In fact, I was desperately trying to ignore the electric current of heat pulsing through my veins.
"Yeah, I was really looking forward to going to Royce with my buddies and the lads from the club," he explained. "Christ, I was fuming with my folks when they pulled me out and enrolled me at Tommen." He let out a small laugh, then said, "Six years later and I'm still pissed about it."
"Well, you seem to be doing okay for yourself here," I offered, unsure of what to say. "You have lots of friends, and you're still playing rugby and stuff."
"And stuff," Johnny chuckled, highly amused by my words. He studied my face for a long beat before asking, "Do you dance?"
"No, why would you ask that?"
"I don’t know." Johnny shrugged. "Some girls dance instead of playing sports." His eyes trailed over me for a brief moment before returning to my face. "You look like you could be one of those–" he waved a hand around, obviously searching for a word, before finishing with, "You know, one of those tutu dancers."
My eyes widened. "You think I look like a ballerina?"
He nodded and a laugh tore from my lips.
"What?" He grinned sheepishly. "You're small," he motioned to my body with his hand before adding, "it's not that far of a stretch of the imagination."
"Well, I'm not a ballerina," I laughed. "Or any other dancer, for that matter. I'm just stunted."
Johnny cocked an amused brow. "Stunted?"
"Have you seen me?" I gestured to myself. "I'm fifteen, barely five feet, and I weigh like 85 pounds."
"You're six stone?" he breathed, eyes widening in disbelief.
Meanwhile, my eyes widened in disbelief at how fast he was able to convert pounds to stones.
Whoa.
"Jaysus, I bench twice what you weigh in the gym." Johnny looked me over before asking, "Are you seriously only five feet?"
"If I stand really straight, I am."
"Christ, I'm 6'3." He shook his head. "You're so small."
"Exactly." I pulled a face. "Stunted."
"Jaysus, no wonder you folded like a lawn chair when the ball hit you," Johnny muttered, rubbing his jaw again as his eyes traveled over me. "I could have broken you in half."
"That's one way to put it," I replied, scrunching my nose up at the analogy.
"Is your mother still raging with me?"
"My mother?"
"Yeah." He nodded. "She looked like she was two seconds away from ripping my head off that day."
"My mother just got a fright," I mumbled. "She saw that I was hurt and jumped to the first conclusion."
"And the first conclusion was that I battered you?"
I shrugged uncomfortably but gave nothing away. "It happens."
"Not from me, it doesn’t," he pointed out, tone a little thicker now, eyes locked on mine. "Never from me."
"Hey now, don’t be so quick to deny." I attempted humor. "I just witnessed you threaten to cut off Ronan's penis."
"That little eejit doesn’t count," was his grunted response. "I can't fucking stand that kid, but his uncle's the school trainer so I have no choice than to tolerate him. He's always pushing my buttons and acting out on the pitch, pulling reckless stunts, and causing unnecessary drama. It's like babysitting a fucking toddler during matches. I swear, it's a daily test to my self-restraint not to throttle the little bollox."
I smirked. "So, you're not friends then?"
Johnny scoffed at the notion. "Definitely not friends."
"Well, he's still young," I offered optimistically. "So maybe he'll mature with time."
"Like you?"
"Huh?"
"I mean you're in the same year as him," he hurried to explain. "But you don’t act like you're fifteen."
"I don’t?"
He shook his head. "You come across as a lot older."
"That's because I'm a ninety-year-old woman disguised as a teenager," I quipped.
"That's…" Johnny scrunched his nose up. "A disturbing concept."
"Yep," I mumbled, embarrassed at my crappy banter. "It is."
"So, what do you do?" he surprised me by asking.
"What do I do?" I'd been half-expecting him to end the conversation there.
"Yeah." He nodded encouragingly. "In your free time."
I paused and thought about his question. "I don’t really do anything," I finally said. "I guess I watch television and listen to music in my free time – oh, and I read a lot." Shrugging, I added, "As you can tell, I'm not very interesting."
Johnny tilted his head to one side, studying me with intense, blue eyes. "What types of books?"
"Autobiographies. Fiction. Crime. Thrillers. Romance." I sighed, thinking of the pile of books in my room. "I'm not picky about genres. I just have to like the blurb. If the back of the book can suck me in, then I'm sold."
Johnny watched me while I spoke, his gaze intense and searching.
"You're a reader," he finally said.
It wasn’t a question, it sounded more like he was banking that piece of information away in his mind.
"That's really good."
"Do you read?" I asked him.
He grimaced. "Not as much as I should."
"So, not at all?" I teased.
"Honestly, no," he admitted with a lopsided grin. Shifting closer, he said, "The last book I read that wasn’t school ordered was about Chicken Licken and the sky falling down on all the little talking animals – do you know the one?"
"Yeah," I snickered, thinking about Johnny reading children's fairy-tale stories. "I've read that one a couple of times to Sean."
"Sean?"
"My youngest brother," I explained. "The three-year-old."
"You shouldn’t, " Johnny warned, suppressing a shudder. "That book scared the bejesus out of me. I haven't read for fun since."
My mouth fell open. "Are you being serious right now?"
"Hell fucking yes, I'm being serious," Johnny shot back, looking comically wounded. "I was only small. It was one of those read it yourself books with the pictures in place for words and all that shite. They should have rated it PG because I swear to god, I genuinely believed the whole fucking sky was going to cave in on me." He shook his head at the memory. "I slept under – rather than on – my bed for three fucking weeks until my Da finally caved and moved me into one of the bedrooms downstairs."
"Why?" I laughed loudly. "What good was moving downstairs going to do if the sky was falling?"
Johnny grinned and his dimples deepened in his cheeks.
"Ah, see," he chuckled, tapping his head with his forefinger. "In my na?ve, six-year-old mind, I was thinking that if the sky did in fact fall, it might break the roof, but it couldn’t possibly break the downstairs ceiling too. I'd have a better chance of surviving on the ground level."
"You were a clever, little fella, weren't you?"
"I was something alright," Johnny replied, laughing along with me. "A bleeding eejit."
"Wow," I snickered between fits of laughter. "That's survival at its finest."
He gave me a wolfish grin. "Original boy scout right here."
"Were you in the boy scouts?"
"Like fuck I was," Johnny shot back, laughing harder now. "I was messing." His eyes danced with amusement. "Why? Were you in the Brownies?"
"Ah, definitely not." I shook my head, stifling a giggle. "My survival skills are terrible."
Johnny's voice was a little deeper when he said, "I don’t know about that."
His expression shifted then, growing more intense.
Unable to take the heat, I turned my face away and glanced at the clock on the dashboard.
It read 8:25.
God, how long had we been sitting here talking?
"Tell me something," Johnny distracted me by saying. He was still smiling, and his eyes were warm, his tone soft, when he asked, "Why'd you transfer to Tommen?"
His question caught me off guard.
"I, uh –" clasping my hands together, I cracked my knuckles and exhaled a heavy sigh, "I needed a change."
"A change?" He arched a disbelieving brow. "Halfway through your junior cert?"
"It's complicated and sort of private…" my voice trailed off, and I turned my face to look out my window, though all I could see was darkness outside.
I wasn’t comfortable with the direction this conversation had taken.
Every time I thought about my old school, a fresh batch of terror enveloped me.