The Boyfriend Thief

CHAPTER 4





The Rose Castle pulsed with music and conversation when I arrived after school the next day. I pushed through the crowd, checking to see if Zac had beat me there. There was no sign of him, so I ordered a chocolate shake and then sat down at an empty table and pulled out my economics notebook.

I was so focused on jotting down ideas that I didn’t notice the person who had slid into the seat across from me until he spoke.

“Hello, Avery.”

I looked up, startled, into Elliott Reiser’s familiar blue eyes.

“What are you doing here?” I snapped.

“I saw you sitting alone and thought I’d come over to keep you company,” Elliott said. “You looked so lonely all by yourself.”

“Actually, I’m waiting for someone, so you’re free to get lost.”

“How about I stay until that someone gets here?” Elliott said, settling back into the seat and making it obvious he was in no hurry to leave.

“I’m really busy. Got this big economics project.” I tapped my notebook with my pen.

“Not too busy to ruin my life, as always,” Elliott said, leaning forward and cupping his hands over mine. He squeezed hard so I couldn’t pull away.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I know you talked to Molly about what you think is going on,” Elliott said. “And now she says I’m on some kind of probationary period.”

I shrugged. “Too bad.”

Elliott’s forehead creased into a scowl. “Despite what you think, I would never cheat on Molly.”

“I see how you are with Tara. All she has to do is be willing to kiss your scaly lips and you won’t say no.”

Elliott shot me a sly grin. “You know my lips are not scaly.”

I shuddered. “Ugh. Don’t flatter yourself. That was a mistake I intend to never repeat again.” I let the stony silence hang between us for a moment before continuing. “Now I’ll do anything necessary to protect Molly from you.”

“I would never hurt her.”

“Sure,” I said, feeling my legs starting to shake under the table. A lump in my throat choked me as I tried to swallow it back. “Like you would never hurt me because we were supposed to be best friends.”

Everything Elliott had said to me the day he and Hannah stopped being my friends echoed through my memory. We were almost thirteen years old and it was the beginning of summer, only a few days after seventh grade had ended. There, in Elliott’s parents’ basement across the street from my own house, he told me he would hate me forever and I deserved to spend the rest of my life sitting alone in my room with no friends. Hannah called me a lying sneak and threw her half of our “best friends forever” necklace back at me.

I gritted my teeth to keep my chin from quivering as I stared back across the table at Elliott.

A flicker of guilt flashed across his face. “Avery, I—”

“Sorry I’m late.”

Elliott and I looked up at Zac, who stood next to the table. He smiled at me and then shot a grimace at Elliott.

“Zac,” I said, relieved. He could have been my knight in shining armor, if I believed in that kind of thing. At least he gave me an excuse to get rid of Elliott. “Glad you could make it.”

Elliott’s scowl deepened as he studied Zac, from his messy brown hair to his dirty sneakers. Elliott was dressed, as usual, in a pressed polo shirt tucked neatly into his khakis. “Greeley,” he grunted in greeting.

“Reiser,” Zac responded. He pointed at the seat Elliott occupied and asked me, “This seat mine?”

“Yes,” I said. “Elliott is leaving now.”

Elliott glared at Zac a moment longer, but then he stood and turned back to me. “We’ll talk later, Avery. You can’t hide from me forever.”

Zac watched him leave with an amused expression on his face. “You and Elliott look like such good friends.”

I snorted. “Sure, we are. He’s my favorite person in the entire world and I’m sure he feels exactly the same way about me.”

Zac raised his eyebrows. “Want to talk about it?”

I shook my head. “Definitely not. Let’s start on this project.”

Zac pulled a notebook from his backpack and opened it on the table in front of him. “So I tried to come up with a few ideas for our business, but it’s a lot harder than I thought. All of my ideas are pretty lame.”

“Let’s trade lists.” I turned his notebook around so I could read the list he’d made and handed over mine. “These aren’t so bad. Photography studio is good. Wait, does that say ‘dude ranch’?”

