The Secrets of Attraction Read online

  I pulled back from him. “There’s this dance at school and—”

  He laughed. “You want to go with Kyle?”

  “No, but . . . is he seeing anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Think you could hook me up with his number? For Jazz.”

  “For Jasmine, yeah, sure,” he said, grabbing his phone off the table.

  “Wait, do you think . . . He’ll go, right?”

  He scrolled through his contacts, copied Kyle’s number, and sent it to me in a text. My phone dinged from across the room.

  “Dunno, I guess. Am I going?” he asked, placing his phone back down.

  I walked my fingers up his chest. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?” He put his hands on my waist and poked his fingers into my ribs—my absolute worst ticklish spot. There was a dare in his eyes. I wriggled in anticipation.

  “Okay, okay. Sure,” I said.

  “Sure what? Are you asking me?” His fingers poised to dig deeper.

  “Zach O’Keefe, will you go to this silly dance thing with me next Friday?”

  He stared me down, then all-out tickled me until I howled.

  “Zach . . . okay . . . okay . . .” I begged. Just before it got more painful than fun, he stopped. I wrapped my arms around him, laughing. It took a few seconds to catch my breath. I rested my chin on his bare shoulder, resisting the urge to give him a nibble.

  “Why wouldn’t you ask me first?”

  “Huh?” I sat up to look at him.

  “Why would you ask for Kyle’s number first? It’s just weird.”

  “Your noticing is even weirder,” I said, running my fingers into his hair, gently nudging him to look at me. Zach was a warrior on the soccer field and had that quiet sort of confidence that made people take notice when he walked into a room. But here, in this moment, his brown eyes searching mine, he looked lost. Did not officially being asked really bother Mr. Chill Pill?

  “Zach,” I said, kissing the corner of his mouth.

  “Would you go . . .” I kissed the other corner.

  “To the Sadie Hawkins Dance with me next Friday?” I ended by running my bottom lip across his. He took it between his teeth and nibbled, eyes still on mine. His jaw softened, our mouths dropping open. My tongue found his. Zach’s hands wandered along my waist, my hip, my thigh. His kiss made me want to be somewhere soft. He stopped a moment to look at me.

  “You make me—”

  “Shh,” I whispered, touching my lips to his again. He gathered me in his arms and stood up, stumbling for a moment before getting his footing. I laughed underneath his kiss.

  “Madison.”

  Our mouths pulled apart, and the realization that neither of us had said my name made us both go wide-eyed. Zach looked up and gently tipped me to standing.

  “Mom, I thought it was your late night,” I said, smoothing my skirt. Even though I was fully clothed I felt completely naked. But Zach . . . oh fudge. He stood there shirtless and stunned. How had we missed the door being opened?

  “I got off at six tonight, I thought I told you that,” she said, her face flushed as she looked at Zach. He finally grabbed his shirt and put it on. Was she blushing or was it from the cold? Paul was behind her, trying his hardest not to grin and losing. They both held bags of groceries. Long, leafy sprouts and a baguette poked out of the top of my mother’s brown paper bag.

  Zach brushed past me.

  “Here, let me help you, Ms. Pryce,” he said, taking her bag.

  “Thank you, Zach,” she said. Paul closed the door and followed Zach out to the kitchen. I busied myself with pushing Zach’s chair into the table. Straightening up papers. Anything but looking at my mother. The thought of what they might have walked in on had they arrived five minutes later made me cringe.

  “Why was he shirtless?” she asked.

  “He, um, was inspired by the Laughing Buddha.” I pointed to the mantle and tried not to succumb to the fit of giggles that was building in my stomach. Wow, that sounded ridiculous. My mother put a finger to her lips to stifle a laugh herself.

  “You really expect me to believe—”

  “Mom, you can ask him, I swear, he was doing it to make me smile.”

  “You weren’t going upstairs, were you?”

