Keeping the Distance (I Heart Iloilo Book 1) Page 5

  A pattern emerged as he continued looking. Some guy named Hunter kept liking her posts, commenting with an inside joke here and there. He opened Hunter’s profile, and a photo of a boy playing the drums so intensely that veins were protruding on his neck loaded on the screen.

  Knots started growing in his stomach.

  Lance’s head snapped up when a hand covered the screen and pushed the phone down. Jace was not the type to giggle, but the expression on his face was almost verging on it.

  “I never thought I’d see the day,” Jace said, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “What?”

  “You.” Jace pointed an accusatory finger in his direction. “Cyberstalking some girl who’s not into you. I repeat, a girl who’s not into you.”

  He pushed the phone at Jace’s chest, almost dropping it on the floor. “I’m not into Melissa Ortiz.”

  Jace only smirked. “Yeah, keep telling yourself that.”

  Chapter Six

  There was a special place in hell reserved for sadistic Physics teachers who had a thing for pop quizzes.

  Melissa desperately wanted to believe that.

  Still, she wasn’t going to leave passing the hellish subject to chance. Mr. Rodriguez had assigned a ridiculous number of problems as homework, and she slaved over them until she passed out at two A.M.

  To reassure herself, she reached inside her backpack, eager to feel the three pages covered with her squiggly handwriting. Her hand curved around textbook spines but not those three important pages.

  Her heart stopped mid-pound. There were five minutes until the official start of class, so she grabbed her backpack and upended its contents on top of her desk. Plastic-covered textbooks, notebooks with floral covers, nail polish, and pens in various colors scattered everywhere. Her homework, however, was nowhere to be found.

  Lance’s amusement vibrated from behind her, wrapping around her like a disgusting eel. Her fishtail braid flew across her face as she whirled around to face him.

  “You.” Her tone was menacing.

  “Me,” Lance said, aiming a thumb at himself. The light streaming through the windows cast a halo around his perfectly messy hair and made him look like an angel more than ever. The sight made her fingers curl into a fist.

  “You took my homework.” She was stating a fact, not asking a question.

  Lance raised one hand and proceeded to scratch the back of his head, the picture of innocence with only the glint in his eyes giving him away. “Now, why would I do that?”

  “Because you obviously weren’t hugged enough as a child.”

  He smirked. “You can hug me all you want to make up for it.”

  For the nth time since the start of the school year, Melissa wanted to close her eyes so she could imagine what it would be like to punch him. She could almost feel her knuckles sinking into his pretty face with a loud smack, bone thudding against skin.

  It would be so satisfying.

  She sighed. There was no way she was going to let Mr. Rodriguez scold her for not doing her homework, because Lance was in the mood to mess with her. Again.

  It seemed like a perfectly sane decision for her to stand up and grab his backpack from where it was perched on the floor by the legs of his desk.

  Pushing aside the thought that it might have insect inhabitants, she reached inside it, fingers already on the search for her homework.

  “If you’re looking for my underwear, Mel, I’m sorry, but you won’t find it there.” Lance stood up and attempted to nudge her aside.

  He stood so close that she could smell his cologne, woodsy with a bit of spice. The fact that he smelled good was grossly unfair. Why didn’t he smell like Eau de Old Gym Socks and Sweaty Boy?

  She wrinkled her nose at the crumpled pieces of paper in his backpack and the disorganized mess of textbooks that hadn’t been cracked open. “I’m not doing this with you again.”

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  Perfectly aware that their classmates were staring, a smile curved the corners of Lance’s mouth, one so bright it made her want to hunt down a pair of aviators. “Don’t be so excited. We haven’t done anything yet.”

  That was the last straw.

  Her elbow reared back and hit him square in the chest. Caught by surprise, Lance wobbled in the air for a heart-stopping minute and lost his balance, but before he could fall to the floor, he made a grab for her arm, dragging her down with him. They fell to the ground, Melissa’s back colliding with Lance’s chest and her hands scrambling to get ahold of something in mid-air.

