Chapter Fourteen
Avery
The distance I’d put between me and Maverick that week backfired. I’d thought it would help me detach myself from him and put an end to the crush, but it only made me want him more.
The times he’d approached me to talk, I hadn’t been mean or ignored him, but I hadn’t really tried to engage in the conversation either. Just simple “yeah, no, cool” responses. Soon, he got the hint and stopped trying as hard. And instead of making me happy that he’d backed off, it did the opposite. Made me kick myself for being such a coward.
My indecisiveness derived from me wanting him, but also knowing we’d never work out. It was a catch-22 situation.
That Saturday, Ben and I had made plans to meet up and study for the upcoming biology exam. We were meeting at a place with a weird name. Brew something. Whatever it was called, it sold coffee and books. Not that I’d be able to purchase either of those, but still. Supposedly it was a good studying area, based on what Ben said.
As I walked toward the storefronts near the harbor, I hugged my arms tighter against my torso. Fall had definitely arrived, and the chill in the air depressed me. I loved summer—the warmth of it. As each day passed and the weather shifted more and more from warm to cool, it just meant it was one day closer to winter.
My family had suffered through some pretty grueling winters. Our electricity had been shut off during one of them, and I still remembered how painful it was to be that cold. It was as if no amount of blankets could help.
When I reached Main Street, I ridded myself of those thoughts. That close to the water, the scent of the ocean was strong, and a ship horn sounded in the distance.
Voices echoed from the dock where several men were tying up a boat. There were a few restaurants around that smelled incredible, making my mouth water and my stomach grumble. One restaurant called Surf’s Up had a big animated fish holding a surf board above the entrance, and I smiled at the silliness of it. An art store was on the left side and a boutique sat beside it.
I scanned the store names, looking for the coffee shop/ bookstore. Seeing a group of people hovering around an entrance, I glanced at the name above them and started heading that way.
Brew Emporium. That was a mouthful.
Reaching the group of people, my nerves sprang to life, and I tried to maneuver around them to get inside. One girl snapped her head around when I accidentally bumped her shoulder, and she spouted off something about me being a gothic freak. I quietly apologized, which just egged her on to say something else.
Ignoring the jab and the laughter that followed, I finally made it inside.
Growing more uncomfortable by the second, I searched the room for Ben. I hated being so socially awkward, but I often felt everyone was judging me everywhere I went, as if they could somehow take one look at me and know my life story.
Any time someone laughed, I automatically assumed they were laughing at me.
“Avery! Over here,” Ben called, drawing my attention to the right side of the room where he sat at a small table.
Thank god. I walked that way, relieved.
“Do you want a coffee?” Ben asked once I sat down. Before I could tell him no, because I didn’t even have two pennies to rub together, he added, “It’s on me. Just tell me what kind.”
Guilt always wound through me when people bought things for me; Maverick with buying my dinner, and now Ben with coffee. I knew friends did that sort of thing for each other, but it was usually returned by that friend later on. A mutual giving and taking. And I was just taking. I hated feeling like a moocher.
“Avery…” Ben started, giving me that look. “It’s okay. Really.”
Stop being so weird, I told myself.
“Um, sure,” I said, tapping my fingers on the table top and lightly bouncing my knee as I thought—which instantly made the cuts on my thighs ache, and I stopped the movement. I didn’t really know coffee flavors, other than the pumpkin one all the girls raved about. “Whatever you’re getting is good.”
“Carmel macchiato it is.” Ben grinned, making the light dusting of freckles across his cheeks wrinkle.
Then, I was alone again. Instead of thinking too much about how there were a lot of people around, I decided to inspect the place a bit more.
Ben had chosen the table nearest to the bookshelves. There were several of them, going from a few feet from us and all the way to the wall. They were tall too, and labeled with their genres. Since it was a used bookstore, I had assumed there wouldn’t be a lot to choose from, but I was wrong. The other half of the shop had a plethora of seating areas: some tables and some were booths. Some were those huge plushy chairs that you could curl your whole body up in.