  Mom was always candid with me about sex. Not that she was okay with me having any, just that she let me know it was cool to talk to her. We’d had the discussion on house limits when I was old enough to have friends over unattended. She was okay with boys in the house when she wasn’t home but she had a strict no-bedroom policy that, even though I’d thought about it, I’d never dream of breaking. We’d done plenty of damage on the couch, though, but it was different knowing someone could walk in on you at any second.

  “No.”

  She shrugged off her gray coat. “Good.”

  Zach came back to the dining room and collected his books from the table.

  “You’re more than welcome to stay for dinner, Zach,” my mother said.

  He looked up as he stashed his notepad into his backpack. The way his hair framed his face, the light in his eyes, made my fingers itch to sketch him. He pulled his jacket off the back of the chair.

  “Thanks, but I have a scrimmage tonight for my indoor league,” he said, telling what I knew to be a bald-faced lie. He slung his backpack over his shoulder. My body still ached from kissing him.

  “Dinner will be ready in thirty, Mads, so clean up.” She disappeared into the kitchen.

  I walked Zach to the door.

  “Scrimmage,” I whispered, laughing.

  “Call me later, we’ll pick up where we left off,” he said, kissing me.

  I nodded, and stepped onto the porch, folding my arms against the chill.

  “And Maddie . . .” Zach said, stopping at the top step.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll go to that dance with you,” he said, before trotting down the steps to the sidewalk. He walked up the block, looking back once to grin. I waved and went inside, jogging upstairs to my room to change out of my school uniform.

  I should have been thrilled, and I was, I guess—a dance together would be a new experience for us. I’d get to hang with Wren and Jazz. Buy a new dress. And I suppose it was sort of cute the way he wanted to be asked. What guy does that? There was something about it, though—maybe the fact that I knew he wouldn’t say no because that’s who he was in my life. He was in the hot boy who makes me laugh, turns girl-bits nuclear compartment. I wasn’t sure I wanted any more from him than that or if he could even give it to me.

  I stayed up in my room, starting pre-calc until the smell of onions frying became too much to resist. I wandered back downstairs to find that our dining room had been transformed into a place where people could actually have a meal.

  The table, half of which usually served as a catchall for junk mail and miscellaneous random crap, was completely cleared from when Zach and I were there earlier. It was set with a wrinkly green tablecloth from some Christmas past and the good china, the flowery stuff that my grandparents left when they bequeathed us the house and moved to Cocoa Beach twelve years ago. There was even a crystal pitcher of ice water on the table.

  My mother breezed in with a basket of bread in her hand.

  “Wow, what’s the occasion?” I asked.

  “Nothing, just dinner. We thought it would be nice to eat in the dining room, with real plates for a change.”

  “We have real plates?” I joked. On an average night, mom and I were the takeout queens, even had our favorite, Tandoori West, on speed dial. I followed her out into the kitchen, where the delicious, onion-y aroma was even stronger.

  “Can I help?” I asked, peering over Paul’s shoulder into the skillet.

  “Hey,” he said, blocking me from seeing anything. “You must wait for zee masterpiece.”

  “Here,” my mother said, handing me some silverware. I finished setting the table, then took a seat.

  The fabulous meal turned out to be t
ortilla Española—which had nothing to do with flour tortillas and everything to do with eggs, potatoes, onions, and olive oil. Paul claimed it was a little something he’d picked up when he lived in Spain, basically a fancy omelet, or from that moment on, my new favorite food. I ran my last piece of crusty bread over my dish to sop up the olive oil that remained, and slunk into my seat.

  “That was amazing,” I said, scarfing it.

  “Well, I try,” Paul said.

  My mother’s plate was still half-full. She traced the rim of her wineglass with her forefinger. Her auburn bob was freshly sleek and angular and drew attention to her eyes. Bangs. She had bangs now.

  “You cut your hair,” I said to her, wondering why I hadn’t noticed before. Getting caught with Zach must have nullified my observational skills.

  “Yes, finally, I was getting tired of it always in my eyes,” she said, running her fingers through her new fringe.

  “They make you look hot,” I said.

  “Ha, funny.”

