Southbound Surrender Page 3

  ***

  We ceremoniously walk up to Target, like we have for the past four years of high school together, and embark on our final trip of school shopping. Yeah, we really need to work on that badass image.

  The fluorescent lighting beams us into the store, and we each grab a red basket. Hudson is already swinging it at me before I can move, and it smashes the back of my legs. I lift my basket higher and threaten him with it before I catch a glare from an elderly woman heading toward us. I drop my basket down and give old White Hair a smile as she passes us.

  “Wuss,” Hudson coughs as he leads us to the school supply section in the back of the store.

  “You just wait,” I say, but we both know that Hudson doesn’t have anything to worry about. We stop in front of the expansive back-to-school area with too many options and products for any normal student. A pencil is hanging overhead like a rocket or penis, whichever you want to envision.

  “Ha, I’ve been waiting for ten years –” Hudson stops mid-sentence while I peruse the pens. I like the ones that have a nice flow with a decent grip, not too inky so it will smear across the paper, but not too dry so it won’t work when you need it to. I have a thing for finding the right pen.

  “Yeah, it’ll come when you least expect it,” I say as I set my eyes on a BIC Select Roller. It’s five dollars and the last one left, but I know it will be worth every penny so I reach out to grab it when a hand tipped with a set of pink nails appears out of nowhere and snatches it before me.

  “Hey, I was – ” I turn to face the culprit that is about to snag my pen. My mouth drops, and my arm is still hanging in the air. I feel Hudson’s hand pull my arm down as he lets out a small laugh.

  “Going to buy this pen?” Piper Sullivan finishes my sentence as she holds the package in the air. She waves it back and forth in front of her pink V-neck shirt that’s plunging way more than my hormones can handle before she throws it in her basket. “Such a gentleman for offering to buy a pen for me. First he stalks me, then he offers to buy me a pen. And to think, we haven’t even gone on a date yet.”

  My heart pounces in my ribcage as I take stock of the magnified view from earlier today. If anything, it’s better than I imagined. Her lips have a light sheen to them, plump, wet, and ready to attack. And her eyes are more ferocious with a green strike that tears through me. My face flushes every shade of red in a Crayola box while I look to find the right words to respond with. A date? I would die for a date with Piper Sullivan.

  “Okay, stalker boy. This is where you ask me how I found you,” Piper says with a cock of her head. Her blonde waves fall to one side, dragging across her breasts. I stare a little too long before my eyes shoot up to her face.

  “Excuse me, let me scrape my friend’s mouth off of the floor,” Hudson jokes as he elbows me.

  “Yeah, how did you know it was me?” I finally manage to stutter. The hole in the fence was only an inch or two in diameter. There’s no way she could have seen me.

  Her lips turn up into a knowing smile before she points down at my shoes. All three of us look down to see my knock-off white Chucks with fluorescent laces.

  “I saw your shoes underneath the fence,” she says. “And then I saw another pair of shoes just like your friend’s over here.” She points to Hudson’s black Nikes. “Stalkers found and apprehended. Case solved.” She curtsies and then blows a kiss at me.

  Oh God, those lips.

  “Don’t look at me,” Hudson says as he raises his hands in surrender. “It was him. I just happened to be delivering some cabinets with my dad down the street when I saw his bike. I decided to come check it out. It’s not every day that Cash Rowland is on the north side of town without me.”

  “Cash Rowland, huh?” she says, eyeing me. I stand up taller and puff out my chest even though, at this point, nothing is going to help me when I’m standing next to the man-child.

  “Piper Sullivan,” I say as I reach my hand out to hers. Shaking hands feels like a formality lost on my generation, but I do it anyway because I would do anything just to feel her skin against mine. She reaches out and meets my hand.

  Her skin is so incredibly soft.

  “I see you’ve done your homework to find out who I am,” she says as she continues to shake my hand. Her hand is warm and smaller than I would have guessed, but the grip is firm. It’s full of meaning like she has something to prove to me. She’s not the type of girl to go down lightly.

  Somehow, a handshake is turning me on.

  “Yeah,” I say, not moving my eyes away from hers.

  “This is awkward,” Hudson mumbles as he moves a few feet away from us and pretends to look at notecards even though he has never taken a note in his life.

  “That’s Hudson, by the way,” I add, nodding toward him. He’s behind her now, but she doesn’t move her eyes from me, which is surprising and completely abnormal. Ten out of ten girls would choose Hudson over me. Hell, I don’t blame them. But this gorgeous girl, she’s looking at me. Hudson violently shakes his head, waves his arms, and silently screams no. Then he points at me.

  “Good to know. Why were you watching me earlier today? Did you like what you saw?”

  “Um,” I stutter and her hand finally stops moving up and down in our handshake. And I realize that I’m standing in the middle of Target, in front of the pens, holding a girl’s hand I’m confident will fill and break my heart at the same time. I don’t ever want to let go.

  “As far as first impressions go, you’ve scored a zero so far,” she saves me with a melodic laugh that snaps me out of the Piper haze.

  Her words scored a zero slice through my brain.

