Keeping the Distance (I Heart Iloilo Book 1) Read online

  "You look great," Cam said out of the corner of her mouth so they wouldn't be heard.

  "Should I walk up to him? Would that be weird?" she asked, her eyes trailing Hunter.

  "Please. You've known each other since you guys were in diapers."

  Hunter left the shampoo aisle and wandered over to the junk food section. Drumsticks stuck out of the back pocket of his cargo shorts. When he grabbed a large pack of Ruffles, her favorite, Melissa took it as a sign.

  "I'm going over to talk to him." She lined up her pen next to her notebook, stood up, and took a deep breath.

  She walked over to where he was still standing by the junk food aisle and tapped him on the shoulder.

  A smile registered on his face when he saw her, the dimple on his left cheek making her a little breathless. “Hey, Mel.”

  He was wearing another band shirt today. It was gray and proclaimed his liking for a bunch of hipster musicians she had never heard of. Maybe walking over to talk to him wasn’t such a great idea.

  What if he brought up something music-related and discovered her playlist featured mainstream pop songs?

  She gulped.

  “Are you here with your parents?” Hunter prodded when she didn’t respond.

  He was being so normal.

  Why couldn’t she do the same?

  “I’m, um, here with a friend.” Melissa pointed to the table where Cam sat. Her best friend perked up and proceeded to wave like an overly eager puppy, knocking an unopened pack of potato chips to the floor.

  She made a mental note to herself that Cam was the worst wingwoman ever.

  Hunter waved back, amusement written across his features. He faced her again, still smiling. “How’ve you been lately?”

  “I’ve been good. School has been keeping me pretty busy. And my ukulele. You know I play the ukulele, right? Of course, I don’t write songs like you do.” Melissa knew she was babbling but was powerless to stop herself.

  Total word vomit.

  Now, Hunter was most likely going to make some lame excuse and sprint his way to the cashier to avoid talking to her. She couldn’t blame him.

  Contrary to her expectations, he leaned a tiny bit closer. “You play the uke? I didn’t know that.”

  “I do. I mean, I’ve known how to play it for a few years now.

  She couldn’t believe it. They were having an honest to goodness conversation, something that hadn’t happened since puberty did wonderful things to Hunter’s face.

  And his hair.

  And his shoulders.

  She could go on all day.

  He nodded. “That’s cool. Maybe you can teach me?”

  Melissa’s heart did a funny little jig in her chest. Was he flirting with her? If yes, how was she going to stop herself from losing the little cool she had left amidst the rows of cheese-flavored chips?

  “Su-sure. I’d like that,” she finally managed to say.

  “Okay.” Hunter smiled one more time before aiming a thumb in the direction of the cashier. “I have to go pay for this. Tessa throws a major fit every time I take too long buying our snacks.”

  “Say hi to her for me.”

  His adoration for Tessa, his six-year-old sister, was clear in the way he said her name. She mentally added it to the Reasons Why I Like Hunter Alvarez list she filed away in a corner of her mind.

  They said their goodbyes, and Melissa walked back to the table she shared with Cam. She was too busy daydreaming about guiding Hunter’s fingers along her ukulele that she knocked into a rack full of superglue. The tiny red packages fell to the ground, clattering as they made contact.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said to no one in particular, wishing she could disappear into a thin puff of smoke. Thankfully, Hunter had his back turned and didn’t see her totally embarrass herself.

  Melissa bent down to pick up a plastic-sheathed tube of superglue, but the words ‘Extra Strength’ on the packaging made her stop. A smile that had nothing to do with Hunter and everything to do with revenge curved her lips.

  She knew exactly what to do with all that Extra Strength.

  Chapter Four

  Lance was used to girls making the first move. They approached him in bars, asked for his number, and things took off from there. He was not used to exerting the tiniest amount of effort. So, it was a big surprise that he’d even bothered to steal Melissa’s pen and tape that piece of paper with the heinous message on her back.