  “No, she’s right, Dana,” Paul said, lifting a glass to her.

  She shook her head and waved her hand, dismissing the flattery.

  Wait, had Paul just called her hot? Maybe they wanted to be alone.

  I inched away from the table.

  “I’ll clean this up, you guys hang out,” I said, stacking Paul’s empty plate onto mine.

  “I’m still working on it,” my mother said. I carried the pile out to the kitchen.

  The sink was almost full with warm, sudsy water when she walked up behind me and squeezed my shoulder.

  “Mads, could you come sit with us? There’s something we need to talk to you about,” she said. We? My stomach dropped to my feet. Was I about to get a lecture on being alone in the house with Zach? With Paul right there?

  “What’s up?” I asked, sitting down. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, so I folded them in front of me, then I unfolded them because, duh, what am I? Five? I wished I had my pen so I could distract myself with some more mehndi design on my hand. This had to be about Zach.

  “So I guess you’ve noticed that Paul has been here for a few days,” my mother said.

  “Um, yeah, I guess.”

  “He’s here because . . . Well, do you want to tell her?” My mother took a sip of wine. I looked at Paul.

  “I had a bit of a falling-out with the airline. And I’m jobless right now.”

  “Is that a fancy way of saying you were fired?” I asked.

  “Madison.”

  Paul laughed. “No. They’re doing a lot of restructuring and I’m not too happy about some of the new policies, so I decided to jump ship before things got too ugly. I’m through with the politics of the big guys.”

  “But, don’t you love to fly?”

  “Oh, I’d never give up flying—just doing it on a smaller scale. I have a connection at a smaller, private company and thought I’d give it a shot. It’s based here in New Jersey. So if it works out, you might be seeing more of me.”

  “Cool,” I said, looking at Mom.

  “There’s something else,” she said.

  “While I get settled, I’m going to need a place to hang out—not a permanent thing or anything but—”

  “Paul wants to stay with us for a while.”

  They both looked at me, searching for a reaction, which on my end felt like something between shock/relief and confusion. This wasn’t about Zach. At all.

  “Are you asking me?”

  “Of course,” my mother said. “This involves you, obviously; some of your freedoms won’t quite be the same with someone here after school.”

  So maybe it was a little about Zach.

  “But Paul will be paying rent, so that will help with some expenses.”

  “It’s not like I’m going to be here all the time,” Paul added. “This is just home base, until I figure out if I want the job. Consider me a tenant who cooks and brings the good doughnuts. Does that sound okay?”

  It felt nice sitting there with them. They say you can’t choose your family . . . but what if I could? What if part of Paul figuring things out included him and Mom getting together? It wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen.

  I smiled.

  “It sounds fantastic.”

  FOUR

  JESSE

  “WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THAT DUDE?” TANNER asked as soon as the fourth audition victim was out of earshot.

  I sat with my feet propped up on a music stand, arms crossed, doing my best impression of taking this selection seriously. Tanner had talked Ms. Shultz, the music teacher, into letting us use the orchestra rehearsal room for our auditions. It was too large a space for the measly six prospects we had, but it was convenient and came with a drum set. The possible spurned-psycho factor was what made me bail on holding them in my garage. School was the safe option. Safe and rock and roll didn’t quite fit together, though. Maybe that was my problem.

  “Dude? That kid probably has a killer Pokémon collection.”

  “So what if he’s a freshman, he could play.”

  “We need someone with ’nads, T. Can you picture that kid in a bar?”

  He shook his head as he crossed the kid’s name off the list.

  Four down, two to go.

  It had never been this hard.

  Yellow #5 pretty much fell together when Tanner, Duncan, and I were in eighth grade. At first it had been more of a school club—an offshoot of orchestra. After the obligatory “Hot Cross Buns” and school Christmas pageant stuff, we’d get together and work out some of our favorite songs. Both Duncan and I could play by ear. Tanner was clumsy at first, but he had grown into a player who could hold his own. By sophomore year we were tight—a Christmas party here, a block party there, we even came in second to Plasma in Bergen Point’s Battle of the Bands last spring, mostly because Kenny Ashe’s neighbor had been on the judging panel. We had planned on winning this time around.