“Yes, it does,” Zac said, grinning at me. “When I was a kid, I always wanted my own ranch. I figured this project would probably be the closest I’ll get to having one.”

I laughed, glad that Zac took my mind off my encounter with Elliott. “I don’t know anything at all about running a ranch, even an imaginary one.”

Zac shrugged as he looked through my list. “That’s okay. It’s supposed to be an adventure, right?” He paused a moment, then said, “Do you mind if we mark pet shop off your list? I, um, have a problem with birds. And I guess you can’t have a pet shop without birds.”

I scrunched up my nose as I studied him. “What do you mean you have a problem with birds?”

Zac sucked in a deep breath and then said, really fast, “Birds terrify me.”

He squirmed in his seat under my gaze, drumming his fingers on the tabletop as I absorbed this. Around us, the noise level in the room remained a steady din as people talked and ate.

“Birds,” I said, “terrify you?”

“Yeah. Like completely, absolutely scare the snot out of me.”

“Like, regular birds? That fly around outside?” I flapped my hands around in the imitation of wings.

“Don’t do that! Ugh.” The tips of his ears had turned a bit red. “I know it’s stupid, but I don’t like birds. With those wings flapping everywhere and those beaks waiting to peck my eyes out. And the claws.” He shuddered. “Don’t even get me started on the claws.”

This bird phobia hadn’t quite sunk in yet. I was having trouble coming to terms with this five foot ten, one hundred and eighty pound boy being terrified of tiny one pound birds.

“What do you do when you go outside?” I asked. “There are birds everywhere.”

“As long as they stay in their trees or flying way up in the sky I’m fine. But I don’t want them flying at me or anywhere within ten feet of my head. I don’t go to the beach. Have you seen seagulls? They swarm and I swear all that noise they make is them deciding how best to organize and attack my head.”

“Has a bird ever attacked you?”

Zac ducked his head and shrugged. “Well, no. But one did poop on me when I was six. Look, I don’t know why I hate birds, I just do. I always have. You can think I’m weird or crazy or whatever. I hate birds and that’s that. I can’t deal with them.”

“You do realize this is a hypothetical project,” I pointed out. “There won’t actually be birds involved, even if we do the pet shop as our business.”

“I can’t even deal with hypothetical birds!” Zac exclaimed, waving his arms around as if to shoo the imaginary birds away.

“Okay,” I told him, holding up my hands. “No hypothetical birds. No pet shop. I have an idea. Why don’t I go through your list and mark the ones I like best, and you go through mine and do the same? Then we’ll choose from the narrowed down options.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Zac said. He seemed much calmer now that I’d agreed to no imaginary birds.

We read through each other’s lists, marking off the ones we liked. Zac had a few silly ideas, but also a few good ones. Nothing really stuck out at me, but I was willing to compromise.

“Okay,” Zac said a few minutes later. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

We had nine ideas left from the lists.

“Oh,” I said when I saw the list Zac had marked, “you can get rid of that one.” I pointed to the line where I had written, “Matchmaking business.”

“It was a silly idea I had. I was jotting down anything that came into my mind, even the stupid ones. I don’t think it’s the best business idea.”

“Why not?” Zac asked, looking genuinely confused. “I think it’s great, the best idea on the list. It’s something the other teams aren’t likely to think of, so we won’t run the risk of having the same business as someone else in class. And there are people who are willing to pay a lot of money to find their true love.”

“I’m not sure Mr. Freeman will like it,” I said. “He’ll probably insist we choose a real business.”

“Matchmaking is a real business,” Zac insisted. “Haven’t you seen those commercials on TV? There are thousands of websites that exist solely to match people up. Hmm...Our business could be two components, online and in person for local customers. So we’d need a web programmer to handle the website and a couple of employees to help out with interviewing clients face-to-face. They could also help with managing the internet applications to save us some staffing expenses.”

And before I knew what was happening, Zac had flipped to a clean page in his notebook and started writing down all of the ideas pouring out of him. His hand flew across the page, but even at that speed, I doubted his pen could keep up with the flow of words coming out of his mouth.

