Most Likely to Succeed (12 page)

“All right. Let me do something first.” I watched him return to Ms. Yates’s desk to gather his papers. Then I faced Sawyer.

He was watching me, like he’d heard the whole conversation and expected an explanation.

“I’m eating lunch with Aidan,” I said.

Sawyer nodded. He had no expression on his face, which was never a good sign.

But if he had nothing else to say, I wasn’t going to hang around and try to draw him out. He
still
hadn’t done anything to make me think he wanted us to get together. As far as I knew, the crush was all on my end.

I walked to the lunchroom with Aidan and a crowd of reps. Aidan went through the hot food line while I visited the salad bar—mainly because I was hoping for another word with Sawyer, not because I wanted salad. So much for not caring what Sawyer thought. I hadn’t lasted five minutes. But I didn’t see him anywhere.

Eventually I slid my salad onto a table across from Aidan, not in the teacher section but far away from our usual table too, in an unpopulated corner. As I sat down, he asked, “What’d you get on your
Crime and Punishment
paper?”

He uttered this like it was a casual question. It wasn’t. He’d asked me all about my grades when we’d dated. But looking back on our time together, I realized my shoulders had tightened and my stomach had twisted with stress every time he’d grilled me. The constant competition with him
over the years had been no fun. Being his girlfriend had made it worse.

I knew from experience, though, that not answering him would lead him to accuse me of getting a bad grade. That was something
my
ego couldn’t withstand. I told him the happy truth: “A ninety-two.” Not a grade up to my usual standards by any means, but way better than the zero I would have received if Sawyer hadn’t stepped in to buoy me that day.

“Wow,” he said between french fries, “you should get Sawyer to write your papers for you every time.”

This was an insult meant to stab me in the heart. It didn’t, because I knew I’d written my own paper. If he’d accused me of cheating two weeks ago, I would have been upset. His grip on me was slowly slipping.

And his mention of Sawyer turned me on. What if Sawyer
had
written my paper for me? Sure, that would be cheating. I would never do that. I didn’t need to. But the idea suggested an intimacy between Sawyer and me that was more exciting than our tame reality.

So far.

“What did
you
get?” I asked Aidan.

“Are you scared?” he accused me. This meant he’d gotten lower than a ninety-two.

“All right, then,” I said dismissively. “What’s the student
council business you wanted to discuss?” I took a bite of salad.

“It looks like you’re not going to get your homecoming dance after all,” he said.

I nodded without looking up.

“But if we do have one,” he said, “I don’t want you to go with Sawyer.”

As he said this, I finally spotted Sawyer across the lunchroom. He stood behind a table where a lot of the cheerleaders sat, one hand on the back of Grace’s chair and the other on the back of Cathy’s, laughing with them. It wouldn’t be long before I heard yet another rumor about his sexual exploits, as if my friendship with him was an addition to his life, not a change.

But I wasn’t about to admit that to Aidan. I said, “You broke up with me. What I do now is none of your business.”

“I didn’t break up with you,” he said, pointing at me with a french fry. “I said I wanted to take a
break
. I thought dating other people for a while would strengthen our relationship, but I didn’t mean you could date
Sawyer
!”

I put my fork down. “You said you wanted to talk about student council business. I wouldn’t have agreed to eat lunch with you otherwise.”

“This
is
student council business,” Aidan said. “When
you and I were dating, people knew we were on the same page, president and vice president. Now people are coming up to me constantly, asking whether you’re dating Sawyer. I tell them, ‘Yeah, she’s obviously had an aneurysm or a small stroke, and suddenly she’s decided she wants to date a loser.’ ”

“Why do you say he’s a loser?” I demanded. “He’s in the upper-level classes with us.” I had no idea what sort of grades Sawyer got, but he must have tested well enough at
some
point to be placed in the college track. “He’s the school mascot, a student council rep, and the parliamentarian. He doesn’t sound like a loser to me.”

Aidan’s eyes were cold as ice as he said, “I don’t like him, okay? I don’t like the way he talks to you.”

I had no idea what Aidan meant. Frowning, I asked, “How does he talk to me?”

