Out of Nowhere (9 page)

“I get off at four. Why?”

“Do you want a drive home after work? I could swing by and pick you up on my way through.”

Huh. He’d never offered me a drive home before. “Um…okay. Thanks.”

“Cool. I have to warn you though, after working in my uncle’s shop all day I’m probably going to be a little dirty.”

I recalled the state he’d been in that day in the ER. “I’ve seen you dirty before, Cole.”

“Right,” he said, folding his arm against his stomach as if he could still feel the pain. “I guess you have.”

Rudy was now clearing his throat, loudly. I turned to go. “See you later, then. Four o’clock.”

“I’ll be here.”

* * *

Cole wasn’t kidding when he said he’d be a little dirty. When he walked into Jitters at four, his hands and arms were coated in black smudges, his hair was coming out of its elastic, and he smelled like motor oil. He seemed more alert now, though.

“I warned you,” he said when he saw me grimace at his appearance. “Believe it or not, I washed most of it off before I came.”

I held up my hands. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You have that same look on your face you had when you first saw me at the hospital. Disgust with a hint of terror.”

We were outside now, and I thought about how weird it was to be walking alongside him like this. All these weeks, all these little chats over coffee, but we’d never actually left the building together until today. “I wasn’t disgusted or terrorized,” I said over the roar of a passing bus. “Just surprised. It’s not every day you see pavement burn like that.”

“Pavement burn,” he said as we crossed over to the next block, presumably toward his car. Parking was a bitch in this part of the city. “That’s the perfect name for it. Like carpet burn, only more extreme.”

“Exactly.”

We came to a stop next to a dusty black Camaro that had seen better days. “This,” Cole said, running his hand along the hood, “is my baby.”

I walked the length of the car, politely admiring everything. “Very nice. Does it have a name?”

“Yeah. Gas guzzler.” He unlocked the passenger side door and then opened it for me. “Excuse the mess.”

I climbed in, not sure what to expect. The inside wasn’t a disaster, exactly, but he was in desperate need of a few CD holders. There were piles of cases and loose CDs scattered on the backseat and floor and center console. My feet knocked against two more as I adjusted my legs on the seat.

“Did you rob Music World after the prom last night?” I asked, reaching down to grab a CD with a black cover and the name of a band I’d never heard of. “How do you ever find what you’re looking for?”

He brushed his hair out of his face, leaving behind a black mark on his forehead. “I know exactly where everything is in here. People have tried to organize it for me before, but I always go back to my system.”

“Which is what? Close your eyes and hope for the best?”

Always up for a challenge—or so I was learning—he closed his eyes, rattled off the name of a band, reached into the backseat, and brought back a CD. It didn’t match. “Shit,” he said, tossing it back and reaching for another. I started to laugh. “Just a sec. It’s back here somewhere, I know it is.”

“Nice system,” I said, nodding seriously. “I’ll have to start using it to organize my school work.”

Giving up the search, he faced forward again and cranked the engine. “You got a mouth on you, you know that?”

“Yeah, I hear that a lot. My mom calls it my snark tank. When I get too mouthy she’ll say ‘Snark tank’s getting full, Riley’. Then I know it’s time to shut up.”

“I must remember that,” he said, pulling out into traffic. He drove to the end of the street and waited. “Where am I going?”

I told him my address. He looked confused, so I mentioned some familiar landmarks nearby. Still confused. Obviously he’d never been to the older areas of the city.

“You’ll have to be my GPS,” he told me. “You can do the cheerful computerized voice and everything. I prefer the British one.”

I cracked up again. I couldn’t remember ever laughing this much with Adam. Probably because he was always too busy trying to get into my pants. Or maybe he just wasn’t very funny.

“Turn right up here,” I said as we rolled up to a set of lights. I’d expected Cole to be a fast, reckless driver, but he was actually really good. I wasn’t sure if it was because he had me in the car, but he drove the speed limit, obeyed all traffic rules, and wore his seatbelt at all times.
Good driver
didn’t seem to mesh with his audacious personality. Then again, I didn’t know him very well yet.

With my guidance, we made it to my house without any problems. Cole pulled up to the curb, since my mom’s car and Jeff’s truck were taking up the whole driveway.

“I would’ve asked you if you wanted to go get something to eat,” Cole said, putting the car in park. “But I figured you wouldn’t want to be seen with me looking like this.”

