“Lasagna,” Dusty said, since I seemed to have lost the ability to form words with my mouth. I swallowed a few times and coughed.
“Clearance sale?” I finally said.
“Yeah, sure,” Renee said, her eyes not meeting mine. Um, what?
“Why are you being weird?” I said, moving away from Dusty. “Are you hiding something from me, big sister?”
“Absolutely not,” she said, hiding the bags behind her back. “Be right back.” She dashed up the stairs and the other two followed. Hmm. If I had only one guess, I’d say it had something to do with my upcoming birthday, but maybe I was just being too self-centered.
They came down a little while later, and Paul and Mase were home a few minutes after that. No one seemed surprised to find Dusty with me in the kitchen, which also led me to the conclusion that the reason he was here was some sort of weird way to distract me while they all went out shopping. My birthday had never been a huge deal, being from a family with a lot of kids. It was bigger when I was younger, but of course I didn’t remember a lot of those birthdays. They only existed now in pictures.
Maybe Renee felt shitty about being so strict with me so she was throwing me a birthday party to make up for it? It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I couldn’t think of any other reason she’d be hiding things like this from me, or why Dusty had suddenly decided to cook dinner with me, seeing as how he couldn’t cook at all.
But of course, I pretended that I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. I’d play along.
Dusty stayed for dinner and I was also shocked to discover that he’d brought homework, as well. Call me crazy, but he just didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would do homework. I mean, he’d have to because he’d managed to make it through one and a half years of college already, but I just couldn’t picture it.
Everyone claimed a piece of real estate, and I ended up sitting on the floor of the living room with my laptop on the coffee table and my books on the floor.
“Is this area taken?” Dusty parked himself next to me and set a stack of books on the table.
“I guess it is now. It’s kind of catch as catch can around here for study space.”
“I see that,” he said as everyone else spread themselves out in various places and positions. I skimmed the titles of the books he’d set down and was a little surprised. Calculus, music theory and several that looked like they were for education.
“Music education, like Hunter,” he said to my unanswered question. “Surprised?”
“I knew that already.” Not exactly, but I could put two and two together.
“Hey, Hunter, do you still have that Praxis study guide?” Hunter had taken the first set of the tests he needed to pass to become a teacher a couple of weeks before and was still waiting for his results since he had to pass the first test to take the second part. It sounded like the SATs only way worse.
Hunter looked up from whatever he was immersed in, his eyes taking a second to focus.
“Yeah, sure. You want to borrow it?”
“Just the practice tests. I just want to make copies, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure, no problem.” Hunter went and got the book from upstairs and brought it down. “I didn’t fill in the answers, so you can’t cheat off me.”
“Well, I’d rather pass the test, so I think I’ll take my chances.” Hunter chucked the book at Dusty, and he caught it as I ducked.
“No throwing books,” Taylor said from the couch. “They can’t protect themselves. You should know better, Hunter Zaccadelli.”
“I hate to be that person, but I have a huge anatomy test and I have, like, a billion pages to read, so can you guys flirt later? Like, in your room? Quietly?” Renee said, glaring at us all like a pissed-off librarian.
“Sorry, Ne,” Taylor said, ducking her head and going back to her book.
“Yes, ma’am,” Hunter said, his accent creeping in.
Dusty gave me a look before he whispered, “You’re not going to yell at me, are you?”
“I’m still hearing talking,” Renee said, turning a page of her book.
I pretended to zip my lips and pointed at Renee and then made a slashing motion across my throat and then pointed to him. I hoped he got the message. He gave me a look and flipped the book Hunter had given him open, and I went back to working on my studying for Pam’s class. I always did it first so my brain was at its most fresh and able to absorb the information.
For a guy who made a lot of noises with his mouth, Dusty was really good at focusing. I kept looking up from my book and seeing if he was really studying or only pretending to, but he was always absorbed in whatever he was doing. He never even looked up, even though I was looking at him and we were sitting so close. It was like he’d shut the door and was in his own room that none of us could get into.
I shook my head and went back to my work and read until I finished everything I absolutely had to finish and then started working on my blog. I was thinking about doing a new design, but since I knew next to nothing about HTML, I was kind of limited. I should just learn code. Maybe I could find a used book about it in the bookstore or something.
“What’s that?” I turned my head the tiniest bit and found Dusty’s face almost resting on my shoulder. I slammed my laptop shut, startling everyone out of their study stupors.
“Oh, my God, I think I just died a little,” Taylor said, holding on to her chest.
“Sorry. Sorry.” I glared at Dusty, who still had his face way too close. As far as boys went, he definitely smelled a lot better than the ones I’d encountered. A lot of them covered up the fact that they didn’t shower too often with that nasty body spray that was probably toxic and slowly killing them with black lung disease. I tried not to close my eyes and lean into him and imagine him hanging up a fresh load of laundry, shirtless, of course, outside on a sunny day.
Dear Jesus, what was I doing?
He’d already said he wasn’t interested, and I wasn’t interested, so why did he keep doing things that made it seem like he was interested, and I kept thinking things like him hanging up laundry without a shirt on?
I scooted away from him and turned my laptop so he couldn’t see the screen. He settled back in his position with the smallest of sighs and went back to taking notes. Or at least that’s what I thought he was doing, but then a paper airplane landed in my lap. Seriously? How old was he? Although, I had to give him points. Note passing was a lost art in the world of texting and Facebook messaging and tweeting your every vapid thought out to the world whether the world needed to know it or not.