Perfectly Accidental, page 23
part #2 of Accidentally Perfect Series
I held off just long enough to get her there, fully aware that it was our shortest run by far. I kept my arms wrapped around her and kissed her neck. I’d spent a little too much time on her neck, but I couldn’t find it in myself to feel bad about it.
“You know, you’re the only girl I’ve done in here,” I told her, feeling lazy and complete.
“Sure, I am,” she laughed but I was too mellow to bristle at her disbelief.
She slid off me and I groaned in protest, despite the necessity.
“No lies, Barlow. Scout’s honour. You’re the only girl I’ve done in my car, on my car, against my car… Really, anything to do with my car.”
“You weren’t in the Scouts,” she reminded me pointedly.
“It’s a figure of speech, Barlow,” I reminded her right back as I hauled arse into the driver’s seat.
She settled in her seat until she caught sight of her neck in the mirror.
“You gave me a hicky!” she accused, all shocked.
I snorted. “Yeah, my bad.”
“You…” she grumbled and pulled a scarf out of her bag. “Just be lucky it’s still cold enough for this.”
I actually snorted again and started the car. “You love it.”
She tried to hide her smile for me by looking out the window, but I saw.
She did love it.
And I loved that she loved it.
“That reminds me, we should swap numbers,” I told her as we headed to school.
“Reminds you? How does that remind you?” she asked. “You need a way to booty call me?”
I threw her a shit-eating grin. “After that performance? I’ll be desperate, love, but you’re totally in charge.”
She laughed. “You liked it that much?”
I nodded. “Oh, I liked it that much.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “Go on, number.”
“Now who’s bossy?” she sassed.
“Oh, it’s still you,” I told her and she smiled.
Chapter Seventeen
Rejected and Ridiculous
Things had gone back to usual. Well, the new usual. The new normal even.
We drove to and from school together. When we saw each other around school, we looked at each other like we had a secret. And I was more than happy to keep it that way. I had nothing all that important I wanted to talk to her about with other people around anyway. Besides, it was bad enough that the boys knew something was going on. If I actually stopped and talked to Piper more often than actually necessary, then there was no way they were keeping their mouths shut about it.
Which made it unfortunate when her friends – including Mason and his friends – and my friends were in the same vicinity outside school on Wednesday afternoon.
“Now, I see why we’re here,” Jake laughed.
“Fuck off,” I said.
“If this thing gets any more obvious, Carter will cave your face in,” Steve commented.
“He wouldn’t dare fucking touch him,” Rio said, then said to me, “Not that you’d hit him back.”
I frowned. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Rio shrugged lazily. “You wouldn’t dare do anything to piss off Barlow.”
I huffed. “Less talking, more skating.”
“You just say that because you love me!” Rio called as I dropped into the bowl.
But my eyes couldn’t stop sliding to Piper. She was watching Mason and his mates, sliding chips into her mouth every now and then as she talked with Hadley and Celeste. Even with the distance between us, I could see she was stressing about something.
So, yeah. She’d told me she was going to the park, and I’d suggested to the guys we went to the skatepark as well. I wasn’t trying to keep tabs on her. At most, I was hoping I could give her a ride home. Of the strictly drive her in the car type. Although, I wouldn’t have said no to any other kind of ride with her.
She looked over to me and something came over me. I purposefully missed my landing and fell off my board. I watched a smile blossom across her face and felt the blossoming bruise on my hip was fully worth it.
“Dude! You totally had that! What happened?” Steve laughed.
“Dunno, man.” I shrugged. “Accident.”
But Rio was looking at me like he knew better. I saw the smirk in his eyes. The dude was about this close to saying things neither of us wanted him saying. I pointed at him in silent warning to keep his mouth shut as I pulled my smokes out of my pocket with my other hand.
“Don’t start with me,” I told him.
Rio shrugged. “I wasn’t gonna.”
“You were.”
“Can I?” Steve asked.
“No,” both Rio and I told him.
“I didn’t think you’d need to,” Steve pumped his hand over his dick, “f-f-f-fake it, man.”
I actually had to hide a smile. “Fuck off.”
“Try the pipe and you won’t have to fake it,” Jake said.
“I don’t fake shit!” I said as I set off on my board.
“Maybe he’s not the faker?” Rio suggested.
I huffed a rough laugh. “You can fuck off.”
“You fuck off.”
Suddenly, Hadley was shouting my name. “Hey, Roman!”
“Yeah?” I called back.
“Ask Piper out!”
Well fuck me.
I turned way too fast and without my board, so both it and me slid down the bowl and took Jake and his board out on the way down. Rio fell over in a fit of laughter and Steve either just decided to stack on me and Jake, or his shitty aim wasn’t getting any better.
I stood up far too quickly to claim a smooth recovery, but that wasn’t really the most important thing right now. Hadley had said what? Had she actually told me to ask Piper out? She totally had. I didn’t think I’d misheard her. The thing that was actually confusing me was the fact that I was too scared to look at how I felt about that.
It had to be a trick.
There was no godforsaken reason why Hadley would be telling me to ask Piper out.
