Now I looked like a crazy person.
“Uh…” I licked my lips and frantically tried to search for an excuse. “I dropped the rag.” My fingers released the rag onto the floor. I offered a small smile.
“You sure you’re doing okay?” Dad felt my forehead. “You feel hot.”
“She does look hot, doesn’t she?” I knew that irritating, beautiful, ridiculous voice. I closed my eyes and prayed I was imagining things.
My dad shot onto his feet and laughed. “You wouldn’t happen to be the person my daughter’s been staring at for the past few minutes, would you?”
“Probably not,” came Demetri’s voice. I opened my eyes to glare. He was staring at me, and then he winked. Crap. “She doesn’t like rock stars. In fact, she verbally assaulted me yesterday about working her corner.”
“Alyssa,” Dad scolded.
“Dad,” I said back in a warning voice as I rose to my feet.
“Did you need anything, Demetri?”
His eyes crinkled as he attacked me with one of the most gorgeous smiles I’d ever seen in real life. “I did… I do.”
Insert long and awkward pause here where my dad looked between the two of us, chuckled, and walked off. Well, at least he was laughing. I hadn’t heard his laugh in what felt like years.
“What?” I snapped.
Demetri shrugged. “I saw you staring at me.”
“Did not!” My nostrils flared. “There’s no way you could see me through the windows from that far away.”
“So you were staring.” Demetri folded his muscled arms across his chest.
“No.” I swallowed and looked at the ground. Looking anywhere but at him seemed like a good idea.
“I felt it.” He placed his hands on the counter and leaned forward so our faces were mere inches apart. “Not that I mind. I just thought I’d come over and say hi, since you seemed to be beckoning me over with your lustful glances.”
“Lustful glances?” My head jerked up. I was half-tempted to bang his head against the counter, but I had spent the entire morning cleaning up that exact spot where he was leaning. Damn him.
“Yeah, they look like this.” His heavy-lidded eyes blazed a hot trail up and down my body as he very thoroughly checked me out, and then without another word, tucked a piece of fallen hair behind my ear, and left.
I was still frozen in place when my mom came rushing in.
“Is he still here? Where did he go? Did he talk to you? What was he like?”
“Mom.” I held up my hands. “Just… don’t.”
She sighed like a teenager and giggled. She’d lost her freaking mind. “I just love Demetri Daniels, and I don’t believe a word they say about his rehab or drugs. He’s just a nice boy who—”
“—is doing community service.” I pointed across the street and sighed. “He’s…” I couldn’t think of the right word, so I just shrugged and said, “Cocky.”
Mom, clearly not caring that she was scarring me for life, sighed and watched Demetri cross the street and grab his bucket from a large guy with a shaved head. Body guard. It had to be.
Demetri continued singing the stupid taffy song and dancing around the corner like a drunken chicken. And I grabbed the rag again and pretended to keep cleaning, while out of the corner of my eye I watched. I hated that he made me feel warm inside. I hadn’t had that feeling in two years, and I wasn’t about to let it get the best of me again. It was all his fault. If Demetri hadn’t spoken to me that first day, if he had just left everything alone, then I wouldn’t be stripping him nak*d with my eyes. I wouldn’t be longing to touch that perfectly sculpted face. Frustrated, I threw the rag against the counter and stomped off, leaving my mom to watch him all by herself.
Chapter Eight
Demetri
Four days. I watched her for four days. What kind of stalker did that make me? I mean she had the ugliest clothes I’d ever seen.
She was so small, she practically swam in them, and I’m sorry, but there’s a reason guys don’t dig Uggs. They gave her legs no shape, and I couldn’t figure out if she had really nice ones or cankles, and then it pissed me off that I was thinking about cankles in the first place.
Ever since Tuesday when I ran in to the competition’s store and tried to find any excuse to talk to her, I’d been out of sorts. Not the out of sorts that just leaves you when you fall asleep at night.
No, the type that had me eating so much taffy that I was convinced I was going to have ten cavities by the end of the year.
I shook the bucket, but my heart wasn’t in it, not that it had ever been truly in it, but still. I felt off. Clearly, I needed another hobby, or friends, or something, because my behavior was bordering on stalker-ish. Yesterday I’d even gone in her parents’ taffy store and asked about her schedule.
I swear her mom almost fainted.
When she introduced herself, she almost seemed too eager to get her daughter into my clutches, which really should have been my first clue that something was off. I mean, unless they lived under a rock, they knew exactly what I was about. Spoiled rock star who nearly killed himself in an accident, troubled past, man-whore of the century, blah, blah, blah.
I’d pasted on my best smile, careful not to give her mom a stroke, and asked about Alyssa.
All I found out was what I already knew. She worked every freaking day, just like me, which just reinforced the conclusion I had come to earlier.
She was lonely.
I asked her mom about friends.