  It was an even bigger surprise when it resulted in… nothing.

  Absolutely nothing.

  When he smiled at her at the cafeteria, she turned her head and pretended she hadn’t seen him.

  Thankfully, the universe—or maybe their Economics teacher, Mrs. Genise—was on his side.

  “Good morning, class.” Mrs. Genise stood at the front of the room, clapping two erasers together. “Economics deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods. It also deals with money. Those of you on the odd rows, I suggest you turn to the person sitting behind you. You’ll be discussing their finances for the next hour.”

  In front of him, Melissa’s spine slowly straightened, turning as rigid as… He stopped before he came up with a dirty metaphor.

  “When the given time period is over, I want you to come to the front and discuss how your partner spends his or her allowance,” Mrs. Genise continued. “The most mundane details are welcome. If they earn their allowance, I want to hear that, too.”

  Lance watched as Melissa’s eyes flew to Cam’s for salvation, some sort of hope that she hadn’t heard Mrs. Genise right. Cam smiled weakly in response. He wished he had a more comfortable seat and some butter popcorn, because things were about to get interesting.

  Melissa raised her hand. “Mrs. Genise?”

  The teacher turned around to look at her. “Yes?”

  “Can we be partners with the people sitting next to us instead?” Melissa motioned to Cam, her face a complete blank.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Ortiz, but no,” Mrs. Genise said. “The point of this activity is to broaden your horizons. Hopefully, you’ll all graduate in nine months and start college where you’ll be surrounded by people from all walks of life. I’m simply speeding up the process.”

  Lance couldn’t help himself.

  He snickered.

  Loudly.

  Melissa lowered her hand, curling the fingers into a fist. She wanted to punch him until his nose bled. He could tell. Refusing to accept defeat, she lifted her chair, like her other classmates were doing, and faced him, his desk between them.

  Her hair was in some sort of fancy braid that ran down the left side of her neck today, a thin purple headband holding the rest of it in place. For the first time since he got her kicked out of class, she raised her eyes to meet his, and Lance felt like he’d been kicked in the chest. She was… what?

  He’d never been good at words, but he knew ‘beautiful’ didn’t even begin to cover it.

  All these years, how could he have never noticed?

  And then she sighed. “Let’s get this over with.”

  The words brought him back to reality. She wasn’t madly in love with him. In fact, he was pretty sure she wanted to drop the contents of the nearest wastebasket over his head.

  So what?

  He wasn’t in love with her, either.

  “So…” Lance made a show of flipping his notebook open and pulling out a certain gold pen out of his backpack. “How do you spend your allowance?”

  “On clothes mostly, though I try not to spend too much. And on cola Slurpees. We live near a 7-Eleven, and I tend to go there whenever I’m bored,” Melissa said, sounding like she’d rather be in a far-flung dungeon than talking to him. “You?”

  “Me?” He pointed at himself. “Oh, the usual. Voodoo dolls, human intestines, frog eyes.”

  One corner of her mouth pulled up, clearly holding back a smile.

  He almost thought she was going to respond with something witty when she shut down
on him.

  The disappointment that suddenly flooded his chest was baffling.

  “And do you have to earn your allowance?” Melissa said, her eyes on her notebook.

  “No, I don’t have to earn it. Not really. You?” He leaned down, trying to get her to look at him.

  “Pretty much. Papa makes me do chores around the house, like haul out the garbage or weed the garden.”

  He sat up straight, unable to keep the interest out of his voice. “The principal?”

  “Who else? He drives me crazy sometimes, because he’s always on my case about—” Melissa’s eyes widened as if she realized who she was talking to. Providing the enemy with ammunition was clearly not on her agenda.

  Silence enveloped them.

  It must’ve been for only about a minute, but it seemed to stretch on and on. He scrambled to make sense of everything as the puzzle pieces fell into place, why she was dead-set on getting good grades and acting so perfect all the time.

