Ever: The Ever Trilogy, Book One (Volume 1) (6 page)

Once inside my room, with the door closed, I could no longer keep my excitement at bay.

“I have a date! I have a date!” I squealed in as close to a whisper as I could muster, not wanting to be overheard. Jessie was sitting on the bed, flipping through a magazine, and she looked up at me with a doe-eyed expression of mock surprise.

“Let me guess … you have a date?” she asked with a giggle.

“Shh!”

“Why are we whisp—?” she looked at me and sighed. “Oh, okay. I’ll play along. So, I guess we’re not having dinner tonight, huh?” Shaking her head and laughing as she gathered her things, she started to head for the door.

“Shoot. I forgot! You’re not mad, are you, Jess? I’ll cancel if … .”

“Oh,
Ever
! Are you kidding me? New Hottie on The Block wants to take you out, and I’m going to make you stay? Yeah right! Please, it was me who had to practically
throw
you at him to even get you to wise up! I knew the second I saw all that
black
… and those motorcycle boots”—she grimaced—”he’s totally perfect for you. And you know what, Ev, maybe this is just what you need to get your mind off certain
other
things.”

She nodded toward my closed bedroom door, though I needed no clarification. I knew exactly what
other things
she referred to because she’d been trying to get me to forget about Frankie for as long as I could remember. She wasn’t a big believer in loving a guy you couldn’t have
or
pining after a guy who didn’t show interest. Both of which applied to Frankie.

As she exited my room, she said, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t … wait, never mind. Do
everything
!” She winked at me, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “And call me the
second
you get home!”

I was starting to undress for my shower when the door opened slightly and Jessie popped her head back through the doorway.

“And do
not
wear those hideous old boots, Ever. I mean it!”

I
don’t think I’ve ever gotten ready for
anything
so fast in my life. I showered, put my hair up in a twist, and played a quick round of
What’s In Ever’s Closet?
in front of my mirror, all the while wishing my pinktastic
human
best friend was still there to help me. I silently thanked my lucky stars my other
ghostly
best friend was nowhere to be found. Somehow, I couldn’t picture Frankie being as excited about my date as Jessie had been, even if he didn’t see me
that
way, and I really didn’t want that guilt knot returning to my stomach.

I applied a bit of makeup, though not much more than the usual mascara and lip-gloss, and remarkably, I was out the door in less than thirty minutes. I was incredibly proud of myself for having a couple minutes to spare, but time to spare or not, Toby was already outside waiting for me. Damn.

Wow.

He rested casually on the hood of a classic Ford Mustang parked on the street, halfway between both of our houses. Sleek and smooth and shiny black, with red leather interior, I had butterflies in my stomach just thinking about getting inside. My Civic was my baby, and though she was old, she was far from a classic—an old beast of a car.

He wore the same outfit from an hour ago, but I noticed, a bit happily, that the jacket was nowhere in sight. He pushed up off the car, glancing briefly past me to my house, and I again had an image of Frankie pop into my mind and a strange, unsettling feeling fell over me. But as Toby approached me, looking me over with an approving smile, that thought was almost instantly forgotten. His smile did funny things to my insides, and the way he kept trying to get his hair out of his eyes made me want to touch it. His V-neck t-shirt was snug-fitting and showed lean muscles underneath it, and my eyes were drawn to the groove in his collarbone.

“Wow. You look great.”

Funny, I had been thinking the same thing about you.

“Oh, thanks.” I checked my hair with my hands, making sure it was still tucked neatly into a twist, then took my purse off my shoulder to get inside the car.

I had settled on a red tunic, instead of my usual black, feeling a little adventurous … though not adventurous enough to skip the leggings. I had my limits. I’d grabbed my favorite red rose earrings, which I’d bought last year at the swap meet from a boutique specializing in Dia de Los Muertos merchandise, as a last minute addition. In the end, I’d somewhat reluctantly swapped my beat-up black boots for some black gladiator-style sandals that my mom
insisted
I buy to be part of my spring wardrobe a few weeks ago. Between Jessie making it a point to forbid me to wear my favorite boots, and since my mom was always getting on me about them as well, I figured wearing the sandals obliged them both, whether or not they were there to see it happen.

“I guess it’s a step up from sopping wet and smelling like dog, huh?”

“I kinda liked you sopping wet. And you smell
nothing
like dog.”

Cue my red cheeks.

With that comment, he shut the door, and I was in the car alone for a few seconds as he walked around to his side. I took a few deep breaths and ordered my heart to quit racing.

Once he was inside, Toby took off his sunglasses and leaned over the center console, reaching for the glove box. I waited to see what he was doing, when his hand grazed my knee just slightly. I sucked in a quick breath at the slight touch. Reaching past me, he retrieved the case for his sunglasses. I exhaled a bit too loudly, completely unaware I’d been holding my breath, and he stopped what he was doing, turning his head sideways to look at me. That sexy half-smile was on his face again.

With mere inches between us, I looked into his eyes for the first time. They were strikingly dark blue, almost midnight. It was such a contrast from his dirty blond hair that I wouldn’t have believed the combination would work.

Oh, it works.

It worked so well, in fact, I was half-tempted to smash his sunglasses into smithereens so he could never hide his eyes behind them again. But that would be weird.

“Where to, Ever?”

I was mesmerized looking into those eyes. I was so used to Frankie’s—so translucent and almost far away, even when they were right in front of my face. Toby held eye contact with an intensity that made lightning shoot through my body, clear down into my toes. It felt like every inch of me was alive, and the butterflies in my stomach intensified.

Damnit, I’m holding my breath again.

“Ever?”

