Chapter 10
ten
“Nope. Absolutely not. I refuse.” I slammed my locker door shut and turned away from my twin, who was looking at me with puppy dog eyes. I started to walk down the near-empty hallway, but she was right beside me, a pout on her lips.
“Why do you hate the coffee shop so much?” Ainsley demanded as she caught up to me. “It has good drinks, the vibes are fun, the—”
“Barista is hot?” I finished for her.
“And dangerous,” she said. She gripped my arm, eyes wide and excited. “He’s allegedly been to juvie, remember?”
“That’s just a rumor,” I said, surprising even myself with the defense of Cole. Ainsley only stopped for a second before continuing on, completely unphased by my words.
“But it’s also, like, the only place around to just hang out! Especially since the other coffee shop had that accident. Come on, please?”
“We can hang out at home,” I said, although I could feel how lame the suggestion was as it came out of my mouth.
“That’s no fun and you know it,” Ainsley said. “Besides, Clementine said she’d drive us so it’s not even like we have to walk all the way or anything.”
I pushed open the doors to the parking lot, a cool gust of autumn air blowing my hair off my face. “You can just go without me. I’ll catch a ride home with Lavender.”
Ainsley stepped directly in front of me, blocking my path away from this conversation before I could admit too much. She looked at me with a searching gaze. “Do you not like my friends?” she demanded.
I felt a brief sense of relief that she thought I disliked her friends and not that I was keeping a massive secret from her, though the relief quickly faded into guilt as the realization hit.
I’ve never lied to my twin before. I’ve never lied to anyone before, if I was being honest. And the idea that I was keeping something so big from her was starting to get to me.
Maybe she could sense it too and that’s why we’d been seeing so much less of each other lately.
But even with the guilt gnawing away at my stomach, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about dad. At least not here on the steps of school on a random Thursday.
“Of course I like your friends. Where did that come from?”
Ainsley crossed her arms over her chest. “Every time I invite you to hang out with us, you say no.”
“I hang out with you guys all the time! Or have you already forgotten last Saturday?”
“After I twisted your arm until you came out with us.”
“I like your friends,” I repeated before we could get caught up in me listing all of the times I’d hung out with them over the last three months until she felt better. “I just don’t feel like going out tonight.”
“But you’re going to another sleepover later,” Ainsley said. Her brows furrowed. “Is it me? Do you not like spending time with me?”
I really needed to come up with a better excuse to give her about where I was going on the nights I visited Dad before she developed some complex about me having fun without her.
There were just so few excuses for why I was gone overnight.
I desperately wished that we could be like any other family with divorced parents, where I could be honest about staying over at Dad’s place for a night, but I still wasn’t sure Ainsley was ready for the truth yet.
I stopped walking and turned to face my sister, putting my hands on her shoulders.
“I love you, Ainsley,” I said. “And I love spending time with you, and your friends are great. I just don’t like The Corner Cup that much. Is that so horrible?”
It was probably for the best that I didn’t mention how I’d gone there on my own on Tuesday after school to study.
That was a moment of desperation and nothing more.
Sure, I’d gotten plenty of work done and okay, yes, my teacher had been impressed by the part of the essay that I fixed after Cole’s suggestions when I showed her my draft the next day, but none of that was anything that needed to be repeated.
“Actually, yes,” Ainsley said. “And it’s a very big problem.”
“Why?” I asked, throwing my hands up in exasperation.
“Because it’s the only place in town to hang out, and I want to hang out with my twin.
” She crossed her arms. “It’s just so different at home, especially now that…
” She trailed off but she didn’t need to say the words: now that Dad was gone.
“And between swim and dance, I have so many practices, and you have your clubs and your sleepovers and I just feel like I don’t see you anymore. I miss you.”
The guilty feeling was now fully consuming my entire stomach. “I miss you too,” I said. “We’ll do something this weekend. I promise.” She brightens slightly and opens her mouth, but I hold up a hand to cut her off. “Something besides going to the coffee shop.”
She snaps her lips shut and sighs. Her eyes catch on something over my shoulder and her lips twist up slightly. “Remind me why you hate The Corner Cup again?”
“Ainsley—”
“It’s the hot barista, right?”
“I don’t see how this is important right now.”
She gripped my shoulders and spins me around. Then she reached a hand in front of me and points to a car coming to a slow stop in the parking lot a few spaces from where we stood. “Because I’m pretty sure he’s at our school right now.”
I glanced up, hoping for a second that it might be Clementine or Lavender or literally anyone else on the planet.
But no—the car was the wrong color, and there was a boy in the driver’s seat.
He leaned back in the seat, one hand draped across the steering wheel, looking like he belonged nowhere and everywhere at the same time.
I blinked, trying to explain away his presence here. Surely it was a hallucination. My brain was playing tricks on me.
I stared. Then frowned. Then squinted harder, tilting my head like that might somehow sharpen my vision.
There was no way.
Absolutely no way.
He didn’t go to this school. I knew that. And yet the longer I stared, the more sure I was that Ainsley was right—the dark hair, the annoyance on his face, one hand resting against the steering wheel and his head tipped back like he’d been waiting for hours instead of thirty seconds.
Cole was here. At my school. Which meant he was either very lost… or up to something.
I glared in the direction of his car. Then I adjusted the strap of my bag on my shoulder and took a step down the stairs.
“Wait, don’t forget the statistics about schools after hours!” Ainsley called after me.
