Complete Nothing (True Love #2)(43)

“He came to The Nutcracker last Christmas,” Lauren offered.

“Besides that, it was just the first one. The day he asked me out,” Claudia said, her eyes shining with nostalgia. “But that was in the spring, and his little sister was dancing. Then last spring he was at some football clinic. But I don’t mind. I would never expect him to miss a game to come see me dance, just like he’d never expect me to miss a recital to come see him play. It’s fine.”

“Still. It would have been cool if he’d found some other way to support you, like you did for him by joining Boosters,” Lauren said.

“Yeah, I guess. But ballerinas don’t have boosters. And he supported me in other ways.” She looked at me and lowered her voice. “Boy gives a killer foot rub.”

She fell silent suddenly, obviously caught up in the memories and the emotions. My heart went out to her. It was clear she was in love with this boy. We needed to make him realize he loved her back.

Claudia took a deep breath and sort of shook out her limbs like she was a wet dog shaking out her coat. “How did this get so negative? We have a plan, and the plan is going to work. Right, girls?”

Lauren and I looked at each other and nodded. “Right.”

I imagined Claudia and Keegan ensconced at an intimate table at some romantic restaurant when Peter burst in, grabbed Claudia, and kissed her like no one had ever been kissed.

I rolled my shoulders back confidently. “Tomorrow night, we seal the deal.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR


True


I was getting better. I was. I had just sat through ninth-period art for forty-two minutes and had not once looked at Orion. Not once. Not even when the girl next to me had turned her easel toward the boy next to her with the word “Homecoming?” spelled out inside the shape of a big red heart and everyone had applauded. Of course, the easels had been set up in such a way that I couldn’t have seen him even if I’d craned my neck so far I’d fallen off my stool, but that was neither here nor there.

When the bell rang, I pushed myself out of my seat, shouldered my bag, and speed-walked toward the hallway. I had to get to the gym for the pep rally, but before that, I wanted to find Claudia and give her a final pep talk (ironically) about tonight. The sand in my sand timer was getting close to the halfway mark, which meant we didn’t have that much time to make Peter Marrott wake up and smell the love. I didn’t need to sneak a peek at Orion to see if he was, by chance, sneaking a peek at me. I was focused. One hundred percent focused.

It wasn’t my fault that I had to take a small detour and walk past Orion’s easel as he bent to gather his things into his backpack. Some girl had left her tennis bag in the aisle, so I really had no choice. As I passed behind him, I inhaled as deeply as I possibly could, longing for a whiff of his scent. Then my eyes fell on his easel and I froze. My throat went entirely dry.

It was a painting of his arrow. The arrow pendant I had given him months ago inside our cabin in Maine. The arrow that now hung around my neck.

Slowly, casually, I reached up and tucked the pendant under the collar of my white sweater. At that moment, Orion sat up and our eyes met.

“Oh, hey!” he said with a smile.

I searched his eyes for some spark of recognition. Surely if he remembered the arrow, he remembered me. There was nothing.

“Hi.” My gaze darted past him to the painting.

“Oh, don’t look at that,” he said, blushing deeply. “It sucks.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I told him as he rose to his full height, shouldering his backpack. He was wearing his blue-and-white football jersey, the number twenty-two outlined in silver, and somehow the uniform made him even hotter. Maybe I really was becoming a human girl. Every last one had seemed to stop and almost faint every time a football player passed by in a jersey today. “Why did you . . . I mean, what made you paint that?”

I rested my hand just below my collarbone, flattening it against the arrow beneath the cotton weave of my sweater. Orion’s brow knit as he looked at his own painting.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “It’s weird. I’m always seeing that arrow in my mind for some reason.” He stared at it until someone dropped a tray of paintbrushes, and the clatter seemed to awaken him. “Who knows? Maybe I was a Native American warrior or something in a past life.”

My heart lurched at the words “past life.” He had no clue how close he’d come to hitting on the truth.

“Or maybe you’ve seen it somewhere before?” I suggested. “Does it maybe have some significance to you?”

He frowned and lifted a shoulder. “I don’t think so.”

As he turned away from me, I grabbed his arm to stop him. He looked down at my hand first, before meeting my eye.

“Because some people say that a true artist paints what’s in his heart,” I said, my own heart slamming so hard against my rib cage it had to be bruising itself.

Orion turned to fully face me. He looked deeply into my eyes, searching, searching, his face looming closer. I could scarcely breathe. He was remembering. Finally! He was remembering. I hooked my finger around the silver chain on my neck, ready to pull the arrow out.

“Wow,” he said quietly. “That is the cheesiest thing I’ve ever heard.”