  “You scored a 2400 on your SAT,” I reply. “You’re the only one who scored higher than I did in our graduating class so I had to scope out my competition.”

  “Competition, huh?” she asks with a raise of her eyebrow. She finally drops my hand and the dreadful path back to my own cold bubble of a body leaves me deflated. “You go to Xavier?”

  “Yeah, Hudson and I both do.” I curse myself for bringing up Hudson again. As far as I’m concerned, she needs to stay far, far away from Hudson Hawley and his chiseled abs, thick neck and strong jawline. There is no sharing when it comes to Piper, not that we shared anyone before.

  “So, why aren’t you at the football game? Why isn’t your friend playing? He looks like a football player. Grades not good enough?” she quips as she leans in and lowers her voice. “Big meatheads like him usually aren’t the brightest in the bunch.”

  “He left the team or got kicked off, depends on what story you want to believe. But enough about Hudson. What’s your story?” I ask, shoving my hands in my pocket trying to stay collected.

  “You want to know my story?” she asks. Her eyebrows quirk up in a gentle u-shape, molded like the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, and I start to think about what it would be like to whisk her away, just the two of us. I’m envisioning us on the Shovelhead, touring the west coast with her blonde hair flapping in the wind. She’d hold me tight, her arms wrapped around my waist. Hell, I’d even ride through North Dakota as long as it was with her. Anything and anyplace would be exciting with this girl.

  “Are you sure you want to venture that deep, Mr. Cash? Into the ring of fire?” she adds.

  “Good one. Johnny Cash. It’s not the first time I heard that one,” I reply. “Usually I get called the man in black by someone more seasoned than you.”

  “Seasoned, huh? I wouldn’t peg you for the type to go for older women,” she says with a smile.

  “I’m full of surprises,” I say, but I don’t know what the hell it means. All I know is that I’m not lying, and I’m nervous as hell.

  “You going to the party tonight after the football game?”

  “How’d you know about the party? I thought you just moved here?”

  “You’re observant. If I didn’t know better I’d call you a stalker,” she teases.

  “I saw the storage container in your driveway,
” I reply, feeling my hands sweat out a pool of water in my pockets. “How’d you know about the game?”

  “I get around. I hear news wherever I go. Are you going?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” She turns out her palm toward me. “You owe me five dollars. For the pen.”

  “I don’t owe you anything. I want my pen back.”

  “You can get it back tomorrow, boy,” she replies as she puts her hand on her hip.

  The fact that she calls me a boy doesn’t faze me because all I can concentrate on is the word tomorrow. If tomorrow means I get to see Piper, count today a distant memory. “How can I get my pen back?”

  “Meet me at my fence at noon tomorrow and you’ll see,” she whispers as she leans in, kisses the tips of her fingers, and presses them on my lips.

  God, does she press them on my lips.

  I don’t want her fingers to move, ever. But she pulls them away, grabs hold of her basket with both hands, and turns to leave. Her blonde waves swish back and forth as she walks down the aisle toward Hudson. She gives his elbow a playful nudge before she passes him.

  “What about your dad?” I call to her.

  She doesn’t miss a beat or turn her head to answer my question. Instead, she replies over her shoulder, “Stop looking at my ass, Cash Rowland.”

  I stand dumbfounded, love-struck, paralyzed and all of the above as she parades out of the aisle and out of view.

  “What the hell was that?” Hudson walks back toward me all wide-eyed as he slaps my chest in a sign of man-to-man camaraderie I never quite understood until this moment. It feels right the way he hits my chest as if I’ve scored the biggest jackpot of my life, and I think that maybe I just have.

  “I don’t know,” I whisper. “But I’m going to find out.”

  Chapter 3

  I got exactly three hours and thirty-four minutes of sleep last night. I spent the rest of the night obsessing about the girl that walked into my life less than twenty-four hours ago. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. As we walked back through Target I thought she’d peek out behind the shower curtains when we passed them or find her sitting in a display chair, with her legs crossed and her mouth chewing on that sleek pen of mine. I thought I’d see her in the parking lot climbing into some little hotrod car that her rich dad bought her. Maybe she drove a Mercedes or BMW. Or better yet, a Camaro. I imagine it pink like her swimsuit or maybe peach. When I crawled out of bed this morning, I took a cold shower. A real cold shower.

  I’m standing at the fence again, and my Yamaha is parked on the sidewalk just like yesterday. My palms are sweaty in adolescent foolishness, and I panic for a moment that Piper’s setting me up. She called me out yesterday, and she’s doing it again. Except this time, her dad calls the Appleton Police Department, and they’ve got a swarm of police cars down the street. I can see it now, the trail of cars with their red and blue flashing lights waiting to arrest me. Piper would smile that sweet smile of torture before flipping me off. It would be flawless, just like her.

  I look down at my phone. 12:01. A bead of sweat runs down the side of my face when I decide that I should have listened to my Luella Intuition. I never should have come here. The sky is smeared a dark grey, ready to crack open any moment. Another sign. I shouldn’t let a girl play me like this. I take one last look through the hole and then push myself off the fence toward my bike. That’s when I hear the low whistle that splits my heart open.