  He didn’t know who was more surprised out of the two of them when he didn’t come up with another jackass response. Instead, he gave her a smile without a single hint of mockery and said, “It’s okay if your father’s on your case a lot. Mine doesn’t even notice I’m alive.”

  Melissa’s jaw dropped open. “You—”

  “All done, class?” Mrs. Genise returned to her position at the front of the room and surveyed them all with eager eyes. She called out the first pair, and they discussed what they learned about each other’s finances.

  When it was their turn, Lance said, “I’ll go first, okay?”

  “Sure.” Melissa nodded.

  He cleared his throat before speaking. “I learned a lot of things about my partner, Melissa Ortiz, today, and most of them were surprising.”

  Approval flashed on Mrs. Genise’s face. He knew this was the kind of thing she’d been hoping for when she said she wanted her students to broaden their horizons.

  He opened his mouth to speak but made the mistake of staring down at his classmates. Did he really want to tell them that Melissa’s father made her weed the garden to earn her allowance? Did he want to let them know that she spent a little too much money on cola-flavored Slurpees? For some reason, he wanted to keep those things to himself.

  A little while longer.

  The words they practiced earlier vanished in the face of his dubious good intentions.

  “Apparently, Melissa spends most of her allowance paying for their Internet bill, so she can look for shirtless photos of me online.” Lance shook his head in a sorry-girls-can’t-help-it way and looked at her. “Mel, if you wanted to look at my hot, sculpted body, all you had to do was ask.”

  Their classmates erupted in laughter.

  Melissa, on the other hand, was practically vibrating with anger, her lips disappearing into a thin line. He wondered if he’d pushed her too far, if this was the time she was finally going to unleash all that raging fire she kept trying to water down.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, they were calm and devoid of anger. Disappointment returned to his chest with a vengeance.

  In a voice that was as sweet as the purple headband in her hair, she said “I’m sure your clients have a great time groping that hot, sculpted body of yours, Lance. You did mention earlier that your part-time job as a male prostitute supplies you with a hefty allow—”

  Melissa stopped in mid-sentence, her eyes growing wide at her outburst. She bit down on her bottom lip as if more words were threatening to jump out. A furious blush began to spread across her cheeks and neck. Lance could only grin at her.

  He did it.

  He managed to put a crack in her Perfect Daughter Robot exterior, but as his grin grew wider, something heavy sank in his stomach. Pushing her too far might not have been his best idea.

  For the first time, it occurred to him that he’d bitten off more than he could chew, and that maybe, this unpredictable version of Melissa Ortiz was someone he couldn’t handle.

  ***

  His first mistake was thinking she wasn't capable of anything sinister.

  Lance didn't know this when he walked into their classroom after lunch and found Melissa calmly organizing her pens in a neat row on her desk, like the day's earlier events hadn't happened at all. She was the picture of a good student, hair braided again into perfection.

  He almost sighed.

  The wooden seat felt warmer than usual when he sat down, like someone else's butt had kept it warm for the last five minutes. One row away, Cam sneaked glances at him. When their eyes met, he raised his eyebrows at her, and he could almost swear a bead of sweat began to form on her upper lip.

  Something was going on here, and he didn't like it one bit.

  His gaze flicked back to Melissa who was still arranging her pens. He wanted to swipe one from under her nose to shake her up. There were better things in life to look at.

  His face, for example.

  They still had five minutes before the torture known as their Physics class started, so he pulled his chair closer to hers. “If you’re good in Algebra, can you substitute my X without asking Y?”

  It was cheesy and completely ripped off some site he found online, but it was the best he could do on short notice.

  For a heart-stopping minute, he thought she wasn’t going to respond. She continued toying with the pen in her hand, but in the end, it was as if she couldn’t help herself. The dam broke earlier when she lost control, and the words she’d kept inside for so long wouldn’t stop pouring out.

  “Which ex?” she said in a voice so quiet he barely heard her.

  “What?”

