Romance By the Book by Sarah Ready

Jessie

I knewI had fate on my side. Why else would Gavin be at the Sweetheart’s Dance? While I was getting ready, choosing between the green dress or the red, I sent up a prayer. I said, if this is meant to be, please let him come to the dance. And here he is.

So.

It’s meant to be.

Gavin’s across the green grass of the open field. He’s in a tight T-shirt and he looks rugged and lean. His hair sticks up a bit like he’s been out on some windy adventure. Will stands next to him. My skin tingles and I chalk it up to irritation. Of course he’d be here too. Unlike Gavin, he’s in a button-down shirt, his hair is smooth, and he looks as starched and uptight as ever. The thought of yanking his buttoned shirt open flashes through my mind. I shove it away.

The band starts to play, the fiddle player holds a long note, and then the mandolin comes in—the notes fly fast. I take a step towards Gavin.

He’s in an animated conversation with Will. Gavin gestures excitedly with a beer in his hand and Will gives him a wry smile.

I take another step and stop at the edge of the lawn under the string of white lights. In nearly every romcom movie, there’s a moment when the man sees his woman in a new way. Their eyes meet, music swells, and there’s a reaction. I call it the long stare.

“Look at me,” I whisper. “Come on. Long stare for the win.”

The long stare is the second-most common way couples recognize their connection. An awesome meet-cute was number one, but that didn’t quite work out.

The bluegrass music picks up and segues into the perfect song for couples to dance to. I start to sway. Then, thank you fate, Gavin looks up. He sees me. His eyes widen. He says something to Will.

Will looks at me, and something flickers in his eyes, but it’s replaced by a black look. His warning fills my mind. But it doesn’t matter, because Gavin looks at me again. From across the lawn our eyes meet. The lights twinkle, the music swells and—yes—Gavin and I are doing the long stare.

Any second now he’ll feel the connection. In fact, any second now I’ll feel something, that lightning strike of awareness.

Just one more second of—

Will shoves his beer in Gavin’s hand and steps in front of him.

A flare of annoyance fills me. I step to the right and try to see past Will. He steps with me. I clench my jaw and step to the right again. Will moves with me. I step twice to the left. Will moves with me. He completely blocks my view of Gavin. His lips turn up, and his eyes glitter, he shakes his head at me. Telling me no.

“No,” he mouths.

“Yes,” I say.

He’s twenty feet away, steadily moving toward me. I step left, he mirrors me. I move right, he moves too. All the while he holds my gaze. His eyes lock on mine and I can’t look away. I keep moving and he moves with me. We’re in some sort of strange dance that’s taking place a field apart. Every time I try to look away, break away, there he is again, pulling my eyes back to him.

Until all there is, is the music, the lights and me and Will.

I shake my head no.

He nods his head yes.

Suddenly, he’s in front of me. He stops less than a foot away. Entirely too close. I lift my chin so I can keep holding his stare. I won’t be the first to back down. With Will, you can’t show any weakness; he’ll take advantage of it. Every time.

“What do you want?” I ask, holding his gaze.

His eyes widen and the blue of his irises darkens. “What do I want? I thought I made that clear.” His voice is low and intimate with a note that makes me feel like he’s running his fingers over me. I flush and his lids lower over his eyes until he has the look that I associate with my forbidden fantasies. I have the overwhelming urge to tell him yes, I agree to everything he wants. Everything. Anything. His dark eyelashes flutter and I think I see equal longing in his eyes.

I take a shallow breath and try to regain my equilibrium. Then, I realize that Will and I have been holding our gaze for easily more than a minute. And what he made clear, what he wants, is for me to let go of my soul mate.

The warm, deliciously wicked feeling breaks.

“Ack. No.” I break eye contact, shake my head and look away, out over the lawn and the dancing couples.

“That bad?” asks Will sardonically. He puts his hands in his pockets and looks at a group of kids running in circles around their dancing parents.