“Stop watching so much true crime!” I said over my shoulder, then I veered toward the car before I could talk myself out of it.
When I reached the driver’s side, I lifted my hand and tapped twice against the glass with my knuckles.
He startled—actually startled—before turning his head.
The annoyance was instant, written clearly across his face as he rolled the window down an inch.
“Yes?” he said flatly, like I’d interrupted something incredibly important.
I leaned down slightly so he could see me better, smiling sweetly. “How’s it going, stalker?”
He looked back at me, almost seeming bored. “Better now that I get to see that scowl on your face and know that I’m the reason your entire day was ruined.”
“Someone thinks mighty highly of himself. My day was already ruined before you got here.”
The sadness on Ainsley’s face when I declined her plans passed through my memory again, but I pushed it down for now. It was easier to direct all my negative feelings at Cole than to mull them over right now.
He snapped his fingers in mock disappointment. “Darn. I’ll have to try again bright and early tomorrow morning. Start your day off on a terrible foot.”
“What are you even doing here? You don’t go here.” My eyes widened. “Or is it that you’re here to enroll?”
He barked a laugh. “Yeah, like I’d ever go to school here.”
I found myself bristling at it, suddenly defensive of Parkhurst. “It’s a good school.”
“No, Princess, I’m not here to enroll in your precious school.”
“So you’re just… hanging out in random school parking lots after school now?”
“Who said I was just hanging out?”
“Well, I don’t see you getting out of the car.”
“That would be hard to do with you leaning against my door like that.”
“Oh, sorry, am I preventing you from grand plans?” I tapped my fingers against the windowsill. “Let me guess… you’re here to vandalize the school statue.”
“Right, because I care enough about your school to break in and do that,” he said flatly.
“Okay,” I said, dragging the word out as I thought over possible other reasons. “Are you here for a secret fight club?”
“It wouldn’t be very secret if I answered that question, now would it?”
I studied his unblinking face, wondering just how much of his answer was a joke.
Not that I thought there was an actual fight club running out of Parkhurst or that he would be stupid enough to show up for it while students and teachers were still here if there was, but still, the rumors of the fight at his old school couldn’t have been born out of nothing.
How bad of a fight had it been? For some reason, I couldn’t imagine the boy in front of me beating someone up so badly that he got expelled, but it wasn’t like I really knew him.
I shrugged. “Well, until you give me a different reason, I’m just going to assume you followed me.”
His jaw tightened, and for a moment I thought he might actually tell me to get lost again. Instead, he glanced past me toward the school entrance, like he was checking the time without a watch.
“Katie volunteers here,” he said finally.
“Katie,” I repeated trying to remember where I’d heard the name before. “You mean, your cousin Katie? The one who snuck her boyfriend into the flat to makeout?”
His mouth twitched, just barely. “That would be her.”
“Wow. And here I thought you were sitting in a dark parking lot for me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” He leaned forward to look out the windshield searchingly, like he was willing her to come back out. “She left something here yesterday and needed me to bring her to pick it up.”
Before I could respond, the front doors behind me opened again, spilling light across the pavement. Footsteps followed, quick and energetic. I straightened and turned back to look.
The blonde barista from the coffee shop was walking toward us, her coat unzipped, hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. She slowed when she noticed me, confusion flashing across her face. “Oh,” she said. She glanced at Cole quickly then back at me. “Hi.”
“Get in,” Cole said gruffly.
“Well that’s very forward,” I said, turning back to him. “I barely know you.”
He flipped me off. Katie barely muffled her laugh. “I didn’t know you had friends at Parkhurst, Cole.”
“She’s not a friend,” he said tightly.
“That’s not very nice,” she said in a chiding tone. Then her eyes widened and she snapped her fingers like she finally pieced something together. “Oh! You’re the coffee girl, aren’t you? The one who spilled, like, ten coffees on the floor of the shop.”
“It was only eight,” I mumbled.
“And donuts,” Cole added.
Katie tipped her head back and laughed so hard she grabbed her stomach.
When she finally righted herself, she grabbed my arm like we were long lost friends catching up.
“Oh my gosh, I had to hear about that incident for days. It’s all Cole would complain about.
You must’ve made quite an impact on Grumpy McGee over here. ”
“Katie,” Cole warned.
I shot Cole a look. “You’ve been talking about me.”
“I mentioned you,” he said.
“Constantly,” Katie added. She smiled wider, clearly delighted in embarrassing her cousin. “I’m Katie. Sorry—he didn’t tell me you went to school here.”
“He didn’t tell me he knew anyone who volunteered here either, so I guess we’re even.”
Cole rolled his eyes and reached across the car to open Katie’s door in an obvious get in the car gesture. “Can we go now?”
“One second, I’m talking to my new friend.”
He groaned and dropped his head back against the headrest. “Just talk to her the next time she comes into the shop.”
“Is that your way of inviting me to come by more?” I asked teasingly. “Because I got the sense yesterday that you were really unimpressed that I kept coming back.”
He turned his head just enough to be able to glare at me. I just smiled in response.
“Katie, get in the car or I’m leaving you here,” Cole said, but he didn’t take his eyes off me.
Katie laughed like it was a joke but moved over to the passenger door.
I stepped away so Cole could drive off but didn’t take my eyes off the car—which meant that I didn’t miss the way he looked back over at me one last time before he turned out of the lot and drove off as fast as he could.