didn’t hear him when he spoke again. I was too focused over his shoulder, where the person who’d walked by slid into the booth behind Carter; just one person. He sat with his back to me, but the partitions in the booths were low, and I could see his full head of hair.
His full head of bleached hair, with stubborn brown roots growing through.
You’ve got to be kidding.
“Eleanor?”
I ripped my gaze back to Carter. “I’m sorry. What was that?”
“I said the top of your class is very ambitious. And your college plans are all set, right? Mullhound?”
There was no way that was Beckham Jennings sitting behind Carter. No way. Even if he had eavesdropped on Saturday and heard the coffee invite, no way would he actually crash it. No way.
F-O-C-U-S. The word was easy, helping me get a grip.
“Right. Mullhound College for undergrad. Pre-Law. After that, Harvard for law school.” My future was as solid to me as if it’d been mapped out in stone.
It was easy to do when I had Dad’s path to guide me.
“My plan is to take summer semesters and graduate early.”
“Wow,” Carter echoed, eyes widening. “You are quite ambitious.”
Ambitious. Again. It was a strange word when he spoke it, like it meant something else.
“It is kind of a funny coincidence,” Carter went on, amused. “You’re going to Mullhound, where my father’s a professor with a dedicated pre-law mentorship.”
“I did want to meet Dr. Pembleton, even before I knew you were… you,” I insisted slowly, now checking every word out of my mouth because someone was definitely eavesdropping. It put me on edge.“It is a funny coincidence.”
Carter waved his hand lightly. “I believe you. And honestly? I’d love to introduce you to my father if it means getting you that leg up.
He brags about it all the time—that almost all of his mentees graduate from Mullhound with Harvard admissions.
” He lifted his drink. “We’ll get Eleanor Brighton on that list.”
A shiver worked down my spine. A-N-T-I-C-I-P-A-T-I-O-N.
“Lydia mentioned the same thing when we danced together,” Carter went on. “About my dad’s program.”
“Lydia?” I’d known she was going to Mullhound—quite a few seniors in the area were, as it was a good school close to home—but I hadn’t known what she’d been going for. “She’s interested in law?” She was copying me again?
“I guess so. My dad told her he doesn’t accept freshmen, but admired her tenacity.”
T-E-N-A-C-I-T-Y. Not a word for Lydia—a word for me. And she’d already met Dr. Pembleton, had even gotten a compliment from him. My breathing quickened.
The shoulders behind Carter bobbed with a quiet laugh, one that Carter paid no mind to—he probably didn’t even notice—but one I zeroed in on. It was faint, but I’d heard it. A ghost’s ghostly laugh.
“Carter,” I said, picking up my shaken espresso. “I’m feeling a little sick. Would you mind ordering us something to snack on?”
“Oh—oh, sure.” He fumbled to put his mocha down, nearly knocking it over. “What would you like?”
“Anything.”
Beck’s head tipped down. I imagined him grinning at his hands, preparing.
Carter rose from the booth and headed toward the front, where a small line had formed. I stared—glared—at the back of Beck’s head, waiting for him to look over his shoulder.
And then he did. With all the nonchalance in the world, Beck turned in his seat, the booth cracking with the movement. He laid his elbow over the booth partition, his electric eyes finding mine. He was smirking, and his lips parted to speak.
I didn’t let him. “Get lost,” I all but growled.
Beck slid his ringed fingers into his hair, leaning his head against his palm. “Don’t wanna.”
I actually gaped at the childish response.
“Quite ambitious.” Beck’s eyebrows came together as he smiled. “Only a dweeb like Pebble Brain could make that sound like an insult.”
P-E-B-B-L-E B-R-A-I-N. It was almost infuriating how long it took me to realize it was a play on Pembleton. “What are you even doing here?” Outrage caused my voice to go high. “Why would you show up—”
“Didn’t you listen?” Beck parted his hair to expose his ear, giving it a tap. Every piece of him moved so lazily, as if he wasn’t fighting against the clock of Carter returning to the booth. “I said I’d remind you what it’s like to really want someone.”
The words burned me now just as they had before, the audacity of the outrageous statement like a fire poker that’d been sitting in the coals. “Leave, Beckham. I mean it.”
“Don’t. Wanna.”