  Falling on top of a boy was supposed to be a slow freefall with a romantic pop song blaring in the background, not this undignified mess of tangled limbs and loud grunts. Also, it was never supposed to hurt, since the guy in question was supposed to break your fall. She was pretty sure she was going to have at least three bruises before the end of the day.

  Lance wasn’t done with her. His hands snaked around her arms, pulling her closer until the warmth of his chest blasted through the fabric of his white button-down shirt. Air suddenly refused to escape her lungs. One hand flew to her heart in an attempt to calm it.

  “Admit it. You’re enjoying this,” he whispered, his breath hot against her ear.

  He apparently had no intention to stop touching her.

  For one crazy second, she didn’t want him to.

  In the end, Mr. Rodriguez made the decision for them both.

  “What is going on here?” The teacher’s voice rang from the doorway, jolting them both out of the moment.

  With as much dignity as she could muster, she pulled herself up to a standing position, smoothing down the folds of her skirt, and tried to look their teacher in the eye. Behind her, Lance stood up, the collar of his button-down shirt askew and not caring in the least about how he looked.

  The entire classroom fell silent, clearly expecting another fireworks show. Mr. Rodriguez glared down at the two of them, his face turning a violent shade of red. Palpable anger made his eyebrows start twitching.

  “The two of you? Again?”

  Melissa cleared her throat. “Mr. Rodriguez, I… I can explain.”

  “I don’t want to hear your explanation, Ms. Ortiz,” Mr. Rodriguez cut her off with a gruff shake of his head. “I’ve seen everything I need to see. What I want is, for you and Mr. Ordonez to go to the principal’s office. Now.”

  “Please—”

  “I’ve lost count of the number of times the two of you have interrupted my classes.” The teacher moved to the front of the room and started organizing his things on top of the desk, done with the conversation. “I was very forgiving, considering your previous history as a good student, Ms. Ortiz, but it seems you’ve found yourself in rather bad company.”

  She opened her mouth to defend herself some more, but a hand on her arm pulled her back. She turned around, expecting it to be Cam, but to her utter surprise, it was Lance.

  He shook his head. “Let’s go, Mel. That’s enough.”

  “No. I can’t get kicked out of class again. My father won’t like it.”

  “Mr. Rodriguez isn’t going to listen to you.” The words were spoken kindly, and that made things even worse. Lance’s pity was the last thing she needed, especially since he was the cause of all this.

  As much as she hated to admit it, he was right. She was going to have to plead her case somewhere else.

  The walk to the principal’s office was a long one, her feet growing heavier with each step. Colorful bulletin boards advertising different clubs swam by her in a blur. For the first time since he asked her out, Lance kept his distance and maintained a few paces between them, almost as if he was afraid that she would snap and attempt to murder him with the rainbow-shaped pin attached to her collar.

  Oh, if only she could.

  ***

  Melissa’s backpack was white with pink strawberries all over it. It was the strangest thing Lance had ever seen. He tried to focus on it as guilt threatened to swall
ow him whole.

  He wasn’t a bad guy.

  Really.

  He was—how should he put this?—a work-in-progress. Sometimes, he lost control, didn’t know how to stop, and other people became collateral damage. Melissa, for example. That didn’t mean it was right, but he was learning. Didn’t that count for something?

  It didn’t, though, not in Melissa’s eyes.

  This, his second visit to the principal’s office in a month, was bound to be more dramatic than the last, especially with the aforementioned principal’s daughter in tow. The man sat behind his humungous desk, fingers clasped before him and a stern expression on his face.

  “Take a seat, both of you.” Mr. Ortiz’s face was as immovable as the side of a mountain.

  They sat down on the leather chairs facing the desk, maintaining a healthy distance from each other to avoid getting into even more trouble. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Melissa place her backpack on her lap. She attempted to radiate calmness, but the shaking of her hands gave her away.

  The lump of guilt in his throat turned into a boulder.

