The Last Girl (6 page)

Chapter 12: A Day with Lance

I wake up to the annoying buzzing from Luke’s alarm clock. I don’t want to move because it is so warm and cozy. Luke removes his arm from around me to turn off the sound and I feel myself frown involuntarily. I lift my head off of his chest and sit up. How did my head end up like that? Didn’t we fall asleep with his head on my shoulder?

“So last night was fun,”
Luke says smirking and kissing my cheek.

I feel paralyzed but I manage to ask, “The movie? Yeah it was really funny.”

“No, silly,” he says standing up. I realize he is just in his boxers. Wasn’t he wearing clothes last night? “What we did after the movie,” he winks. “I didn’t realize how flexible you were.”

Wait what the hell?

“Smile” by Uncle Kracker sounds in my eardrums and I jump up. I see Luke lying next to me, fully clothed, and he gets up and turns off his alarm. I was dreaming? I feel a little bit relieved and a little bit depressed at the same time. I groan and fall back onto Luke’s pillow.

“I think we fell asleep in the middle of the movi
e,” Luke’s voice is groggy.

I nod. I wasn’t going to mention that I actually saw the whole movie and he was the one that fell asleep.

“Did I fall asleep on your shoulder?” he asks.

I was about to say no when I stopped myself. Why lie? “A little bit.”

He laughs, “Sorry about that.”

“No big deal,” it was a huge deal actually.

We get to school on time and I find Daisy at my locker.

“Hey, where is Jessi-”

“Probably with her boyfriend, right? I mean, that’s always who she is with nowadays,” Daisy says angrily.

I put my arm around her, “Well don’t worry, you have me today. Where do you guys meet after school?”

“At
Lance’s car, spot A1,” she says still sounding glum.

I walk to the parking spot as the end-of-summer heat blazes down on me. The car in the first spot is small and white. I don’t know what kind of car it is, though. I am the first one there, as always. I wait a few minutes and finally Daisy appears, angry, her new normal the past few days.

“I should have warned you not to get here too quickly. Mr. and Mrs.
Turner take their time getting to the car,” she complains.

“You are so overdramatic.”

“No, they are,” she says, pointing to the red-head and senior boy walking towards us, hand in hand. Lance Eskimo kisses Jessica and I hear Daisy gag.

“Yay,
everybody is here!” Lance calls. Daisy gestures for him to unlock the car and so he does. She quickly opens the back seat door and gets in. This surprises me because I was expecting her to get shotgun. I see Jessica get in the passenger seat and I finally realize why Daisy has always been afraid of one of her best friends dating her brother.

We arrive at the house I have been to about a billion times before. It is like my second home. As soon as I walk through the door, Daisy pulls me into her bedroom, “You are staying with me,” she slams her door.

There is a knock on the other side of the door and I hear Lance’s squeaky voice say, “Daisy, she came to hang out with all of us, you can’t hog her.”

“Uh, she is my best friend; I can hog her if I want to.”

There is a sigh and a pause. I think he has gone away until the door bursts open and Lance runs in. He comes over to me, lifts me up over his shoulder, and carries me out of the room, screaming like crazy the whole time. He drops me on his bed and slams the door to his room shut. I breathe in and smell Jessica’s perfume in the sheets. Well that isn’t good, is it? His room is a whole lot of white and is much neater than Luke’s. There were a few jeans on the ground but that was it.

“What was that for?” I ask half laughing.

Jessica looks at me from Lance’s desk chair, “You need to make Daisy forgive us already.”

“What do you think I have been doing?”

“Well, what exactly is it about us that makes her so mad?” Lance sits next to me.

“
That you guys are always lovey-dovey around her. That is why she doesn’t like sitting at lunch with you guys and she has been eating in the library the past few days. And seriously, you make her sit in the back seat of the car and Jessica gets the front. What is up with that?” I want to try and help Daisy in any way I can.

“So what do I say to apologize?” Jessica stands up.