The idea that it was because Piper had told Hadley that’s what she wanted floated through my head and I squashed that flat. If I let myself think that for a second more…
Fuck.
I tried covering, but I wasn’t sure how well I did. “You want me to what, Miss Reynolds?”
“You scared, Roman?” Hadley taunted.
“Scared? No, sweetheart. More confused. What makes you think I want to go out with Barlow, there?” I picked up my board and climbed back out, the pain in my hip making me limp slightly.
I looked at Piper for a second, and knew she thought it was her fault. I may have got it to make her smile, but it was all my fault. She was not allowed to apologise for it.
“Humour me, skater boy,” Hadley said, leaning back on the table she was sitting on and crossing her legs. “Ask Piper out.”
Rio was, no doubt, having a field day at her pose. She was clearly putting on a show. I just had to wonder to whose benefit. Was this for me? For Piper? Or for Mason…?
My eyes slid to Mason, and I could see the fear in his eyes. He was legitimately worried that I’d ask her out and she’d say yes, and he’d have missed his chance. I remembered what she’d said about someone who only wanted her because someone else was interested, but I knew sometimes you just needed a fire lit under your arse. You fear losing something, you made a move. Sometimes, it wasn’t for lack of wanting to.
So, I looked at Piper and was prepared to face whatever feeling her rejection was going to do to me. For her. This wasn’t a hypothetical conversation about how we’d ask each other out, this was for all intents and purposes the real thing. At least, the closest to the real thing she and I were ever going to get. So yeah, for my only chance, I piled it on.
“I didn’t want to have to do this in front of everyone, Barlow,” I told her, walking closer to her so I wouldn’t have to yell at her in front of every person in the park. “But I guess there’s very little choice now.” I shrugged, adding a self-conscious rub of the back of my head. “Do you want to go on a date with me some time?”
My eyes slid around the park.
Hadley wore a grin like she’d just damned an arch angel’s soul to hell.
Mason, meanwhile, was shitting bricks. Honest to God, shitting bricks.
By the time my eyes were back on Piper, she was smiling at me like fucking butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
This was going to fucking hurt.
“Not if you were the last human being on the planet, Lombardi,” she said.
Yeah. It hurt.
“Ouch. That’s pretty definitive, man,” Rio said his eyes unforgiving as they looked her over. The fucker could give Sherlock a run for his money and no mistake.
I shook off the sting and flashed her as much humour as I could. I fished out a new smoke and tucked it in the corner of my mouth. Rio was going to hit me for my next stunt.
“Thank, fuck,” I said. “Now that’s over with… Miss Hadley Reynolds!”
Hadley broke out into a grin that was definitely going to get me smacked. “Yes?” she asked.
“Barlow tells me you guys need a ride on the weekend?” I said, avoiding looking at Rio.
Hadley sat up straighter and flicked her hair back. “We do.”
“Sweet. Well, let me know if you find one. I need one, too.”
I gave her my sexiest smirk and hit my board again.
Moments later, Rio smacked into me, and we both went down.
“Fucker, I was joking,” I told him as he got up.
He pushed me back to the cement. “I’m gonna give you a pass because you just got your heart broken, but you try that again and I will fuck you up.”
I snorted. “Why don’t you ask her out, then?”
He glared at me but didn’t say anything.
I snorted harder. “You did and she said no.”
He huffed and held his hand out to help me up. “It wasn’t meant to be a date or anything.”
I couldn’t begrudge him that. Guy had it bad, and I was starting to know how that felt. Seems neither of us could have what we wanted. It was only one reason we made such good companions.
We dropped our dispute, as petty as it was, and went back to skating which was not helping my hip. I intimately knew everything there was to know about taking your shit out on other people. If Rio needed to vent shit, then he could vent it on me, and I wouldn’t hold it against him.
A little while later, I saw Piper start heading for the bus.
“Oh, no,” I muttered. “None of that.”
“What?” Steve asked as I hurried over to my bag.
“He’s chasing tail,” Rio said, sounding bitter.
“Fuck off,” I told him.
“You are, though.”
“I didn’t deny it,” I snapped, then followed after Piper like I’d implode if I got too far away from her.
I dropped my arm around her shoulder, and she yelped. I laughed as she smacked me and pulled her headphones off. I hadn’t seen her in those headphones in a while.
“Do you mind?” she asked.
“Not particularly,” I said as I flicked my butt away.
“How’s your ankle?” she asked.
“Fine,” I told her because it was. It was my hip that was fucked.
“Good.”
“I’ll let you put your music on if you let me drive you home,” I said, glad she didn’t press about my injury.
She stopped walking and frowned at me like she was testing me. “As loud as I want?”
I dropped my head back dramatically, like her turning her shitty music up as loud as she wanted was a hardship. “Yes.”
“All right.” She changed direction and headed for my car.
“I liked that trick back there,” I said, forcing the nonchalance.
“Which one?” she asked, equally as nonchalant.
“The one to help Carter find his sack.”
“I swear that had nothing to do with me. I think you broke Hadley’s heart, though,” she said as we got into the car.
