The Boyfriend Thief

CHAPTER 9





When I pulled up in front of Greeley Lock & Key, a small brick building with a sign shaped like a house key hanging over the front door, I could see Zac inside through the big plate glass window. He stood behind the register, nodding his head and bouncing around as he hung keys on a giant pegboard on the wall. He danced in the space between the counter and the wall, spinning circles and doing crazy disco moves mixed with what looked like the Macarena, as if he didn’t care that anyone driving or walking by could see him.

I sat there in my car in front of the store for a long time, watching Zac dance around in his own little party inside his dad’s shop. It was hard enough forcing myself to do the Hot Diggity Shuffle a couple times a week, and yet here Zac was dancing as if he never wanted to stop. How could he dance so freely without worrying about being interrupted by someone walking in the front door? What would it be like to feel that carefree?

When I stepped inside Greeley Lock & Key, I had expected to be greeted with a blast of loud, fast-paced music from the way Zac still danced around the room. But instead, a tinkling of soft muzak met my ears.

The bell over the door chimed when I walked in and Zac turned toward me, still dancing away. He grinned wide and gestured toward the pegboard behind him.

“Hey,” he said. “Just doing a little work. Hanging new key blanks.”

I raised an eyebrow at him as he launched into the Running Man. “Do you always dance while you work?”

“Sure,” Zac panted. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“Only when someone insists on seeing the Hot Diggity Shuffle.”

Zac looked at me as if I were the crazy one. “You need to dance more often,” he said, pointing a key blank at me. “Come on, let’s see your moves.”

I shook my head. “No way.”

“Come on.” Zac moved from behind the counter and danced his way toward me. “A little disco, maybe?” He rocked his hips back and forth, pointing one hand toward the sky. “Or the Robot?” His arms and torso twisted around with stiff movements for a moment before he grinned at me again.

“How about homework?” I asked, tapping my bag. “Economics class, remember?”

“Oh, I see.” Zac nodded, a smug smile on his lips.

“What?”

He shrugged and returned the handful of key blanks to a box on the counter. “Nothing. Just that you can’t dance.”

“Just because I don’t want to dance doesn’t mean I can’t,” I snapped.

Zac hopped up onto the counter, kicking his legs back and forth. “Sure. All talk and no action.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, glaring at him. “I am not dancing here in your dad’s store to prove I can.”

“Then I stand by my statement that you can’t dance.”

The way he smiled at me made me furious. I took jazz classes for six years when I was a kid. I could dance. But I didn’t want to, even if doing so would wipe that stupid grin off his face.

I unzipped my bag and pulled out the business notebook. “We have a matchmaking business to run, remember?”

“Tell you what,” Zac said suddenly. “If we ace the economics project, you’ll dance for me. Deal?”

I snorted. “Yeah, right. And what are you going to do for me if we ace the project?”

“What do you want me to do? Teach you all my signature dance moves?” He launched into the Cabbage Patch, rolling his arms in wide circles.

“I’ll pass, thanks.” I leaned against the old, battered counter, next to dusty boxes of key chains and those magnetic key boxes you stick under your car to hide a spare key.

“Come on,” Zac said. “It’s not a fair trade if you don’t get something in return. What do you want me to do? Name your price.”

I should have said I wanted him to dump Hannah. A quick and easy end to this whole mess I’d gotten myself into. But I couldn’t. The words got lost somewhere between my head and my lips.

What came out instead was, “Teach me how to not be miserable.”

Where had that come from? I clamped my mouth shut, wishing I could pull the words back in and hoping maybe Zac hadn’t heard.

But he had. “No one can be miserable when they’re doing the Electric Slide.” He launched into a fast-paced rendition of the dance, sliding across the dingy floor and beckoning to me to join in.

I shook my head. “You have to ace the project before you’re getting me to dance.”

Zac’s shoulders drooped as he sighed. “The untalented always have plenty of excuses to keep from dancing in front of anyone.”

“Untalented?” I asked. “You’ve never seen me dance, so you can’t make an assumption of my skills.”

“Then let’s see your moves.”

My hands planted firmly on my hips, I scowled at him and said, “I’m not dancing for you. Especially not here in your dad’s store, where anyone could walk in and see me.”

“Okay, okay,” Zac relented. “Project first. Dancing later.”

