Double Clutch - Реинхардт Лиз (книги полностью бесплатно TXT) 📗

“They are really cute together. So, do you have anyone in mind in the love arena, Ms. Sex Goddess?” It seemed like it was all done with Saxon, and Kelsie always had insta-crushes in middle school, so I hoped there was already someone new who caught her eye.

“Yes! Do you know Chris Holcomb? He’s in our Crafts class.”

“Yeah.” I tried to keep my voice even. “Isn’t he in that band Folly?”

“Yes! Do you like Folly?” She bounced up and down on the bed, making all the nail polish bottles clack and threatening to spill hot pink polish all over her bedspread.

I grabbed the pink polish and twisted the cap on it. “Um, I just got a CD of theirs, but I haven’t listened to it. Do you like them?”

“I love them. And Chris is so cute. Have you noticed him?” She shook me by the shoulders and bounced again.

“Someone at lunch mentioned that he noticed my shirt. He was asking about getting something made for Folly.” I wasn’t positive how Kelsie would react to my news, but, in typical Kelsie fashion, she was thrilled.

“This is so perfect! I’ll go up to Chris on Monday and tell him how you’re my good friend, and he’ll ask me if I can talk to you about shirts and that’s it. History will be made!” She flopped back on the bed and squealed.

We cracked up, and Kelsie yelled at me for messing up her paint job. I was glad to hear that things between her and Saxon had cooled down in a way that left me feeling less guilty about my kiss.

Not that I was okay-ing the fact that I’d kissed Saxon. It was most of all a betrayal of the unspoken thing that Jake Kelly and I had. But Kelsie had planted some serious seeds of doubt about Jake. Maybe I was taking his interest in me way too seriously. He was, after all, just another guy in my class. Maybe he just wanted to talk to me while I was in class with him.

When Kelsie went to the bathroom to get ready for bed, I slid my laptop out of my bag. I got an internet signal and went online, then logged into my Facebook page. Jake’s picture was there in my very small friend list, and when I clicked on it, I picked up a pretty standard guy’s site. His wall was filled with YouTube videos of dirt bike races and screaming bands mixed with lots of gangster game invites. I went to his pics. He had four up. The first, his profile picture, was him standing in front of his dirt bike. There was one of a big blue truck that looked like it belonged in a junkyard and one of Jake on a tractor, a piece of straw hanging out of his mouth, his eyes squinty in the too bright sun. Both where pretty much exactly what I expected.

There was one tagged picture. It was Jake, and he looked like he might be drunk. He was sitting between two girls, his arms around them. They were wearing a lot of black eye makeup and were both tilting their heads down and making kissing faces at the camera. Underneath the picture, one of the girls had written, “Good times, J! Call me when yur around again! XOXO”

I was looking at the picture when Kelsie walked back in. My instinct was to click the laptop shut, but that always made people totally curious about whatever you were looking at. Unfortunately, Kelsie was curious anyway.

“Let me see,” she demanded. I turned the screen and she looked at the pic with narrowed eyes. “The hottie is Jake?”

I nodded. She grabbed the laptop and flipped through his four pics over and over again. “Why is it that boys always have, like, two pictures?” she grumbled.

“I don’t know.” My problem wasn’t the lack of pictures; it was the people in them. Who were those girls to Jake? And was that picture an insider’s look at the real Jake? Or was the real Jake the guy I shared smiles and stares with in class?

“You have picture comments.” She clicked without asking me. I guess I should have been annoyed, but there was something so likable about Kelsie that I just let her do what she wanted and was glad for her company. Her eyebrows went up high. “Hello, Jake,” she muttered.

“What is it?” I almost didn’t want to look, but my curiosity got the better of me.

There were a few pictures of me from Jutland. The one Kelsie had clicked on was a beach scene, and I was wearing a bikini. I know most girls are freaked out about that kind of stuff, but I thought I looked good in it, so I put it up. There was a comment from Jake. “Hottt!!!!” it said. I felt a weird heat low in my belly.

“He can’t spell,” I said lamely.

“Yeah, I don’t think it was a misspelling,” she giggled. “You do look hot, Ms. Brenna Sexy Mama. Hot with three ‘t’s.’”

She clicked on one of me standing in front of the castle in Denmark that was supposed to be the one that Hamlet took place in. It was just me, nothing really special. He had written, “Yur sexy.”

“Um, he’s not like this in class.” I felt embarrassed by his openly flirty comments and even more embarrassed by his atrocious spelling. Ugh! I was a prude and a grammar snob all at the same time!

“Boys are always braver online,” Kelsie said knowingly. “There’s one more.”

It was a picture of me reading a book. It had also been taken in Denmark. I was reading Catcher in the Rye, which is one of my favorites of all time. When I realized I’d left my copy in the States, Thorsten went out and hunted one down for me one in an all-English book store. I’d read it in one day, and he and Mom thought it was so funny that they’d taken a picture of me curled up in the chair for my reading marathon. Jake had written, “smart gurls rock” under it.

“Woman, he likes you! A lot!” Kelsie gushed.

I shrugged. “If he lives up to his reputation, he probably writes stuff like this under every picture of every girl who’s his friend.”

“We could check any profiles that aren’t private,” she suggested.

“Kelsie,” I groaned. “That’s so pathetic. Besides, most of them will be private.”

“You never know,” she sing-songed.

So we tried, and most were private, but Kelsie was friends with four girls from his enormous friend section.

“Let’s look,” she said happily, logging me out and logging herself in. “Oh, a friend request from Brenna Blixen.” She looked at me with wide eyes. “Should I accept?”

“No way. That’s girl’s a fruitcake.” My heart was settled right in the pit of my stomach. Saxon might be a jerk, but at least he put it right out there for everyone to see. Jake, it seemed, had this secret other life that I didn’t know anything about. I hated it.

“Mmmm.” Kelsie clicked the ‘Accept’ button. “I love fruitcake. Okay, here is the first girl. Ugh, why am I her friend? She’s like a valley girl clone.”

“We live in north Jersey. How is she a valley girl?” I said in defense of the girl.

“She’s blonde and she’s an airhead,” Kelsie said absently. “Ooh, here’s a picture of her and Jake.”