How to Quit Your Crush Page 2

  “For what?”

  “Pool chicken.” I pointed to the other couples waiting.

  Her voice was exactly how I imagined. Low. Clipped. Impatient. “You want me to ride around on your back?”

  “On my shoulders. And shove the other girls off.” I smiled, daring her. She was still humming, but now I was, too. My muscles tensed while I waited for her to answer. My hands itched. Was her skin as soft as it looked? I about choked when she slid to the end of the chair and said, “Okay.”

  Well, lucky me.

  I must have been grinning like a little kid. “I’m Anthony.”

  She nodded. “Call me Killer.”

  We nearly lost because I was laughing so hard. But we prevailed—her word—and I would have gotten her number if she hadn’t disappeared while I was talking with the guys.

  I didn’t find out she was Maya Senn, the smartest girl in our school, and maybe the planet, until a couple weeks later when she showed up to watch a baseball game at Jason’s house. That’s when it started.

  And for a few weeks…well, it was special. I hadn’t felt much of anything for anyone in a long time. When my dad died before sophomore year, part of me died with him. I had Mom and Troy. I had my buddies and baseball. But I felt like a walking zombie half the time.

  Mai woke something up in me. Made me feel human again. I’m not sure why or how. Only that I started looking forward to school every day. Because I’d see her. I started thinking about the weekend on Wednesday because I’d be with her. She made me laugh so hard my face hurt, and that wasn’t even half as good as the feeling I got when I made her laugh.

  I knew it couldn’t last. Couldn’t work. But I didn’t let that bother me. The attraction would burn out the way it always did. We’d hang out, and then we wouldn’t. That’s how it had gone with every girl before her.

  Then we ended.

  And it wasn’t like every other girl. Any other girl.

  I moved on, sure. Kept it chill at school with the guys. But it was harder than I expected. Took a while to stop thinking about her. Missing her.

  Seeing her here now, sitting in my ride, brings it all back with a punch I’m not expecting. Probably because this is where she ended it. My car.

  Talking a long breath, I shake off the past. There’s no way the two of us could have stayed together. I climb in beside her and start the engine. Mai and I were nothing more than a science experiment. We joked about it. Complete opposites in every way. Vinegar and baking soda, she said. A chemical reaction that bubbles. Yeah, we bubbled.

  “You added parts to your speech today,” I say.

  She turns to face me, tugging on her seat belt. “What did you think?”

  She read most of it to me one night, testing to see whether it would put me to sleep. Most speeches would, but I could watch Mai recite the dictionary—which is probably something she can do. She’s got these soft, full lips. The rest of her features are sharper lines and angles. Almond eyes with slashes of eyebrows. Black hair with a hint of auburn cut to her chin with bangs as straight as a ruler. Stubborn, pointy chin. But those lips. “It was good,” I say. “You made people think.”

  She sighs, satisfied. “That was the idea.”

  “So when do you go to California? Josie said you’re doing a summer program?”

  “I am. It starts in three weeks.”

  “Gives you a little time to chill, I guess.”

  “Not really. I’ve signed up for a volunteer program through Community Cares. Trail work in South Mountain Park.”

  Of course you did. “Over-achieve much?” I tease as I pull up in front of her house. I’ve never been inside, but I dropped her off a few times while we were hanging out. The porch light is on, and I can see people sitting in the living room. Her parents are scientists who teach at the university, her brother a sophomore at Harvard. All of them grinding like hamsters in ivy-walled cages. I let the engine idle. It won’t be a long good-bye. “Good luck with that.”

  “Thanks.” She undoes her seat belt. “What are you doing this summer?”

  I rub my hands over the steering wheel. “I’m going to take a road trip. Do a little traveling. Pick up some work here or there.”

  “Construction jobs?”

  She knows I work for a general contractor, doing odd jobs on home remodels. She’s the kind of person who would champion laborers, but date one seriously?

  “Probably,” I say. “Depends on where I end up.”

