Page 72 of Stealing for Keeps
There’s a beat where it seems like neither of us breathes. She’s waiting like she knows what I’m thinking and is curious if I’ll do it or not. Or maybe I’m misreading it, and she’s horrified and temporarily too stunned to move or speak.
I step back, putting some much needed distance between us. “Come on. We don’t want to be late.”
* * *
The lights are off in the school library. The windows on the back wall let in a smidge of light through the overcast skies.
“I think we’re late,” she says as I close us in, quietly shutting the door behind us.
“Nope. Right on time. Mrs. Finch is at a teacher meeting. We have the place all to ourselves.”
“I don’t even want to guess how you know that.”
“I have my ways,” I say, grinning. It wasn’t actuallythat hard. I have a study hour in here, and I overheard her talking with one of the other teachers about going out for drinks after the meeting.
“What are we doing here?” Claire asks, a hint of nervous laughter disrupting the silence. “Besides breaking and entering?”
“We didn’t break anything.” I wink, then pluck a book off a shelf at random and hand it to her. “And we’re here to read.”
“We’re reading?” She glances at the cover.
“Yeah. Books. Fiction. Nonfiction.” I wave around the rows and rows of books. Like everything at Frost Lake High, the library is big and well taken care of. It has that same musty smell that all libraries have though.
“I know how to read,” Claire says, putting the book back on the shelf.
“Good. Now when’s the last time you did it for fun?”
Her mouth opens, and her head tips side to side while she thinks. “A while. You?”
“Just yesterday. Wyatt and I are making our way through the Bad Guys series.”
“Never heard of it.” She grins.
“I’ll loan you the first book.”
Laughing again, she moves ahead of me, staring at the shelves. I follow behind, browsing her more than the titles. She stops and pulls one out, then turns to me. “Is this where you learned all your moves?”
It’s a biography about Coach Collins. The picture on the front is of a younger him when he was playing for Arsenal.
I snatch it from her. “No.Soccer for Dummies.”
“That one I do need to borrow,” she says, continuing on.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“I think you just did,” she says, glancing over her shoulder and hitting me with one of her sexy grins.
I choose my words carefully, not sure the best way to ask but wanting to know, even if it isn’t polite. “Why haven’t you gone back to skate? I know you can’t compete, but you could still do it for fun, right?”
She selects another book off the shelf and then faces me, clutching the hardcover to her chest. “I don’t know. I guess doing it without a goal or purpose feels weird. I liked competing. The nervous energy just before, the rush of adrenaline when the music starts…”
“How long have you been skating?”
“Since I was six. My mom signed me up on a whim, and I loved it. I begged her to let me take more and more classes until I was there every night after school. It’s all I ever wanted to do.” Her smile was dreamy as she spoke, but now it turns bittersweet. “Which I guess is why we’re here. I found a book. Now what?”
We sit on the floor in the very last row, our backs against opposite shelves and our legs sprawled out in front of us, knees touching. She has a fantasy book, and I have the Coach Collins biography.
The only sound is the occasional flip of the page, mostly by her. I’d usually be happy to learn more about my favorite soccer player of all time, but in this case, it comes at the expense of watching Claire.