“I am not going to tell you. You should know what to say.”

She sighs and leaves the room. I am lying on my back on the bed so I push myself up a little with my forearms and
raised myself a little bit off of the bed.

“It’s nice what you are doing for them; helping them makeup,”
Lance says staring at me.

“Well they are my
best friends; I have to do som-”

And that is when
Lance leans forward and crashes his lips into mine. I try to pull away, but I am trapped between him and the bed. I tried to push him away next, but he is too strong. Next thing I know, I feel him shoving his tongue into my mouth. I do the only thing I can think of to get him to stop; I bite him.

“Ow!” he yelps.

I push him off of me and jump off the bed. “What the hell was that?” I almost shout.

“Shh. Okay, I’m sorry. Please don’t tell Jessica or Daisy,” his voice is quiet.

“Are you kidding me? Why did you just do that? You are dating my best friend!”

“I couldn’t help myself. But now that I got it out of my system, I won’t do it again. I promise,” he stands up.

I take a step back, “You are crazy if you think I won’t tell them.”

“Come on, think of how happy Jessica is with me. You will just make her sad. And what if she doesn’t believe you? Then she will get mad at you for making it up
.”

“She would believe me,” I say grabbing the door.

“Would she?” he says. Would she? I don’t even know.

I leave the room and go to the bathroom. The tears start to fall out of my eyes. I have known
Lance for years, why would he do this? I call Luke on my cell. I don’t care if he is meeting his girlfriend somewhere; I can’t stay here.

“Hello?” he picks up sounding irritated.

“Luke, can you pick me up?” I say through my tears.

“What’s wrong?” he asks sounding more worried. He can probably hear me crying.

“Uh, nothing,” I reply. Well that wasn’t very convincing. “I just can’t stay here any longer.”

There is silence and then he says, “Okay, I will be there as soon as I can.”

I hang up quickly. I fix my makeup which was running a little bit and wipe my tears with my sleeve. When I am sure that there isn’t any possible trace of my tears, I walk into the hall. I run into Jessica who has her arm around Daisy. They are both smiling.

“Did you guys make up?” I ask putting on a smile.

“Yeah,” Daisy says.

“Best friends again!” Jessica says way too excitedly.

“Well, as much as I wish I could stay and be a part of this love fest, I have to leave,” I say.

“What? Why?” they ask at the same time
. It’s like old times.

Lance
steps out of his room and I flinch, “Yeah, why?”

“No reason,” I lie. “
Luke is just coming early.”

I say bye to them, pretending like
Luke had already pulled up in front of the house. I leave through the front door and sit on the curb. I sit there for about ten minutes before Luke pulls up. I almost leap to the car and as soon as I shut the door behind me, I start to cry. I feel like such a baby, but I just couldn’t help it. My best friend’s brother/my other best friend’s boyfriend just stuck his tongue down my throat.

I could see
Luke looking concerned, confused, and uncomfortable at the same time; if that’s possible.

He starts to drive and asks, “Are you okay.”

“Yeah,” I say wiping my tears away again. “I just got something in my eye.”

It is quiet the whole way to his house. He parks in his driveway and turns off the engine. He turns to me, “Are you going to tell me what happened now?”

“Nothing happened,” I avoid eye contact.

“Jenna, I consider us to be friends, right? You can tell me anything,” he gives me a little smile.

And because I have no one else to talk to, I tell him, “Lance kissed me.”

Luke
looks blank at first and then what I said must have sunk in because he becomes kind of angry, “When?”

“Today,” I take a second to breathe. “While Daisy and Jessica were in the other room trying to make up. I tried to pull away but I was sort of stuck.”

“What do you mean stuck?”

“Well I was lying on the bed when he did it so, I was stuck between him and the bed
.”

“Did he do anything else?” I shake my head. “Did you tell Jessica or Daisy?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I am afraid Jessica won’t believe me and it will cause a fight. And she is happy with Lance. And he told me he wouldn’t do it again so there is no reason to-”

“You have to tell her Jenna!”

