He scans my face again and his gaze narrows in on something. It’s making me increasingly self-conscious. “You have some, uh…dirt stuck to your lips.” He motions with his index finger to his own mouth, pink and slightly fuller on the bottom. “And grass.”
Scorching heat rolls up my neck and blankets my face, which I’m sure is the color of a baboon’s butt. The Bailey curse. My pale skin keeps no secrets. Something I’ve learned to live with since the first grade when I told Brady Higgins that I liked him and he told me, and I’m paraphrasing, to take a hike because I look like Casper the friendly ghost. Last I heard, Brady’s still unemployed and living in his mother’s basement. Sometimes karma takes a while.
I flip down the visor and check the mirror. Not only does it look like I’ve been eating dirt and grass. He failed to mention the glob of white sunscreen stuck under my left eye. “Peachy. Thank you for so kindly pointing it out,” I mutter as I wipe it away with my fingers.
“You’re not from around here.”
“What gave me away?”
A smile full of mischief now permanently fixed on his obnoxiously handsome face, he looks me over again. “Where from? New York?”
“New Jersey.”
“Jersey,” he echoes as he slow-nods. “That’s…different.”
“Why am I getting the impression that different is not a good thing.”
“It’s not a good thing,” he clarifies, and for some strange reason my heart sinks a little. Gaze fixed on the road ahead, he adds, “It’s a great thing.”
Chapter 2
Alice
“I don’t think it’s broken,” the campus medical center doctor, a middle-aged man with full cheeks and kind brown eyes, tells me while he examines my leg. “But I do recommend you go to the ER and get an X-ray. I’m sorry, what’s your name again?”
From a prone position on the gurney, I snap up on my elbows, shaking my head before the doctor can even finish his sentence. “Alice Bailey and no, I really can’t afford a trip to the ER.” Without warning, he lifts my ankle to bundle it in a flexible cold pack, and as soon as it hits my skin, I squeak.
Bad driver is standing next to him with his legs spread apart and arms crossed over bulging chest muscles covered by a worn blue t-shirt. He’s staring at the mottled red and blue thing, otherwise known as my lower leg, with his face screwed up like there’s an answer here somewhere just waiting to be discovered.
Here’s your answer, bud––there isn’t one. Not unless you have a time machine we can jump into.
“How did it happen?” Doc asks. I’m not sure if the question is directed at me, or the guilty party.
“My fault,” bad driver mutters. I don’t argue. We’re in absolute agreement on that front. The embarrassed smile he returns is, I will begrudgingly concede, an endearing one. Or at least it would be under different circumstances. The throb in my ankle has now become so painful it feels like it’s giving birth to a baby alien.
“How, exactly?” From the looks these two are exchanging, I take it they know each other pretty well. Doc pulls out cotton and a bottle of clear lotion and holds it up. “This shouldn’t sting,” he tells me right before he aims it at my skinned knees.
Never trust anything anyone says after “this shouldn’t.” Because sure enough, it frigging stings. Every time the antiseptic hits my cuts, a word bursts out. “He’s…a terrible…driver. The fucking worst.” My brown eyes latch onto green ones. “No offense.”
“None taken.” Bad driver turns away, chewing on his lower lip. Glad I can amuse him.
“She was walking up the street by the pool and I was coming around––”
“You hit her?” Doc finishes for him, looking justifiably horrified on my behalf.
Doc replaces the old ice pack with a new one and I nearly jump off the gurney. “I had to dive for safety––”
“You’re in good hands now,” the guy who almost killed me says. “Dr. Fred’s our team doctor. He knows all there is to know about soft tissue injuries.”
“Team?” Panting as the cold pack comes off and an ACE bandage is skillfully wrapped around my ankle, I’m reduced to speaking in single syllables. I couldn’t care less what either of them are yammering on about, but I have to do something to keep my mind off the ankle.
“The water polo team.” Dropping his arms, he points to his t-shirt. Emblazoned across it in faded orange…Malibu U Water Polo How Wet Can You Get?
“Umm…” is all I can come up with because––one, seriously? Two, who cares? Not me. Not this girl with the busted ankle, and the busted car, and a world of trouble. And three, the hell is water polo anyway?
My remark is met by two identical frowns.
“You know who this guy is, right?” Doctor Fred tips his head at bad driver as he’s securing the bandage with a butterfly clip. My gaze slides over, and bad driver meets my scrutiny with a bright, expectant expression. Am I supposed to?