“Where did you get that pretty sweater?” Petra said, and Marjorie rolled her eyes. Eavesdropping on sweaters was not going to get Marjorie where she wanted to go, which was deep into the details of the biggest breakup at Tibbett High since the last coach had left his wife for a cafeteria worker.
Quinn smiled sweetly at Petra to annoy Marjorie and said, “It’s vintage. I found it in a shop in Columbus the last time I visited my sister.”
“I think you’re making her reevaluate her own life,” Edie said.
“Why would I do that?” Quinn asked, genuinely mystified. “I don’t see that what I’m doing has any bearing on her.”
“Does it come in other colors?” Petra asked. “I can’t wear lavender. I’m too pale.” Petra looked like the undead, but it wasn’t the fault of her clothing.
“I’m sure it came in other colors in nineteen sixty,” Quinn said, trying not to sound exasperated. “It’s vintage. There aren’t any more.” It had also been five bucks, but Quinn saw no point in making Marjorie’s day by broadcasting how cheap she was.
“Probably no bearing at all,” Edie said, soothingly. “So now that you’ve got some free time, you can come do the tech for the play. Sets and costumes. The stipend’s a thousand dollars, which isn’t bad, and if you don’t do it, I’ll end up with a parent again. Remember The Sound of Music?”
Quinn winced. She’d never seen shoddier Alps in her life. “It’s every night of the week for ten weeks. That’s not even minimum wage.”
“Maybe a nice blue,” Petra said. “Is it wool?”
“Please don’t tell me that’s a no.” Edie tried to look crushed, but it wasn’t in her personality. Fluffy little blondes do not crush.
“I’m starting a whole new life,” Quinn said. “I’m going to be selfish.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Marjorie lean forward.
“Aren’t you afraid the moths will get it?” Petra went on, and Marjorie said, “Petra, for heaven’s sake, drop it.”
“Well, I’m all for the selfish part,” Edie said. “I just wish you’d make an exception for me.”
“This is equal-opportunity selfish,” Quinn said. “No.”
“It’s Into the Woods,” Edie said. “Fairy tales. Trees and towers. Think how much fun.”
“No,” Quinn said, trying not to design trees and towers in her mind.
“Mothballs,” Petra said. “But then they smell so.”
“Imagine how bad it could be if you don’t do it,” Edie said. “You’d really be saving the play if you took it.”
“So you dumped the coach, did you?” Marjorie said, evidently goaded past resistance.
“Gotta go,” Quinn said and escaped.
Then Bill dropped by the art room—“just to see how you’re doing”—and stayed. “You must be getting pretty sick of living with your parents,” he’d joked and she’d said, “No,” feeling no temptation to tell him about the house, to tell him about anything that might start a conversation. “I’m really busy, Bill,” she’d said, and he’d still hung around, while the kids watched, fascinated by the soap opera unrolling before their eyes, some of them actively hostile toward her because she was dissing their coach.
“He’s a good guy,” Corey Mossert told her when Bill had finally given up and gone, and she said, “Corey, do I mess with your personal life? Then stay out of mine.”
When Jason Barnes saw her last period, he just shook his head, but Thea, who was aiding and therefore not distracted by artwork, was harder to put off. “What did he do?” she asked, and Quinn said, “He wasn’t the right one. And I didn’t want to settle, that wasn’t good for either of us.”
“What do you mean, you didn’t want to settle?” Thea leaned on the desk, checking out supplies as students trailed up to the desk sporadically. “He’s the coach, for cripe’s sake. He’s like the king of the school.”
“There’s life after school,” Quinn told her. “And I don’t want to wake up someday wishing I’d gone after what I wanted instead of settling for what I have. Which in this case is what other people want for me, not what I want.” She hesitated a little, knowing Thea had parents behind her pushing her into places she wasn’t sure she wanted to go. No point in unsettling Thea three months before graduation. “Look, he’s just not the right guy.”
“Right,” Thea said. “How do you know he’s not the right guy?”
“He took my dog to the pound.”
