Chapter Nine — Blair

Blair walked into the library, hesitating as the door closed behind him. He suddenly felt like an intruder. Like this was Sandra’s home or something. He’d known where she’d be, and she couldn’t exactly just leave to avoid him.

Not that she’d want to.

He hoped.

Blair suddenly felt self-conscious and considered turning around and leaving. His thoughts ran wild, feeding on his insecurities. Would Sandra be glad to see him? Annoyed?

He was surprised to see so few people at the library on a Friday evening, but he was grateful it was mostly empty.

Sandra couldn’t blame him for showing up at her work, though. She hadn’t been at school all week; Blair hadn’t had a choice. He assumed she was following through with her whole ‘dropping out’ thing, which he still didn’t understand. She wasn’t the type. Or at least so he thought. But what did he know? It wasn’t like he and Sandra were close or anything.

He didn’t even have her phone number.

Which was why he was at the library. In his panicked state when asking Sandra to the dance, he’d forgotten he had no way of contacting her. Sure, he could have asked Amanda for the number and she would have given it to him. But it felt wrong to get it from anyone other than Sandra herself.

Steeling himself, Blair walked further into the library. He could do this. A quick scan of the small space told him that Sandra wasn’t at the front counter. He wandered down a couple of the aisles, assuming she must be shelving books. He rubbed his neck—it had started to itch again. He hated the constant physical reminder of his anxiety. He had good reason to be nervous, though. Blair hadn’t come to the library only for Sandra’s number. He had also come to make sure she still wanted to go to the dance with him.

It had been several days since he had asked her, and considering she hadn’t shown up to school, he wondered if she would be uncomfortable being there.

Blair peeked around another corner. She wasn’t there either.

His arms were itching now. Great. Probably because they knew he wasn’t being completely honest with himself. This wasn’t just about Sandra. This was about him and his own issues.

Blair couldn’t ignore the fact that he and Sandra would be going to the dance with their best friends, who also happened to be in serious relationships. No matter how many times he told himself it didn’t matter, the fact was that they would be going with two other couples who were crazy in love. To a Valentine’s Day dance.

Which would leave Blair and Sandra sitting uncomfortably, trying to avoid watching their friends hanging all over each other, probably making out, while secretly wanting to die inside. Okay, maybe that was what Blair would be doing. Sandra would probably run in the opposite direction, making sure Blair kept his distance.

He smacked a palm to his forehead. This had been a mistake. He had been wanting to ask Sandra out for so long, but he should have chosen something different for their first date—something that wasn’t going to scar him, or her, for life.

Blair turned quickly around the corner of an aisle and smacked right into a library cart. He toppled backwards onto the floor, clutching his stomach where the corner of the cart had gouged him. He doubted it had drawn blood, but it still hurt. A lot.

“Oh my gosh, are you all right?” Sandra dropped to the floor next to him. She looked him over, as if she were a doctor and he was her patient.

“I’m fine,” he said with a low laugh that didn’t sound like him at all. “But really, we need to stop meeting this way.”

Sandra smiled and stood. She held out a hand to help him up. “Yes, I suppose it wouldn’t do us any good to show up to the dance tomorrow all bruised up.”

The dance.

Blair’s hives were now in full attack mode and they targeted his stomach next. Argh. He needed to find a girl who didn’t make him so nervous—he wasn’t sure he could survive dating someone he liked so much.

He tried to scratch his stomach without her noticing, reaching for a book on the shelf while at the same time using his thumbnail to scratch where it itched the worst. It looked completely awkward, though he didn’t think she’d noticed.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked, her forehead scrunched in concern.

Okay, she’d noticed.

“Oh, um, yeah. Nothing to be worried about.” Blair quickly scratched his stomach again when she turned her head for a brief moment.

When she turned back, it seemed something had changed. Sandra’s gaze didn’t meet his. Instead, it bounced around to the various books that surrounded them. “You haven’t been in all week. Did you finish your project?”

She’d noticed. It made Blair’s stomach tie in knots, but not in the ‘I have indigestion and will spend the next three hours in the bathroom’ kind of way. It was more of the ‘oh my gosh, she might like me, I might pass out’ kind of way.

The good way.

Blair took a calming breath to steady his voice before he said, “We just finished up today. But we were done with the research portion, so we finished it up at home.”

That was true. But he had chosen to leave out the part about Julianna insisting they finish it at her house because he had been too distracted by Sandra when they were at the library.

“Oh. I guess that means I’ll be seeing a lot less of you, then.” She paused. “You know, since I won’t be at school, and you won’t be here…”

It could have been Blair’s imagination, but he was pretty sure Sandra looked…well…disappointed.

“At least we have the dance tomorrow,” he said. “Unless you’ve changed your mind.”

Sandra’s gaze snapped up and met his. “No, of course not.” Her cheeks flushed. “I have a dress. Sort of. I mean, I do. But it’s not my dress. It’s Gracie’s. Actually, it’s her mom’s—” She stopped. A look of horror flashed across her face before she grabbed the cart and hurried down the aisle and around the corner.

Okay, that was weird.