  “Cash Rowland,” she calls from the other side of the fence. “I see your yellow laces.”

  My heart is officially decimated. This girl has wrecked me, and we’ve barely spoken.

  She’s just a girl.

  But she’s not any girl, she’s the girl.

  I curse my inner demons, wipe my hands on my shorts, and press my eye against the hole. Another bikini. This one’s a lighter pink verging on Vivid Tangerine and covers about the same amount of skin as the bikini from yesterday. Trust me, I remember.

  And yes, I still know my colors from my crayon box. That’s another thing you should know about me. I remember the strangest details. So, now you know three things about me: one, I’m honest; two, I’m a details guy; and three, I’m in love with a girl I just met despite knowing that she’s going to break my heart.

  I smell her coming closer. It’s a mix of peaches and something else I can’t put my finger on. She stops about five feet from the fence, puts her hands on her hips, and says, “I’m glad you came.”

  “Thanks for the invite.”

  “So, what’s your story?” she asks as she leans closer to the fence to see me better, but my eye is smashed up against the opening.

  “What do you want to know?” I ask.

  “Stand back a second,” she says, “I want to see what it’s like looking through the hole.”

  I step back five feet, nervous as hell, thinking she’s forgotten what I looked like from last night. I envision her yelling for her dad again so she can watch me scramble to get on the bike and hightail it out of the side of town where I don’t belong.

  But all she does is let out another low whistle that makes me shove my hands in my pockets. A drop of rain splashes on my forehead, and I wonder why Piper’s wearing a swimsuit in the first place, not that I mind. Sure, it’s hot, but it’s definitely going to downpour any second.

  “What’s your SAT score?” she asks.

  “2280.”

  “GPA?”

  “3.9.”

  “Colleges applied to?”

  “None.”

  She pauses. It doesn’t make sense to anyone, and I’m definitely thinking I’ve got this whole college thing all wrong. I decide to start my applications tonight.

  “Religion?”

  “Catholic, I guess.”

  “I guess?”

  “Well…”

  “By choice?” Her voice quirks as she stares at me with her unblinking emerald eye. It’s like the Eye of Providence on the dollar bill. You know, the one in the pyramid. Being on the other side of the fence as 'the watched' is unnerving, and I’m suddenly aware of how idiotic I was yesterday to show up by the fence and watch a girl I’ve never met. It’s miracle that I’m standing here now.

  “Because my mother was and because I go to a Catholic school.”

  “You said ‘was.’”

  “My mom’s dead.”

  “So is mine.”

  A flash streaks through the sky and a rumble rolls for several seconds. A second raindrop lands on my arm.

  “2400. 2.0. Harvard, Yale, Princeton. Atheist by choice.”

  “Impressively odd.”

  “Thank you,” she replies as her eye finally blinks. “How’d you find my address?"

  “My dad’s a custodian for the school, and I help him once in a while. We were cleaning the administrative offices when I stumbled across your file.”

  “Stumbled, huh?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Why don’t you take a turn.” Her face disappears from the fence so I press my own against it, but I don’t see her anymore. I look down to see her heels against the fence. I imagine her fine ass pressed against the other side of the fence.

  “It’s too weird being watched.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.” Another raindrop splashes on my hand. And then another, until it’s falling like a lawn sprinkler.

  “I suppose I should invite you in,” she says as if she is thinking aloud.

  “I can go,” I stammer, hoping she doesn’t take me up on my offer.

  “Cash, you’re going to have to try a little harder than that.”

  “Is your dad home?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll meet you at the front door.”

  “That’s more like it. Leave your bike here. In case.”

  Before I can ask in case of what, her feet disappear, and I’m left reeling at the possibilities of what she meant as the rain begins sweeping down in large sheets. I sprint around the fence and up the impossibly
long driveway. By the time I reach the colossal double doors of a McMansion I don’t belong at, I’m dripping and panting, neither of which is remotely attractive given our current state of relationship. As I reach to grab the iron knocker, which by the way I’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing before because my life is filled with the kind of doors that are flat with a half-moon if I’m lucky, the door swings open to a dripping pink bikini.

  I’ll spare you the details on how my body responds. Just imagine any sexually-deprived, hyper-hormonal seventeen-year-old boy. You get the picture.

  I clear my throat and stare a second too long before finally resorting to shaking out my hair and averting my eyes.

  “Are you going to stand there all day?” she asks as she moves her hands on her hips. My eyes follow the graze of her fingertips along her skin, and I’m suddenly unable to move or formulate any intelligible speech that impresses her or forces her not to slam the door in my face. Instead, I clear my throat again.

  “I’ll give you two seconds before I shut this door,” she warns and cocks one eyebrow.

  My foot finally steps onto a rug that I’m sure costs more than Big Dave’s old Camry and my Yamaha combined. She shuts the door behind me, and I reach down to slip off my shoes, but she stops me with her hand on my forearm.

  Is it too girly to say the touch is electrifying? Because it is.

  “Don’t take off your shoes. In case,” she says.

  There she goes again with the in case. It’s starting to freak me out, but instead of asking her about it, I mumble something unintelligible, again.

  She smiles. God, does she smile.