Thea’s eyes widened. “He’s not the right guy. So how do you know the right guy?”
Quinn thought of Nick. “Beats me. I know somebody who makes me want to throw up every time I look at him, but that might be flu.”
“No, I know that feeling,” Thea said. “So are you going to start dating this new guy?”
“He doesn’t seem to be interested,” Quinn said. “I may have to make a move anyway, though.” The thought of that was terrifying, but the alternative wasn’t any better. “Otherwise, I’m just going to sit around getting older waiting for him to figure it out.”
“That’s no good,” Thea said, and when Jason came to the desk a couple minutes later to check out an X-Acto knife, Thea handed it to him and said, “So, you want to go to a movie tonight?”
Jason jerked his hand back and Quinn thought, Oh, hell. “No,” he said.
“Okay,” Thea said and walked into the storeroom behind the desk and shut the door.
“You handled that beautifully,” Quinn said, torn between smacking Jason and feeling sorry for him.
“Well, she took me by surprise.” Jason scowled at the storeroom door. “What was that all about, anyway?”
“I think she wanted to go to the movies with you,” Quinn said. “That’s just a wild guess, of course.”
“What are you on my case for?” Jason said. “What else was I supposed to say?”
“Nothing,” Quinn said. “Except maybe you could have said no a little slower.”
“She surprised me.” Jason shook his head. “Women.”
When he’d gone back to his desk, Quinn went into the narrow storeroom where Thea was stocking paint.
“You okay?”
“Yep.” Thea handed her the empty paint carton. “I’ll get started on the ink.”
“Thea—”
“It’s all right.” Thea picked up the carton of ink from the floor. “I just thought I’d give it a shot, like you said. It’s not like I have anything to lose.”
Quinn ached at the determined matter-of-factness in Thea’s voice. “Thea, he was just surprised, that’s all. Maybe when—”
“McKenzie,” Thea said. “He’s known me since kindergarten. Do not say, ‘Maybe when he gets to know you.’ He knows me.” She ripped open the ink carton with a lot more ferocity than the cardboard needed. Plastic ink bottles bounced on the concrete floor but didn’t break. “Shit.” She stooped down and then stopped, looking up at Quinn. “Look. My mom wants me to be valedictorian, my father wants me to get a lot of scholarships for college, and my social life is pretty much studying and aiding for you. It’s all about grades and school. And I look at Jason and I see a real life, I mean, a guy who does things. Who’s been there, you know?”
Since Quinn was pretty sure the only places Jason had been were athletic fields and the backseats of cars with cheerleaders, she didn’t know, but then Thea had been even fewer places. “Sort of.” Like Nick, she thought. Different from me.
Thea went on. “And then you said, ‘Don’t settle,’ and I thought—” She shrugged. “It was stupid.”
“It wasn’t stupid.” Quinn bent to help her pick the ink bottles up. “Men don’t like surprises. I feel the same way about one of them, and he doesn’t want anything to do with me, either.”
“Men are stupid,” Thea said, and began to shelve the ink.
“Pretty much,” Quinn said, and went back outside to her classroom to glare at Jason until he said, “What?” and she had to admit he hadn’t done anything wrong. Poor Thea.
Her sisterhood with The
a increased tenfold when she went to the station after school to get her books and give Nick back his jacket, her heart pounding like a trip-hammer.
She knocked on the back door as she went in, calling, “Hello? Nick?”
“Over here.”
He was tightening the lug nuts on the wheel of an Escort, and she stopped for a guilty moment to enjoy the muscles in his arms, mostly his forearms but also the biceps under his shirt. Nick wasn’t muscle-bound, he was too lanky for that, but working in the garage had made him solid and strong, and his arms were great. The rest of him was probably great, too. You’re hopeless, she told herself, but it was still good to watch. No law against watching. As long as she remembered not to ask him to the movies, she was safe.