  “You’re going to Mesa Community College in the fall, right?”

  “Maybe.” I shrug. “Might put it off for a while.”

  Disapproval flashes in her eyes; she doesn’t bother trying to hide it. It’s one of our many differences. She’s going to spend enough years in school for the both of us anyway.

  “You’re just going to bum around?” she asks.

  “After I see some things, I’ll probably end up in San Diego. My brother lives there now, works at a surf shop. They might have an opening in the fall.”

  She blinks. “You surf?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You’re going to strap a piece of wood to your ankle and then go out into the ocean, the most powerful natural force on the planet, and wait for sixteen feet of water to crash over you?”

  “I’ll have to write that down,” I say drily. “My brother can put it on their flyers.”

  She smiles—just a small upturn of her lips. The always-in-control version of Mai. “I’m not the adventurous type,” she says.

  “How do you know if you’ve never tried?”

  “Because you mention surfing and I think of death.”

  “There are other things.” My seat belt pinches, so I undo it and roll out my shoulders. “Rock climbing?”

  “Death.”

  “Hot air balloon?”

  “Death.”

  “Trampolining?”

  “Head injury.”

  “Horseback riding?”

  “Chafing.”

  “Chafing?”

  “I was on a horse once. My inner thighs. You have no idea.”

  There she goes, making me smile again. “I don’t. You should show me.”

  She rolls her eyes, but her smile peeks out again. I feel something expand inside me…unknot. A laugh, maybe. She always made me laugh.

  I shift to face her. “We had some fun, didn’t we?”

  Her eyes meet mine. “Yes, we did. For a little while.”

  It was never going to be more than that. She wanted plans and rules and reasons. Everything was about the future. I hadn’t looked ahead since Dad’s doctor told us pancreatic cancer and I realized there was nothing good to look forward to.

  In the dim light, her brown eyes are like magnets. They tug at me. “You looked beautiful tonight. Up on the stage, giving your speech.”

  “I was in a plastic gown the color of dried blood.”

  I lean forward, sliding my thumb over her lips, lightly. Slowly. “You were in this lipstick.”

  Her breath shudders out. Her eyes widen, and then she pulls back until we’re not touching. Not in danger of touching. “This lipstick causes nothing but trouble.”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  A sigh whispers out. “I should go. Good luck, Anthony.”

  It sounds final. It is final.

  I have the strangest urge to grab her hands and not let her leave. Instead, I tighten my fingers on the wheel. “You, too, Mai.”

  “Thanks again for the ride.”

  “Thanks for licking your hands first.”

  Her smile appears, and the mood lightens. I’m glad. Keep things easy right until the end.

  “Well, then,” she says. “I’m going.”

  “Yep, you should go.” I lean in to give her a friendly good-bye hug. Seems like I ought to. She leans in, to
o, and I get a whiff of her scent. Spicy-sweet and warm. I pull back from the hug, letting my hands skim over her shoulders and down her bare forearms. It feels like I’m holding cool velvet. I should let go, but I can’t. My pulse is kicking like a jackhammer.

  Our eyes meet. Hold. I feel that humming sensation again, low and deep.

  Whatever was between us is still there. Still fizzing.

  “One last kiss?” I don’t know where the words come from. Hardly recognize my own thick voice.

  “No!” She sounds almost panicked.

  Then she blows out a breath, leans forward, and kisses me.

  Damn.

  Her mouth on mine feels so good, I groan. My body immediately remembers every time I held her, and now that I’ve got my hands on her again, it’s singing Hallelujah! My hand is in her hair—taking control of her mouth, of the kiss…kisses.

  I’ve missed this. Missed her.

  We break apart to breathe. Her eyelids flutter open. Her pupils are dilated, her always-focused eyes unfocused. She once complained that my kisses made her stupid. I loved that.

  I still do.

