“Don’t worry. It’s not going to explode or anything.”
For a second her eyes lightened, and I swear there was a hint of a smile hiding in their depths. “No, but I bet your mileage is crap. You might want to get that carburetor fixed.”
“That is probably the sexiest thing a girl has ever said to me.” I was teasing. It’s what I did. But as soon as the words left my mouth I winced, because man, could I sound more stupid?
Her eyes widened slightly. “Well, then I feel sorry for you, Trevor Lewis.”
“Oh,” I said. “And why is that?”
“If that’s the sexiest thing you’ve ever heard, then obviously your reputation is overrated.”
Huh.
She stepped out of the car, and it took me a couple of seconds to catch up.
Well, that was unexpected.
Chapter Two
Everly
Trevor Lewis bit his bottom lip when he read.
We’d just gone over the basic structure of our government (if I was going to tutor him, we were starting from the bottom up), and I was surprised at how much he already knew. I wasn’t expecting that. But then, I’m not exactly sure what it was that I’d expected.
Everyone knew about the accident. That his best friend Nathan had gotten behind the wheel of Trevor’s car, either high or drunk (I’d never been clear on which, and for all I know, it could have been both). He’d crashed the car, and Trevor ended up in a coma for months. I guess I just thought he’d be somehow less than what he’d been before. So far, he seemed pretty much the same to me.
I settled into a chair across from him and tried to concentrate on the book I’d brought along, but I found myself peeking over the top of it and looking at his mouth. At the way he worried his bottom lip with his teeth.
It was kind of adorable, something my little brother did, and totally not in keeping with Trevor’s bad-boy persona.
His eyebrows were furrowed as he concentrated, and he kept tugging on a piece of hair that hung in his eyes. His plain black T-shirt showed off impressive biceps, and though I couldn’t see them, I knew that his faded jeans, so worn out they looked as if they were about to fall apart, hung low on the hips. It was hot but he wore heavy black boots, and I noticed a sheen of sweat on his forehead.
He sure didn’t look like someone who’d nearly died in a car accident a year ago. In fact, with the beam of sun coming in through the bank of windows highlighting the dark blue streaks in his hair, he looked more alive than anyone I knew.
But then again, hadn’t he always?
Trevor Lewis. The bad boy with the smile of an angel. The kind of boy who got away with most everything because he was a charmer. Had that down to an art form by grade six. In eighth grade he convinced our teacher, Miss Harmon, to let us have our year-end dance out at Baker’s Landing. You know, ’cause that was so much cooler than the gym. Everyone was excited at the idea, and Trevor went with it.
He thought that maybe his band should play.
Oh, and maybe his band should, you know, get paid to play.
And he managed to get Miss Harmon on board with that.
When they changed the location, my parents wouldn’t allow me to go unless they chaperoned. As if. Who wants to go to their eighth grade dance with their parents watching? Not me. I missed the dance in protest, and of course it was all anyone talked about that summer.
I totally blamed Trevor and decided there and then that he was on my very own personal blacklist. It was easy to do. The guy was confident, cocky even, and usually in the middle of whatever was going on.
And he always had a girl…or two. I thought of his ex and the guy we’d seen her with earlier, and I wondered about that. I’d heard that she’d dumped him a couple of months after he’d come out of his coma because he wasn’t the same guy as he was before the accident.
If it was true, then she was as shallow as I’d always thought.
I snuck a peek at him again. He looked good as new to me.
Not that I’d seen him much over the last year. Because of the accident, he’d missed the entire first semester of school, and when he’d returned, well, we didn’t exactly eat at the same lunch table. He hung with Nathan Everets, his buddy Link, and more girls than I’d ever care to wade through.
My eyes fell back to Trevor’s mouth, and I thought of a dark closet, the smell of Pine-Sol, and his infectious grin. Trevor Lewis was trouble, and if I let him, he could make trouble for a girl like me. The guy was way out of my league.