Again, yes, I’m very much aware how creepy I was being, but I had Bob, that was it. I was desperate for some sort of companionship, even if said companion wanted to stab me in the eye.
After no convincing whatsoever, I discovered that Alyssa had Saturdays off and didn’t often go out with friends.
I could be her friend.
Lame. Maybe that’s how I should start the conversation.
“Hey, Alyssa, I’ve been watching you for the past four days. You have a pretty face even though your clothes suck. Wanna hang out?
Oh, and by the way, I’m so bored and strung out about not being able to get high, that if you say no, I just may kill myself.”
Promising.
Clearly, I’d been out of the game for far too long. I couldn’t even remember how to talk to a normal person.
I kicked the ground and looked across the street again.
Tomorrow was Saturday. Tomorrow I was going to pursue the first girl I’d pursued since Nat.
And look how well that turned out.
The familiar pang of rejection hit me square in the chest.
Why was I even putting myself out there when I literally had nothing to offer, but baggage?
Hell if I knew, but damn if I didn’t still want to try.
Chapter Nine
Alyssa
I woke up to someone pounding on my door. With a grunt I threw off the covers, stumbled out of my bed, and walked drunkenly toward my bedroom door, opening it with irritation.
“Hi, friend.” Demetri smiled.
I closed the door in his face.
“Is that any way to treat your friends?” He laughed from the other side.
Closing my eyes didn’t make the problem go away. I was still in my Seaside High Track t-shirt and old running shorts. I looked like a little kid. I glanced in the mirror and cringed. My brown hair was pointed in every which direction, making me look possessed, and I had giant bags under my eyes.
“Go away!” I yelled.
Silence and then, “No.”
“Demetri.”
“Alyssa.”
Dang, I should have never told him my name. “How do you know where I live?”
“I followed you.”
“Seriously?”
His laugh made me want to strangle him. “I’m kidding. It’s my day off, so I went down to the store to grab my three pieces of taffy and…”
I rolled my eyes.
“Hey, can I finish telling you why I’m here to your face? It’s weird talking to a door, even weirder when the door has a Justin Bieber poster staring at me.”
Crap. I forgot about that stupid poster. Brady had put it there as a joke when I confided in him that I loved Justin Bieber.
After everything happened, I hadn’t the heart to take it down.
Slowly, I pulled open the door. Should have known Demetri would push past me and make himself right at home. “No really, come on in. I wasn’t sleeping or anything on my day off.”
“Good.” He took off his leather jacket, revealing a tight tank top that showed off tattoos down his right arm and across his collarbone. I tried to pry my eyes away, but I was tired and clearly needing more oxygen or something in my room.
“They’re just tattoos, Lyssa.”
“Wow.” I chuckled pulling my hands through my tangled hair. “Already got a nickname, huh?”
“I like it.” He crossed his arms, making his muscles bulge.
I bit my lip and looked away. “So, the reason for my wake- up call.”
“Oh, babe.” He chuckled. “You haven’t even seen the beginning of my wake-up calls.”
“I’m not going to even ask.” I threw on a sweatshirt and sat on the bed cross-legged. “So, the reason for you being here?”
“You’re a cheerleader?” Demetri pointed at the school sweatshirt. The same one that had Brady’s old football number splashed across the front. Just another piece of him I couldn’t give away. Like everything else in my room that had his scent or touch on it.
“Um, I was a cheerleader. Yup.” Talking to Demetri was like herding cats. One minute he was on-topic, and within seconds he was changing subjects as if it was completely normal to talk about taffy and tattoos in the same sentence.
His eyes scanned the sweatshirt. I could tell he was trying to put pieces of a puzzle together. But I wasn’t up for fixing. I liked the puzzle pieces scattered, so I tried my best to give him a flirty smile and touched his arm.
“You were saying?” I urged.
His eyes darted immediately to where my hand touched him and then back up to me. “Taffy. I had three pieces.”
“What flavors?”
He grinned and pulled out the three wrappers for me to sniff. With a laugh I took them into my hands and smelled each one. If I didn’t know he was in rehab, I would think he was either drunk or high the majority of the time.
“Kahlua, Pineapple, and Rum Punch?”
Demetri howled with laughter and began clapping.
“Seriously. Best party trick ever.”
“Clearly you’ve been to all the wrong parties if you think sniffing candy wrappers is the way to go.” I rolled my eyes.
“Or just the wrong parties in general.” He shrugged, his smile gone. I wanted it back and I hated that he was making me care for him.
“So…” I leaned back against the pillows. “You came all the way to my house to tell me about your three taffy flavors?”
“Sort of.” He lay down next to me — it was almost too intimate. The last time I lay down with a guy on the bed… I jolted up and began pacing in front of him.
He lifted his eyebrows in confusion but kept talking anyway. “I saw your parents and asked where you were. Weird, but your mom knew exactly who I was.”