Love On Call

“I bet you did,” Mari said.

“What makes you think so?”

“Because you seem so certain, so sure of everything. Who you are and what you’re about.”

“Maybe that’s just a front.”

“I don’t think so,” Mari said softly.

“You still didn’t tell me why you’re jealous of Blake,” Glenn said, once again neatly deflecting the topic from herself.

Mari regretted her impulsive statement. She wasn’t ready to expose her private hurts, especially not so soon. “It’s a familiar story, I guess. It’s not important.”

“If it’s your story, it’s not familiar, and it’s not unimportant.” Glenn held her gaze, steady and strong. “But it’s yours to tell.”

Mine to tell. Maybe Glenn was practically a stranger, but somehow, she didn’t feel that way. Glenn was so intensely present, so focused on her, Mari trusted her in a way she hadn’t trusted anyone in forever.

“It is, isn’t it. My story.” Mari took a breath. Maybe telling it would take away some of the pain.

Chapter Seven

“What do you think they’re talking about?” Blake said quietly.

Margie swallowed her bite of pizza. “Who? Queen bitch?”

Blake cut a sidelong glance at the group of girls clustered around the counter, laughing with bright eyes that took in everyone in the room and quickly dismissed them, as if no one else mattered enough to be noticed. Usually Blake preferred to go unnoticed—but in a way, being erased with the flick of an eyelash was worse. Funny, he could barely remember when he wanted to be part of a group like that, though he never was. Too shy, too weird, too wrong. “Which one is the QB? Madison or Kaylee?”

“You can’t tell?”

“I don’t know, I don’t pay all that much attention to them.”

“That’s probably part of the problem.” Margie snorted. “Kaylee, of course. The one everyone follows around like a bunch of baby ducks.”

“Hey,” Blake protested, “I like ducks.”

“Yeah, me too, usually.” Margie leaned back and sipped her Coke, pretending not to notice when Kaylee, who she secretly envied for her straight blond hair that probably never got frizzy every time it even threatened to rain, looked in her direction. Margie practiced what Harper called a thousand-yard stare, looking somewhere over Kaylee’s left shoulder and imagining herself standing in the middle of a huge cornfield with nothing around her but miles and miles of rows of green. She’d drown herself in the horse trough before she let Kaylee know that a single snarky comment even registered in her hearing, let alone made her mad.

“I don’t get it,” Blake said. “Them, I mean. Why be that way?”

Margie sighed. Sometimes, Blake was clueless, but then, weren’t all guys when it came to girls? She leaned forward and lowered her voice, aware that Kaylee and company were still watching them. “You’re the new guy, the cute new guy, and you’re supposed to be paying attention to them, not somebody like me.”

“What are you talking about? Somebody like you? You mean smart and funny and cute, instead of stuck-up and just downright…well, mean?”

“Whoa,” Margie said, feeling her face flame. Jeez, she didn’t want to be blushing in front of those girls. They’d think Blake had just said something way personal. Of course, he had, and that was kind of weird. Nice, but, jeez. “Is that what you think?”

Blake stared at the tabletop. “Well, yeah. I just figured you knew that.”

Margie laughed. “Well, how am I supposed to know that if you never said anything?”

Blake lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know, don’t you ever look in the mirror?”

“Not where I spend a lot of time. Do you?”

“Uh…” Blake wondered if he should answer for real or just shrug it off. But it was Margie asking, right? And she got him. She never got turned off or made him feel like some kind of freak by anything he confessed. Being able to tell someone besides his mom, instead of his mom, about all the things he kept hidden made him feel normal. “I didn’t use to like looking in a mirror because every time I did, I got this creepy feeling that everything was all wrong. That the person looking back wasn’t me.” He laughed and picked the edge of his paper plate. “Now I probably look too much.”

“Is the right person looking back?”

Blake grinned, still not meeting her eyes. Still a little embarrassed, or maybe not embarrassed exactly, but self-conscious. “Yeah, pretty much, anyhow. More all the time.”

“Well, I’ve probably never said this,” Margie said, “in so many words, I mean, but like I said—you’re a cute guy.”

Blake raised his eyes. “You think by the time school starts, everybody will know about me, and maybe it’ll already be over?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anybody else like you, at least not here.” Margie sighed. “Some kids are just jerks, but you’ll be okay, sooner or later.”

“Yeah, it’s the later I’m worried about.” Blake straightened his shoulders. “Anyhow, I wasn’t talking about QB and Co. I don’t care what they have to say. I was wondering about Glenn and Mari. Do you think they’re talking about us?”