“He stands very close to you,” Aidan said, moving closer across the table himself. “He leads with his pelvis. And I don’t understand what you see in him. Of course, there
are
ladies who marry men in prison.”

“He’s not in prison,” I pointed out.

“He will be.”

We stared each other down across our almost untouched food. I’d had plenty of conversations with Aidan in which he lobbed witty insults at me to make me feel bad. But he
didn’t usually
want
something from me. This time he was intense and certain. Whether or not I was a part of his life, he wanted Sawyer out of mine.

“Tell me something,” I said, acting casual by picking up my fork again and stirring my salad. “Did your dad help prosecute Sawyer’s dad when he went to jail?”

I wasn’t looking at Aidan, but his hesitation told me I’d surprised him. After a few seconds, he said, “Yeah.”

“And when Sawyer moved to town, your dad told you who he was. That’s how everybody knew on Sawyer’s very first day at school that his dad had been to jail. You made
sure
they knew.”

“So?”

I looked up at Aidan. “Sawyer might be a different person today if you hadn’t done that. He didn’t know a soul in town except his dad. He hardly knew his dad, I imagine. And you ensured he was teased by the entire student body the second he stepped on campus. No wonder he’s so defensive. Some school leader
you
are.” I shouldered my book bag and picked up my salad. Ignoring Aidan when he called to me, I walked away.

I wasn’t sure where to go, though, which put a damper on my dramatic exit. I’d almost forgotten that the last time I’d seen Sawyer, he was cozying up to Grace and Cathy. But he
wasn’t sitting with them now. After a quick scan of the room, I spied him at our usual table, working through an enormous salad and speaking an occasional word to Quinn next to him.

When I approached, he glanced up at me. He looked down again without smiling, as if I wasn’t welcome. He really
was
mad that I’d eaten lunch, however briefly, with Aidan. As I slid into the seat across from him with my salad in front of me, he concentrated on his own food. Then he asked flatly, “Did you finish with your student council business?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve told you, I’m good at reading people. Don’t tell me you were talking about student council.”

Quinn looked at Sawyer, then at me, then wisely pretended to pay attention to a dirty joke Tia was messing up farther down the table.

I told Sawyer, “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Get back with him if you want to, Kaye.” Sawyer sounded bitter. “I don’t own you. That’s your choice. But don’t lie to me about it.”

Now Noah beside me was eyeing us too, and Brody beyond him. I glared at Sawyer, letting him know I didn’t find this public fight amusing.

He raised his eyebrows at me. He didn’t care.

“Aidan and I were together for three years,” I said. “We
dated for a year before you even moved here. The way he broke up with me was ugly and open-ended. It’s hard to pretend that didn’t happen.”

The angry expression in his eyes faded. He took another bite of salad, considering. Finally he said, “I get it. But don’t expect me to be polite about it.”

I almost laughed and told him that was fair enough. But it
wasn’t
fair. He was acting like a jealous boyfriend, except he wasn’t my boyfriend, as far as I knew. I
wanted
us to be friends with bennies, but our bennies had gone missing.

I wasn’t going to point this out with ten of our friends listening, though.

Instead, watching him reach the bottom of his salad plate, I asked, “Why did you become a vegan, anyway? Are the pelicans your brothers?”

He slammed his chair backward so suddenly that everyone at the table turned toward the screech. Rising, he said, “I’m tired of people telling me I’m a dumbass for going vegan. I know.”

“I didn’t say you were a dumbass!” I exclaimed.

“You didn’t have to.” He grabbed his backpack and his empty plate and stalked away.

As he went, I finally realized what he was telling me every time he got angry with me. People at school thought
Sawyer had a thick skin, but he was sensitive after all. And he was upset that I’d found out.

Near the other end of the table, Tia caught my eye and jerked her thumb over her shoulder, asking if I wanted her to go after Sawyer and smooth things over.

I shook my head and returned to my salad with a sigh. I was beginning to think whatever was wrong between Sawyer and me was something that couldn’t be fixed.

