“Yes ma’am.” I hope she isn’t implying that I want to have Derek’s baby in a year.
“None of that ma’am crap either.” She wags her finger at me then turns back to the kitchen. “I’ll order us pizza.” Derek grabs my elbow and pulls me to the couch as fast as his legs will take him. “She can be a bit much,” he says.
I sink into the couch, which is so fluffy it feels like I’m diving into a cloud. “I like her.”
He scoffs. “You would.”
“No one likes their own parents. But I’m allowed to like yours.”
“You don’t like your parents?”
“I like them. I mean, my mom thinks all she’s good for is to be a house wife so she’s dropped out of community college like six times and my dad is never home because he has to work so much, but I yeah like them.”
Derek cocks his head to the left. His question was a simple yes or no question. Quick and dirty, just the way guys like it. So why did I ramble on like an idiot? I glance around for something else to talk about besides my boring family. “I like how your mom has paired denim blue curtains with the mocha walls. It’s a great color scheme.”
“Yeah,” he says, gazing around the room with a roll of his eyes. “Totally.”
“Shut up.” I playfully punch his arm. “You don’t have to mock me.”
His hand grabs the part of his arm that I had just punched. He leans in close—like only ten inches away from my face close—and says, “I wasn’t mocking you.”
His voice is all raspy like he just woke up, and some of his hair falls into his face, covering his left eye. My stomach twists like a rubber band has been stretched across it way too many times. I feel like a thirteen-year-old girl with her first crush, not like a seventeen-year-old who’s made out with more guys than she can count.
I lean back a little just in case my Skittle breath is rancid. “It may sound stupid to you, but I notice things like that. I’m going to be an interior designer one day.”
He smiles a little, probably still mocking me. “Of course you are.”
His lips are slightly parted and I can’t stop staring at the tiny sliver of space between them. I shake my head, pushing all the thoughts of making out with him into the deep recesses of my mind. “I’m talking too much.”
He shrugs. “Your excessive talking just balances out my lack of talking.” Reaching into his backpack, he unfolds a piece of cardstock that’s shaped like the stage, flattening it on the coffee table.
Transfixed, I run my finger along the pretend stage, reading the notes he’s written in perfect uppercase letters. Dimensions for possible sets and furniture pieces are laid out with sticky notes cut to shape.
“What do you think?” he asks. “Does it suck?”
I fall back on the couch and cover my face with my hands. This is too good to be true. I’ve spent the last few nights lying awake in bed, agonizing over how I’m going to figure out the stage layout and manage being around a guy who I thought was a deranged psycho. Now, with no action on my part, I’m here with that same deranged psycho who happens to be normal and sexy and not a psychopath—and he’s done all the stage work for me.
“You hate it,” Derek says, biting his thumbnail.
“No…” A tingle runs down my spine. “It’s perfect.”
I watch Derek’s taillights slip into the distance, growing brighter as he stops at the end of the road before turning left toward his neighborhood. I sink into the porch swing, crossing my legs under me. A gentle breeze pushes the swing without my assistance as the events of this evening replay in my mind.
I’ve never had so much fun doing something for school. Derek is better than any lab partner I’ve ever had. We get along perfectly; his dry humor making me smile more in one night than I’ve smiled in weeks. My heart compresses inside my chest. Why does he have to be off limits?
A sinking ache of doom buries itself in my stomach. I’m crushing on Derek. Bad.
Why is it that when the perfect guy for me comes along, he’s riddled with imperfections?
The grinding lull of Jason Brigg’s garage door opening pulls me out of my Derek daydreaming. He lives across the street and is the lead singer in what I’m pretty sure is Lawson’s most untalented garage band.
Cymbals clang together as the drummer drags his drum set out of the corner of the garage and begins setting up. I hear Greg’s voice before I see him, and although he knows I live right across the street, he doesn’t seem to speak any quieter to avoid me overhearing.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he says, stumbling over something in the driveway as he walks into my view. “I gotta go give Wren Barlow a piece of my mind.”
“Liquid courage,” someone yells from behind a hard guitar case.
I lift an eyebrow and step off the porch swing. I haven’t exactly done anything to piss him off, besides maybe taking all of Derek’s better prop designs over Greg’s—but Greg doesn’t know that yet.