"Really cool." She circled around to the front and plopped down beside him. "How about I wait around with you?"
There wasn't any reason he couldn't talk to her. School was safe or his dad wouldn't have let him come. "Sure. Thanks."
A bus chugged by. Arms hung out the windows. The shouts and laughs and we're-free noises carried on the wind.
He lifted his shoe off the gum, a long stream of hot sticky pink stretching. "Everything going okay?"
"Great. Really great." Turning, she hitched a knee up onto the bench, a mega-hot knee pressing against his thigh. "Listen, Chris, I just want to say thank-you for being there when I needed a friend. I mean, I don't know who else would have been so cool about everything and not judged me and just helped me—"
He kissed her.
Oh God, he was really kissing Shelby Dawson. He didn't remember leaning or even deciding to do it. But her face was right there and Murdoch—the lucky bastard who got to do it with her and probably didn't appreciate her—wasn't around. And her lip gloss was all shiny and he had to know what it tasted like before she moved or he would die.
Strawberry.
Her breath hitched. He heard it. A tiny gasp thing that said maybe this was okay and she wasn't saying no or pulling back. Her mouth softened a little and he leaned forward, angled his mouth over hers more fully.
She jerked away. "Ohmigod."
Crap.
Her eyes widened. She touched her lips with a hand that shook.
Double crap. He was so screwed. "I'm sorry. I'm not sure what I was thinking by—"
"I had no idea."
No idea he liked her or no idea she would like him? His heart shifted from double time to triple, pounding like the bass drum rallying the football crowd.
"Chris, you are absolutely one of my best friends in the world."
Thud. Stop. The friend word.
His heartbeat started again, slow, pushing against the ache in his chest. "Your friend, huh. Gee, thanks."
"I'm so sorry if I did anything to lead you on."
Get it together, Price. Salvage some pride. "Hey, chill. It's no big thing. I totally understand. Just thought I would see, if, well, before you move—"
"Stop, please." She clamped her hand over his mouth and blinked back tears. "God, Chris, I'm really sorry."
That she felt this bad over trampling his heart to bits notched his pride up a little. He clasped her wrist to pull it away from his face and tried not to get too hyped by the way her pulse throbbed so fast against his fingers.
He placed her hand on her knee and gave it one more hinting try. "Since you and Murdoch are hardly together anymore, I wondered—"
"Uh, Chris?" Her gaze shot down to the sticky gum before coming back up to him. She winced apologetically. "John's not here today because his dad took him for a late registration at the college I'm attending. He changed schools for me."
That was it then. Shelby was moving and John Murdoch was going with her and the guy deserved her because he'd made the tough choice to be with her. "I'm glad for you two that everything worked out."
"Are you okay?"
"Of course I'm okay. It's not as if I was in love with you or anything. I like you, all right? And I thought if Murdoch was out of the picture I'd better make my move fast before some guy moved in ahead of me. I mean, Geez, Shelby, you're hot."
She gave him a watery smile. "Okay. Enough. Stop it. And thanks."
"Sure." He tracked his eyes back to the Bazooka bubble-gum blob, not a big fan of seeing her pity-stare right this minute.
Yeah, the tree, bus stop, road hurt less to look at, especially now that he saw a Jeep rounding the corner, a guy in a flight suit driving who—the black vehicle revved closer, clearer—was Bo Rokowsky. "Hey, there's my ride. I gotta go."