10

BY THAT EVENING, I WAS
eager to try again. I watched out the window of the cheerleading van for Sawyer’s beat-up truck to appear, lumbering over curbs in the school parking lot. Just like last time he stopped right next to my car. That was no accident. He looked up at the window and saw me. I didn’t turn away.

He climbed into the van wearing gym shorts and his Pelicans T-shirt, with his huge costume bag slung over his shoulder. He stood next to me in the aisle.

“Do you need to put your costume on before we make up?” I asked drily.

He glanced toward the rear of the van as if he was considering this.

“Go put it down,” I said. “I owe you a shoulder rub,
remember? Or is staying mad at me too important?”

“It’s not
that
important,” he admitted, already moving into the back to dump his bag.

He didn’t make it all the way. He took two steps and chucked the bag over Ellen’s head, making her squeal in fear. It landed on the back seat with a rustling of pompons.

He sank into the seat beside me. Before he could change his mind or feign anger again, I gripped both his shoulders and kneaded those tense muscles. He melted under my hands as if he’d never been touched before.

* * *

The ride home was even better. The cheerleaders were in a great mood after Brody led our team to yet another win. The highlights of the game had been Brody bulleting an impossibly long pass to our best tailback for the winning touchdown, and Sawyer directing the band. Usually when he wandered into the band’s section of the stands, the band director, Ms. Nakamoto, made him leave, or DeMarcus, the drum major, wouldn’t let him direct. This time everyone had been elated enough about our pending victory to forget all the times Sawyer had stolen flutes, disassembled them, and hidden them in the pelican’s mouth. Ms. Nakamoto let Sawyer through. DeMarcus moved aside. The pelican directed a funny version of “Fight, Pelicans, Fight,” speeding
way up and then slowing way down and accelerating again. The cheerleaders, laughing, finally gave up trying to dance to it.

After the game, Sawyer disappeared into the locker room to take a shower. I carried his dead carcass of a costume back to the van, then retrieved his T-shirt and waited outside for him so he didn’t have to look quite so buff and manly by walking across the parking lot bare chested. That’s what I told him, anyway. Personally, I wouldn’t have minded. When he was dressed, I extended my hand to him, and he took it. We held hands as we walked back to the van.

Ms. Howard already had the engine running. Sawyer and I were the last ones in. Before we’d even sat down, the van started moving, and the lights blinked out. This time he got into the seat first, taking the window. He propped his forehead against the glass, anticipating what I would do next, as I took his shoulders under my hands. The groan he let out caused Ellen and Grace to stand up from the seat behind us to see what was going on. Grace made a motion with her hand indicating I should jerk him off next. Grace. Sigh. If Sawyer had seen her do this, I would have died.

But she was right about one thing. I was giving Sawyer some pretty intense physical pleasure. And he was letting me know. I felt his groan in my crotch. I curled one thigh up and
over his, letting my lower leg curve around his calf, as if this gave me better leverage.

“Oh God, Kaye,” Sawyer said, guttural and appreciative.

“Ms. Howard!” Grace called. “I can’t sleep because Kaye and Sawyer are having sex.”

As a
wooooooo
echoed through the van, Sawyer straightened slowly so he wouldn’t knock me onto the floor with a sudden movement. He pulled off his shirt and tossed it over the back of the seat at Grace.

“It’s not a rock concert,” Ellen said. “Geez.” The shirt came sailing back to land on Sawyer’s head.

“We want the shorts,” Grace yawned.

Sawyer put his shirt back on—but not before I passed my hand down his bare back.

And he felt it. With the shirt over his head but not yet pulled down to cover his back, he looked over his shoulder at me. Our eyes met as the van passed under a light on the interstate. A shadow descended over his face when we drove away from that light and approached the next. Then his blue eyes lit up again.

I moved my hand down his arm and felt chill bumps.

He pulled his shirt the rest of the way on. “Your turn,” he said, shifting in his seat.

“Here.” I fished around in my bag and pulled out the
pillow I brought on long trips. He propped it behind his back against the wall of the van. With one of his legs extended along the seat, he pulled me by the hips until I settled back against him.

