My (Not So) Perfect Plan (Believe In Us #2)

NINE

EVAN

I study her face carefully, wondering if she’s going to run screaming. She doesn’t and her phone is still at her ear. After a frozen beat where she stares at me like she’s seen a ghost, she speaks into the phone.

“Okay. If he knows what he’s doing, I trust him,” she says. She slowly lowers the phone and gets in the front seat. My arms are crossed in front of me and it feels like my knees are up to my elbows in this little car. She studies my face carefully.

“Your eye is okay?” she asks.

“Yeah.” I don’t offer any more than that. There’s no way I can tell her that her hands on mine, her touch so loving and sweet, had messed me up. She just cared. No ulterior motives.

“How did they rope you into doing this?” she asks. She tries to keep her voice neutral, but the little scowl lines between her brows give her away.

I sigh. “No one roped me into anything.”

“So you volunteered?” She obviously thinks that’s unbelievable. I guess I can’t blame her considering how I’ve been treating her, but I’m not ready to talk about us yet or about how destroyed I felt when she dumped me like yesterday’s gossip. I want her around, need her around, but I can’t act like everything is cool. It’s my own special form of self-torture.

“Let’s just get this started, okay? I plan on going to the game later tonight and still need to do my exercises,” I say.

After a moment she nods and shuts her door. “Okay.”

I walk her through the first steps and after a few false starts we are able to get the vehicle moved a few feet, and then another few feet, before coming to a jerky stop and stalling out. She takes her hands off the steering wheel and shakes her fingers to loosen them up.

She laughs without humor. “I keep screwing it up.”

“That’s normal for people first learning how to drive stick.”

“I don’t know. Apparently my mom was never able to pick it up.”

“You can do it.”

Apparently my encouragement was all she needed because we are able to get around the parking lot for a bit. I tell her to take a turn toward the main road and just go exploring in the area of the school grounds. She brakes and goes to take a left turn. The gears grind and she panics. I start trying to walk her through it, but one of the late buses is behind us and we’re blocking the road.

“Put it in first,” I say. Gears grind and the car jolts forward a foot. “Try again.”

Somehow we end up zooming backwards almost backing into the bus. I’m yelling at her to brake and she’s screaming because she thinks she’s going to hit the bus. The bus honks at us and students are starting to yell at us out the bus windows. She’s more flustered than ever and her eyes are starting to tear up.

“What do I do? What do I do?” she screams. Anxiety and driving never make good neighbors, so I do the first thing I can think of that might calm her done. I put my hand on her upper back and start making slow circles.

“It’s going to be okay. We are just going to start at the beginning of the process, okay. Start at the beginning.”

Her breathing calms down and I walk her through it. The entire school bus is hanging out the side laughing and jeering, but I tell her to ignore them and just focus on what she needs to do. The car moves forward out of the way of the bus and we continue driving at a snail’s pace.

“Okay, shift again up to second and then bring it up to speed,” I say.

She starts to get the hang of it and within a half hour she’s able to down shift and up shift with ease, take turns, and start driving from a stop or parked position.

She parks next to my truck and sighs before turning toward me. I have one hand on the door ready to leave because I haven’t forgotten her all-important plan and how I just don’t fit into it. For a few seconds today we shared some carefree moments like we used to, but it’s painful and it makes me angry that she’s not willing to give us a chance.

“Thank you for teaching me,” she says.

It’s not what I want to hear, so friend-zone, that I just nod abruptly and get out of her car. My knee twinges as I get out and I hear her gasp, showing that she has a heart after all, but I catch myself on her door, gain my footing and limp around to my truck without another glance in her direction.

I turn on music that has a pounding bass, something that drowns out everything else. I tear out of the parking lot but watch her in my rear view mirror as she turns on to the main road. I keep track of her until I’m sure she knows what she’s doing and then I go home, do my exercises, and lift weights until my arms are noodles and I’m too tired to think.

At the football game I sit on the sidelines with everyone else. Somewhere behind the stands the gala committee has set up a booth to sell tickets to the gala. It’s turning into a huge event and I’m doing everything I can to quietly promote it for her, even getting my mom to buy tickets, though I’m 97% sure my dad isn’t going to show.

Lane is really starting to come into his own on the field. I’m proud of him, but I hate having to sit on the sidelines like a ball boy while he eats up my glory. My teammates try to include me in their ribbing, but it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and I begin to wonder why I had decided to come after all.

I catch myself searching the stands for Claire. I force my eyes back to the game and lose myself in it for awhile. It’s a welcome relief and the game is over too soon.

I’m heading out of the stadium with everyone else when my eyes fall on Claire. She’s breaking down the ticket booth she had for her ticket sales. She’s working on collapsing a table, unable to see that above her head the canopy is starting collapse. It folds up all at once right as I reach it. She gasps, holding a hand to her chest, and then her eyes latch onto my arm and follow it to my face. I pick up the canopy and lay it on the ground. Without saying anything I help her finish breaking down the other table and booth. I heft both of the tables in my hands. She doesn’t say anything either, but the silence isn’t companionable. What am I doing?