“No Luke, listen. You can’t tell anyone. If it happens again then I will, but I don’t think it has come to that yet.”

“But it upset you so much-.”

“Luke, promise me you won’t tell anyone. You can’t even tell Lance you know. You can’t be mad at him or anything. You have to act normal.”

He looks at me for a long time angrily. But finally, his expression softens and he nods, “Okay. I promise.”

“Thank you.”

“Let’s watch a movie to cheer you up, though,” he says getting out of the car.

I laugh and do the same. We watch the movie “Bridesmaids” and I laughed a lot. But I also couldn’t stop crying throughout the whole thing. So some points I would laugh and cry at the same time. A strange thing to do. I was so tired that I couldn’t keep my head up, so I rest it on Luke’s shoulder. I don’t care if he thinks it is weird or doesn’t like it. I do it anyway and at least he doesn’t stop me. I fall asleep three-quarters through the movie.

Chapter 13: A Day with
Hayden

Luke’s alarm clock goes off and I open my eyes to see that I was lying on his chest and I could feel his muscular arm around me. I’m dreaming about this again?! I groan angrily.

“I’m sorry!”
Luke jumps up. “I forgot to turn off my alarm last night,” he explains turning it off.

Wait a minute.

The alarm clock was playing “Smile”. In my dream it just buzzed. In real life it played “Smile”. Am I not dreaming? Were we really sleeping like that?

“I’m sorry,”
Luke says again lying back down on his back.

“It’s okay,” I laugh.

“Let’s just go back to sleep the way we were, and pretend that never happened.”

“How we were?” I ask. “Like my head on your chest?”

He shrugged, “If you want to,” and I could see a hint of a smirk on his face.

So I lie back down
in the same position I woke up in. I feel his arm wrap around me and his hand touches my back sending shivers throughout my body. “How did we end up like this last night?”

I feel his chest rise
as he inhales, “Well, we must have just moved to this in the middle of the night. I’m kind of a cuddler. It sounds weird but it is true,” he laughs. “Sorry.”

“I’m a
cuddler too,” I say and he laughs. I wonder if he can feel my heart pounding in my chest. “And it’s okay, it is actually pretty comfortable.”

I feel his chest fall as he laughs. There is a silence and then he says, “
Can I ask you something?”

I wonder if I have bad morning breath. “Mhm.”

“Well I know I’m graduating this year and everything, but I was wondering if-,” his phone rings interrupting him. He sighs a sorry and reaches over to answer his phone. It was Hayden.

“Hey, man,” I hear
Hayden say. “What time am I picking my date up?”

I look up at
Luke surprised and he rolls his eyes. “It’s not a date. And it’s like 6:30 in the morning, why are you awake?”

“I couldn’t sleep, was too excited.”

I hear a little audience in my head go “awwwe” and told them to shut up. It was just Hayden.

“Yeah okay well
, you can pick her up around 12,” Luke says.

“I can’t wait that long! I don’t want to be alone!”
Hayden complains.

“Sorry, ma
n. You are going to have to deal with it,” Luke says and quickly hangs up.

I giggle, “
Hayden’s eager, isn’t he?” Luke nods and there is silence before I ask, “What was it you were saying before he called?” I feel my heart start to pound again. How does he not feel that?

There is more silence before he mumbles, “I forgot.”

I feel my face fall from hopeful to disappointed. “You sure?”

“Yeah. It’s still really early so I’m just going to go back to sleep.”

I nod, “Yeah, same.” But I stay there until 9:30, mind racing wondering about what he was going to say and listening to his heart beat, until he wakes up.

The rest of the morning I just mope around, getting dressed and eating, until Hayden shows up. He comes at exactly 12:01. I say bye to Luke and he reminds me as I leave, “Be nice to him. This needs to work.”

I walk slowly to his car and get in. “Hey, gorgeous,” he says.

I cringe and am about to say some snarky comment back but stop myself. “Hey, handsome.”