His hands gripped my shoulders and massaged. Now I understood why he’d groaned under my touch. Aidan had never bothered to give me a sexy rub like this (and in his defense, I’d never given him one, either). Sawyer turned me to water under his fingers. I nearly groaned but stopped myself so Grace wouldn’t holler any more orgasm jokes across the van. My groan came out as a squeak.

“And you said
I
was tense.” Sawyer’s voice was a low rumble in my ear. “What’s this knot right here?” He kneaded a spot in my neck.

“Ah,” I gasped.

“Put your head down,” he said gently, his hands working their way up my neck, then down into the neckline of my cheerleading top. “I wish I could take this off.”

“That could be arranged,” I murmured as if I were Grace, or Tia.

My face flushed hot. He’d only made a joke. Maybe he hadn’t even meant anything risqué, and I’d ruined the mood by going too far. I wondered if he could feel my neck and shoulders tensing up again.

He placed one kiss on the back of my neck, at the lowest dip of my neckline.

I shivered.

And then he passed one arm around my chest, drawing me even farther against him until I relaxed into him, and he eased back against the pillow.

The heat of his body soaked into me. He took one deep breath. My body rose and fell with his. He nestled his arm under my breasts, his hand resting protectively across my hip.

In the silence that came after, I didn’t know what to say.

Finally I gave voice to what had been bothering me from lunchtime until he sat down with me in the van. I said quietly, “Aidan did tell me he wanted to talk about student council at lunch. You were there. You heard him.”

“What did he really want to talk about?” Sawyer asked, his words vibrating through me.

“He wants to make sure I don’t go out with you.”

“Hm,” Sawyer half laughed.

I waited for him to ask me out, or to tell me the idea of us going out was ridiculous, but he did neither. He only flattened his palm on my hip, then gripped me more firmly, which sent a jolt of electricity down my leg.

I said, “And he wanted to know what I got on my paper for Mr. Frank.”

“Was he impressed?”

“He said you wrote it for me.”

“He is an asshole,” Sawyer said, “and he knows how to push your buttons. More importantly, was your mom impressed?” At some point during that horrible morning, I’d moaned to him about accidentally telling my mother what I’d done. Even if I pulled off a feat by scoring well on the paper, she’d still know I’d forgotten to write it until the last second—that is, failed.

And that’s exactly how she’d reacted when I told her what my grade was. “No,” I said, “she wasn’t impressed. She’s making me stay home tomorrow to write the next one.”

“It’s not due for two weeks.”

“I know.”

“We haven’t even worked on the notes or the outline in class yet.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“How can you be in trouble when you’re perfect?”

I nodded, careful not to bump his chin with the back of my head. “It’s a question for the ages.”

“
Most
importantly,” he said, his breath tickling my earlobe and sending a fresh chill across my skin, “are you impressed with yourself?”

“No,” I admitted, “and I know that’s stupid. Ms. Malone
will tell me this when I meet with her about handling stress. I’ve already heard it in self-esteem lectures, especially for girls only. I just can’t shake it, though. When I don’t accomplish something, I know it’s my fault. When I do make good, I feel like I don’t deserve it.”

“I know that,” he said, “but why do you feel that way?”

I shrugged automatically, then hoped I hadn’t elbowed him. He put one hand up to rub my shoulders again, very gently.

I said, “People give me stuff because of what I’ve already done, or because of who my mother is.”

“That’s definitely not true,” he said. “People don’t want dipshits leading the student council. Well, scratch that. We elected Aidan president. But people definitely don’t want an ugly, unpopular head cheerleader. When the school voted for you, nobody was thinking, ‘Kaye’s mom runs a bank.’ They were thinking, ‘Kaye has a firm ass.’ ”

This time I did elbow him softly in the ribs.

“Oof. Maybe that’s just what
I
was thinking. But
nobody
was thinking about your mom. And you’re in all the upper-level classes. That’s no accident. You were in the Loser class way back when, right?”
The Loser class
was Sawyer’s term for the gifted class. “If they put people in the Loser class based only on their hard-hitting parents, Tia wouldn’t have been
in it, because God knows whether her mom is dead or alive. Harper wouldn’t have been in it. I love Ms. Davis, but she’s not exactly playing with a full deck.”