Nick stopped and straightened to look over his shoulder at her, and he looked gorgeous. She’d never thought that before, he’d always been just Nick, and everybody knew Max was the good-looking Ziegler brother, but now she saw Nick differently, saw how hot those dark eyes looked and how unruly his thick dark hair was, as if he’d just rolled out of bed. Nick looked like he’d just finished making love, she realized, or maybe was about to start. There was an idea.
Mostly, though, he looked wary, and she knew if she tried to talk about that night on the couch, he’d duck, but she had to say something, so she stuck with her excuse for the visit. “I brought your jacket back,” she said, draping it over the work table. “You left it Thursday night.” That night you stared at me.
Nick nodded. “Thanks.”
Okay. “And I came to see if you had any problem picking up the books. I know there were a lot of them.”
“There weren’t any.” He went over to the wall to hang up the wrench. He had great shoulders. Why hadn’t she noticed his shoulders before? Where had her mind been, Pluto? He wiped his hand on a rag as he turned back to her. “You and Darla packed them up Friday, right?”
“Right.”
Nick shook his head. “They were all back on the shelves. Alphabetical order. No boxes. Just like you’d never been there.”
Quinn leaned against the workbench, her knees suddenly not as strong as they had been.
Bill had unpacked all those books. She thought of him coming home, seeing the boxes, carefully reshelving them by the authors’ last names, taking the boxes to the trash, putting things back the way he wanted. She was willing to bet he hadn’t even been angry. He’d just put them back where he thought they belonged.
“Have you talked to him?” Nick asked. “Because he doesn’t seem to be getting the idea.”
“I left him a note,” Quinn said, and Nick snorted. “No, a very clear note. And then he called me at Mom’s and I told him again. And he said, ‘There’s no silverware,’ and I said, ‘It was Grandma’s, you’ll have to buy more,’ and he said, ‘But then we’ll have two sets.’”
Nick met her eyes on that one. “That’s not good.”
“And I told him at school on Friday. And I packed up all the books. And I told him again today at school.”
Nick dropped the rag back on the bench. “Well, you’re going to have to be a lot clearer.”
“How?” Quinn said. “How much clearer can I be than ‘I’ve left and I’m not coming back’?”
“Did you tell him why?”
“No.” Quinn looked at her feet. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Well,” Nick said reasonably. “What did he do?” He leaned against the wall, his arms crossed, flaunting those great forearms. “It’s easier to understand being dumped if somebody tells you why.”
Quinn shrugged. “I just realized there wasn’t anything there.” And after that there was something between you and me.
He was nodding at her. “Right, I’ve been there. The thrill was gone, and it wasn’t coming back.”
“There never was any thrill.” Quinn shoved herself off the workbench, irrationally angry that Nick had had thrills that had worn off. “You know me. I’m not the thrill type.”
Nick unfolded his arms and turned back to pick up the rag again.
“It wasn’t just the no thrill.” Quinn watched him crouch down on the concrete to polish the Escort’s wheel cover. “He kidnapped Katie, and I realized I didn’t want to live with a guy who would do something like that because he thought he knew best when he didn’t know me at all.” The last words came out in a rush. “I may not be the kind of woman who has thrills, but I wasn’t going to live with that. And then it felt so good to move out, I knew it was the right thing.”
She stepped closer, trying to make him understand because it was so important that he be on her side, not on Bill’s, not two guys sticking together, but him and her together. “But I can’t tell him that. ‘Sorry, Bill, I just realized that you were not only dull, you were clueless about what I need. See you.’ That would be cruel.” She tried to picture Bill if she said that. “And then he’d say, ‘I’ll learn what you need,’ and I’d have to say, ‘Not in a million years,’ and then I’d just be being a bitch.”
Nick wouldn’t look up at her. She should have known better. He hated getting involved. “So I’m sticking with ‘We’ve grown apart,’” she finished. “That doesn’t mention that we were never really together.” She shrugged then, trying to lighten the silence. “Sorry about the books. I’ll figure something out.” Nick still wasn’t saying anything, so she turned for the back door. “I really appreciate you trying to help.”
Still nothing.
