12. Maybe I Missed You
12
Maybe I Missed You
I prowl around my bedroom, trying to remember every single detail I possibly can about the abandoned hotel. Who could be texting me? How did that person get my number? Tanner is my guess. But then there’s also Ian and the North Side.
Why would Tanner be trying to scare me? His brother doesn’t care about me. He made it clear by disappearing on me twice. Tanner got what he wanted—to weaken the East Side and get me away from Haze.
Winter: Who is this?
Unknown: You deleted my number. Harsh.
Winter: I repeat, who is this?
Unknown: I’m the guy you seriously shouldn’t be dreaming so much about
Winter: Omg. Channing Tatum?
Unknown: Hilarious
Winter: I know. Seriously, who is this?
Unknown: I’m the guy standing outside your window.
Winter: Yeah, right.
Unknown: You really shouldn’t keep your curtains open. What if some creep is stalking you
There’s one thing you do not want to see after reading a message like this and that is your curtains wide open. I gasp at the completely uncovered window. He’s right. Either Haze is really standing outside my house, or he just took a really, really lucky guess.
I draw a breath, my mind racing, and look out the window. The streets are calm and certainly don’t contain any trace of him. The idiot is messing with me. I register his number in my contacts so I can differentiate his number from the other one.
Winter: You almost got me. Almost.
Haze: Careful. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Winter: You are so creepy, Adams, you know that?
Haze: Damn it, how’d you know it was me
Winter: Only you call me Kingston, dumbass. Plus, I think I know your bad jokes by now. Why’d you decide to come back to life?
Haze: Aw, did someone miss me? You’re the one who told me to stop texting for a week if I recall.
Winter: Since when do you listen to me?
Haze: Come on, fill me in. What have I missed
Winter: Nothing much except for my new reputation. Thanks to your crazy friend with benefits. I’m a hoe now. Haven’t you heard?
Haze: Don’t think so low of yourself, Kingston. You’re more than a gardening tool.
I find myself laughing out loud when I read his message.
Winter: Idiot.
Haze: You laughed.
Winter: I did not.
Haze: I saw you.
Winter: How could you?
Haze: I’m standing outside your house, I told you.
Winter: The hotel this morning and now my house? You really are obsessed with me.
Haze: What are you talking about
Winter: Stop. I know it was you.
Haze: What was me
Winter: The text messages.
Haze: What messages?
I can’t tell if he’s messing with me. I sure hope he is.
Haze: Is someone sending you creepy texts
Winter: You mean except you?
Haze: Seriously, someone’s messing with you?
Winter: Oh so now you know how to use a question mark.
Haze: Winter, I’m serious.
Winter: I’d like to stay and chat but I can’t. I have a dinner to go to.
Haze: Oh yeah, the fake girlfriend dinner. Am I invited
Winter: How the heck do you know about that?
Haze: Because we haven’t been talking doesn’t mean I haven’t been keeping an eye on you.
There he goes again with his damn lines. The boy sure has a way with words. But most importantly, he has a way with me . Sometimes I think he is endeavoring to seduce me. And sometimes I’m afraid that it might be working.
Winter: Creepy.
Haze: Am I invited?
Winter: Never in a million years.
“Winter, honey, dinner’s served!” Maria shouts from downstairs, her voice distant but firm.
“Coming.”
By the time I walk into the kitchen, Kendrick and Nicole are already sitting at the table and pretending to love each other. A hint of sexual tension floats around the room, but I try my best to ignore it. These two clearly have a lot of unfinished business. And by unfinished business I mean that they still want to rip each other’s clothes off. I sit next to Kass, but also the farthest I possibly can from the fake lovebirds, and pour myself a glass of water.
Ding. My phone goes off again. I look down to the message that popped up on my screen.
Haze: Challenge accepted.
Wait, what?
My blood turns cold, and the oxygen leaves my lungs when the worst sound I’ve ever heard rings out in the room.
A knock on the door.
“Are we expecting someone?” Maria gets up.
Kendrick shakes his head.
“Sit down, Mom. I got it.” Kass motions to her mother, beating her to the door. She swings the door open, and the expression “color drains from her face” has never been more accurate when she sees the person standing on our porch. I can tell that she considers closing the door, but the unwanted guest stops her, stepping inside.
“I’m so sorry I’m late.”
When we trade glances across the room and he assesses me, I swear I can hear my heart explode.
“I hope you didn’t start without me.”
It’s official.
Tonight is the night Haze Adams dies .