  Stealing her homework hadn’t been his brightest idea, but he couldn’t think of another way to get her attention that didn’t include pissing her off. Jace had other—saner—suggestions, but they all vanished the instant he saw that drummer boy’s photo online, the one who shared little inside jokes like they’d known each other their whole lives. Hell, they probably did.

  Mr. Ortiz’s loud throat clearing snapped him back to the not-so-pleasant present. He braced his arms on the desk, his hands still clasped, and said, “I understand that Mr. Rodriguez can be quite strict. That’s probably why I hired him.” A charming smile. “But getting kicked out of his class twice in one month can be quite alarming, especially for someone who used to have an exemplary disciplinary record.” His eyes drifted to Melissa at the last sentence.

  “Pa, I—” Melissa started.

  Mr. Ortiz held up a hand to stop her.

  “I mean, Mr. Ortiz, I swear it won’t happen again,” she said, her face two shades paler than usual.

  Lance couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Maybe you had to act a certain way when one of the students you were punishing happened to be your own daughter, but there was something so cold, so distant, about the scene unfolding before him.

  Why would the principal even have that smiling photo of Melissa on his desk if he wanted every person in the entire school to forget they were related?

  He decided to shake things up, see what happened when Mr. Ortiz’s carefully ordered world stopped spinning. He stretched out his legs. With a smile meant to piss off the fathers of teenage daughters everywhere, he said, “I’m afraid I can’t make the same promise, Mr. Ortiz.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Beside him, Melissa turned as still as the books on the shelf behind her father.

  “Shut. Up,” she mouthed at him.

  He shook his head at her almost playfully.

  “We’re teenagers with bloodthirsty hormones, and I can’t guarantee that we can control ourselves around each other, especially considering how attractive we both are.” Lance made sure to keep the lascivious grin in place as he spoke. “No offense meant, Mr. Ortiz. I merely meant to compliment your daughter. And myself, of course.”

  Murderous wasn’t enough to sum up the look in Mr. Ortiz’s eyes. A vein threatened to pop on his left temple, his knuckles turning white from the effort of gripping his desk. Who knew the man and his daughter both had tempers under their calm exteriors?

  “Do I sound like I’m joking, Mr. Ordonez?” the principal said in a tone that was oddly quiet.

  For the first time since he became a student at Saint Agnes Catholic Academy, a trickle of fear flowed down his spine in the face of an authority figure, but he attempted to smile anyway. “I wasn’t joking either, Mr. Ortiz.”

  A large, meaty fist slammed against the desk, making the frames on top of it shake. “Then, you shall be pleased to hear that the two of you will be spending a lot of time together. We need people who’ll repaint the Grade One and Grade Two classrooms, so you’ll save the school some money. Ms. Ortiz for three weekends. You, on the other hand, will have the pleasure of painting our dignified school’s walls for six weekends straight.”

  Oh, shit.

  Mr. Belandres, known simply as Coach to members of the varsity basketball team, was going to hunt him down, squash his carcass into a ball, and use it to shoot a three-pointer. He was going to miss weekend practice for six weeks straight. They couldn’t afford that with the biggest tournament of the year around the corner.

  Lance knew all that, but he still couldn’t stop the grin that stretched his lips. “Looking forward to it.”

  He wished his mouth had a pause button, so he could willingly hand over the remote to Jace. Or to Melissa. She’d be ecstatic to have something like that in her hands.

  It seemed impossible but the vein on the principal’s temple throbbed even more. “Good to hear. We’re done for the day, Mr. Ordonez.” He turned his gaze on Melissa. “Please stay.”

  If the lump in Lance’s throat was previously a boulder, it now reached lunar proportions. Melissa wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t stolen her homework in a bid to get her attention. For the first time in a very long time, he wished he could take something back.

  True regret made standing up, slinging his backpack over his shoulder, and walking out of the principal’s office difficult.

  True regret, however, did not stop him from stopping by the door to eavesdrop, like the lowest life form on the planet he could ever imagine.