Blair stared, unsure if he was supposed to follow her. Would that come across as a stalkerish thing to do, or more like a concerned friend?

He went with concerned friend—he did still need her number, after all.

When Blair rounded the corner, however, he didn’t see Sandra. Instead he found himself face to face with the cranky librarian, who looked down her nose at him.

“Um…hi.”

She continued to stare, not moving.

“I’m in the wrong aisle.” He took a step backward. “I was looking for a book on magic tricks. And I can see that it won’t be next to ones about,” he glanced at the nearest title, “brain aneurysms.”

The librarian continued watching him, but he could have sworn that her lips had twitched up into a barely there smile. By the time he looked again, the smile was gone. She looked over her shoulder and spoke to someone just out of Blair’s sight. “I like him.”

Huh?

The librarian disappeared down a different aisle just as Sandra stuck her head out from behind the library counter, her cheeks a deep shade of red.

“Did I do something wrong?” Blair asked.

“Oh no, this is all me,” Sandra said, straightening and fiddling with a pile of books that sat on the counter. “I just…” She looked up at the ceiling and blew out a puff of air. “You make me nervous. And I do stupid things like rambling and then running away and…and I’m doing it again.”

Doing what, making him like her even more? Yeah, she was totally doing that.

Blair walked up to the counter. “If it makes you feel any better, you make me more nervous than I make you.”

“There’s no way. I’m so nervous right now, my feet are sweating.” Her hand flew to her mouth and her eyes widened. “Why do I say things like that when I’m around you?”

“You think you have me beat?” Blair rolled up his sleeve and displayed his hives in all their glory. “It starts at my neck and usually stops there, but you’ve put me in full-on breakout mode.”

Sandra stared. Then burst out laughing.

The librarian walked past at that moment. Without pausing or looking back, she said, “If you two insist on showing off your weird bodily functions, can you please do it somewhere else? You’re going to scare the patrons away.”

There currently weren’t any patrons, so Blair didn’t know what she was worried about, but still, he had to admit that he and Sandra were officially the weirdest couple he’d ever seen.

Not that they were a couple. Yet. Or ever. Was that something Blair even wanted? He wasn’t one for long-term relationships, and she seemed the type to want that.

He took one look at Sandra, who was currently pretending she was scanning books into the library system but kept stealing glances his way.

Oh, yeah. He wanted it.

“I actually came into the library to talk to you,” he said, leaning his arms on the counter. He tried to scratch at his neck without her noticing and look cool at the same time.

Her lips tilted up into a smile. “Oh, yeah?”

“You see, I asked you to attend a dance with me tomorrow, but I don’t have your phone number. How would that look if I was running late but had no way of contacting you?”

“You didn’t have to make a special trip for me,” Sandra said, leaning forward. “You could have gotten it from Amanda at school.”

“Yeah, but I don’t feel right about getting a girl’s phone number if she didn’t give it to me herself. I would hate to be mistaken for a stalker or something similarly nefarious.”

“Ooh…nefarious. That’s a good word,” Sandra said, her eyes teasing him.

Blair smiled, but it dipped when she didn’t say anything more. “So…can I have your number?”

She straightened, her mouth parting in surprise, like she hadn’t realized he wanted it right then. “Oh yeah, of course. I’m sorry.” She rattled off the numbers as she brushed back her hair, looking embarrassed.

After entering Sandra’s phone number, he said, “Smile,” and caught her off guard as he snatched a picture. “Perfect.”

“Let me see it,” she said, reaching for his phone.

Blair held it just out of her reach. “No, ’cause then you’ll make me change the picture. And you look too beautiful for me to do that.”

“If I look so beautiful, why would I make you change it?” she challenged him.

“Because…” The warning look Sandra gave him made him stop.

Because that had been his experience with girls. It didn’t matter how amazing they looked, they always managed to find flaws. They thought their teeth looked crooked or the camera angle made their nose seem slightly larger than they liked. Most of the time they wouldn’t give him any specifics, they would just tell him how awful they looked, and he’d be forced to delete it, regardless of what he wanted.

She smiled. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Blair didn’t know what she was thinking, but he doubted it was what he had meant. But just to mess with her a little… “Glad to know we are on the same page.”

Sandra hesitated, her eyes searching his. “When you say ‘on the same page’…”

With a grin, Blair stayed silent, letting her be uncomfortable for a moment.

“What exactly did you mean?” she finished.

He laid a hand on hers as he looked at her with mock sympathy. “That we both agree that your beauty is too much for you to handle.”

Sandra’s lips parted in surprise, then she released a laugh that was so genuine, her entire face lit up. “You’re good.” Her gaze moved until it rested on his hand, which still covered hers.

Self-conscious, he removed it, immediately missing the touch. “I do what I can.” Blair stepped away, lightly tapping the counter before he slowly walked backward toward the front door. “See you tomorrow, princess.”

She quirked an eyebrow as she held up her wrists, showing him her spiked bracelets. “Princess? Really?”

“Who says princesses can’t be badass?”

Blair left before she could respond but didn’t miss the adorable smirk she wore.

He wasn’t sure if the dance would be his only chance at a date with Sandra. But he desperately hoped not.