Our area had all the books, and I smiled. Ben loved reading, so it made sense he’d chosen this spot.
“Avery?”
I blinked, confused. My name had been said so much in the last five minutes that I felt like I was in one of those alien movies where I was the outsider and everyone was suddenly coming for me, trying to convert me into one of them. And yeah, perhaps my imagination was a bit out there.
When I shifted my body to the right more, my face heated when I saw who’d spoken.
Maverick was in one of the aisles, holding a stack of books in one arm and placing them on the shelf with the other. Except he’d stopped shelving the books and was instead looking at me. His expression was both kind and sort of shy.
I wasn’t used to seeing him nervous.
“Hey, Maverick,” I greeted, seeing the way his face fell a smidge when I didn’t say the shortened version of his name. It was my way of trying to keep him at arm’s length. If he got any closer, emotionally, I might not be able to resist him anymore. “I didn’t know you worked here.”
“Yeah, I do,” he said, setting the books on the floor in the aisle before walking toward me. “It’s a pretty cool job. Rehearsals cut into my hours a bit, so that sucks. But I love it here.”
By his stance, I could tell he didn’t know whether to stand in front of me, sit beside me, or walk away and continue working.
I decided to throw a life jacket to the poor guy.
“Do you wanna sit?” I asked, motioning to the empty seat beside me. “Ben went to get us coffees, but I’m sure it’s okay if you hang out for a few.”
Maverick smiled, and the shyness gradually left him. “As much as I’d love to, I don’t think I should while on the clock. But if you guys are still here when I go on my lunch break, maybe I can? If the offer is still open?”
“What offer?” Ben asked, placing my coffee in front of me before sitting down in his chair.
“I said he could sit with us if he wanted,” I said, and then I froze a little when it occurred to me that maybe I was overstepping. “I mean, if that’s okay with you.”
“Of course it is.” Ben gave me a weird look, as if he couldn’t believe I’d even suggested otherwise. He then looked at Maverick. “We’re studying for the biology exam, so another brain wouldn’t hurt. Plus, you’re the best student in class. You’d be a lot of help.”
“Cool,” Maverick responded. “My lunch is at one, so I’ll be over here then. As for now,” he looked over at his discarded pile of books, “I need to get back to work.”
***
A lot of reading and two lattes later, Ben and I had gone over most of the material. For the past ten minutes, we’d decided to take a short break before diving into the rest.
During the break, we’d talked about various things, like his love of skiing—his family vacationed to Colorado each year at some winter resort—and how he couldn’t say the word iron. He pronounced it with the r.
“Sorry, I feel like we’re always talking about me,” Ben apologized. “I feel like an awful friend.”
“You aren’t,” I said. “Believe me. I don’t mind having the topic off me.”
“Why?” His brow pulled together. “You’re awesome. Like, I wish I had the confidence to dress the way you do, with all the eyeliner and rocker hairdo. I tried on a pair of skinny jeans before and ripped the inner thigh of them before I even pulled them up over my ass. Not just any dude can wear those.”
I laughed as a wave of something else washed over me too. Happiness? Ben called me brave for wearing what made me feel like me. He praised what most others mocked.
“Thanks.” The spotlight made me feel a little uncomfortable. I wasn’t used to compliments and didn’t know how to respond to them. “I don’t feel confident. I just see it as I’ll be judged no matter what I do or wear. If it’s not my appearance than it’d be how I talk or where I live. So, why not stay true to myself? If I’m going to be teased, it might as well be for who I am than who I’m not.”
“Very thought provoking,” Ben said, nodding. “I’ve kinda thought about dyeing my hair a few times. People call me a ginger and make fun of me for it. Damn, it used to hurt a lot when I was younger too. I’d come home from school crying nearly every day. But it’s me, you know? If I dye my hair just so they won’t make fun of me that means they’ve won.”