I smiled and we closed our doors at the same time. “Tell her I’ll drive you both on Saturday if it makes her happy.”
“You? Go to a party and not drink?” she said sarcastically as she plugged her music into the car.
I looked at the controls like that would stop the music playing when I turned the car on. No such luck. I turned my glare on her.
“The things I fucking do for you,” I said, actually not giving a shit at all.
“Eh, you love me,” she said like it was nothing but pure fact and my heart jolted in my chest.
Fucking traitor.
“I certainly don’t hate you,” I answered.
“What a glowing review,” she laughed.
“Well, I’m hardly going to agree. What sort of message would that give you?”
“Okay,” she chuckled. “I will give you this one chance to say anything to me. A totally off the cuff remark which I will take purely at face value.”
One thing? There were a lot of things I wanted to say to her. Some of them sexual. Most of them inadvisable for completely different reasons. But if we were going to play this game, I wasn’t the only one who was going to play it.
“Okay. One thing. Each. Anything. Total face value. And, we never speak of it again?”
She didn’t disagree. “Sure.”
“Okay.”
“That’s it?” she sassed.
“Shut up, I’m thinking.”
“All right, take your time. You don’t want to break anything.”
I didn’t, but thinking wasn’t going to be the thing that did the breaking. I had one chance here. She might not have realised, but this was a test. A test I needed to pass. There wasn’t really a right or wrong answer, I knew that, but there were good and bad answers.
I gave a rough laugh. “Face value? Then, I do kind of love you.”
She was silent for a moment, then said, “I kind of love you, too.”
My heart jolted again and I knew she meant it. But I had to diffuse some of the tension threatening to overwhelm me.
“Oh, now that’s just copying. Boo! Get your own material, Barlow,” I joked as I took her hand.
She laughed. “Fine. That not good enough for you? How’s this; I love that… ‘You say it best, when you say nothing at all’!” she sang along with the song.
Like her previous statement, I knew she meant it. I knew us well enough that I knew she meant it. Just because she’d given us both a laugh didn’t mean the sentiment was any less true.
I laughed, warm and open, and felt lighter than I usually did. “You’re a total loon.”
I drew her hand to my lips and kissed the back of it. As a motion, it was simplistic, but it was fraught with meaning that I think we both wanted to avoid.
Some random song came on and I sub-consciously started singing along. I didn’t think I recognised it, but apparently I knew all the words.
“How the hell do you know that song?” she asked me when it was over.
I looked at her out of the corner of my eye and shrugged. “Dunno. What is it?”
“Um, a song so obscure I can’t find it on YouTube, Soundcloud, iTunes, anywhere…”
“Spotify?”
“Nope.”
“Radio?”
“Yeah, no.”
I had no idea then. “Okay… So, I have a legitimate right to be embarrassed?”
“I think I found it in a box of CDs your mum gave me that used to be Paris’. She probably played it a lot?”
That made sense. Paris had played music at an unbearable level. It was inevitable some of them had wormed their way into the archives of my memory and I’d never forget them.
I nodded. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Or now is the time you tell me you have a penchant for obscure love songs?”
One corner of my lips tipped up. “Maybe I’ve been inspired.”
She laughed. “Yeah, of course you have.”
The problem was, I kind of had. And not in the insinuation kind of way we’d joked about so many times. She inspired me. Songs like that weren’t just all bullshit and noise anymore. But there was no way I’d let her know that.
So, I looked at her and shared her amusement at the idea Roman Lombardi could possibly understand the concept of wanting to be someone’s boyfriend.
Huh.
Yep.
That was fucking ridiculous.
[if there’s time, add in the cheese and bacon ball eating contest]
“Okay, rules?” she asked.
I grinned. “There are no rules.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “There have to be rules. It’s a competition.”
Chapter Eighteen
Parental Politics and Blue Balls
It was getting harder to feel okay with the knowledge Mason was going to ask her out.
After Hadley’s little stunt on Wednesday, it wasn’t so much a fire lit under his arse as it was some slow smouldering embers. He touched her more. They hugged. A lot. She’d already started kissing his cheek, now he returned the favour. He still hadn’t asked her out, but the bonfire party that Saturday would be the perfect time. Bit of liquid courage and Piper was your girlfriend.
It was a fucking shame that I was playing designated and was stuck staying sober.
“You just say, ‘Want to go out?’.” I heard Tucker’s voice.
I looked around the tree that was currently holding the majority of my weight and saw Tucker with his hands on Mason’s shoulders.
“Just walk up to her and ask her,” Tucker continued.
“I just walk up to her and ask her,” Mason repeated, and I could tell he’d had a few drinks. “Why is this so hard?”
Tucker laughed. “If it’s hard for her, then ask her out and do something about it.”
Mason frowned. “Piper’s not like that,” he said as though like that was the worst thing to be.
I managed to keep my snort in. If Mason thought Piper wasn’t like that, he didn’t know her at all. It wasn’t that I thought she’d just fuck any guy, but I would never dare suggest that Piper was or wasn’t like that. She got to be who and what she wanted and no amount of demanding otherwise on Mason’s part was going to change that.