She let the door bang behind her, feeling miserable and furious at the same time. A logical woman would have analyzed her feelings and reconciled her thoughts. Quinn just wanted all men dead.
When the back door slammed, Nick stopped polishing the wheel that didn’t need polishing and leaned his forehead against the side of the car.
So she thought she wasn’t the thrill type. But he’d seen the flicker in her eyes when he’d leaned close to her that night, heard the soft intake of her breath, felt the heat as her blood had flushed close to her skin, and the need to have that all back, to touch her and make her breathe harder, make her blood pound harder, to take that mouth, move his hand down her throat, over her breast—I could make you the thrill type, he thought and then tried to push the thought back into whatever dark hole in his mind it had crawled out of.
Hell. He sat down on the cold concrete floor and wished the last half-hour had never happened. In fact, if he was going to erase history, he could do without the last five days entirely.
Quinn was a permanent part of his life—hell, he couldn’t sleep with her, he loved her—and sex and permanent were two words he didn’t want anywhere near each other, not in his life, not ever. He had a good life going—lots of freedom and variety, no responsibility, everything easy—and he was not going to screw it up just because he was hot for his best friend.
Forget it, he told himself, and turned back to the other problem, the safer problem, which was Bill.
Bill was a great guy, not deep but honest, hard-working, kind—God, he sounded boring, what had Quinn seen in him?—so why was he acting like she couldn’t leave him?
Nick leaned back against the wheel cover and tried to put himself in Bill’s place, something he wasn’t very good at since he usually didn’t care what other people did. Okay, he was Bill. He’d been living with Quinn—his mind swerved a little there, trying to go into the corner where the underwear memory lived—and she moved out. This shouldn’t be hard; women had been getting fed up with Nick and dumping him for years, and it had never bothered him much.
But suppose it was Quinn. Suppose he’d been used to coming home every night and finding Quinn on the couch reading, or laughing on the phone with Darla, or showering—don’t think about that—and then one day he’d come home and there was a note.
The showering part was distracting him, lot of soap in that particular image, but he tried to imagine a note that said, Dear Nick, I’m gone, and it bothered him a lot more than he’d expected. No more Quinn in his life, no more laughter and bright cool co
pper hair, no more arguments or “Guess what?”s or surprises like ratty little dogs with persecution complexes.
And if he’d been Bill, no more rolling into bed at night and feeling all that softness against him, no more running his hands down her body, no more taking that lush, hot mouth, feeling her hair slide like silk against his skin, feeling himself slide hard deep inside her—
“Okay,” he said out loud and stood up.
Quinn had problems. Bill wasn’t going to give her up easily. Nick could understand that, he wouldn’t have, either, but Bill was going to have to because Quinn wanted out.
“Then we’ll have two sets,” Bill had said. And he’d smiled when she’d told him she was moving out.
So it might be a good idea to keep an eye on Quinn. Nothing intense, just a brotherly eye, because all Bill needed was to get used to the idea of Quinn being gone, and things would be fine.
Nick shoved all thoughts of Bill and Quinn and showers and beds out of his mind and turned back to the Escort.
And wondered what color underwear she’d had on under that sweater.
Six
Bill had sent Quinn two dozen red roses when she got home the next Tuesday night. He called so she could thank him, and she said, “Bill, it’s over. Don’t send any more flowers,” before she hung up on him and dialed Darla.
“Red roses,” she said when she’d explained. “Isn’t that just like him? The most generic gift in America.”
“He’s trying to be nice,” Darla said.
“No, he isn’t,” Quinn said. “He’s trying to ignore reality.”
“He probably thinks if he ignores it, it’ll go away,” Darla said. “Men don’t like change.” She sounded grim as she said it.
“Well, it’s not going to go away,” Quinn said. “I have an appointment tomorrow morning at the bank to get a loan application for my house, and that’ll be the end of it. Even Bill is going to have to accept I’m gone after that.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Darla said, but the next day Quinn walked into the bronze and marble lobby of the First National Bank of Tibbett on her planning period, feeling as though she was declaring her independence.