Page 28 of Crossing the Brooklyn Briggs
He straightens and heads for the door with the haste of someone who knows I’m likely to change my mind. “Was that so hard?” he asks.
“Yes. Yes, it was.” Only, I’m just now realizing how good this man smells, and suddenly it’s all I can think about. I know for a fact that I don’t have this scent in my bathroom, so he must have brought some body wash from home. I will be investigating immediately upon returning home because I need to know what this is so I can buy out the whole stock and have it forever. It’s taking everything in me not to nuzzle my face into his neck and breathe in deeply.
When we reach his large truck, he opens the passenger door and then spins around, letting me slide off his back onto the seat. Then he gives me a smirk. “You can keep smelling me as we drive.”
Kill me now. It’s a good thing there’s no chance of Jordan ever wanting to date me because I am clearly way too awkward to act like a normal human around men. I’m great with teenagers and other women, but I’m even more hopeless than I thought when it comes to interacting with the opposite sex.
It’s possible I spend my life focusing on the wrong kind of chemistry. It’s no wonder Mark hasn’t talked to me before now.
He quickly works to unhook the large trailer that holds a bunch of yard equipment, and then he hops into his seat and starts up the truck. There must be something written on my face, though, because he doesn’t pull away immediately. Instead, he softens his smile. “Don’t worry, Queens. I’ll get you in tip top shape for your buddy Miles. When I’m through with you this weekend, he’ll be all over you.” He winces at the same time I do. “Not… You know what I mean.”
“I’ll be lucky if Mark even talks to me again,” I mumble.
“Luck has nothing to do with it. It’s all about confidence.”
I huff. “Easy for you to say.”
Though he shakes his head, he’s quiet for a while as he heads downtown. Whatever he’s thinking about, I’m not sure I want to know what it is. Most likely it means something nerve-wracking for me. That’s usually the case when Jordan gets contemplative.
When we hit a stop light, he glances at me and then laughs, which doesn’t exactly make me feel any better. “Would you relax? You’re looking at me like I’m driving you to your doom.”
“Knowing you, that’s more likely than you seem to think.”
“I’m just trying to help you. And remember, you agreed to this.”
I fold my arms, nodding at the light when it turns green. “I was concussed. I can’t be held responsible for anything I may or may not have agreed to yesterday. Besides, your notion of ‘helping’ has never been very helpful.”
He can’t stop smiling, which is making all of this worse. “Name one time I helped but didn’t help.”
Where do I even start? “Prom.”
“Which one?”
“The one where you ‘helped’ me get voted prom queen and then cheated to get yourself picked as king over Garrett.”
His argument comes so quickly that he must have been thinking of our senior year already. “First of all, I didn’t do a single thing to get you voted in. That was all you. Second, I’m insulted that you think I couldn’t win prom king all on my own. Third—”
“There’s a third?”
He nods. “Third, Butler was way too high and mighty for a guy who threw as many interceptions as he did touchdowns. He didn’t deserve you anyway, and you know it.”
Yeah, okay, my boyfriend cheated on me just a few weeks later, but having to get up on stage and then dance with Jordan was the worst kind of torture. Not only because he drove me crazy but also because I didn’t want the spotlight like that. Jordan loved the attention—probably still does—but I’m more of a “fade into the background” kind of girl. Always have been. The only reason I even went to prom that year was because Garrett insisted on it.
“I still think you rigged the system,” I say with a huff.
“I didn’t. Getting the chance to dance with you was a matter of serendipity.”
“How is dancing with me serendipitous?”
He pulls into the parking lot of a restaurant I’ve heard of but never stepped inside, and then he turns to me with a surprisingly serious expression on his face. “Because you looked incredible in your dress that night. I wasn’t the only one who wanted to dance with you, which means our royalty promenade was a huge stroke of luck for me.”
I roll my eyes. “You don’t even remember what I—”
“Dark blue. Sparkly. It dipped low in the back and only had one strap over your shoulder. You curled your hair and left most of it down, but it was straight again by the end of the night.”
Though I try to say something, my voice catches in my throat from the way he’s looking at me, like he’s imagining that dress. It was the one time I let my stepsister Heidi take me shopping, and though it was way more revealing than I would have picked for myself—I would have gone with a high collar and cap sleeves—I had never felt more beautiful than I did that night.
I always held a bit of resentment that Garrett snuck in some alcohol and got too drunk to remember anything about how I looked, and he was too busy dancing with me—or trying to convince me to go home with him—to remember to get a picture taken before they took the booth down. The only picture I have from that night is a poor quality selfie from my cell phone that I have stashed on my computer somewhere, taken in my bathroom mirror. The vice president, the girl Garrett cheated on me with, “accidentally” lost all the photos that the student council had taken of the royalty that night.