I took in his grungy appearance again, my eyes lingering on the dark splotch on his forehead. Suddenly, I was overcome with an almost irresistible urge to wipe it off with my thumb. But of course I didn’t. “It’s, uh…it’s okay,” I said, a little flustered. “I have to study anyway.”

“Yeah, me too.”

It hit me then that his exams were coming up too. And after that, graduation. And after
that
, I wasn’t sure. He would need to bank some serious cash between graduation and California. He’d told me a while back that his father—who was supervisor of the Parks and Grounds department in Weldon—usually got him jobs for the summer, doing things like mowing grass and painting over graffiti. I assumed he’d be doing that again this year, barring any new disabling injuries.

“Maybe we could do it another time,” Cole suggested. “Go out, I mean.”

“Sure,” I said, then wondered exactly what I was agreeing to. Had he just asked me out on a date? I turned away and scrambled for the door handle. “Well, thanks for the ride.”

“Anytime.”

I got out of the car and stood there on the walkway until he left, just to see if he squealed like a maniac down the street now that he was alone in the car. Nope. He drove just as vigilantly as he had before. Smiling, I made my way into the house, which smelled like my mother’s infamous beef stew. I was starving.

“Riley, honey?” Mom’s voice, sounding slightly concerned, drifted in from the living room. I turned the corner to find her, Jeff, and Tristan all standing in front of the big picture window, trying to act like they hadn’t just been spying on me. “Who dropped you off?”

“
Sweet
ride,” Jeff said, craning his neck in an attempt to catch one last glimpse of Cole’s car.

“Ca!” yelled Tristan, pointing out the window. “Why why ca!”

“Riley?” Mom said, her face alight with curiosity.

“It was just this guy I know,” I said, irritation wriggling in my stomach. “A friend.”

She gave me one of those parental scrutinizing looks and I could almost see the thought bubbles forming above her head…Sex! Condoms! Pregnancy! Aside from Lucas, I hadn’t spent time with any boy since Adam, and she was probably dying to break out the old safe sex lecture.

“A friend,” she repeated, not entirely convinced. “I hate to judge a book by its cover and all that, but he looked kind of…well…rough.”

I sighed. Way to not judge, Mom. “He’s not a delinquent. He spent the day working at his uncle’s auto repair shop, that’s all.”

She still didn’t seem too pleased with the idea of some long-haired dirty guy driving me home in a loud, fast-looking car, but all she said was, “Oh. I see.”

“Was the spying really necessary?” I asked, nailing all three of them with a glare. Tristan didn’t even notice, intent as he was on trying to swing off the drapes. Jeff gave me a sheepish shrug, and Mom looked completely unremorseful.

“We came to see what was causing all the racket,” she said. “That boy needs a new muffler.”

“I’ll tell him you said so,” I said, sarcasm dripping, as I left the room. Mom let me go without another word, but I knew this conversation was far from over. When it came to me and boys, she insisted on what she liked to call an “open dialogue”. Her own mother never talked to her about sex growing up, she kept telling me, and we both knew how that turned out.

In need of a few minutes of solitude, I went to the bathroom to run the tub for a bath. The first thing I saw when I walked into the room was the toilet seat, left up by Jeff once again. So much for my polite request. Instead of lowering the seat down gently, I dropped it with a bang, letting everyone in the house know exactly what I thought of them.

* * *

“You gotta block me,” Cole said, moving closer. “Don’t let me get past you.”

He shifted to the right so I did too, staying in front of him. “How am I supposed to do that? You’re bigger than me.”

“So?” He faked left and then easily slipped away from me. “My friend Jordan is like twice my size and he never gets past me when we’re playing basketball.”

“Maybe your friend Jordan is just afraid he might accidentally flatten you if he tried.”

He stopped dribbling long enough to ponder this theory. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, and started dribbling again. “Okay, I’ll show you one more time and then we can take a break.”

I agreed, even though I’d been ready for a break about twenty minutes ago. Cole had more energy than a sugar-buzzed four-year-old and I, a normally sedentary person, was having a hard time keeping up.

Still, I had to admit it felt good, being out in the fresh air, stretching my muscles. When Cole called me earlier this evening to ask me if I wanted to go for a drive and give our brains a break from cramming, I’d jumped at the chance to get out of my room. Mom was still at work when I left, and Jeff knew better than to question my actions, so going out on a school night—something I rarely did—wasn’t a problem.