“We’ll have to think of a name,” Zac said. “Something catchy, but not too cutesy. No offense, but I don’t do cutesy.”

“Zac,” I said, trying to break into his steady stream.

“Maybe A to Z Love Matches? For Avery and Zac? Oh! We could offer deals to in-person customers who also list their applications online. A promotion to help draw in-person customers. And we’ll definitely need advertising.”

I tried again. “Zac.”

Still, he didn’t seem to hear me. “Do you think we should limit to a certain age group? Like, should we focus on matching up teens? Or should we focus on the adults? Underage customers could pose more problems with safety and internet predators—”

“Zac!”

A few people from tables nearby turned to look at us after my outburst. Zac blinked at me.

“What?” he asked. “You don’t like it? It was your idea.”

I twisted the paper from my straw between my fingers. “I’m aware of that. But it was a joke. We can’t do a matchmaking business for our class project.”

“But it’s a good idea. It’ll be something different among all the clothing stores and restaurants the other teams are probably working on. And it’s a service that exists to make people happy. What could be wrong with it?”

“How about everything?” I asked. “Matchmaking is nothing but a scam. Any idiot can pair two people together based on similar interests or goals. Why would anyone pay for that?”

Zac shrugged. “People do pay for it, all the time. Not everyone has the alluring personality you do and can attract people from miles around to throw themselves at their feet.”

I tossed my straw paper across the table at him. “I’m serious. The whole matchmaking industry is a scam preying on lonely fools who think they need someone else to make their lives meaningful.”

“You can’t be that cynical about love already.” Zac tapped my knuckles with his pen. “You’re not even out of high school yet.”

“Relationships are a waste of time and energy. I didn’t get to be number one in our class by chasing after every cute guy who looks my way.”

“Are you calling me cute?” he asked with a wink.

I hated the flush that crept up my neck when he smiled. I needed to regain control of this conversation before Zac could see how flustered he had made me. I sat up, holding my shoulders back, and aligned my pencil on the tabletop evenly parallel with the edge of my notebook, restoring some small amount of order to the mess Zac had made of our booth. “You wish,” I told him.

Zac thumped my knuckles with his pen again, smiling as he tapped out the internal beat in his head on my skin. “No one is that disconnected from the rest of society. Everyone needs love and so...” He waved one hand in a big flourish toward our business notebook. “Tada! Everyone needs matchmakers.”

Tingles reverberated through my hand where he’d tapped. I clasped my other hand on top of it, rubbing hard to make the tingling go away. “Not everyone. I’m not naive enough to confuse scientific fact with these made up ideas of spiritual bonds.”

“Oh, really?” Zac laughed a bit as he leaned across the table, his face only inches from mine. “And what exactly does science tell you about love?”

He was so close I could see the golden flecks in his dark brown eyes. A barely visible mole rested under his left eye and light peach fuzz dotted his upper lip. I swallowed and recited the words that years of reading medical books had ingrained into my mind. “Love is a form of pleasure. Pleasure is caused by the release of endorphins. The things we believe make a person attractive are based on pheromones. You respond positively to someone whose pheromones are compatible with your own, making you think you’re falling in love. But it’s all in your head. Literally.”

Now Zac grinned wide and flicked his pen lightly across my nose. “You’re like a walking medical book. You have it all figured out, don’t you?” His dark eyes stared levelly at me and a small smile curled one corner of his lips, as if he knew what I’d say already and yet still didn’t believe me.

Not everything. I hadn’t even begun to figure him out.

“I know enough to keep myself from becoming easily fooled by simple biology.” I stared at him for a long time, silently daring him to argue or try to convince me otherwise. But he didn’t. He stared back, also silent, until the flush creeping up my face made me finally break our gaze.

I took a sip of my drink to wet my suddenly parched throat, then said, “I still say matchmaking is a scam, but if you think it’s a good idea, then whatever. It’s fine, as long as I get an A.”

My last hope was that Mr. Freeman would object to it and make us come up with something else.