Shut Out(28)

“Dad wants ice cream,” he said, running his hand over his short black hair. “I’m heading out to get some. You want any?”

I glanced at Randy. He was still watching me, but the look on his face was unreadable.

“We do,” I told Logan. “Strawberry with sprinkles for me. And make sure Dad’s is low-fat, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Logan said. “What about you, Randy?”

“Um…” Slowly, he turned to look at my brother. “Chocolate. With chocolate syrup.”

Logan laughed. “Now that’s my kind of ice cream. All right. I’ll be back.” He swiped the keys off the counter and walked out of the kitchen.

“Look, Randy,” I whispered when Logan was gone, “the girls are on a sex strike. It’s going to be this way until the rivalry is over.”

“It’ll never happen,” Randy told me.

I didn’t reply. Instead, I turned and walked into the living room, where Randy wouldn’t dare return to this conversation in front of my father, and sat down to watch some crappy sports show and wait for my ice cream.





chapter twelve


“So you’ve been reading Aristophanes, huh?”

I jumped, and the book I was trying to shelve slipped from my hand and thudded to the floor. My empty fingers groped for the stability of the wooden shelves as the ladder wobbled beneath me, my feet scurrying to regain their balance.

“Whoa,” Cash said.

His hands were on my hips then, steadying me. My T-shirt had ridden up slightly as I’d stretched my arms to the highest shelves, so his fingers made direct contact with the exposed skin just above the waistband of my jeans. A small burst of fire pulsed through me, starting at the places where he was touching me and spreading to the rest of my body.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. You okay?”

“Fine.”

His hands were still on me.

I wondered why he didn’t let me go. I was fine now; he could have pulled his hands back. But he didn’t. And I wanted him to keep touching me. I knew I shouldn’t—if my own boyfriend’s touch made me stiffen, Cash’s should revolt me—but my body hummed in stark disagreement with my brain.

His hands stayed on my hips as I climbed down the ladder, guiding me to safety on the floor in front of him. Once my sneakers hit the thin brown carpet, he let me go, his fists moving instantly into his pockets.

“You okay?” he repeated, as if I hadn’t answered.

“Fine,” I said again. “God, are you taking a class in sneaking up on people or what?”

Cash shrugged a shoulder. “Natural talent, I guess.”

“A natural talent that is going to get me killed one day. Can you please not do that? I could have fallen off the ladder and broken my neck. Or at the very least my leg or my ankle or something. Or my wrist, and then shelving books would have been hard, and Jenna would have yelled at me—and at you for making me fall, and…” I trailed off. I should have just shut up after “Fine.”

“I’ll work on it,” Cash said with a sheepish smile.

“Right. Good.”

“So,” he said. “Aristophanes?”

“What?”

“I was trying to ask if you’d been reading Aristophanes,” he repeated. “You know, the Greek playwright? One of the forerunners of satire?”

“I’ve never heard of him,” I admitted, a little ashamed. “Who is he? What has he written?”

“Oh, uh, well,” Cash said, his cheeks turning just a touch red. “His most famous play is probably The Clouds. They don’t really teach him in high school, though—too racy. I guess the fact that I know who he is really proves what a dork I am, huh?” He laughed, scuffing the toe of his sneaker against the floor.

Great. He was a hottie, a good kisser, and a literature buff. God really must have had a sense of humor, because if I had to name my biggest turn-on, it was literature. And he had just recommended a book that I didn’t know, that wasn’t taught in school. If I were single, there would be no better pick-up line.

Suddenly, I found myself thinking back to Atonement—you know, the scene in the book where the two main characters have sex in the library? Even though Chloe said doing it against bookshelves would be really uncomfortable (and she’d probably know), it was still a fantasy of mine. Like, what’s more romantic than a quiet place full of books?

But I shouldn’t have been thinking about my library fantasies.

Especially while I was staring at Cash.

In the middle of a library.

“So,” I said, clearing my throat and trying to sound cool and detached. Instead, what came out was pretty flirtatious. What was it about this guy that always made me do that? “It’s funny. You can’t do geometry but you read Greek plays?”

Cash’s blush deepened. “Yeah… I know it’s a little lame. But you’re sure you’ve never read anything by Aristophanes? Not even one play?”

“It’s not lame,” I said quickly. Too quickly. “I love the Greeks. I’ve read Antigone and Medea and Oedipus and—”

“Wow,” Cash teased. “No wonder you seem so tense sometimes; all you read are tragedies. Do you have something against smiling?”