“Where are these going?” I ask. My mood has my words coming out short and clipped. She flinches, which makes me feel like a jack hole, but she nods toward the field house. I bring them in for her and she follows with the money box and canopy.

After I lean them against the wall in the room she indicates, I walk away. I can feel her eyes on my back until I turn the corner and leave. I can’t jog out to my truck, but I would if I could. I know I’m running away, but I can’t seem to deal with both girl drama and ruined dreams at the moment.

Like earlier in the day, I crank some metal music and gun the truck out of the parking lot, ignoring the twinge of pain in my knee and the hollers and waves of team mates who are gathered by their vehicles watching me.

I know the bitterness is eating me up inside, but I can’t seem to stop it. It’s an early night for a Friday, but I don’t want to be around people right now. I give the excuse to my mom that my knee is hurting, but it’s a half truth. I lay on my bed and relive what it was like kissing Claire again. My heart hurts.

Over the weekend some of my friends stop by, trying to get me out of the house, but I know I won’t be good company, and they aren’t up for trying to entice me out of my emo—boy mood. I throw myself into working out and doing my exercises. My new English tutor, a freshman from UD, is tiny and cute, and flirty, but I’m just not feeling it. She’s not Claire. Apparently Claire has ruined me for anyone else, even college girls.

By the time Monday comes around, I’m sick of myself, and I know my mom is too. My dad would be, but he’s not around enough to care what’s going on with me other than my injury. The first thing I see when I drive into school is Claire’s Mazda. It’s a p.o.s. but she loves it, I can tell.

Every day I’m getting better and stronger on my knee. I can tell my muscle tone in my injured leg took a bit of a hit, but I’m working up to full strength. I won’t be able to try anything strenuous on it for another four months, but I’m confident in my upper body strength and I feel a ton better when I walk in to school and half the girls in the hallway are not-so-secretly checking me out. It’s petty and frivolous and conceited, I know, but it does wonders for my ego and my mood.

I’m walking behind Raven and Tamara on the way to first period when I overhear them arguing about whether or not to tell Claire something. Not that I care (but I totally do), I walk a little closer so I can eavesdrop.

“You can’t tell her. That’s all she has right now. If you tell her the venue didn’t come through, Claire’ll flip. We are already selling tickets!” Tamara says.

Raven swipes at the hair hanging over his forehead. “I don’t see that there’s a way around it. She has to know about it to be able to set something up.”

“I know, Raven, but I’m hoping to be able to handle it ourselves without getting her involved.”

I frown. Claire is going to flip. I haven’t been spending hardly any personal time with her and even I know how much this gala means to her. If the venue doesn’t work out, she’ll be devastated. An idea comes to me and I run with it before I talk myself out of it. I grab each of their elbows and use my height and body size to cut us a path through the students, ignoring Tamara’s sputtering objections. Raven looks surprised but willing to go along for the ride. I shove them inside an empty classroom.

“Dude, I think you just man-handled me,” Raven says, swiping at his hair again. I can’t tell whether or not he’s gay, but Tamara’s growl has me turning to her.

“What in the world is wrong with you, Evan? You can’t just do whatever you want to people!” She stomps for the door, but stops when I start speaking.

“I can help you.”

They both turn to look at me. “With what?”

“You said Claire will flip if she finds out the venue for the gala fell through. I can help you.”

Tamara eyes me shrewdly. “How?”

“I can get you a venue. Just tell me how many and what your needs are.”

They provide me with details and I take notes in one of my notebooks.

“I have one condition,” I say to them as the bell rings. We’re now officially late to class.

“What?” Raven asks.

“You can’t tell Claire. I mean, you can tell her that you had to change the venue, but you can’t tell her how it was changed or that I had anything to do with it.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want her to know,” I say, as if that should be obvious.

Tamara shakes her head in confusion. “But why not?”

“I have my reasons.” Chief among which were that I didn’t want her thinking I’ve pining away over her when she rejected me, but they didn’t need to know that.

Raven shrugs his shoulders and nods, looking over at Tamara.

“Okay. Deal.” We shake on it and then go our separate ways.

The rest of the day I’m thinking about how I am going to work this out. Dad isn’t going to like it, but I don’t really care. I’ve asked him for precious little in the last four years. I don’t think it’s too much to expect him to help me out, but I might need mom on my side as back up.

I meet Claire in the library as usual. As usual, I pause outside of the library doors to watch her as she sits at the table, biting her lip as she works on her homework, her eyebrows screwed up in concentration. I steel myself off to be the unfeeling tutor she’s come to expect for the next hour. I hate what we’ve become. I hate that that’s the only way we can be. I don’t want to be friends, but I don’t know how to get past the wall that I’ve put between us, as much for my own safety as, apparently, for hers. It’s better this way, I remind myself again.

