Lessons in Love (Flirt) (2 page)

“Really? Cool.” The guy turned and studied my face. His eyes were very blue. I held my breath. What was I supposed to do now? My mind was a vacuum. Not as in vacuum cleaner. As in the scientific term for a complete absence of matter or substance.

This time it was Susannah who came to my rescue. “Can I help you?” she called out as the professor moved out of the way, clutching a steaming cup of coffee.

“Yeah, thanks.” Mr. Blue Eyes stepped forward. “I need to order some sandwiches to go. . . .”

As he started to give his order, I yanked Simone away. “We should get back to studying.”

“Are you mental? We can’t abandon your hot new friend.” She poked me in the side, making me squawk. “Didn’t you see how he was looking at you? And he’s obviously smart, too. Just your type.”

“What? No. What do you—shut up.” I frowned at her.

The loud
cha-ching!
of Methuselah’s cash drawer distracted me. I glanced over just as Susannah said “Okay, that’ll be about five, ten minutes.”

“Thanks.” The guy barely had time to turn and face us again before Simone reached out and tugged lightly on the sleeve of his T-shirt.

“MIT, huh?” she said. “That just happens to be Bailey’s dream school.”

I blinked, noticing his shirt for the first time. It was gray with the red MIT logo emblazoned across the chest. How had I missed that? Or wait—had my subconscious mind somehow picked up on it without telling the rest of me? Maybe that explained why my attention was drawn to this guy with the strength of a neodymium magnet.

“Yeah, both my parents went there,” the guy said. “By the way, I’m Logan. Logan Morse.”

“Like Morse code?” I blurted out.

See? Hopeless at talking to guys.

Logan laughed. “No relation, as far as I know.”

“So Logan,” Simone said. “Why’d your family move here?”

“My mom just landed a tenure-track job at the university. Physics. She’s really psyched about it.”

“Physics? Your mom’s a scientist?” I said, interested enough to forget my discomfort for a second.

“Bailey’s a scientist too,” Simone piped up. “Our bio teacher says she’ll probably win the Nobel Prize someday.”

I shot her a murderous look. Mr. Ba
so
hadn’t said that.

“Really? Cool.” Logan gave me another of those appraising blue-eyed looks.

“Um . . .” As I was figuring out whether it was actually scientifically possible to die of embarrassment, three or four people burst into Eats, laughing and talking loudly. College rugby players, I guessed, based on their clothes and the mud covering every inch of them from hair to cleats. Eats was a favorite stop after sports practices thanks to our Belly Buster specials.

“Suz!” one of the rugby players shouted. “Feed us, woman!”

Susannah rolled her eyes and smiled at the player and his friends, then glanced at me. “Think I’m going to need a little help back here, Bailey,” she said.

“I’ve got it!” Simone exclaimed before I could answer. “I’ll go make sandwiches. You stay right here, Bails.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but it was too late. She was already scooting behind the counter. Simone worked at Eats part-time in the summer, so Susannah just nodded as she pushed past, heading for the kitchen.

As the rugby players clustered around the register, Logan and I stepped back. “This seems like a cool place,” he said. “So your family has owned it for a long time, huh?”

“Ages. Since before my mom was born, actually.” I was glad he seemed to be ignoring Simone’s ridiculous Nobel Prize comment. Still, I couldn’t resist turning the topic back to science. “So your mom’s a physics prof? And she went to MIT?”

“Yeah. She and Dad met there as undergrads. He’s a science guy too—paleontology. He’s been working on a book while Mom climbs her way up the academic ranks.”

“Works her way up?” I was distracted by the way his lips went a little bit crooked when he smiled, though I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t usually notice stuff like that about random strangers unless I was doing research for a human-genetics project or something.

“Yeah,” he said. “First she was finishing up her PhD; then she had a bunch of nontenured jobs and stuff. So we’ve lived in a bunch of different places.”

“Really? Like where?”

