Page 20 of Crazy for this Girl

“Laynee, haven’t I taught you better than this?”

“I like it,” I counter with a shrug of my shoulders. “I even have a shirt by them that I bought from Hot Topic.”

Cal’s face twists in pure disgust. Like worse than the time black olives were put on his pizza last year or the time I told him I liked Milky Way bars. “Where? In the house?” He glances back at it as if it’s going to wave at him from the window of my room. “Did you bring it with you?”

My brows furrow at his mini freakout. “Yeah. I—“ Cal begins to push himself to stand, and I already know what he’s about to do. He wants to burn it. “Stop.” I pull him down by his white Adidas shirt and laugh when his butt hits the hard surface with a heavy thud. Serves him right. “You’re insane. Leave my stuff alone.”

“I can’t let you do it, Laynee. That’s treasonous to music lovers everywhere. It’s like social suicide, to be honest.”

“To who? The group of trees that we have around us and the parents who have no idea who Good Charlotte is?”

“They named themselves after a children’s book,” Cal retorts with a serious expression on his face. I notice his own dark tan, the way it pops his green eyes to stand out. “Who does that?”

Me, apparently.

I smirk against his repulsion of yet another boy group I like. “A band that’s doing very well for themselves, Cal. This is the anthem put all your hands up, get on board.”

“I’m not gonna get on board when they sound like an intro to a teenage movie drama.” He impatiently plucks my iPod out of my hands and switches the song. “Aw…” He looks over at me, his face softening instantaneously as if I’m a child that just drew him a picture with crayons. “It’s Here’s To The Night by Eve 6. The last song I downloaded for you the day you left.”

I harden my features against his sweet-placed tone because he probably thinks I’m obsessed over him or something. The way his voice sounds like I’m pathetic immediately pulls my defenses up. Or maybe it’s my paranoia because Cal came back this summer looking hot, and I haven’t changed a bit. “Had to.”

“Why?”

“Because...if I started taking your songs off, I’d never hear the end of it.”

He tsks at my not so absurd comment, because we both know he’ll do it, and begins to bob his head to the beat when he presses play.

Then he starts to sing the chorus he knows like the back of his hand.

Cal is by no means a good singer, but the fact that it’s him and that the song means something makes it special to me. I’d never tell him, but I know every single word of this song too. I listened to it every night before I went to bed.

Because it was the last thing he gave to me before we said goodbye.

I shove another fork-full of hashbrowns in my mouth and use my other hand to keep open my Nancy Drew book. It’s the only time lately that I’ve been able to read because the moment I step outside, my day begins with Cal showing up within minutes of my butt hitting the rocking chair.

We quickly fell back into our rhythm like it never stopped. Reading hasn’t been and isn’t a priority, even though I still packed books. My time has been filled with nothing but Cal Harper. We swim—with me in shorts and a baggy t-shirt—fish, listen to music, row the small boat Dad has around the lake, and eat.

All the time.

We’ve also been trying to catch turtles for my brother—failing horribly at it so far—and dodging Janelle and Jessica since the Fourth of July, to my utter relief.

His reasoning is that Jessica laughs too much, and Janelle is too bossy. He’d rather hang out with me because I don’t mind getting my hair wet, and I’ll almost out eat him, which, to him, is a huge compliment.

Regardless, I’m weary that they’ll remember him and keep trying to show up on our side of the lake.

“Laynee, do you want to head into town with me today?” I glance up at Mom, who’s whisking something in a bowl and watching me like she’s looking for a secret—one I don’t have.

She found Cal with his hand on my back yesterday and bluntly asked me if he kissed me yet.

Mortification—it’s the only word I can use to describe how she makes me feel with anything related to the opposite sex or being a teenage girl because the way she says it is so aggressively nosey.

I wish she’d speak to me about normal things, even boring stuff like the weather or something she saw on the news. Her obsession with making sure I don’t become a teenage mom is excessive. Again, I would expect it from Dad, but shoot, he likes Cal and doesn’t go out of his way to embarrass me.

Her biggest qualm is that he’s a so-called bad boy, and those sorts of boys break hearts. I’m beginning to think my mother fell victim to one at my age. There’s no other excuse for it, and now I get to pay the price for something that happened to her however many years ago.

I know what Cal and I are.

She doesn’t need to lose sleep over it nor bug me twenty-four-seven about uncomfortable things that not a soul in this world could pay me to tell her.

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