“I don’t care.” I watched as Beck’s eyes went past me, no doubt to where Carter stood in line. The thought of Carter seeing Beck here, unraveling pieces of the truth I’d buried, caused my stomach to cramp again. “It’s highly inappropriate that you—”
“Highly inappropriate. So you really do talk like that all the time?” He wrinkled his nose. “This kind of feels more like an interview than a date. I’ve only been sitting down a minute, and I’m ready to fall asleep.”
I could’ve told him how Carter and I agreed that this wasn’t a date. Could’ve. But didn’t. “As if you’d know what a date looks like,” I threw out, a dull, desperate jab. “Poor Lydia.”
“Lydia?”
“You’re using her to make me jealous, aren’t you?” That was the only reasoning I could come up with as to why she would’ve sat on his lap. Because someone like Beckham Jennings would’ve hated someone like Lydia Johnson.
A part of me thought Beck would mock the question, but he just shook his head. “Jealousy doesn’t work on you.” Then his eyes roamed my face. “But you know it drives me crazy.”
Beck leaned forward even further, lowering his head, tossing his blond hair from his eyes.
My heart hammered in my chest, the hardest it had beaten all day.
Even when Carter picked me up for my first date ever, it hadn’t raced this fast. But with Beck across from me, I was struck, hard, by the boy I once knew.
The boy who’d had darker hair and a softer expression, but those eyes.
The ones I’d loved. They were wild. Exactly the same.
And the same tumbling feeling that came whenever I’d won his sole attention. It also felt exactly the same.
“Have you looked at his mouth yet?”
I flinched back. “Why would I look at his—”
“Have you imagined kissing him?”
I very nearly hurled my iced espresso at his smug face. “What is wrong with you?”
Beck’s laughter was too loud, nearly disrupting the poet on the microphone. “When you want someone, you’ll look at their mouth. You’ll imagine kissing them.” Pointedly, his gaze dropped to my lips. “You won’t be able to help it.”
There was something strange about watching someone watch your mouth.
Watching their eyes trace your cupid’s bow, glancing across your bottom lip like a fingertipped touch itself.
There was something strange about that person being Beckham Jennings.
He’d looked at my lips like this once before, and just like warmth had flushed down the back of my neck then, it swamped me now. My bolero became sweltering hot.
Look away, I thought, unsure if it was directed at myself or toward him. The letters choked me. L-O-O-K A-W-A-Y.
Unbidden, shamefully, my eyes dropped to his smirking mouth.
But Beck turned almost immediately, as if he’d heard my desperate thoughts. He tucked his arm back over the partition and turned back around.
I knew what that meant, but I still jumped when Carter set down a ceramic plate on the tabletop. “They had banana nut muffins,” he said cheerfully, and when I looked up, I found his gaze focused on the other plate he held. Another muffin. He set it down. “I figured that was good.”
I trembled in the booth from the leftover adrenaline, the letters in my head unable to quiet down. I pinched my fingers under the table. “Maybe we should just head out,” I said. “Maybe the fresh air would help.” Fresh air and distance from Beckham Jennings.
It wasn’t fair that Beck could crawl so easily under my skin after all this time. He barely did anything, barely said anything, and yet it was like he’d put his hands underneath the table of my mind and flipped it.
“Let’s stay for a bit longer,” Carter said, picking his mocha up. He turned a little in his seat, and for a wild moment, I thought he was turning around to talk to Beck. “I’d love to see if anyone around here has a knack for poetry.”
Miraculously, I didn’t have to sit, agonized, in the risk of Carter spotting Beck long.
As the poet began his next stanza, Beck stood, raking a hand through his hair.
I held my breath, bracing myself for Carter to look up, or Beck to speak, but neither happened.
Carter’s eyes remained on the abysmal poet, and Beck turned so that Carter wouldn’t have been able to see his face, anyway.
I tried not to look at him, but he was a car crash, and I couldn’t pull my gaze from the wreck.
Beck’s chin remained level, eyes swiveling down to meet mine.
With a curl to his lip, he shot me a wink.
And then walked past.
I let out my breath when I heard the bell on Crushed Beanz’s door jingle. Carter noticed the harsh sound, turning back. “Are you going to be sick?”
“No,” I said in a voice more confident than I felt. The air seemed less thick now. Less choking. I took a small bite of the muffin, nearly coughing on the overwhelming banana taste. “I think I’ll be okay.”