  “Which ex do you want me to substitute?” Her voice increased in volume, confidence stitching through every syllable. “Noelle Calderon? Jenny Rodriguez? Lyka Abella? Bea Sandoval? I could go on, but I think you see my point.”

  ‘Shocked’ would’ve been a colossal understatement for how Lance felt.

  He had dated each of the girls she named for less than five months, breaking things off when they got too serious, or when he met someone more exciting. Rinse and repeat.

  He wasn’t particularly proud of his rather extensive dating record, but at least he could say that he’d never dated two girls at the same time.

  Technically.

  His breakup with Lyka, the salutatorian, had been particularly bad. He’d slipped a note that said ‘We’re over’ in the notes he’d borrowed from her. Good thing they didn’t have any classes together.

  But he was also taken aback by the realization that he knew next to nothing about Melissa’s dating history. Had she ever dated anyone from their school?

  Did she date? Was she even allowed to?

  Not wanting her to realize where his thoughts were going, Lance carefully erased the shock from his features.

  “Sounds like you want to be added to the list,” he drawled, wondering how she was going to react. She was a bit of a wildcard now, always toeing the line between fighting back and ignoring him.

  “Sorry, but being another notch on your bedpost isn’t my lifelong ambition.” Melissa didn’t even bother to turn around. She merely leaned back on her chair and crossed her arms over her chest, the movement bringing her neck closer to his face.

  The smell of lavender struck him with sudden force. His eyes were drawn once more to the constellation-shaped moles on her neck and wandered down to the vague outline of a bra clasp showing through her white blouse. That outline alone tilted his world on its axis.

  If she could tell what he was thinking, she was going to wrap her fancy braid around his neck and simply pull.

  He cleared his throat and shook his head even if she couldn’t see him. “I never said being a notch on my bedpost was your lifelong ambition, just your deepest, darkest fantasy.”

  A squeak of indignation escaped Melissa’s lips, and the gravity in his world was restored. They were back on equal footing as her cheeks turned red.

  His eyes wer
e back on her neck again. He wasn’t doing himself any favors by sitting there and ogling her neck, like a thirteen-year-old who was getting his first look at a real pair of boobs.

  Needing to get a grip on himself, he attempted to go talk to one of his teammates who sat a few rows away. Attempted was the keyword. He pushed himself off his chair, but it wouldn’t budge. It had attached itself to his slacks, some sort of superglue seeping through the fabric and latching onto his skin.

  “You did this,” he said to the back of Melissa’s head, unable to keep the reluctant admiration out of his voice.

  This time, she deigned to glance at him over her shoulder. Her face the picture of innocence, she said, “Prove it.”

  Un-freaking-believable.

  But all the smugness evaporated from her face when Mr. Rodriguez, their Physics teacher, walked into the room. No matter how smart you thought you were, there was always one thing you overlooked when you were new to the art of troublemaking.

  Melissa forgot to plan for the aftermath. It showed in the way she nervously doodled in her notebook, each stroke leaving a deep dent on the pages. He didn’t have much of a choice since he was glued to his seat, but he was going to enjoy the coming fireworks show.

  In fact, he was going to milk every minute of it.

  Mr. Rodriguez soon filled the blackboard with equations and formulas that barely made sense to any of them. When he noticed that most of their eyes were glazing over, he stopped, his gaze bouncing around the room in search of his next target. His eyes locked on Lance. “Mr. Ordonez, you seem to be uncharacteristically quiet today. Why don’t you go to the front of the room and regale us with your answer to this problem?”

  Lance knew as much about the class discussion as he did about his father’s daily life in Manila.

  Absolutely nothing.

  He gained a sense of satisfaction when Melissa’s face turned as white as the notebook page she was writing on, knowing full well he couldn’t stand up without dragging his chair to the front of the room.

  “I’d love to, Mr. Rodriguez, but I can’t.” Lance tried to keep his voice even. He watched Melissa’s grip tighten on her pen, her knuckles turning white with exertion.