Chapter 5 CLOSE ENOUGH
I looked at his profile in the dark.
His, fine sharp jaw, the straight nose. The piercing grey eyes that remained fixed on the road.
There was something under the surface of Alexander Hollander that I had spent two years assuming was just emptiness.
I used to call it arrogance. The particular emptiness of someone who had everything and therefore valued nothing.
But it was not emptiness. It was something else entirely but I just could not name it yet.
"Oh shit, I have to stop thinking about his feelings. Ew." I thought to myself, disgusted. "Jake is the one for me."
"This is it," I said as my street appeared.
He pulled up smoothly. I opened the door and climbed out.
"Lily," he said.
I turned.
He was looking straight ahead still and not at me.
"Tomorrow," he said. "Lunch. Don't be late."
I looked at him for a moment.
"I am never late," I said.
I closed the door. The car stayed at the kerb until I was inside.
I stood in the hallway of my house and listened to it pull away. Then I went to check on Mom.
She was already awake, pulling on her work coat in the kitchen. She looked up when she saw me.
"You are home late," she said.
"Study group," I said.
She looked at me for a second with the particular look mothers had when they knew something was not the whole truth but decided the hour was too late to dive into it.
"Eat something," she said and kissed my forehead.
Then she was gone.
I stood in the quiet kitchen.
Tomorrow's lunch.
Jake Sinclair would be sitting across from me every day. That was what I wanted and I was so overjoyed.
So what was the reason why I kept thinking about the way Alexander's car had stayed at the kerb until I was safely inside?
At school, I found them before they found me.
Jake and Alexander were already at their usual table when I walked into the cafeteria.
Their tabke was at the centre of the room. Best seats. The kind of table that had belonged to them since freshman year without anyone ever officially assigning it to them.
Every eye in the cafeteria was on that table at any given moment. And I was about to walk to it.... with my pasta.
I stood at the entrance holding my lunchbox and gave myself a private three second pep talk that did absolutely nothing to help me.
Then I walked over. Jake looked up first.
His brown eyes moved across my face and then to the lunchbox in my hand and then back up with an expression that was somewhere between surprised and very pleased.
"Miss Lily," he said. "Hey."
"Hey," I said.
Alexander looked up from his blood bags. His grey eyes moved to me. Then to the empty seat beside Jake. Then back to me.
He said nothing. So, I sat down right beside Jake. So close our elbows almost touched.
Jake smiled. "You are eating with us today?"
"Apparently," Alexander said flatly.
I ignored him. "I thought I would try something different," I said to Jake, teeth already out as I couldn’t contain the joys of crushing on him.
"I like that," Jake said.
I opened my lunchbox.
Pasta again. Of course it was always pasta.
The first five minutes were normal.
Jake talked about football practice. I listened and asked questions, including dumb ones for the sake of at least not going quiet, and laughed at the right moments and everything was going exactly according to plan.
Then Jake reached for the salt.
My hand shot out and grabbed it first. I handed it to him with a smile.
He blinked. "Thanks."
"Of course," I said.
Alexander watched this over the rim of his blood bag.
Two minutes later Jake reached for a napkin from the dispenser in the centre of the table. I grabbed the whole dispenser and held it out to him.
He took one napkin slowly. "I could have just...."
"It is fine, my dear. It is fine." I said brightly. "I have it right here."
Alexander set his blood bag down.
It escalated.
When Jake's phone buzzed on the table and he reached for it, I picked it up and handed it to him before his fingers got there.
When he leaned forward to look at something across the cafeteria I leaned forward too and pointed helpfully.
When he shifted in his seat I moved the salt shaker two inches to the left in case he needed it again.
Jake found all of this either charming or baffling. It was genuinely difficult to tell. He kept looking at me with that slightly confused smile of someone who was not sure what was happening but was not against it.
Meanwhile, Alexander looked like a man developing a headache in real time.
"Lily," he said.
"Mm," I said without looking at him.
"He can reach things himself," Alexander said. "He has arms and hands."
"I know he has arms," I said pleasantly.
Jake laughed. "It is kind of nice actually."
Alexander picked up his blood bag and then put it down again without drinking from it.
Jake was telling a story about football tryouts from last year when he gestured widely and knocked his own drink over.
I had a stack of napkins ready before the liquid finished moving. I handed them across.
Jake took them laughing. "How did you do that so fast?"
"I was watching after you," I said.
"She is always watching after people," Alexander said under his breath.
"What was that?" I asked, pissed at him.
"Nothing," he said.
Jake mopped up the spill still laughing. He looked at me with those warm brown eyes and that handsome smile and everything in me went watery.
This was Jake Sinclair looking at me. Actually looking.
This was working!
"You are funny," he said.
"Thank you," I said.
"I mean it." He leaned slightly closer. "I don't think I ever noticed how funny you were before."
My heart was doing something completely unreasonable, thudding like a warground.
"You just never sat close enough," I said.
He tilted his head....
and I kissed him.