  “Oh Lord,” she mutters. Just like that, her brain is working again. Immediately, she pulls away. This girl is always pulling away. She always would be. But still…

  “I have to go.” She opens the car door and gives me one last look and a sigh that sounds wistful. “I really hope you’re not the only guy who kisses like that.”

  She closes the door, and I drop my head back, thumping it against the window. I shouldn’t have done that. Shouldn’t have stirred everything up again.

  Let it go, Adams. Be chill. You’re leaving. She’s leaving. Forget you saw her. Forget you kissed her.

  I watch her stride up the walkway, and it’s like the spring all over again. Her walking away. Me sitting here missing her.

  Frustration rolls through me. All that time forgetting and now her scent is in my car and her laugh is in my head, and I know I haven’t forgotten a single damn thing. A spark of anger breaks through my normal calm. My pulse quickens, and a throb presses against my temples. I’m not going to spend the next however-long thinking about her and missing her. Not again. I’m getting Mai out of my system, once and for all.

  I just have to figure out how.

  Chapter Three

  Mai

  “How do I look?”

  Dad glances up from a file folder and sips his coffee. “Like you’re about to face a thousand angry bees.”

  I take another look at myself: hiking boots, long khaki pants, long-sleeve white shirt, and Mom’s wide-brimmed boater hat with brown velvet laces. But Dad’s comment makes me realize my mistake. “I should have gotten one of those beekeeper hats with the face netting.”

  Mom smiles. She’s adding spinach leaves to the blender. “Are you expecting bees?”

  “No. I’m expecting rattlesnakes.” Much worse than a thousand measly Africanized killer bees.

  It’s Monday morning, first day of my trail project, and part of me would like to be back in bed where the most dangerous animal is a stuffed panda pillow that’s missing an ear. I check to make sure my gloves are still tucked in my back pocket. It’s only 6:15 in the morning, but the sun is already glinting off the copper pans hanging over the cooktop. I try not to think about how hot it’s going to get. “That smoothie isn’t for me, is it?”

  “It’s for Ethan. Would you like one?” Mom asks. “I’ve got plenty of spinach.”

  My stomach lurches, and I press a hand there. “Not today.”

  Mom frowns. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  Dad closes the file folder. “You could have picked a different project, honey. There were over twenty options.”

  Twenty-four, to be exact. When Community Cares started ten years ago, there were only two. I know because my parents were the ones who started the program. Now it’s a huge success with a board and staff. Students choose a project they’re interested in, sign up online, and earn volunteer credit hours.

  “I thought it through,” I say. “I’ll be studying environments and ecosystems, so that’s good for my resume.” I grab a protein bar from the pantry. “The timing is right, and the trail I’ll be working on is less than a mile from here.”

  “All valid,” Dad agrees, “but it doesn’t take into consideration that you’re afraid of the desert.”

  “With good reason,” Mom adds.

  I try to stop my mind from going back in time, but the memory is especially close to the surface today. I can almost taste the dirt, feel the sun hot on my shoulders. Hear the snake rattling from the scrub.

  I have to get past this.

  I rip off a corner of the bar and force myself to chew. Peanut butter and chocolate but it tastes like chia seed and flax. “A third of the earth’s landmass is desert. I can’t avoid it forever. Besides, it happened eleven years ago. It’s time I faced my fears.”

  Dad pulls off his readers, and his smile radiates through his pale blue eyes. “You amaze me, you know that?” His words, his approval, warm me, and my stomach settles a little. “You’re one in a million, Maya.”

  At least a one in forty-five. That’s about how many babies were in the orphanage, but it might have been a million when I think about it. About how easily they could have picked another baby.

  I don’t remember the orphanage in Guyana, South America. I don’t remember the mother who left me there when I was six weeks old. I don’t remember the family who started visiting when I was eight months old and who took me to the United States when I was eighteen months old. It was only when other kids pointed out that Ethan looked like my parents and I didn’t that I understood I was different. Adopted. Or, as Mom and Dad said, chosen.

