Page 7 of Overdue

“Because I asked you to, and Mrs. Campbell has always been one of your favorite people.”

“That was before stupid Reed moved in,” I grumble. Stupid and gorgeous. But he’s more stupider than gorgeous. Is stupider even a word? If not, it definitely should be.

“Jane Austen Caraway, we do not call people stupid in this house.” Mom breaks into my thoughts. I give her my best deep sigh moan thing. I mean, it works for Brontë. She also never has to do anything this heinous.

“Who’s stupid?” Eliot asks, walking into the kitchen.

“Reed Campbell.” Eliot, of all people, should understand that. She has to know how obnoxious he is. They’re in the same classes together after all.

“Just because you have a crush on him doesn’t make him stupid. If he reciprocated, that would be stupid.” My mouth falls open like a fish gasping for air. How can she turn against me?

I leap off my chair to shove her. I’ve been dealt a grievous blow by my own flesh and blood. That’s it. We can no longer be friends. Such betrayal can not be recovered from.

“I do not!” I yell right in her stupid face. See, we do call people stupid in this house.

“Keep telling yourself that,” Eliot answers calmly, followed by kissy noises. Gross!

“Reed and Austen, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g,” Brontë starts chanting from the back stairs. Et tu Brute?

“Girls! Leave your sister alone. Austen, take this pie to the Campbells. Now. I’ll call Jennie and let her know you’re on your way.”

I get in one more parting glare at Eliot. She’s doing that thing where she wraps her arms around herself and pretends she’s kissing a boy. I still say, gross.

I stomp out of the house with the pie and slam the front screen door. I don’t care what they think, he’s stupid. I’ll never like him. Not as a friend and definitely not as a boyfriend. I agreed with Dad, there are a lot of fish in the sea. I’ll find a college boy. They’re so much more mature.

“Hey, brat.” There he is, the bane of my existence. He’s walking toward me. Walking? No, he’s swaggering. Jerk. “Gran sent me to get some stupid pie. Did your mommy let you walk all this way by yourself?”

Ever since I hit him with that rubber ball, he’s been a toad. I cock my hip and stare at him, so he knows I want none of what he’s selling. Why do his eyes have to be so damn blue? And when did he get this tall?

“Yeah, well, Abraham Lincoln said it’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.” There, that should shut him up.

“Then I guess you should remain silent,” he answers with a smirk.

Ugh, he’s such an a-s-s. I don’t know what overcomes me. It’s like I’m watching someone else throw the pie at Reed. It hits his chest before sliding down his body to the sidewalk.

I’m not hanging around for this fallout. I haul ass out of there. The last thing I see when I look over my shoulder is Reed standing in the middle of the sidewalk, his mouth hanging open, covered in warm blueberry pie.

* * *

“It left a lasting impression,” Reed says, pulling me out of my reverie.

“Well, you sort of had it coming.” He cocks an eyebrow. A sexy, sexy eyebrow. Stop Austen! “But, I might have overreacted just a tiny bit.” I hold my finger and thumb up, showing a tiny space between them.

I’ll be the first to admit, I was kind of insufferable. Who had I been trying to convince with the books way beyond my reading level and my overinflated ego? Still, he had made a profession out of learning which of my buttons to push.

“Maybe a little,” he agrees and winks at me. “But, the rest was impressive. Not every thirteen-year-old can whip out an Abraham Lincoln quote and get it right. I know. I looked it up that night. That was pretty cool.”

“My mom was so mad at me.” We’ve reached the steps leading up to the front door. Reed manages to balance his load in one arm and open the door.

“You had to apologize. A lengthy one you had written out with lots of quotes in it, if memory serves.”

I laugh. God, I had been insufferable. “And you stood there the whole time with your arms crossed and a smirk on your face,” I say. The memory makes me smile. I can still remember the white T-shirt he wore straining from his newly burgeoning muscles.

“It was the most fantastic apology I’d ever heard,” he continues. “I didn’t want to miss any of it. Besides, I was trying to show off what a year of weight lifting in the high school gym did to my biceps.” He wiggles his eyebrows. Okay, maybe he’s not quite the ass he had been growing up. Not yet, anyway.

“Gran’s back in the kitchen. I hope you don’t mind that I made a salad to go with everything. She’s just now getting her appetite back, so I try to encourage as much variety as possible.”

“Of course I don’t.” For some irrational reason, I put my hand on his arm. Was that a shock of electricity that shot up it? Did he feel it too? I jerk my hand back. “I’m just glad you let me do this. Your Gran has always meant so much to me.”

---