Eruption (Yellowblown™ Book 1) (7 page)

“Screw the President,” someone yelled. “Put Pitt back on!”

A smattering of applause broke out, while others chided the rebel for his outburst.

A few hours later,
Mia slicked on a coat of lipstick. We stood near the stage of an 18-and-over club for the first fall performance of the popular student band, Cappy Hates You! Cappy graduated two years ago, and the rest of the band members were seniors. I sort of felt sorry for Cappy, still trapped in his college life. I would probably be like him at age twenty-three, looking back at Western Case like a dog looks through a kennel’s wire fence at its family, packed up for fun in the departing minivan.

We
crammed elbow to elbow with a group of friends on the dance floor. Our bodies bounced and writhed in time with the deafening music. Between the sound and the motion, I didn’t notice my text alert go off, but a message waited when I checked it during the first break.
 

Text from Boone:

I smiled to myself. We hadn’t hung out since last weekend
, but we’d been texting, and I’d known he’d be at the game with the other misfits.

Text to Boone:

I chewed on my thumbnail.

And it was. Both for me and the poor freshman guy.

Mia jabbed me with her elbow. “Hotness?” she asked. My glowing smile must have given me away.
“Tell him to put on his dancin’ shoes.”

“He’s busy advising the residents.”

“Oh, c’mon,” she said. “Not the RA excuse again.”

I started to defend him
then shut my mouth. Mia flinched, realizing she’d struck a nerve, but she wasn’t one to apologize for tiny slights. She turned when one of our friends held up her phone with a funny Instagram on the screen.

I pretended to be engaged in the
ir banter while in my head I stood twenty feet from the entrance of the library on a cold, slate-gray afternoon last January, armed with French homework and my will to conquer verb conjugation once and for all. My mouth went dry when Boone pushed through the glass door right in front of me. Something flickered across his face when he saw me, as it had the other times we’d run into each other. (Living in the same dorm with your freshman crush resembled living above a bar as an alcoholic. Can’t touch this.)

“
Hey, Violet,” he said, his voice the caramel syrup on my latte.

“Hi, Boone. How was break?”

“The usual. You?”

“Fine,” I said. I bit my lip as I searched my
Hotness-befuddled brain for a topic to keep the conversation going. “My parents gave me a new bike for Christmas. That’s the highlight.”

“Nice. Pretty cold for riding, though.”

I shrugged. “Went out yesterday.”

His jaw dropped. “Are you serious? And you didn’t get frostbite?”

“No.” I bit my lip again. “I did get some road rash,” I admitted as I pushed the sleeve of my fleece hoodie up to reveal a big bandage on my elbow. The flesh-colored rectangle covered the worst damage, though red scrapes extended down the delicate underside of my forearm.

His brow furrowed in concern. “What happened?”

“Patch of ice on the shoulder. No biggie. I’m mostly pissed my long-sleeved jersey got trashed.”

“No other injuries
?”

“I have a wicked bruise here.” I twisted and lifted
the hem of my hoodie, though I didn’t roll down my yoga pants to show him skin. My finger poked at the tender spot on my hip. “It’s Technicolor.”

Boone
’s face tightened, the same way it had in front of the dorm the day we’d ridden together. He cleared his throat. “If you didn’t have those clip-in pedals, you could have saved yourself.”

“Flat pedals are for sissies.”

His jaw dropped for the second time. “Are you calling me a
sissy?
”

“If the biking shoe fits, you gotta wear it
.” I let my jacket fall back into place. Giddy hope launched, propelled by the teasing combined with his eyes reluctantly leaving my meager curves. I’d spent months forcing myself into mental placidity where Boone Ramer was concerned, the mantra “not into you” repeating like an endless ride through “It’s A Small World” at Disneyland. Now, unexpectedly, I climbed the rails right before the steepest drop of “Thunder Mountain.” Dark. Disoriented. Exhilarated.

“You’re not like most girls, are you?”

The confusing question spurred me to blurt my own, a thought barely formed in my mind, much less my mouth. “Do you want to go to the Valentine’s formal with me?”

His head shook
“no” too quickly, automatically, as if I’d offered him a cube of disgusting, moldy cheese. “I can’t,” he added, in case I hadn’t gotten the unequivocal message.

I looked past him into the warmth of
the library, wishing I could reverse the clock and return to “It’s A Small World.”

No such luck.
The bottom of the roller coaster dropped, leaving me, well, screwed. In less than five minutes I’d gone from time-to-study-French-verbs to a fresh hell of obsession for Boone Ramer.

Not.

Into.

You.

“Okay,” I said as I ducked around him. “That’s embarrassing.”

“Violet, wait,” he said when I was halfway to the door.

I jerked to a stop. “What?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to. I
can’t
.”

“You don’t owe me any e
xplanations,” I said, not wanting to hear his reason. I didn’t want to know about a new girlfriend—Twyla had been history since the fall—or the lucky gal who’d asked him to the formal yesterday, or something equally pathetically crushing.