“You ruined my long stare.” I’m feeling put out and off-guard.

“Is that what that was?”

“Of course. The long stare is like the clumsy girl meet-cute, or walking down the stairs in a flowy dress, or a first kiss in the rain. It’s—”

“A bad cliché?” He gives me a boyish half-grin, like we’re sharing a joke.

I sigh. It’s funny, even though Will has been my nemesis for twenty years, it’s times like this that make it hard to hate him.

“Why weren’t we ever friends?” I ask without thinking.

Will’s relaxed boyish demeanor vanishes and is replaced by the cold, stiff façade that I’m used to. Here’s the Will that’s capable of shutting down any attempt at friendship.

When we were fifteen years old, Will found me in the branches of the oak tree. It was dark, eleven o’clock at night, and I thought he was Gavin. I sink into the memory.

It’s a moonless night and the sky is like a dark blanket with a hundred stars poking through the blackness. The crickets are singing and I’m reading by flashlight when he climbs up. I’m not scared. I’d heard him coming from the big house from across the field. When he climbs up I scoot over and give him room on the wide limb. My heart beats erratically. Gavin is here—he’s finally come back to our tree. He turns his face down towards my book, but he doesn’t say anything.

“It’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.” I hold up my book. I’ve read it so many times that I can recite entire paragraphs from memory.

He smiles and moves next to me until our thighs touch. My legs are cool from being out in the night air for so long. He’s so hot I can feel the heat of him to my core. My stomach flips and my mouth goes dry. I don’t know what to say, he’s finally here again, after seven years. He rarely comes to Romeo, and when he does it’s for such a short time. I thought he’d forgotten me.

“I saw your flashlight,” he says.

I startle at the sound of his deep voice—so different from the last time I heard him.

“Sorry. Did it bother you?” I click off the flashlight and wait for my eyes to adjust to the dark.

“No.” He shakes his head.

I peer at him through the darkness. He’s tall, his arms and legs are long, and his shoulders are wider than they were the last time I saw him. My cheeks heat and awareness of his leg pressing against mine floods me.

He doesn’t say anything more, so we sit in silence and listen to the night sounds. Finally I feel the tension I hadn’t realized was there seep out of him. He relaxes into the curve of the tree limb and leans toward me until our arms touch. The feel of him runs over me and I shiver.

“Cold?”

I shake my head. “Not really.”

But he still slowly reaches over and puts his arm around my shoulders and pulls me close. My heart thunders in my chest and my breath comes out in short pants. I can barely stand the feelings coursing through me. I think I might burst.

We’re sitting in our tree, there are brilliant stars and the grassy perfume of the field, and Gavin’s arm is around me. This is better than my dreams.

“Are we still friends?” I whisper, driven by seven years of dreams dreamed in a silent house.

He stiffens slightly, a warning, but I don’t really register it until much later. I’m too caught up in the closeness of him.

“Last time you were here…the day my mom died…”

He turns and looks at me, his face is inches from mine, and even in the dark I can see the deep blue of his eyes. He looks tired, there are bags under his eyes, and a heavy weight in his gaze that a fifteen-year-old shouldn’t have. But I understand it.

“My dad hasn’t said more than fifty words in seven years. I don’t have friends here. I…” I hold up my book. He doesn’t look at it, he keeps watching me.

“I read so I don’t remember how lonely I am,” I say. I’m taken by surprise when a tear slips down my cheek. “I’m lonely.”

He watches me and suddenly I’m uncomfortable with my confession, with opening up so much to someone I only met once before. When I was eight. For heaven’s sake, I’ve had three dozen awful run-ins with Will, but only one beautiful moment with Gavin. And this moment.

“Say something,” I whisper. His eyes are shadowed and tired and filled with deep regret and self-recrimination that I don’t understand.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

There’s so much sorrow in his voice that I can’t help it, I lean forward and I press my lips to his. He stiffens in surprise, but instead of pulling back like I thought he would, he stays where he is. His mouth is warm and his lower lip is soft and full. I’m finally having my first kiss. With Gavin. In our tree. It’s more perfect than I could’ve ever imagined.

