“Okay,” I said, laughing. I knew he was serious, but I enjoyed hearing him admit to being base and petty every once in a while. It helped to know he wasn’t as superhuman as he looked.
“So I’m sorry for the way I acted after the picture yesterday. You didn’t know what’s going on with me. I came down a lot harder on you than you deserved. And I understand why you challenged me. I drove you to it. I wouldn’t want to stand next to me either.” He looked down at my hand on his knee. Then he glanced over at the door like he hoped Harper would relent and open it. I wished he would put his hand on mine, some sign that we were cool again, but he seemed only to want to be alone.
“I consider you a friend,” I said quietly. “I think we’re having such a hard time getting along because, the first night we met, we read each other completely wrong. We went a lot farther than you were expecting, and I was surprised at how you reacted.”
He held my gaze and said grimly, “That’s not why.”
As I watched his eyes, looking dark now rather than blue in his shadowed face, I felt warmth spread across my chest and up my neck. I was more confused and more turned on than I’d been yesterday morning when we kissed, because his words were weightier than his lips on mine. We both understood we had a connection. I’d told him, over and over, that I didn’t want a boyfriend. He’d made progress toward getting a different girlfriend. And whatever we said we wanted, we kept ending up close to each other, touching.
That scared the hell out of me. I took my hand off his knee.
He glanced toward the door again, nodding like he accepted what I was telling him: that we would never be together. Not the way he wanted. And he was ready for Harper to come along and let him go.
He’d confessed his feelings to me, and his motivations. I was glad Harper had made us talk. But when he walked out that door, he would still be lost in Florida. The school would still view him as the dog who couldn’t stick with one girlfriend—even worse than Sawyer, who at least was up front about his inability to commit. And Will would still be second chair on snare.
“Will you challenge me?” I asked him. “Tell Ms. Nakamoto during band this afternoon, and we’ll have another tryout tomorrow.”
“No,” he said firmly. “You won. I lost. If we went through it again tomorrow and you lost, I’d know you threw it. So would everybody else. You’ve already undercut any authority I might have had with the drums.”
“That’s not true. You get your authority from being a great drum captain. I don’t want to be in charge. You’ll see in practice this afternoon. If we’re so unfortunate that Ms. Nakamoto tells us to have a sectional, Jimmy and Travis will laugh me out of the parking lot.”
His brows knitted, deepening the worry line between them. “Can I ask you something personal?”
“More personal than ‘Do you like it when I put my mouth on your nipple?’ ”
A blush shot through his face. He pursed his lips, trying hard not to laugh. I noticed that goose bumps broke out on his skin too—possibly the only time in the last week that he’d felt a chill, unless he’d been taking cold showers. I wondered if he realized he was rubbing his arms with his hands to warm himself as he said, “I’ll take that as a yes. The question is, what were you in charge of that you screwed up?”
I shrugged. “Nothing. I’ve never been in charge of anything.”
“Then why are you so scared?”
“I will screw it up,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“Everybody tells me I will. Everybody says, ‘Oh, you’d better not put Tia in charge of anything—watch out.’ ”
“Who says that?”
“My sisters. Everybody at school. You heard the drum line, and DeMarcus. They were so freaking relieved that anybody was drum captain besides me.”
Will squinted at me. “Don’t you think that’s because you go around saying, ‘You’d better not put me in charge of anything’? It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
What he was telling me seemed to glimmer in front of me. “No,” I said. “You wouldn’t think that if you’d known me for more than a week. The people around here have known me forever.”
“I just got here,” Will said, “and that’s exactly why I can see you so clearly.”
Suddenly I was the one who was cold. I crossed my arms but tried to disguise the move by putting my chin in one hand.
“Girls look up to you.”
“Ha!” I crowed. “That is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” I felt my smile dropping away as he watched me silently without laughing along. I asked, “Are you serious?”
“Yes. The girls in the drum line, especially. They watch your every move. They practice the twirls you do with your sticks when you’re thinking about something else.”
I suspected he was making this up. “I never noticed.”
“They wait until you’re walking away.”
“Well, God help them,” I said. “If I can do one positive thing for them between now and when I graduate, it will be to give up drum captain and never be put in charge of anything again.”
“That’s not a goal,” he said. “It’s an anti-goal. It’s an aggressive stance against any sort of goal, like that’s going to help you.”
I let out a frustrated sigh. He was starting to sound like Kaye. Besides, I wasn’t the one who needed help. He was the one who feared the school would show up at his house with pitchforks and torches. And I could use that to my advantage. “Listen, would you challenge me for drum captain if I did you a favor?”
He grinned at me. “What kind of favor?”
He looked so adorable when he smiled. I wished I was suggesting that kind of favor. “I’ll explain the situation to Angelica,” I said. “I’ll tell her the picture yesterday was my fault.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he murmured. “Not totally. We agreed on that.”
“Still, I’ll try with her. I’ll convince her to give you another chance. You can go out with her again. You and I will keep our hands off each other. Then all your problems will be solved.”
His fingers tapped a beat on one knee. “Knock yourself out.”
“And you’ll challenge me?”
“Yep.” He was looking at the bare bulb in the ceiling. He didn’t seem very invested in this conversation. I would show him, though. Getting out of drum captain was at stake here.