“She’s an artist.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

That’s exactly what
I
thought of Harper’s mom. I loved that Sawyer said he loved her. Everything I found out about him, every additional inch he pulled back the curtain on his life, made me like him more.

And every stroke of his skin across mine made me want him more. Yet if we followed our recent pattern, the closer we felt to each other, the sooner we’d have a dumb fight and push each other away again.

So I brought up the other thing that had been bothering me since lunch. “I didn’t mean to offend you today when I asked if the pelicans were your brothers. I was just trying to snap you out of being mad about Aidan, and I picked the wrong thing to make a joke out of. I didn’t know you were so serious about being a vegan.”

“Why not?” he asked, dropping his sexy tone for the first time and sounding more like his normal self. “I have to eat, like, four gallons of salad to get any calories. Doesn’t that seem serious to you?”

“You’re never serious about anything.”

“I’m serious a lot,” he said.

“It looks exactly like kidding.”

His sultry tone was back as he whispered, “Maybe you just don’t know me that well.”

“Maybe not.” I pulled away from him and turned around in my seat.

“Don’t go,” he murmured.

I wasn’t going anywhere. He was right. After two years, I felt like I hardly knew him at all. If he was as good at reading people as he claimed, he had me at a disadvantage. I wanted to look him in the eye when I posed my next question. I sat sideways, one knee bent and my foot up on the seat, open to him. “When did you go vegan?”

His eyebrows rose in surprise. “Last spring.”

“Why?”

“I was about to try out for mascot. I was up against five other people, really funny characters—”

“Like who?”

“Chelsea.”

“Oh, right! I’d forgotten she’d gone out for mascot.” My friend Chelsea was a majorette in the marching band. Majorettes and cheerleaders tried out in front of the whole school, and students voted. These definitely were more popularity contests than any measure of talent—though I’d probably
clinched the wow factor among cheerleaders with my ability to do ten back handsprings in a row. This boggled boys’ minds.

Mascot selection was different. These candidates tried out in front of the principal, the football coach, and the cheerleading coach only. I guessed the faculty wanted to make damn sure the mascot would do a good job of representing the school. They weren’t taking any chances on getting a lame pelican by letting students vote.

That meant the mascot selection had flown under my radar. I vaguely remembered the announcement that rising seniors could try out, and later, the shocking announcement that Sawyer had won. But this event had been as big a part of Sawyer’s life as the cheerleader tryout had been for me.

Maybe bigger.

“They let us put the costume on for two minutes to see what it was like,” Sawyer said, “and that was all. The next day we had to come back, get in the pelican suit, and convince them to give us the job. But my two minutes in the suit had taught me that a lot of the gags I’d been planning weren’t going to work. You’ve got so much padding on that your movements have to be hugely exaggerated for the crowd to see what you’re doing. I left wondering if I should even come back the next day.”

“Really!” I exclaimed at the idea of Sawyer, discouraged. This was a new concept for me. Every time he identified a real emotion he’d had, I was shocked all over again.

“After school, before I went to work, I drove down to the marina and sat on the dock for a while, watching the pelicans, looking for inspiration.” He moved one hand up, swooping like a seven-foot wingspan. “And—”

He stopped in midsentence, hand in midflight, lost in thought. In the dim van, his eyes were darkest blue, watching imaginary birds above us. I’d never seen him so unguarded before. I loved to look at him when he’d forgotten he was being watched.

He blinked and put his hand down. “Pelicans are dorks on land,” he said, “little trolls waddling around. In the air they unfold their wings and grow huge, soaring and then diving for their dinner. It occurred to me that they’re like a lot of students at this school. We’re not so good at sitting in desks, staying still, and paying attention to a boring lecture.”

He cut his eyes to me, and I knew the same thing was going through both our minds:
I
was good at that. But, granted,
he
wasn’t.

“That doesn’t mean we’ll never be good at anything, though,” he said. “There’s almost no job out there where you
sit at a desk and pay attention while someone else talks. I mean, I’ve already got a job I’m way better at than school.”