I squirm in my chair as Kendrick glowers at Haze with a tight jaw that’s twitching with fury. If you could stare at someone to death, he would be six feet under by now. Kass is probably the least shocked one in the room as she knows Haze and I have been… I’m not sure what the hell it is we’ve been doing, actually.
As for Nicole, she’s just sitting there, confused.
My aunt frowns, the wrinkles on her face making themselves known. “I’m sorry, who are you?”
Haze peels his eyes away from me, his gaze traveling to my aunt.
“Of course, where are my manners? I’m Haze.” He holds out his hand, which Maria shakes with hesitation.
He looks at me, and I know from the way his eyes light up that he just had an idea . The worst idea of all fucking time . My first instinct is to get up, ready to pounce, as if it’ll somehow stop him from carrying on with what he clearly intends to do. But it doesn’t.
The words come rushing out of his mouth.
“I’m Winter’s boyfriend.”
I’m going to hurt this boy.
Multiple emotions take over my aunt’s face. She’s confused, then happy, then confused again, and finally, she’s relieved. Wait, relieved? I get up, walking toward them to somehow stop this big problem from turning into a straight-up disaster we can’t get back from.
“Honey, why didn’t you tell me?” She pulls me into a loving embrace. “I knew something was going on. That’s why you were so secretive. You’ve met your first boyfriend.”
Two problems with this sentence.
One: She’s wrong. But, just like she did with Kendrick, she’d rather believe that there’s a reasonable explanation for the change in my behavior. I think me getting a boyfriend is the better option as the other one is that I somehow got involved in Kendrick’s mess. Which I did. But she can’t know that.
Two: Now everyone, especially Haze, knows that I never had a boyfriend before. Why’d she have to expose me like that? He’s never going to let me hear the end of it. He already thinks I’m a prude.
If only I was .
Haze ignores the first-boyfriend comment, thankfully.
He grins. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell them about us, babe. I thought we were official.”
To think that I almost missed him.
“Please, give me your coat. Welcome to my home.” Maria smiles warmly. Haze takes off his jacket and hands it to her with a thanks.
“What’s wrong, honey bunny? No kiss?” Haze turns to me.
“Of course. I’ll give it to you in a second. I just have to show you the thing first,” I lie, a fake smile plastered on my face.
“What thing?”
“You know that thing that I talked to you about the other day?” I elbow him when no one’s looking, obviously saying “just go with it, or I’ll make you swallow your eyeballs.”
“Aren’t you eating with us?” Maria asks, a bit disappointed. I bet she’s just dying to get all the juicy details of our “love story.”
“We’ll be back. Start without us,” I reassure her and quite literally drag him out of the kitchen to escape the killer looks Kass and Kendrick have been throwing at us for the past minute. I can tell Kendrick is on the verge of losing it. But he can’t do anything as long as Maria is here.
I slam the door shut as soon as we walk into my bedroom.
“Are you out of your freaking mind?”
I push him, but he barely steps back, still smirking.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t miss such an opportunity to piss off Kendrick.”
So it was true. He really was outside of my house this whole time. I don’t know what to think of it.
“Do you realize what you’ve done? Kendrick will literally crucify me, and don’t even get me started on Kass and her guilt trips. You can’t just show up when you want to. Especially not now,” I spit, pushing him once more. “Why did you do that?”
“I was in the area and thought it had been a while.”
The fact that he thinks for even one second that this is a good enough answer is what baffles me the most.
Haze is that guy who leaves for three months, then comes back and says it’s because he forgot to look at the time.
“Thanks, I noticed.”
“God, you’re sexy when you’re mad.” His eyes travel downward to my dress and back up to my face. I don’t usually wear dresses. It sure is different from my usual Converses and T-shirts. He chews on his bottom lip for a second, and a wave of shivers runs down my spine.
Damn you, sexual tension.
When he steps closer, I step back faster than I thought possible.
“You’re going to tell them something came up and leave, am I making myself clear? We’ve worked too hard for this to have you come in and ruin it all.”
“And miss all the fun? No, thanks. I’d much rather stay and enjoy a great family dinner with my girlfriend. But, I mean, if you really needed me to behave, I could be convinced.” His voice is dripping with suggestion.
The conclusion that’s brought upon me when he finishes speaking is one that I wish I never had to face. He has the upper hand. I’m helpless.
“What do you want?”
He raises his eyebrows, satisfied. “You agree to come with me somewhere after dinner.”
“And do what?”
“There’s something I want to show you. It only happens tonight.”