  It’s a wonder they didn’t choose to send me back in the beginning.

  Ethan was “easy.” He liked to do puzzles in his room or play with Legos. I was “a handful.” I liked to climb trees, and I used the cement wall by our house as a balance beam. And I liked to wander off.

  Until the hiking trip.

  I was seven years old when we were all hiking in the Superstition Mountains and I wandered off the trail. I was lost in the desert for three hours. It felt like three days. It’s the worst thing that ever happened to me, but looking back, it’s also the best. After that, I got more careful, stuck closer to home. Mom said she could finally relax, and Dad’s eyes that had often looked at me with worry started to look at me with approval. I’ve grown to love those looks over the years. They make me feel like, well, a Senn.

  “What’s going on?” Ethan asks, breaking the moment with the rattle of his suitcase and laptop bag.

  “Dad is singing my virtues,” I say.

  “Are we still talking about graduation? When can we talk about me again?”

  Mom hands him the smoothie. “We can talk about your new apartment. If you’ve called the leasing agent back. Researched cable hookups, parking garage, trash pickups.”

  “Let’s talk about Mai,” Ethan says brightly as he sits next to Dad.

  We all laugh, and my stomach calms enough for me to finish my power bar.

  Ethan looks over Dad’s shoulder at the file. “Is that for Mai?”

  “Is what for me?” I ask.

  “It is,” Dad says. He smiles at me. “I had my intern put together a file of research in advance of your summer program. So you can get a jump on the subject matter. I’m just going through it first and making some notes.”

  My stomach starts churning again. “Dad, it’s only two weeks away.”

  “Which is why you want to get started now.”

  Ethan grins at me, a bright green smoothie mustache coating his top lip. “You are going to be busy.”

  “The trail project is just three hours in the morning,” Dad says. “She’ll have plenty of time.”

  Ethan gives M
om a look. “Does she know about the surprise?”

  “What?” My head is now spinning along with my stomach. “For the trail project?” I look at Mom. “Is it Antivenom?”

  “Much better.” They all exchange smiles I don’t understand.

  “Why does Ethan know?”

  “Because I know everything.” He says it with a smile, but it’s that smirky-smile that’s only gotten bigger since he started Harvard. It’s annoying when he flaunts his big brain, but I know it started as a defense mechanism. He never had many friends, and the smirk was his way of showing he didn’t care. It worked all through middle school and high school until, finally, he really doesn’t care.

  I dump my wrapper in the trash. “Do I get a hint?”

  “You’ll find out this morning,” Dad says. Even in a robe and slippers, my dad looks like the brilliant scientist he is. He sits straight, shoulders back, a bit of gray showing at his temples.

  “All right, fine,” I say. “I better go.” I give Ethan a hug. “See you next weekend.”

  “I’ll be home.”

  I expected Mom and Dad to let Ethan out of the fundraising dinner this year. He’s got an internship in Boston, and he already had to fly home for my graduation. But this is the most important night of the year for CC and my parents. A black-tie fundraising dinner for the rich and locally famous. Mom and Dad like to show us off, and I like that they think we’re worth showing off. Ethan is, of course. The Harvard math genius. But I was a National Merit Scholar, valedictorian, and I got into a top five college even if I’ve had to work harder for it all. I’m show-off-able. Logically, I know I am. Sometimes, I even feel like it.

  I grab my water vest and prepare to face a morning in the desert. “Wish me luck.”

  I hope I’m not going to need it.

  Chapter Four

  Mai

  I spot him when he gets out of his car, though I have no idea who he is. Hello, handsome boy at ten o’clock. I follow his progress as he grabs a small backpack from the backseat and makes his way toward the visitor center where I’m waiting in the shade, trying not to think about snakes. I may live in the desert, but I’ve done an exceptionally good job avoiding them for the past decade. Now, my nerves are on high alert. Not a good sign, since I’m still in the Ramada area with concrete under my feet.