There were tears in his eyes, and he looked away, trying to hide it. No matter how confident a person seemed, they could be struggling with deep insecurities. Some just hid it better than others.
I hadn’t known Ben had been bullied.
“Well, I happen to like redheads,” I said, smirking. “In medieval times, redheads were thought to be kissed by fire. So if anyone ever gives you crap for it again, just tell them that you’ll set them aflame or something and drag their souls, kicking and screaming, to the Underworld. Be all dramatic with it.”
Ben snorted, and his watery eyes cleared. “Thanks, Avery.”
It was then that I truly felt like I wasn’t alone. Ben had experienced the same type of bullying I had, and for something that wasn’t his fault at all. Seeing how emotional he got when telling me about the bullying and seeing his reaction at me defending him impacted me.
Sometimes you just needed one person to be there for you. To have your back. Not a huge group of people, but one who truly got you.
Maybe Ben would be my person and I’d be his.
When Ben’s gaze fixated on something behind me, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Not so much out of fear, but just the unknown. Like that feeling of what the heck is behind me type thing.
Maverick appeared at my side, put his hand on the back of the vacant chair, and hesitated. “Can I sit?”
“Yep,” Ben answered before I could get the words out of my mouth.
I’d once seen a quote that I didn’t quite understand until then. It was something along the lines of how the brain worked all the time, all day every day, and only stopped when you talked to someone attractive.
That’s how I felt around Maverick. He turned my brain to mush.
“We were just taking a break before looking over chapter six,” Ben stated, opening his textbook to the marked page. “I don’t want your lunch taken up by studying, though. That’d suck.”
“Not to me,” Maverick replied before sitting down with his lunch—a coffee and a blueberry scone. His leg brushed mine under the table, and I didn’t know if it was intentional on his part or not. “Chapter six is over microorganisms, right?”
Ben checked. “Yep.”
It was difficult not to envy the ease at which Ben spoke to Maverick, but then I had to remind myself that Ben didn’t like Maverick in that way, so of course it was easy.
There were moments where I could talk to him too, but lately, it’d only become harder—when I wasn’t avoiding him anyway. It was as if the admittance that I liked him rearranged all the chemicals in my brain and made me see everything differently.
Like those black and white pictures that were dual images. You saw one thing but when the other image hidden within was pointed out, it was the only one you could see and it was difficult to see the first again.
Maverick was like that: the only image I could see.
Mrs. Brown had given us a sheet with terms and cycles to know for the test, so we went through the chapter and quizzed each other over the ones we found. It impressed me that Maverick got every question correct. He’d told me before that he loved science, but seeing him in action was different.
What impressed me even more was when I answered a question wrong, Maverick explained the correct answer and gave examples. He knew material that wasn’t even on the freaking study sheet.
“Crap,” he said after glancing at his phone. “My lunch is over. What are you guys doing later?”
Ben shrugged. “Probably just gaming. I never have much planned on weekends.”
Maverick looked at me. “What about you?”
“Nothing,” I answered, feeling self-conscious again as I looked at him.
The mark on his cheek from where I punched him was still visible, just a little more faded. I wondered if anyone had asked him about it, and if so, what had he told them?
“Do you guys wanna hang out after I get off work?” he asked with a hopeful gleam in his sapphire eyes. “We don’t have to study. We can go out somewhere or you guys can come over to my place. It’s whatever.”
I didn’t miss the way his stare lingered on me before moving to Ben.
“Sounds cool to me,” Ben agreed.
Then their eyes were on me. How could I refuse without sounding like a jerk?
“I’ll have to talk to my brother, but sure,” I said, thankful my voice was steady. “It shouldn’t be a problem.”
Right after I agreed to hang out with him, differing emotions went through me. Excitement to see him later, but also nerves because of what happened the last time we hung out. A left hook to his face. However, Ben would be with us that night unlike the last time, so it wouldn’t be one-on-one.
Hopefully that’d prevent things from getting awkward.