I reach up and touch his jaw. My fingers stroke over his skin. His lips soften even more and I try to move closer. I let out a small sound against his lips. When I do, he pulls back. I blink up at him, wrapped in the heat of him and the drunken excitement of my first kiss.

“That was…” I shake my head, try to clear it, and smile at him. “Gavin…that was…”

I can’t explain it, it was more than words. I finally felt connected again. I knew he’d come back. I knew he felt it too.

“I’m not lonely anymore,” I say, and so much gratitude and happiness wells up inside me, I feel like I could fly into the night sky and shine with the stars. That’s how happy I feel.

“Gavin, do you think…will you come here tomorrow night? We could…”

He pushes away from me and slowly draws the back of his hand over his lips. “Jessie,” he says, and the mocking tone of his voice sends a prickling of alarm down my spine.

I squint and try to get a better look at him. His upper lip curls into that sneer I’ve seen a hundred times. I gasp and my blood goes cold.

When he sees the look on my face he lets out a low, horrible laugh.

Oh no. No no no. I cover my face with my hands. I told him my secrets… I felt connected to… I had my first kiss with…

“Will,” I choke out.

He wipes his hand on his pants and sneers at me. “To answer your first question, no, we aren’t friends.”

I gasp and panic bubbles inside me and burns at the back of my throat.

It’s Will. It’s Will. It’s Will. The words thud over and over in my mind. He looks down and gives a small smile at my tightly clenched fists.

“We’ll never be friends,” he says.

I look away and quickly swipe my eyes. “Stop it,” I cry out. “You’re horrible. Why would you trick me like that? Why would you do that?”

Even in the dark, I see his face go white. “Because that’s what I do. Because I wanted to,” he says in that horrible, clipped, unemotional way of his. If he’d spoken in more than monosyllables earlier, I’d have known it was him right away. If it hadn’t been so dark. If…

“You’re a creep. You’re an awful, horrible creep, you always have been and you always will be.”

He shrugs, uncaring. “To answer your second question, no, I won’t be coming back for more. I run an international company, I don’t play with children, and I don’t need friends. Unlike some.”

My nails dig into my palm. The jerk. The jerkity jerk.

“From the day I met you, I knew you were awful.”

“Really? When we were eight?” He sounds surprised. It seems like I’ve managed to shock him out of his contempt.

“Yes. Even then you liked to hit me when I was down. You were rotten.”

He gives me a contemptuous look.

I glare back. “Fine. Yes, William, I kissed you tonight. But only because I thought you were Gavin. He’s fun and kind and…and everything you’re not—”

“So they say,” he says dryly.

“So, get out of my tree.” I fling my hand out and gesture for him to leave.

He tilts his head but doesn’t move. “And if I told you that my mom died last week, and I just needed somewhere to go to be quiet?”

I look over at him and feel regret at my words. “Did she really?”

But he must hear the note of skepticism that I can’t keep out of my voice because he lets out a small laugh.

“No. See you later, Jessie.”

He drops from the branch and out of the tree. I don’t watch him walk away, but I can hear him move through the tall grass, back to the dark, old, cavernous house.

I found out later that month that his mom really had died the week before Will came up the tree. But both he and Gavin were already gone by the time I heard. They didn’t come back for almost a year.

“We were friends when we were eight,” says Will, bringing me back to the Sweetheart’s Dance and the here and now.

I shake my head. “What? No.”

He shrugs. “Agree to disagree.”

“We’ll disagree.” Then, “You stole my long stare.” Gavin is across the clearing, buying desserts from the Friends of the Library fundraising table.

“If you think staring at my brother like a cow with a stomach ache is going to catch him, then you’re deluded.”

I cough. “I’m a cow now?”

He holds up his hands as if to say…yes?