With a slight shake of my head, and a sigh I’m sure he heard, I snapped myself back into the here and now. If I kept getting dumbstruck around him, he would definitely decide there was something
very
wrong with me.

“Oh, I don’t know, uh … .”

“Well, hey, I’m new around here, right? And your friend
did
say you wanted to show me around a bit, right?”

“Yeah, um, okay, let’s see … where are you from originally?”

“Not around here.”

“Yeah, I get that, but where exactly
is
‘not around here?’”

He was still just inches away from me, and I found it hard to focus with his face so close to mine. When he smiled, I was shocked to discover that I had a barely resistible urge to kiss him
. Whoa. Slow down, Ever.
I wondered where the new brazen side of me had come from all of the sudden.
Especially
since I didn’t even know the first thing about kissing boys.

“Montana. I’m from Butte, Montana.”

“Montana, huh? Okay, so no beaches. Hmm. Have you ever even
seen
the ocean? Like, on a vacation or something?”

“Nope. I guess I’m pretty sad, huh?”

“Yes!”

He leaned back into his seat, looking at me sideways with that perpetual smirk still on his face, and I realized my blunder.

“Oh my gosh. I mean, no!
You’re
not sad!
It’s
sad! I can’t even imagine growing up away from the ocean. Okay, we’re heading to the beach. Take Chapman up to the 55 heading west, and it will take us all the way to PCH. That’s Pacific Coast Highway, if you don’t know.”

“Highway 1, right?”

“Yeah. Exactly. Except we don’t really call it that. I’ll tell you where to go from there.”

As we pulled away from our neighboring houses, a flash of something caught my eye from my living room window, but when I looked back there was nothing—or no one—there.

Frankie.

Toby and I talked a little on the way to the coast, and I pointed out a few key places—like all the nearest Starbucks, and my favorite little hole-in-the-wall place for breakfast burritos—but mostly we rode in silence and listened to music. His car had a place to plug in his iPod, and he handed it to me right away to scroll through. The songs were in alphabetical order, so it didn’t take me long to find out that, like Jessie and me, he also liked the Black Keys.
It’s my lucky day. He’s gorgeous and he has great taste in music. Seriously?
I guessed Jessie wasn’t the devil incarnate for making me go out with him after all.

Once we hit PCH, I had him head south to Laguna Beach. We found a spot to park on one of the residential side streets that luckily didn’t have parking meters … since neither of us could find any quarters. Toby parked the Mustang, and we set out to Tablerock Beach on foot. He didn’t touch me or grab my hand on the way down to the beach, but I swear I felt his close proximity to me in my entire body. I’m sure that was only due to my nerves and excitement, but I was lit up like I’d been plugged into a wall socket—currents dancing happily just below the surface of my skin. I had the usual Frankie guilt, sure, but everything else about being near Toby was so thrilling that I was a bit annoyed I hadn’t followed Jessie’s advice before now. If going out on a date with a hot guy was
this
exciting, I’d been missing out.

“So, back at the house, you said something about not going to regular school. Did you drop out or something?”

“Oh no, nothing like that. I’m homeschooled.”
Here it comes.
I cringed slightly and braced myself for ‘the look,’ but it never came.
Weird.

In fact, he seemed genuinely interested in my homeschooling. I proceeded to tell him all about it, leaving out the part about why it began in the first place. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine telling Toby that my mom started homeschooling me after
—or because of—
Frankie’s death. I’d been such a mess after he died—and came back—that I’d had an enormous amount of trouble in school. Not like starting fights and smoking, though I did try both at one point, but basically just not being able to focus on anything—or caring to. All I’d wanted to do was get home to Frankie. So eventually, my parents decided to just teach me at home.

We got down to the beach and found a large grouping of rocks. We climbed up to the highest point we could reach, and he sat down, taking my hand in his. As he pulled me down to sit next to him, I couldn’t believe how amazing it felt to hold his hand. More of that excited warmth spread through me at his touch. I wondered if Jessie felt this every time she dated a new guy. It could be the reason she chose to go out with a new guy every weekend.

As the sun descended, turning the skyline impossible hues of orange and purple, I found myself able to open up to Toby almost completely. He was good at prompting me to continue, but it was difficult to be one-hundred percent open with him without sabotaging myself by bringing up Frankie. I managed to pay very close attention to my words, and after a few hours, I felt I’d exhausted my life story—all seventeen years of it.

When he asked about my neighborhood, I mean,
our
neighborhood, it became even more difficult to keep Frankie a secret. So instead of talking about anything current, I decided to tell him about my home’s embarrassing history of paint colors. We’re talking seriously embarrassing aesthetic quirks. I lived in the house that for years was periwinkle—amid a neighborhood of varying shades of beige. As I neared the point in the history lesson where Dad finally convinced Mom to paint over the hideous shade of—

“Oh shoot! My mom!” I jumped up and nearly toppled off the rocks in my haste. He jumped up as well, reaching out to grab me, and steadied me so I didn’t plummet to the sand below. My heartbeat was far from steady as I realized I was completely wrapped in his arms, held tightly to his body.
Oh.
His eyes narrowed in on my lips, and I heard myself sigh. Then I cringed.
Ugh.
I had to stop doing that. He donned that knowing smirk of his and released me without letting go of my hand.

“I’m sorry I totally just freaked out, but I realized I never told my Mom and Dad where I was going tonight. Do you have your cell phone with you?”

“No. It’s charging on my kitchen counter right now.”

“Shit.”

“What, you don’t have yours either?”

“Um … I don’t even have a phone with which to charge.” Truthfully, I’d never really needed to call anyone before. I was either at home with Frankie or out with Jessie.