Of course I didn’t let them know I was watching. Fortunately there was this massive blue and rust pick-up parked right next to me, and the tailgate was down, so I climbed up and perched myself on the very edge and pretended I was waiting for someone.
I’d been carrying around this big clunky tote bag which I’d found in the back of my cousin Kat’s closet, because I’d kind of told her that I’d try looking for a job and I needed something to carry my pathetic excuse for a résumé around in.
I plunked it next to me on the back of the truck and it promptly tumbled over and fell off. Not my smoothest moment. It bounced a couple of times on the rough cement before half disappearing from view under the tailgate. I winced.
Kat was not exactly convinced that I was all that reliable, and borrowing her leather tote without asking and returning it with a couple dozen scuff marks probably wasn’t going to help change her mind on that.
Luckily, Traci was too busy spitting out short, overused swear words to notice I existed.
But the guy she was yelling at noticed. Man, did he notice.
Sam cut his eyes over in my direction and glanced up at me through a shock of sandy brown hair, and I could feel this weird blush-like tingling spreading up my arms so I quickly bent over and pretended I was really focused on retying the long flimsy laces I had on my sandals. The sandals were a typical gift from my mother—hypothetically on the cutting edge of fashion somewhere in the world, but incredibly uncomfortable and pretty impossible to wear. Should have just stuck to flip flops.
When I looked up, Sam wasn’t looking my way anymore.
Not that I blamed him. Traci was the type that guys consider good looking, in a very obvious way. Fake blonde, fake tan, long fake bubblegum nails. My mother would have loved Traci. My mother would have tried to clone me into Traci. My mother would have taken Traci shopping and tried to convince everyone that they were sisters, and then she would have come home and and on about why, oh why, her miserable daughter Jo couldn’t just be more like pretty little Traci.
You see, I was the big, embarrassing disappointment in my mother’s life. You’d think her five failed marriages and string of useless boyfriends she brought home all my life would have rated somewhere on her regrets list. But no, to hear her tell it, everything that was wrong in life culminated in the fact her one and only daughter was an uninspiring, ridiculously tall beanpole of a teen with an uncontrollable mass of mud-colored hair.
In other words, there was no reason why Sam would be looking at me when he could be looking at Traci. Especially considering she was screeching, swearing, and waving her arms out in front of her like she was trying to swat mosquitoes while summoning an angry rain god.
But it kind of looked a little like Sam was fighting the urge to laugh. He had a great mouth, wide and expressive and curling up just a little at the side, like he was trying not to smile at her, but couldn’t help it. He glanced over my way and raised one eyebrow, like a guy caught in some crazy scene that wasn’t really him. I blushed and ducked down again.
Somehow I doubted Sam and Traci would be making up any time soon. But you never can tell about other people’s relationships. Maybe they did this every Saturday. Is it a sign that you’ve been single too long, when you find yourself getting jealous of someone else’s relationship, even as it’s ending in public humiliation?
I didn’t have too long to ponder why some people were lucky enough to have someone to scream abuse at, because, suddenly, I heard the truck’s engine turn over.
For about half a second I found it almost funny—I mean, trust me to pick the one vehicle that was going to drive off mid-fight.
But then the vehicle gave a little lurch, like someone was shifting gears, and I sort of fell off the back of the truck, just as the driver started backing up.
Chapter One - Page Three