Cole and I did drive around for a while at first, but it didn’t take me long to clue in that sitting was the last thing he wanted to do. He was like a fly that had been trapped between a window and screen all day. He needed to
move
. Hence the reason we were at Crawford Park at eight o’clock on a Tuesday night, shooting hoops on the basketball court.

“You’re the most athletic person I’ve ever met,” I said, trying to distract him from getting past me again. “Is there any sport you don’t play?”

“Let’s see.” He kept his eyes on my hands, probably assuming I knew what to do with them while he was coming at me with the ball like that. “Curling? Figure skating? Cow tipping?”

“Cow tipping is not a real sport. How about golf?”

“Tried it. Too boring. I need something that gets my blood pumping.”

“Bungee jumping?”

He relaxed his stance, holding the ball against his hip. “That’s a blast. Ever try it?”

“Um, no. Are you insane?”

“It’s safe,” he said. “Safer than driving a car.”

He was right, of course, but still…driving a car didn’t involve hurling yourself off a high surface with a plastic cord tied to your ankles. “You know, I read an article once about daredevils. Apparently their brains have too much dopamine, the chemical that produces that high you get when you do dangerous things.”

“So you’re saying I was born this way? That explains why I rode my tricycle down the stairs when I was two. On purpose.” He grinned proudly. “I broke my leg.”

I sighed and shook my head. Break time. We headed toward the nice thick grassy spot under the trees that I’d been eyeing longingly for the past forty-five minutes or so.

“What’s your favorite sport?” I asked him once we were seated side-by-side on the grass. “The one you do the most.”

He peered across the park, his eyes lighting on the six or so skateboarders zipping along the concrete. “Skateboarding. I can’t wait to start again on Saturday.”

“No more sliding on rails, or whatever the hell it was you fell off of,” I admonished. “You just healed.”

“Dude. You sound like my mom. Trust me, I know my limits.”

“I’m not so sure you do,” I said, leaning back on my palms. “And don’t call me
dude
. I’m not a dude. I’m a girl.”

As if he needed confirmation on this, he glanced down at my legs and then away again, a slight smile on his lips. It wasn’t the first time I’d caught him checking them out in the past two hours. He was used to seeing me in the black pants I wore for work, so when I got into his car wearing shorts he’d seemed surprised to find out I owned legs. Apparently he found them fascinating.

“Surfing,” he said suddenly.

“What?”

“That’s something else I do a lot. Surf. I go at least once a week in the summer.”

This explained why the huge waves in California appealed to him. I was beginning to think he had a death wish. “Aren’t you afraid of sharks?”

He gave me that mental-hospital-escapee look again and said, “In all the years I’ve been surfing at Vickers Beach, I’ve never once seen a shark or heard of anyone else seeing a shark. Do you know how rare shark attacks are?”

I did, actually. They were very rare. Virtually unheard of around here. But still. Maybe there were more instances of shark attacks in the Pacific Ocean. This was exactly why I preferred safe, predictable boys. Like Adam, for instance. Adam would never bungee jump or risk getting eaten by giant carnivorous fish. The most dangerous thing he ever did was jaywalk once or twice, and I even gave him hell for doing that.

Cole stretched out on the grass, limbs splayed like he was sunbathing. I felt weird sitting up while he was horizontal, so I lay on my side, facing him. For a second, a patch of fading daylight caught the scar on his right forearm, the long-healed one I’d noticed at the hospital. “What sport caused this?” I asked, touching my fingertips to the discolored stripe of skin.

“That one’s not from a sport,” he said, staring up into the trees. “I was in a car accident.”

“Really? When?”

“I was fourteen when it happened. It was just me and my father in the car. We were driving home from a karate tournament one night and this car came out of nowhere and plowed right into us. It hit the passenger side, where I was sitting. My seatbelt and the airbag protected me from the worst of it but I still got pretty banged up. This arm was broken in a few places and I needed surgery to correct it. That’s how I got the scar. I have a tiny scar on my neck too, from when the window smashed in on me. I had cuts pretty much everywhere.” He rested his hands on his stomach, fingers intertwined. “The doctors were mostly worried about my head though. I didn’t wake up for three days afterward.”