The Pretty One(67)

“No. I mean, I told her I might stop by, but that’s it.” Wait, he didn’t ask my sister out on a date? Why did Lucy tell me he did? Then something awful dawns on me. Perhaps she intentionally lied about Drew asking her out so she could keep me away from him. As terrible as that sounds, at the moment, none of it really seems to matter. I feel as if a major load has been taken off my shoulders. Drew didn’t ask Lucy out! Drew is here with ME!

“Anyway, when Bill told me you were sick, I decided to come over and check up on you.”

“Bill? Bill who?”

“Bill Williams. He’s a sophomore.”

“I’ve never even met him. How would he know I was sick?”

“When the prettiest girl in school is sick,” Drew says, “people notice.”

“That’s what he said?” I ask as my face grows warm.

“No. I did.”

My face burst into flames as I give him a little grin and stare at my feet.

“So are you hungry?” he asks. “I can make you dinner if you’d like.”

“You cook?” I can’t exactly envision Drew in an apron, stirring a steaming kettle on a hot stove.

“Well, I can make ratatouille,” Drew says, taking my hand.

My breath catches in my throat. Even though I kind of feel like I did when I was in the finals of the fifth-grade spelling bee and was asked to spell myrrh, I’m determined not to let my fear get the best of me, like I did before.

“Do you like ratatouille?”

I am looking at my hand in his and about to melt onto the linoleum. “I hate it,” I whisper almost seductively.

Drew laughs. “I’ll just have to make something else. Anything you want.”

As if holding on to my hand wasn’t enough to make me faint, he pulls me in closer so I’m standing only inches away from him. I’m so startled by this that I blurt out the word spaghetti.

Ugh. Every toddler’s favorite food.

But Drew doesn’t care. “Spaghetti it is,” he says, and then he kisses my hand.

My heart stops beating and my head is spinning. Drew puts my hand to his cheek and his skin is incredibly warm. He leans in and I’m totally paralyzed, but with sheer joy, not fear. It’s as though everything up until this moment in time has been scripted to a fault, and with one improvised action, the story will need a different ending.

Megan Fletcher, ugly duckling techie turned beautiful swan actress, will ride off into the sunset with the hero.

Drew gently presses his lips to mine, kissing me softly and slowly. My pulse is racing when he sticks his tongue in my mouth just a little bit. Before now, I would’ve thought that touching someone else’s tongue with mine was right up there with scraping the gum off from underneath my desk and sticking it in my mouth, but it’s not that at all. It feels…unbelievable. In fact, I want to swallow him whole. Drew’s kiss is getting hungrier, too. My chest is pressed up against his and his hands are going up the back of my T-shirt. Then they travel south toward my rear when I hear it.

Click.

Through the fog it hits me: It’s a key in a lock. Which can only mean one thing: someone’s home. With all the strength of a superhero, I push Drew off me. He topples over into the stove, stunned and surprised.

I hear footsteps storming through the living room and within seconds, Lucy is standing in the kitchen. “Drew? What are you doing here?”

“He just stopped by to see how I was feeling,” I say in a high-pitch voice.

It makes me sound guilty of something, I’m just not sure what anymore.

“Oh?” Lucy says, narrowing her eyes at him.

“What are you doing home?” I say to Lucy. Surprisingly, this question almost comes out as an accusation.

“I was worried about you,” she replies sternly, looking as though she’d like to strangle me and dump my body in the Chesapeake. “I’m surprised to see you out of bed.”

Now that I see the rage in her eyes, I feel like the wind has been sucked right out of my lungs. “Right, I should, well, get back in it.” I turn toward Drew. “Thanks for stopping by.”

“Oh,” he says, clearly surprised by his sudden dismissal.

“Um, sure.”

Lucy crosses her arms but doesn’t move. She’s just standing there, glaring at me.

“Well, good night,” I say as I run back up the stairs, leaving Drew and Lucy alone. I turn off the bedroom light and crawl back into bed, still wearing my clothes. I can hear Lucy saying “so long” to Drew, then padding up the stairs.

“He brought you flowers?” she asks, flipping on the overhead light.

Half of me wants to defend myself and rip into Lucy for misleading me about her “date” with Drew. The other half wants to apologize. But for what? Getting what I want? Being happy for the first time in my life? For being (according to Drew at least) the prettiest girl in school?

But instead I say nothing.

Lucy just shakes her head in disgust and walks into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

The shower turns on and I hear a muffled noise. I get out of bed and creep out of the room, pausing at the closed bathroom door. I stand still, listening to Lucy cry in the shower. It’s clear from the level of her devastation that maybe she really did like Drew. And she had come home to find him with someone she never thought she’d have to fight with for any boy.