Logan leaned against an empty table. “We just moved here from Switzerland. Before that was Boston—we were only there for a year—and then Tokyo and California. We also spent a couple of summers in Botswana for Dad’s research. And one in Singapore for Mom’s.”

“Wow.” I wondered what it would be like to live that way—moving to a new city or country every couple of years.

“So what about you?” Logan asked. “Have you always lived here?”

“Uh-huh.” I shrugged. “Totally boring, right?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” He flashed me that off-kilter smile. “There’s something kind of nice about knowing where you belong. Maybe I’ll finally find out what that’s like. It looks like this time my family might actually stay put for a while.”

“Oh.” I’d observed Simone talking to guys for long enough to know that she’d probably have a flirty comeback for a comment like that. Me? Not so much. For a moment I’d almost forgotten I was talking to a guy. Now it all came crashing back, and Logan and I stood there staring at each other for what felt like forever but was probably only a few seconds.

“So,” he said at last, “what’s the local high school like? I’m starting there tomorrow, and I could use any tips you can give me.”

“It’s okay, I guess.” I tried to think of something witty to say but came up empty. “Um, just a typical high school.”

The door flew open again. This time at least half a dozen more rugby players poured in. At the same time, Susannah hit the little silver bell by the register.

“Morse!” she called out. “Order’s up!”

“That’s me.” Logan glanced over. “I should get going, I guess. Looks like things are getting busy.”

“Yeah. They probably need me to help back there.” I stepped aside as a rugby player barreled past, shouting something about a bacon craving.

“Okay.” Logan hesitated, shooting another look in Susannah’s direction, then turning back to me. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow, right, Bailey? You and—um, your friend.”

I blinked. Had my ears deceived me, or had this cute guy actually remembered my name—and forgotten Simone’s? That had never happened before.

“Yeah,” I said just as Susannah shouted my name, sounding frazzled.

“Guess you’d better go. See you.” With one last smile, Logan eased his way through the shifting mass of rugby players to grab the big white bag with his name scrawled on it. I noticed there was a smiley face drawn in the
O
—Simone’s work, obviously.

Seconds later he was on his way out. I watched him go, feeling oddly disappointed. I figured it was probably because I hadn’t learned more about his mother. It was always cool to hear about successful women in science. It gave me hope that my dreams of becoming a biomedical researcher someday could actually come true.

Simone made a beeline for me when I entered the kitchen. “Well?” she demanded. “Tell me everything!”

“Everything?” I grabbed an apron from the hook by the door and tied it around my waist. “That’ll take a while.”

“Ha-ha, very funny. You know what I mean.” She jabbed me in the arm with a latex-gloved finger. “Logan. You. What happened after I left? Did he ask you out?”

“What? No!” I shot a look at my dad and Uncle Rick to make sure they hadn’t overheard. “Are you crazy?”

“Girls!” Uncle Rick’s voice rang out from the other end of the huge stainless-steel table, where he was rapidly assembling a pair of roast-beef subs. “More work, less gossip, please.”

“
You’re
crazy if you missed the way Logan was checking you out,” Simone hissed.

There was no more time for talking. Which was just as well, since I had no idea what to say to
that
.

Chapter
Two

W
henever anyone asked how Simone
and I became best friends, I told them it worked on the same scientific principle as one of those school IDs that unlocked the gym doors when you held it close enough to the sensor. Proximity. We’d been friends since we were tiny tots because we lived right next door to each other.

Actually, that was only part of the reason. The other part was that our mothers had been best friends since they were teenagers themselves. I doubted they’d started out as different as Simone and me, but their lives had definitely gone in different directions for a while. My mom married her high school sweetheart, graduated from the local university, then went right to work in the family business (dragging Dad in with her). Meanwhile, Simone’s mom went off to college in California. She spent her junior year abroad in Paris, then went back to France after she graduated. She lived there for a couple of years, and in the process fell madly in love with a Frenchman of Algerian descent. They got married, she dragged him back here to live, and the rest was history.

