Page 4 of Hate You, Maybe
No matter how perfect everyone else at the school thinks he is.
Squaring my shoulders, I cross the squeaky basketball courts, then head down the hall off the gym’s lobby. When Icome to the door of the weight room, I throw it open, blinking rapidly in the fluorescent lights. As my eyes adjust, the truth is just as I suspected.
Dexter is facing away from me, gripping a pair of dumbbells and counting out reps. He’s got his earbuds in and he’s huffing and puffing to whatever man-music is on his playlist. The fabric of his dark gray shirt clings to his back, pulled taut by a cornucopia of muscles. I got an A in AP Physiology, and my list-loving brain automatically takes a quick inventory:
Trapezius.
Latissimus Dorsi.
Rhomboids.
Delts.
Stupid lists.
My mouth falls open, and something stirs low in my stomach, a tightening of my abdomen. Probably from the breakfast burrito. I hate that my heart is racing from indigestion.
And I really hate that Dexter Michaels is hot.
His skin is beaded with sweat, and a thatch of almost-black hair is damp at the base of his neck. With a final grunt, he returns the weights to their rack and reaches for a towel.
I could slip out the door now and pretend I didn’t just get an eyeful of his workout, but this man already gets away with everything. I need to call out the golden boy for what he’s done wrong.
While I debate my options, he rolls his shoulders, head tilting back as he exhales. Then something terrible happens.
A no-good, very bad, horrible thing.
Dexter Michaels turns, mid-stretch, and catches me gaping at him.
He slings his towel over one shoulder, and a smile stretches across his face, slow and lazy, like he’s got all thetime in the world to humiliate me. Meanwhile, a single bead of sweat breaks free at the top of his throat, trickling down his thick, corded neck to?—
“Morning, Kroft,” he drawls. “Enjoying the view?”
“NO!” I blurt, choking on my spit. The old Sayla from last spring would dig a metaphorical hole straight through the mats to bury herself in the center of the earth. But the new Sayla from this fall has done nothing wrong.
I’vedone nothing wrong.
So I stomp toward him, my blood pumping and my eyes on fire. I’m Shakespeare’s King Henry, preparing to engage the enemy on the battlefield, and this time, I will not lose to Dexter.
Once more into the breach.
Unfortunately, the closer I get, the more the energy between us crackles. Like wool socks rubbed over carpet during an electrical storm. He watches my approach, dragging a hand along his beard. The same beard that’s been the source of much ooh-ing and ahh-ing among the female population of Stony Peak High.