He looks over at me surprised, “That is the first nice thing you have ever said to me.”

“Yeah, don’t get used to it,” I say and he smiles.

Shoot.

“So what amazingly interesting thing do you have planned for us today?” I ask a little too fake.

“I was hoping we could just hang out at my place. Maybe mess around a little bit,” he starts to drive.

Before I can stop myself I say, “I couldn’t think of anything worse.”

He laughs, “I had a feeling you would say that. That’s why I thought we could go mini-golfing.”

“Mini-golfing? Why? In case I don’t know how to putt so you can show me by standing behind me and wrapping your arms around me, guiding me through it?”

He smiles again, “Well now that you have figured it out, no. It’s mostly just because I actually like mini-golf.”

His answer surprises me and all I can say is “Alright.”

Hayden
starts to blast the radio. Okay so being nice to Hayden is harder than I thought. I just need to remember what Luke said and-. Hayden starts to sing to the music and I can’t focus on what I am thinking anymore. I am not going to lie, he is a pretty good singer, but I’m not going to let him know that.

“Can you keep it down please? You are disrupting my thoughts,” and then just for fun I add, “And you’re hurting my eardrums.”

He lowers the music, “Why you gotta be so mean? You are starting to hurt my feelings.”

I jump up a little a
nd sit straight up in my seat surprised, “Whoa whoa whoa! You have feelings?”

He smiles at me, “Yes and they are uncontrollable. Just like how I can’t control the feelings I have for you.”

I scoff, “Where did you get that from? A Nicholas Sparks movie?”

“Probably,” he shrugs. He parks the car in the mini-golf parking lot. “But it’s true,” he smirks opening his door. I sit there for a few seconds thinking as
Hayden makes his way around the car. He opens the door for me, “You coming, Sassy-Pants?”

I laugh, “How original.”

“You have no idea how many times I have called Lance that. It makes him nuts.”

I flinch when he says
Lance, and all the memories of yesterday flood over me.

“How come you just twitched?”
Hayden asks me as I step out of the car.

“That wasn’t a twitch,” I correct him. “It was a flinch.”

“Okay,” we start to walk to the building. “How come you just flinched?”

I sigh, “Nothing of your concern,
Hayden.”

“Why not?”

“It’s personal.”

“Is it about
Lance kissing you?”

I stop in my tracks, “How do you know?”

“Lance is my best friend,” he explains. “He practically bragged about it to me.”

I feel my blood begin
to boil, “Why would he do that?”

“To make me angry. That’s why he did it. He knows how much I like you.
”

I calm down when I hear this. For no apparent reason, hearing that relaxed me. Well there is a reason. Hearing that one of the hottest guys in school likes you enough to get jealous when someone kisses you would make anyone pretty damn happy.

“So he doesn’t like me? He wasn’t technically cheating on his girlfriend by kissing me, right? Because he doesn’t like me.”

“Well, I mean he kissed a girl who wasn’t his girlfriend, I think that still counts as cheating,” he says as we stand at the back of the line to pay.
I hear the audience in my head awe at what Hayden just said but I block them out.

“Thank you,
Hayden. You could have just lied and said it wasn’t cheating! Then I could stop feeling so guilty.”

“There is nothing for you to feel guilty about.
Lance kissed you and you stopped it. You tell Jessica, they break up, she and Daisy can make up, and everything will be fine. And then you and I can go out.”

He mumbles the last part and I ignore it, “Jessica and Daisy already did make up.”

“Things won’t be fully alright with them, though. I mean she’s dating her best friend’s brother.”

I knew he was right.

“But I can’t tell Jessica! She will be heartbroken.”

He shrugs, “It’s your call. I’m just telling you what I would do.”

There is a moment of silence as we move up in line and I think things through. I still had no idea what to do.

“Did it work at least?” I ask.

“Did what work?”

“Did the kiss work? Were you jealous?”

