Double Clutch - Реинхардт Лиз (книги полностью бесплатно TXT) 📗
“I got a lot of great stuff.” I pawed through my bras and underwear, picking the nicest ones. This was a trip to Paris, after all. “Thorsten got me an awesome new design program for the computer. Um, did you get anything good?”
He laughed like I made a joke. “I got my socks, flashlight and fifty. I told you, babe, it’s what I get every year.”
“Well, I got you some good stuff.” I tried very hard not to get aggravated at Jake’s dad on the most peaceful day of the year. How could he be so cheap about his own son? And I didn’t mean cheap monetarily, although that was true, too. Jake was this vibrant, amazing guy, but his dad put no effort whatsoever into making things good or nice for him. It was just basic necessities as far as Jake’s dad was concerned, and he didn’t even stretch his imagination much there.
“I can’t wait to see what you got me. I’m still trying to get over my birthday gift.”
I had custom made him a motocross jersey. Jake was really into dirtbikes, and when he raced during his last big amateur competition, I had taken a bunch of action shots of him. I transferred them to the computer, played with the images, and made them into really high quality iron-ons. I had the shirt ordered and put his last name and the images on it; it was pretty professional looking.
“It wasn’t a big deal.” I sat on my bed and unknotted a tangle of necklaces from my jewelry box. “It was just a shirt.”
“And the rest of the outfit to match, and a helmet that you custom designed. And the decals for my bike.” He sighed a happy, adorable sigh. “Don’t downplay it, Bren. It was awesome.”
“Well, it all had to match.” I moved onto my bracelets. “And it was cool that that big dirtbike magazine was at Digman’s when you won that race.”
“I can’t believe I got a spread.” Jake laughed. “It was your design. It was good luck.”
“I know I’m pretty great, but don’t you think it had something to do with the fact that you won the race?” I smiled at the memory, a little girly pride pricking me nicely. “Like by a mile.”
“By a couple yards,” he corrected humbly. Typical Jake. “Yeah, I guess. You just…” He stopped. “Alright, I didn’t want to get all mushy on you, but what the hell? I never had someone care about me the way you do. It makes me feel like I could do anything. Like you give me the confidence to do whatever I want. You don’t know how incredible it’s been for me to have you in my life.”
And now my heart felt like it was singing and tearing apart at the same time. How could I help but fall in love with a guy like this? Jake was the whole package, no question. We had plans for winter break. Since Jake turned seventeen this November, he’d been cutting some of his hours at Zinga’s, the farm where he worked. He’d been a full time employee when he needed to keep a farmer’s license, but since he’d gotten his regular license, he was able to scale back and spend more time with me. This break was supposed to be a chance for us to hang out as much as humanly possible. How was I going to tell him that we were going to have no time at all together?
“Jake, you don’t need me around to do all of that,” I pointed out. “You’re too hard on yourself. You’ve always had the talent and the drive. You just need to believe in your potential.”
It was an old speech on my part, and one I didn’t love making. I’ve never been great at pep talks in general, and I hated when people didn’t just admit what they’re good at. But in Jake’s case, I always made exception because I honestly got the feeling that he didn’t realize his full potential. So I tried to reassure him without rolling my eyes too much.
“You can have whatever theory you want.” I could hear his goofy grin over the phone. “I know that it’s all Brenna Blixen magic. I’m just glad you had some sort of mental breakdown and decided to date me.”
“Jake.” I giggled. It was easy to dismiss all of his humble talk when he had such a good sense of humor about the whole thing.
“So, what’s up with tonight? It’s gonna be dressy like Thanksgiving was, right?”
He had worn his blue button down to Thanksgiving. And my birthday dinner. And every other occasion he had had to come to my house for. Jake’s wardrobe was depressingly small, but I had remedied that.
“Look under your bed.” I bounced up and down on my bed, excited despite the impending bad news that I knew I had to tell him sooner rather than later.
“What?” I heard him put the phone down and move around in his bland, boring little room. He picked the phone back up. “Bren, what is all this? How did you get it here?”
“I snuck it in my big purse. You know the one. You make fun of it all the time.” I smiled with pride. “Open your presents up.”
I heard him tear wrapping paper. “Wow. Um, these are from Banana Republic. That’s just a stupid amount of money to spend on clothes for me.”
“Jake. I love you in blue, but if I had to look at that button down one more time, I was going to rip it off of you.” I jumped up and ran my hand over the many, many gorgeous outfits hanging in my closet, and it was such a deeply satisfying feeling. I was well aware Jake probably didn’t feel it quite the same way, but there had to be some sense of happiness when he looked at his new clothes.
“Uh, you did. The last three times I wore it. I thought you were ripping it off of me because of how good I looked in it.”
“Shut up.” But I smiled from ear to ear. I loved that I found him so irresistible. “Do you like them? I kept the receipts, so you can take them back if you want.”
“No way. You have the better judgment in clothes and stuff. If you think I’m gonna look hot in this stuff, I’m wearing it. Not that you need any encouragement.”
“Haha.” I rolled my eyes. “At least you dropped the whole humble guy thing.”
“Well, I think you exaggerate about how smart and great I am. But as far as my hotness? There’s no debating that.” I heard him opening the packages. “You seriously just quadrupled my wardrobe.”
“Well, considering you had less than ten pieces of clothing in total, that wasn’t very hard to do.” I took a few pair of shoes out and assessed them. Shoes were always big space takers in luggage. As much as I loved going through my awesome clothes, I knew I needed to come out and tell Jake about Paris. But our conversation was so fun and sweet, I was greedy for a few more minutes.
“You spent a lot of money.” Now his voice had an edge of grumpiness to it.
“I made a killing at the last two Folly shows.” I designed shirts for a local band, Folly, and got a cut of the profits they made from the sales. It was only a small amount per shirt, but it added up quickly. Especially considering their fan base had been growing in the last few months after a couple of incredible shows.
“You should be saving that money. Aren’t you going to Ireland this summer?” he reminded me. “You’re going to need it, Brenna.”