  He leaned against the wall, letting the coolness of it seep through his shirt. As quietly as possible, his backpack sank to the ground by his feet.

  He couldn’t hear everything, mostly the muffled sounds of a conversation between a disappointed father and a very pressured daughter. Sometimes, he managed to nab a word from thin air, hooking his fingers between the syllables before they could float away for good. Words like ‘disappointment’ and ‘apply yourself.’

  Lance almost breathed a sigh of relief. His father might’ve only acknowledged his presence when it was convenient, but he at least wasn’t forced into a mold neatly labeled Perfect Son.

  As the conversation between father and daughter grew longer and longer, he found himself sinking to the floor, one hand covering his face and the other buried in his hair.

  Melissa was getting the lecture of a lifetime, and it was all his fault.

  When the door opened again and Melissa walked out, she didn’t see him huddled by the doorway. Her feet wearily walked a few paces before they slowed to a stop, her thin shoulders quivering as she tried to hold back tears.

  Lance stood up in a flash. When he started to open his mouth, he was horrified to realize that no words were about to come out for the first time in his life. How was he supposed to comfort this girl who drove him crazy with irritation and curiosity in equal measure?

  He didn’t know where to start.

  Melissa didn’t give him a chance to explain, to offer words of comfort that might slowly bridge the distance between them. She looked at him over her shoulder, her face red and splotchy, eyes still shimmering with more unshed tears.

  The look on her face. It was an arrow through the heart, sinking through him and coming out the other side. Looking into her eyes began to hurt. Too much.

  “I’m not blameless in all of this, I know,” Melissa said, even her voice was tear-stained if that made any sense, “but please, Lance, stay away from me. I’m begging you. Keep your distance.”

  “I… I…” The apology got lodged in his throat, the words hanging on to his tonsils for dear life.

  “I don’t need to hear an apology or anything else from you,” Melissa cut him off, her eyes slanting to the floor. “Please stay away from me. We’ll live through weekend detentions together, but that’s it. While we’re in school, let’s pretend the other one doesn’t exist. I’m done. With this. Wit
h everything that has to do with you.”

  “I’m sorry.” The words finally escaped his lips.

  He wanted to tell her that he didn’t mean to get her in trouble, that he didn’t understand how big of a control freak her father was, but to do so would be doing her a disservice. She didn’t need to hear his excuses. In the end, none of it mattered.

  “Like I said, you don’t need to apologize. I’m not even angry anymore.” Melissa took a step back. “I’m just so exhausted.”

  Her hands flew to the straps of her backpack, holding on with a little too much force, while her eyes reached into him and cut him open. They refused to leave the floor, the fire he saw whenever they argued or generally messed with each other extinguished, not a single ember left behind.

  A strange feeling took hold of Lance’s chest and refused to let go. He couldn’t remember when he last wanted to tell another person that he could fix things, make everything all right so she could breathe a little easier.

  It was a strange, not to mention entirely unfamiliar, feeling. Come to think of it, he experienced a lot of those whenever he was around Melissa Ortiz. He reminded himself that she didn’t want that, or anything, from him.

  Lance took back the hand he had unknowingly reached out to her, to make sure her world was righted back on its axis. It clenched into a fist.

  Keep your distance, she had warned.

  “Sure,” he said. “I can keep my distance. Not a problem.”

  He didn’t know whether he was trying to convince her.

  Or himself.

  Chapter Seven

  Weekend detention.

  She was supposed to dread the words, but somehow, the right feelings refused to rise to the surface.

  Sunshine streamed through the windows, making a pool of light by her feet, a slight wind ruffling the lace curtains. It was almost ironic that the weather seemed to be cooperating on what was supposed to be the worst day ever.

  As Melissa lay in bed under the covers that Saturday morning, she tried to figure things out. While she made her bed, she pictured how she was going to face Lance again after that excruciating exchange between them in the hallway. Running a comb roughly through her hair, she wondered how they would endure each other’s presence for one whole day under the watchful eyes of the school custodian.