A Midsummer's Nightmare(51)

“How would you know?” I demanded, splashing water in Harrison’s face. “You were watching him, too.”

“Too!” he cried. “I got you! Ha. You just admitted you were watching him. You love him. You so love him.”

“I do not,” I said. “That’s just weird, okay? He’s going to be my stepbrother.”

“I know. It’s all sexy and forbidden—like in Cruel Intentions.”

“Doesn’t someone die at the end of that movie?” I asked. “Not that it matters. I don’t like him that way. We’re just… I don’t know. Lately we’ve hung out more. He’s not so bad, really. So, I guess we’re friends now.”

“Friends with benefits,” Harrison teased.

I tried not to blush or anything dumb like that. Harrison didn’t know about my past with Nathan. I’d never told him about the graduation party or the aloe incident or the almost-hookup in the guest room. I hadn’t breathed a word, and I wasn’t planning to. Because that was all behind me. Harrison could believe what he wanted, but I was done chasing boys. Nathan and I were friends. Just friends. And future stepsiblings. That was all.

“You’re just dreaming,” I told Harrison. “You can’t have him, so you want to live vicariously through me.”

“Damn straight I do.”

“Christ, Harrison, you’re such a loser,” I joked, splashing him again.

He splashed me back, and soon a war erupted in the water around us. And the issue was dropped.


Unfortunately, Bailey wasn’t so easily distracted… or convinced.

“So, what’s going on with you and my brother?” she asked the next day. Her cheerleading tryouts were in a week, and we were out on the front lawn practicing again. I was no expert, but it seemed like she was doing well.

“What do you mean?”

“Something is up with you and Nathan,” she insisted, sitting down on the porch beside me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, handing her a bottle of water. Christ, I just couldn’t catch a break about this.

“I’m not stupid.” She unscrewed the cap and downed a few gulps of water, letting some of the clear liquid drip down her chin. “You’re being nice to him. I thought you hated him.”

“Why would you think that?”

“You guys were just so weird around each other.” She handed the bottle back to me. “It was always, like, tense. You were pissed off—”

“It’s still weird when you say pissed.”

“Now you hang out and run errands together and smile at each other—”

“Your mom made him drive me to the bridal shop,” I said. “That doesn’t count as hanging out.”

“But you watch movies together, too. I told you, I’m not stupid. I can see that something changed. What happened?”

Goddamn, the kid asked way too many questions.

“I don’t know,” I said flatly. “Why does it matter?”

“I’m just curious.”

“Well, you’re wasting time. You should practice.”

“I have practiced.”

“Practice more.”

“Why are you changing the subject?” She raised a little blond eyebrow at me. “You act like you’re hiding something, Whitley.”

“I’m not.”

“Are you sure?”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re so annoying,” I said, nudging her arm. “If you want me to hate your brother, I will. Would that make you happy?”

“No, I just—”

“Then practice and let it go.”

She frowned at me. “Fine. But I think you’re hiding something.”

Before I could argue, she skipped across the yard and did two cartwheels in a row. “Go, go, Panthers!” she yelled, finishing with a backflip and a toe touch.

The kid was lucky I couldn’t get angry with her; even when she was being irritating, I still kind of adored her.

It seemed like the only one not questioning my relationship with Nathan was, well, Nathan. He had no issue with our sudden friendship. He invited me to go places with him, obviously aware that my social life was lacking due to my self-imposed isolation.

The next Friday night, while Bailey went to sleep over at Sherri’s, Nathan asked me to have a Back to the Future movie marathon with him. He claimed that I had to join him because it was a travesty that I’d yet to see these movies—which, I might add, came out way before I was born. I didn’t put up much of a fight, though. It was the third Friday night in a row that I’d stayed in, and a little company, even if it was just Nathan, was preferable to lying on the guest bed, listening to my iPod for hours on end.

He tapped on the guest room door around nine. “Are you ready for the epicness you are about to witness?” he asked.

“When you say epic, are you describing the movies or your shocking level of nerdiness?”

“Hey,” he said, folding his arms over his chest, only barely obscuring the image of a hand making the Vulcan salute on his T-shirt. “I thought you were giving this whole being-nice thing a try.”

“I am,” I told him. “But come on. You want to major in computer science, you’re practically swooning over some ancient movie about a time-traveling car, and you have a freaking Darth Vader bobblehead in your room. I thought jocks beat up geeks, not aspired to be them.”