I walk in and she looks up. A smile creases her mouth before she remembers herself and looks down at her books. I don’t react to anything and slide my back pack down on the desk.

I slump down in the chair next to her and point to the trig book she has out. “How did that quiz go today?”

Her smile is huge and genuine this time. She proudly slides a piece of paper across to me, a big 89% circled along with the words ‘Keep It Up!’ at the top in red pen.

“Good.” Inside I want to whoop and high five her, but instead I slide the paper across to her like it’s no big deal. It’s a big deal. If we were dating, I would want to take her out to celebrate.

Her face falls for a moment and my heart twists. I ignore that too because it’s not like I created this stupid situation. This is what she wants.

Her smile returns and she looks over at me. She takes a deep breath and then hesitantly says, “I couldn’t have done it without you, you know? That grade, that’s all you. Thank you. Seriously.”

I almost crack a smile, but can’t bring myself to do it because I’m so frustrated and angry and annoyed at the situation. I’m not good enough to be her boyfriend because I interfere with her attaining the American dream, but I’m good enough to help her in the finer points of trigonometry. Whatever.

Apparently my face gives away some of my anger because she says, “Evan? Did I say something wrong?”

I clear my throat, shoving the negative thoughts away. “Let’s just work on today’s assignments, okay?”

We go over the problems and I explain to her the parts she’s struggling with. While she works through some of the problems on her own, I pull out some of my own homework and attempt to wade through it. I also text my mom that I want to have dinner with her tonight.

My phone dings, showing me I have a notification. I open the screen without picking the phone up.

M: What’s so important about us having dinner tonight?

I snort. Time to butter her up if she’s going to help me convince dad to do what I need.

ME: I love having dinner with you. Isn’t that enough? ;)

M: Okay. Let’s do Italian. Rosaretti’s?

ME: Sure. 6pm tonight? Do you want me to pick you up?

M: No, I’ll meet you there. No biggie.

ME: K.

I lock my phone again. When I raise my head, Claire jerks like she just turned away. Was she reading my messages? I can tell she’s trying not to be mad, but the tips of her ears are turning red and she’s pressing down so hard with her pencil I fully expect the lead to break off. I smile to myself because I realize what my conversation with my mom could look like. She was jealous. I could use this.

Later that night, I meet my mom at the small Italian restaurant we’ve come to become regular diners at. It’s not a fancy place, but their food is so good, it doesn’t matter. Each of the booths offer more privacy than you get at just about any chain restaurant, so it’s perfect for discussing what could easily become one of the most embarrassing conversations of my life. I figure, if I am going to be ripping off the band-aid and telling mom everything, I need to have something pleasant as a distraction.

We order and settle down with our waters.

“Okay, Evan, I’m here. What did you need to talk about?”

“Claire.”

Mom’s eyes grow huge in her head. “I thought you two were over and done with.”

I laugh and run a hand through my hair. “Um… I don’t think I could ever just be over and done with her.”

Mom purses her lips studying me. She knows if I am talking to her about it, it’s serious.

“Are you in love with her?”

I swallow and think for a minute, closing my eyes, and trying hard to be honest with myself. I really like Claire. She makes me feel invincible. But more than that, I want her to fulfill all those hopes and dreams she had of a better future. I’m only a senior in high school. I have a whole future ahead of me, but the thought of Claire not being a part of that future leaves me with a cold, dark knot in my stomach. I see myself having children with her, taking vacations with her, growing old and gray with her. A future where she is mine. And I am hers. I just have to convince her that an ‘us’ is possible. Maybe we are all fools in love. Or maybe I am obsessed. Either way, all I can do was try.

I open my eyes and sigh. “Yeah, I am.”

Mom watches me for a few more moments before she rubs her hands together. I wouldn’t say she’s pleased, more like she has her game face on and we’re going to do whatever we need to do to make it happen. I’m relieved because it finally feels like I have someone in my corner.

“All right then, sweetie. What do you need from me?” Mom asks.

The week flies by. I spend all of my time outside of school exercising, tutoring, and working on my little side project. It involves getting to know Raven, Tamara, and Rachel a lot more through text.

Tina finally took the hint that I wasn’t interested. While she still loved to put down Claire or any of her friends, she knew to be wary about how far she went when she saw I didn’t care about my reputation enough not to stop from giving her an epic verbal beat down.

The longer I go without Claire, the more I know I want her in my life. So many other girls might have the clothes, the hair, the model body or model looks, but they aren’t the girl for me. This wall between Claire and I is going to have to come down and I’m going to have to be the one to breach it and remind her of what she wants. It’s easy enough for girls to friend-zone a guy they like, avoid the pressure of a relationship. It’s time to step up my game and, as Claire would probably say it, ‘woo the girl.’