A small smirk appears on Hayden’s lips and he licks them, “Unfortunately, yes it did.”

Our round of mini-golf ended at 2:30. Hayden had beaten me. Badly. He had a score of 86 and I had a score of 100. Just terrible.

I looked at the score card as we walked to the car
.

“You really suck at golf,”
Hayden says.

“I do not!” I defend myself. “If you hadn’t talked so much while I was putting, I would have done loads better.”

“That wasn’t your problem,” he says nudging me. “Your problem was that you don’t know how to hold a club. I told you I could help you.”

“And I told you I didn’t need your help,” I remind him.

“How did that work out for you?” he points to the score card in my hand.

I laughed. He was right.

We get in the car and pull out of the parking lot.

“So you su
ck at mini-golf, but you are awesome at video games. So, how do you think you would do playing a videogame of mini-golf.

“Probably much better than your sorry ass,” I laugh.

“I challenge that.”

“Okay then, let’s go buy one.”

“What?” he asks confused.

“Let’s go to the nearest videogame store and get a mini-golf game.
Then we can settle this once and for all.”

“Deal,” he nods. “But you know what that means?”

“What?”

“It means you actually have to come to my house so we can play,” he smirks.

He smirks a lot. But sadly it is kind of cute.

I sigh, “As I feared.”

He laughs.

We manage to find a mini-golf game for the Wii. We drive to Hayden’s house. He lives in a really rich neighborhood. Shocker. He has a big house that is clean, white and practically sparkles. There is another car just like his but silver parked in front.

“That’s my sister’s car,” he says.

“I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“Yeah, well she doesn’t live with us anymore. She moved away but left her car here.”

“Can I have it?” I ask as a joke.

“Sure.”

“Really?” I ask, incredulously.

He laughs, “No, idiot. I’m not giving you a car.
”

He
gets out of the car and I follow suit.

We walk inside and the house smells
like vanilla. There is a large living room when you first walk in and one whole wall is a big window. It looked out into the garden. I follow him into a huge kitchen. I feel like I have walked into an old-fashioned movie. Everything was black and white. The tile, the counter, the refrigerator. Everything was so big it looked like the kind of kitchen a chef would have. I really like this house. It feels so full of life and open and homey.

“It looks like we cook a lot but we never do.”

I laugh and a really pretty brunette woman walks in, “Hayden?”

“Hey mom, this is-.”

“Is this that girl? Jenna right?” she asks pulling me into a hug.

I see
Hayden blush and I smile at him, “Nice to meet you.”

She lets go of me, “Sorry, I’m a hugger,” she laughs. “I’m Anne,” she looks over at
Hayden who is glaring at her now. “And now I am leaving.”

She walks out of the room and I cross my arms in front of my chest
. I look at Hayden smugly. “Care to explain how she knew my name?”

“Nah. I’m good,” he says pushing me out of the room.

We end up in the biggest bedroom I have ever seen. It’s light grey and white and his bed is covered in a fluffy dark grey comforter. I bet his bed sheets matched. He has a king-sized bed with a wooden frame. The furniture is big and elegant somehow, but his room is messier than Luke’s room.

“Thanks for cleaning up for me,” I laugh.

“You are welcome.”

He turns on the television and the Wii and I look around a little more. All his underwear drawers
were open. Not meaning to, I see a flash of gold in one drawer and I grabbed it in shock.

“Why do you have gold thong?” I ask laughing.

His eyes widen and he nearly tackles me to get it back. He shoves it back into the drawer and closes all the others as well. “The boys just got me that as a joke for Christmas.”

I keep laughing and sit at the foot of the bed, “Okay,
Hayden.”

“It’s true,” he sits next to me.

We play the game and Hayden promises not to talk when it is my turn. We play for about two hours and we tie.

“How did we tie?” I almost yell.

“We balance each other out. You and your amazing videogame skills and me and my super awesome, sexy mini-golf skills.”

“I wouldn’t call mini-golf very sexy,” I snort.