“You also stole my meet-cute.” I hold up a finger. “The coffee.” I hold up another finger. “The ladder.” I hold up a third finger. “And falling over the books.”

He grins.

I remember him sitting in the tree with me—kissing me.

“And…” I poke him in the chest. “You stole my first kiss.”

He looks at me in surprise, then chokes back a laugh. “When we were fifteen? You kissed me! I didn’t steal anything. You practically attacked me.”

A heated flush washes over me. He has a point, but…

“I thought you were Gavin. My soul mate.”

The laughter fades from his eyes and his mouth turns down. He takes a step toward me and there’s a look in his eyes that I don’t like.

I glance over my shoulder back toward Gavin. He’s eating a pile of Miss Erma’s oatmeal raisin cookies, chatting with Juliet at the wine table. Will clears his throat. I look back, surprised to find him so close.

His bottom lip curls into a wicked smile and I realize why his look made me nervous. It’s predatory.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Stealing your first dance.”

Then he takes me in his arms and spins me into the circle of dancing couples. He spins me away from him and then back to him again. Gavin’s watching us. So are the ladies at the dessert table. Gavin smiles. Will pulls me closer.

“Eyes on me,” he says.

“I’d rather not.”

Will laughs and then bends me backwards in a fast dip. I gasp and he pulls me back up. He pulls me close, our lips almost touch, but he spins me in another circle and leads us through the dancing couples.

My friend Chloe and her husband Nick are dancing. Chloe sees Will and me together and her eyes widen. Veronica is nearby, and when she sees us dancing, she does a double-take then steers her husband the other way.

In fact, it looks like the whole town is watching us dance. Our mutual antipathy has never been a secret.

“Everyone’s watching,” he says, mirroring my thoughts.

“It’s like they smell blood,” I say.

He gives me a toothy grin and twirls me again.

It’s true. Our dance is more a battle than not. I pull away, he spins me back. I push, he catches. I fall back, he pulls me up. He spins us until the lights and the people are blur and all I can do is focus on him.

“Smile,” he says. “You’re supposed to smile when you dance.”

“Screw off,” I say and I bare my teeth at him.

He chuckles deeply and it sends vibrations down low into my abdomen.

The music picks up speed and he puts his hands around my waist, picks me up and spins me around. My dress flares out around me. I gasp at the warmth of his hands spanning my ribs and the ease with which he lifts me. He slows and pulls me close. When he sets me down my front drags along his. My breasts press against his chest.

He holds me close, his hands span across my lower back and rest in the hollow that feels like it was made for him. He looks down at me and my heart thunders in my ears. It takes me a moment before I realize the music has stopped. I step out of Will’s arms and he lets me go. His hands fall to his sides and his expression shifts back to closed-off and cold. I shiver and turn back to Juliet’s wine table.

“He’s gone,” says Will, the teasing is gone from his voice.

“What?”

“Gavin left while we were dancing.”

I turn and quickly look around the field, but I don’t see him. Not anywhere.

“You did that on purpose.”

He nods. “I told you, I’ll do whatever it takes. Even dance.”

I shake my head. “I don’t understand you.”

He shrugs. “You don’t have to.”

“You know, you won’t always be there to stop me. Fate is going to intervene, Will. You can’t stop something that’s meant to be.”

“Because the psychic love lady told you it was fate?” he asks with annoyed disbelief.

“Exactly.”

“So we’re still doing this?” He gives me a challenging stare.

“If you mean, am I still following my chance for true love and are you still trying to stop me, then yes, we’re still doing this.”

“So what’s on for tomorrow then? An impromptu song in the park? A contrived emergency so Gavin can play hero?” He raises a supercilious eyebrow.

I shake my head. “Good night, Will.”

He smirks. “See you tomorrow.”

I hold back a smile. “Looking forward to it.”

And strangely, I realize that I am.

I have big plans, and I don’t think even William Williams IV will be able to stop me.