I have no idea what he has in mind, as always, but if it can save Kendrick’s dinner and make the hell that my cousins will put me through slightly more bearable, I owe it to myself to try.
“Fine.”
A victorious expression covers his face. “I believe we have a dinner to go to.” He takes a couple steps forward and rests his hand on the door handle.
“Why did you come back?”
I’m slightly surprised by my own words when they ring out in my tiny bedroom. Haze pauses, his brawny back facing me.
“You disappeared for days. No messages, nothing. Don’t get me wrong. You do whatever the hell you want, and clearly, disappearing is your thing… so why bother coming back at all?”
He turns around, and our gazes meet.
“I told you I was in the area.”
I nod, beating myself up. I don’t know what I expected him to say. That he came back for me? We’re not friends. We’re not anything. He’s just a lonely bad boy with attachment issues who’s desperate for some company. Plus, he did tell me that he came to annoy Kendrick. Not for me.
He begins turning the door knob but stops himself. I hold my breath.
“And…”
He takes a long pause, his back still all I can see.
“Maybe I missed you.”
THERE ARE MANY PLACES I’D RATHER be in the world right now. So many people I’d rather be having dinner with, too. I’d rather be eating with Gretchen, my elementary school bully who constantly stole my Capri Suns, than be here, dining with Haze and Kendrick and wondering if Kendrick’s going to jump over the table and rip off my “boyfriend’s” head.
Indeed, I’d rather go back to the most humiliating moment of my life than be here. Like that one time I choked on my chicken nuggets at McDonalds in front of my fourth-grade crush, George Bay, and almost died.
Needless to say, Bay never became bae .
For the past thirty minutes, Haze has been getting the worst possible childhood stories out of my aunt, who’s more than happy to provide. The only thing that’s missing is the baby pictures, which I swear on my life, he will never see.
“Why did you do that to that poor little girl?” Haze says in between laughter.
“You call that a poor little girl? She was awful. She rubbed her boogers on every kid in kindergarten. She deserved it.”
“But you filled her pants with bugs. Bugs, Winter. That’s evil.”
“Not as evil as she was, I assure you.”
“How did you two lovebirds meet?” Maria asks.
“School,” I say, thinking back to his stupid reputation and the way it all began.
“I saw her in the hall, and I just knew I had to get close to her.” Haze smirks and reaches for my hand, intertwining our fingers on the table. I’m a bit shocked, but I don’t move away.
I see Kendrick clench his fist from the corner of my eyes. I get it. Love at first sight is not the reason why he knew he had to get close to me and he knows it.
No words can explain how relieved I was when I saw Maria had ordered pizza and that we were eating off paper plates. That means no dishes and no more painfully long conversations between Haze and my aunt.
It’s clear that Maria likes him.
Of course she does.
He’s nice, he’s funny, and he’s… well, Haze Adams .
As for Kendrick, I bet he’s wondering whether or not it’d be okay to stab him with a fork. On the bright side, Haze did behave like he promised. He’s been sweet, polite, and he made sure not to do anything that might result in Kendrick slapping him with the pizza box. It’s 9:30. I’m surprised we made it this far without a conflict of some sort.
“Well, thank you so much for dinner. It was great talking to you, but I’m afraid we have to go,” Haze says just as we finish throwing the paper plates away.
“We?” Kendrick says through gritted teeth.
That’s the first time he’s spoken to Haze all night. So many questions must be spinning around in his head right now: Why did he show up? How did he know about the dinner? Is something going on between them? What the hell is this?
“Yeah, we’re going on a little adventure tonight. Aren’t we, sweetie pie?” Haze smirks.
I swear he is calling me the most ridiculous nicknames on purpose.
“Yeah.” I press my lips together.
“You two have fun.” Maria hugs both me and Haze. “It was great to meet you. Take care of my niece, okay? She’s like a daughter to me.”
Something shifts in his eyes. I can’t tell what.
“Of course.” He nods.
As Haze leads the way toward the front door, I ignore Kendrick’s furious glances. I can hear Kendrick thinking, Don’t you dare walk through that door . My eyes connect with his. I give him an apologetic look before stepping out of the house and following Haze into his brand-new car. There’s so much Kendrick doesn’t know or understand.
“What? No more motorcycle?”
“We have a long ride ahead of us. I thought you’d be more comfortable in a car.”
Going on an adventure to an unknown location with Haze Adams?
It could either turn out to be a great idea…
Or the worst one I’ve ever had.