I’d always found that story awfully romantic, even though I wasn’t usually the romantic type. I liked the idea that there really was a big, wide world out there beyond my boring little hometown. Anytime I doubted that, I just had to look at Simone’s dad. Or, better yet, listen to him. Even after almost twenty years in the US, his accent was atrocious.

“
Bonjour
, Bailey,” he greeted me when I let myself into the Amrou house through the screen door on Sunday evening. “Simone is in the kitchen helping to wash up after supper. Oh, and tell your mama that her apple pie was
délicieux
!” He kissed his fingertips, just like someone in a cheesy French film. Only he wasn’t doing it ironically—he actually meant it. I loved when he did stuff like that, even though it embarrassed Simone sometimes.

“Thanks, Mr. A,” I told him with a smile. “I’ll tell her.”

I headed toward the kitchen. Simone and I hadn’t had much chance to talk since the rugby invasion earlier that day. First we’d both stayed busy making sandwiches and serving customers. Then Simone’s mom had called to tell her to head home for dinner (and to bring a pie from the bakery case).

Simone heard me coming. “I thought you’d never get here!” she complained, tossing aside the dishrag she was using to dry a pan. “Mom’s forcing me to be her scullery maid.”

“Her what?” I shot a look at Mrs. Amrou, who was dunking a pair of wine glasses into the sink. Simone and her mother didn’t look much alike except for their matching sharp chins and tiny ears. Mrs. Amrou was petite and pale, with auburn hair and a smattering of freckles across her upturned nose.

“You’d better not complain about washing a few pots and pans, m’dear,” Mrs. Amrou told her daughter. She glanced over at me and winked. “Otherwise I’m sure Bailey’s folks could find you a nice full-time job washing up at Eats.”

“Okay, okay.” Simone set the pan on the drying rack. “But if Bails doesn’t help me figure out how to pass this test tomorrow, that might be my only option for employment someday.”

“Fine.” Mrs. Amrou chuckled. “You’re excused.”

“Great.” Simone grabbed a pair of sodas out of the fridge and tossed one to me. “It’s a gorgeous night. Let’s study in the tree house.”

Soon we were climbing the rickety homemade ladder leading up to the tree house. It had been our spot since the third grade, when our dads had helped us build it. It was basically just a big wooden box tucked into a crook of the ancient oak that stood on the property line between our two houses, shading Mr. Amrou’s hammock on their side and Mom’s hostas on ours. When we were younger, Simone and I used to wait up there until her dad fell asleep in the hammock, then have contests to see who could drop a piece of popcorn or a potato chip or whatever and have it land on his face. Good times.

Simone dumped her books on the rough plank floor, then flopped onto one of the big overstuffed floor cushions we’d made in our eighth-grade family-science class (which didn’t actually have much to do with science at all, by the way, unless you counted cooking and sewing as science, which I didn’t).

“So,” she said. “I’ve totally got the scoop on your new boyfriend.”

“What?” I grabbed her biology textbook, flipping through it until I found the chapter on RNA. “Hey, aren’t we supposed to be studying? You know, so you don’t flunk out of bio class and become a professional dishwasher?”

“That can wait.” Those three words pretty much summed up Simone’s philosophy on life and homework, at least when boys were involved. “I texted the girls as soon as I could to see if any of them knew anything about Logan.”

“The girls” were our other friends. Well, they’d started out as Simone’s other friends, really. They were mostly like her—popular and confident and pretty. But they seemed to accept me as their token science-geek friend, so it all worked out.

“What did they say?” I couldn’t help asking.

Simone’s eyes lit up. “See? I
knew
you liked him!” she crowed. “I mean, since when do you care about the latest boy gossip? Even a super-hot, super-smart boy who was practically drooling all over you?”

“Give me a break,” I muttered, folding a corner of a page up and down where Simone had dog-eared it. “If you don’t want to tell me what you found out . . .”