Page 24 of Heartthrobs Don't Date Wallflowers
I wasn’t sure if the idea made me excited or want to throw up.
I stuffed my phone in my pocket and took a deep breath. I needed space from this. I couldn’t worry aboutit right now.
I took about five steps forward before I realized I had absolutely no idea where I was. I spun around in a circle, looking for some notable landmark but every street in this town looked exactly the same—just a bunch of houses. The only place that stood out to me was the Starbucks across the street. Maybe I could go sit in there for a minute and try to figure out exactly how I was going to get home, so I wasn’t standing on the street corner, looking completely lost.
It seemed like a great plan until I stepped inside and immediately made eye contact with the boy from the window.
AKA Zach. If I was going to keep running into him, I should probably learn his name.
He was standing across the Starbucks from me, at the counter where you get the drinks, but the Starbucks was so empty that there was nobody in between us. His lips quirked as he looked me over—probably remembering the window incident again—and my brain froze.
Fight or flight. Fight or flight.
Okay, I wasn’t sure this counted as a total “fight or flight” situation because I wasn’t actually in danger, but I still felt frozen in place, trying to decide what to do. It may not have been a life-threatening situation, but I was at risk of embarrassing myself so much that I could never show my face again, so maybe it did count.
I was leaning towards flight and just running out of the Starbucks without saying a word, but then I heard the words I’d been dreading: “Hey, Ivy!”
The voice wasn’t Zach’s but it wasn’t much better—it was Jude. With him, Sloane, and Megan being my only friends at my new school, I couldn’t really risk rebuffing him now. So, I mustered up all the strength I had in my body—which was not much—put on a smile and tore my eyes away from Zach to look at the boy who had appeared by his side.
“Hi, Jude,” I said as calmly as possible. I hoped he would just ask how I was then let me leave, but of course, he waved me over. I stepped forward slowly, feeling like my feet were cement blocks. Why didn’t I run the moment I saw Zach, before Jude noticed me?
“Lads, this is Ivy,” Jude announced to the whole group as I stepped up. This was the first time I’d seen any of them up close, but I recognized them all from the bonfires and my limited research on the band. The boy with a navy zip up and light brown hair was Finn. Brown curls and some band T-shirt that was notably not their band was Hudson, who I now knew was Megan’s boyfriend. And the blond boy beside him was Neil, the only Irish one in the group.
“Nice to meet you,” I strangled out.
“She’s new in town,” Jude added.
“Just like us,” Hudson said with a smile. “What part of town do you live in?”
What was with him and his girlfriend wanting to know where I lived? Were they planning on stalking me or something?
“Oh, you know…” I waved a hand, hoping they would take the vague answer for what it was.
But then Zach ruined it by going, “She lives next door to us.”
I wish I had a time machine so I could go back to the moment my dad announced his next job position was in Bibridge, so I could tell him to quit. Immediately.
If I did, then I would never have to know what it felt to have all five members of Take Five staring at me, and wondering if they’d noticed me watching them from the balcony.
They couldn’t know. I always sat in the dark. They wouldn’t be able to see me from down there.
I hoped.
“I just moved in,” I blurted. “A few days ago.”
A week and a half could be considered a few days, right?
“You should’ve come over and introduced yourself,” Hudson said.
Yeah, because whenever I moved to a new town, the first thing I always did was go introduce myself to the internationally-known boyband next door. Totally normal behavior.
“Oh, well I—” I was cut off from having to try to keep talking to them by a high-pitched scream from the doorway. I slapped a hand over my ear but the boys all looked completely unfazed.
“Take Five is in Starbucks!” The teen girl in the doorway screamed. She looked about my age, but she wasn’t wearing a Summerfield uniform, so she probably went to one of the public schools in the area—meaning she didn’t see them every day in class. I guess I could understand her excitement.
But the next thing I knew, girls were running down the street, heading straight for the door.
Oh no.