  Until HannahDunk completely stole that future.

  “Why aren’t we playing along with them? Wouldn’t it be easier to tell?”

  “We’re weeding. Besides, I can just feel it,” I said, pounding my chest for effect.

  “The first guy was fine.”

  “Sloppy playing. I didn’t like his teeth.”

  Tanner sprang up from his chair and threw up his hands. “His teeth? Why are you acting like such a dick? Maybe if you took off the fucking Ray-Bans and pretended to care.”

  I slid the sunglasses up into my hair. “It was also obvious he had no band experience.”

  “We just need a body.”

  The more upset T got, the more calm it made me. He was getting pissed enough for the both of us.

  “Why? We missed the deadline for the battle. What does it matter if we find someone today or two weeks from today?” I asked.

  “Don’t you miss it?”

  My mouth opened but the words got stuck in my brain. Did I miss it? Aren’t musicians supposed to work through their pain in music? My breakup had the opposite effect. As if playing my guitar opened a wound. I didn’t want to feel it. I just wanted to forget it. And that, more than anything, scared me.

  But the other night when Duncan asked for the song, I had felt something. Rage, maybe, but it was better than the facedown-in-a-mud-puddle feeling I’d been living in post-breakup. I had to keep reminding myself—I wanted this. A new drummer. A fresh start. No matter how long it took.

  And I had to stop comparing everyone to Duncan. As much as I wanted to hammer the guy into the ground, he was still . . . We’d been tight. Friends and bandmates. Finding another person felt like auditioning a new family member, but that was making this damn near impossible. Maybe approaching it like Tanner had said—that all we needed was a body—was the right way to go.

  The classroom door creaked open.

  “Just, give it a chance, okay?” Tanner whispered.

  A tall dude wearing a T-shirt with Animal the Muppet and the word BEAST below the picture strolled
over to us with his drumsticks in hand. Whether he was trying to be ironic or just a douchebag was anyone’s guess. He may as well have been wearing a tee with the word Drummer across it. Poser. I had the urge to yell, “Next!” just for the hell of it. I slid my Ray-Bans over my eyes.

  “Hey, this is the audition for Yellow Number Five?”

  “Yeah, drum kit’s over there,” Tanner said.

  Animal dude’s brows bunched together.

  “I’m just . . . I thought— It’s just me?”

  “Yes,” I said, resuming dick mode.

  “Your flyer said to pick a song from either—”

  I held up my hand. “Don’t tell us. Just play.”

  His face was blank a moment, but then he stood up straight, shoulders back, corner of his mouth curling up. “Cool.”

  After a moment of adjusting the drum kit to fit his height, he stretched his wrists, bending one back, then the other. Tanner looked over his shoulder at me and crossed his eyes. Animal dude dropped one of his sticks, and picked it up with a laugh. I braced myself for some overplaying. Closed my eyes.

  He started out hard, the beat familiar—“Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Not an especially intricate drum piece, but a solid choice. I kept waiting for him to screw up, quicken the pace, miss a beat, but his timing was insane. He played soft, then explosive at the chorus, even putting his own spin on the fills. I slid my shades into my hair, sat up straight. Tanner was plucking a phantom bass line on his leg, nodding with the beat. It was the longest we’d let anyone play during an audition.

  And the look on this guy’s face as he pounded away was, like, Okay, fuckers, now show me what you got.

  Don’t compare. Don’t compare.

  It was hard not to—he reminded me of Duncan even if he did blow him away—at least in this audition. It was only one song—he’d probably practiced the hell out of it. Jamming with us could be different, I knew that, but for the first time all afternoon this guy made me regret not bringing my Fender. There was just one weird thing.

  I stood up as he finished.

  “Why don’t I know you?”

  “Huh?”

  “The scene in this town is so small. Everyone knows everyone, and well, that was . . . You can play. Why haven’t I seen you before? Were you in a band?”