We worked on our project for a long time, my hand trying desperately to keep up with all of the ideas flying out of Zac’s mouth as he spoke. Mr. Freeman had given us our first random event we had to deal with as a company: an unexpectedly large tax bill that was three weeks overdue. Zac’s ideas for making up the money ranged from setting up a speed dating event for which we’d charge tickets to a bikini car wash match up.

“That’s so sexist,” I told him. “A bunch of girls in bikinis, parading around with soap and water. Of course you’d come up with that idea. You are male.” I shot him a disgusted look.

“What if we made the guys wear Speedos?” Zac asked. “Equal opportunity skin flashing.”

I laughed at the idea of a bunch of guys from school voluntarily wearing tiny little Speedos. “Sure, if you can get teenage boys in Speedos, be my guest.”

Zac flicked my nose with his thumb. “Don’t forget your bikini then.”

“Oh, you’re so sure of yourself?” I asked, ignoring the heat exploding from the spot where Zac had touched my nose.

“The one thing I have never lacked,” Zac said, holding his shoulders back and his chin high, “is confidence in my abilities to convince anyone to do anything.” He paused, then added, “For the right amount of leverage. And girls in bikinis would otherwise be known as ‘leverage’ when dealing with teenage boys.”

I almost didn’t hear the sound of the bell over the front door tinkle as I laughed. We turned to find Mr. Greeley striding across the room, unloading a stack of papers from his front shirt pocket.

“Zac,” he said, glancing at me. “I didn’t realize you had company.”

“You remember Avery?” Zac asked. He tapped the books we had spread across the counter. “We’re working on our economics project.”

Mr. Greeley’s jaw was tight, but he nodded and gave me a polite smile. “Any customers tonight?” he asked.

Zac shook his head. “It’s been quiet.”

“Did you put away the new key blanks?”

“Most of them.”

Mr. Greeley raised his eyebrows. “Either you did it or you didn’t. I don’t pay you to stay here and goof off. If I wanted to waste years of hard work, I’d give in to the offers I’ve gotten and sell this old place.”

The muscles in Zac’s jaw twitched a little. “I’ll finish organizing them before I leave. We’ve been doing homework.”

Mr. Greeley frowned, but he said, “Good. I’ll be in the office, entering these receipts. If I’m not done by ten, you can go ahead home without me. Nice to see you again, Avery.”

The smile had barely spread across my face before Mr. Greeley turned and stepped into the office, closing the door behind him. He obviously wasn’t one for small talk. Zac stood at the counter, staring down at the books in front of him and absently tapping his fingers on the wood.

“So,” I said, trying to think of something to break the silence. My gaze fell on the key making machine along the wall. “Um, how does that work?”

Zac’s gaze followed where I pointed and he gave me a half-grin. “Want to learn?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Oh, no. I was just curious. Let’s get back to work.”

“Come on, it’s easy.” Zac took my hand in his and led me around the counter toward the rusty machine. “There are much newer models that do all the work for you, but my dad insists on keeping this old dinosaur around. He says you can’t really make an exact copy unless you can feel the grooves in the key. Let me see yours.”

I blinked at him. “See my what?”

“Your key.”

“Oh.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small keychain, which contained only two keys: my house key and my car key. Molly’s keychain had at least ten different keys on it, half of which she couldn’t remember what they went to.

“So we take your key,” Zac said, holding up my house key, “and clamp it into this side of the machine.” He twisted a knob on the left side, clamping my key between two metal pieces. “And then we take the key blank—” He grabbed one from the pegboard on the wall. “—and it goes on the right.” He clamped the key blank in place.

“Now, stand here in front of it, with one hand on this knob and the other over this switch,” he instructed. He gently led me into place in front of the machine, his hands over mine as he showed me what to do. He was so close I could feel the heat from his body radiating toward my back. His breath tickled my neck as he breathed out and I shivered slightly.

“What now?” I asked, my voice a little hoarse.

“Press this button.” He pressed my finger down over the switch and the machine roared to life. “Then with your other hand, you gently guide the slide back and forth.” I let him envelope my right hand in his as we moved the slide over the rotating blade that would cut a copy of the key. A few movements and it was done. Zac switched the machine off and stepped around me to unclamp the two keys.

Instantly, I could feel the absence of Zac’s body against mine. I stepped back, my head spinning dizzily and my hand tingling where he’d touched me.

He held up two keys, giving me that impish grin. “Now I have a key to your house. I could sneak in tonight and disturb your beauty sleep.”

I tried to shake off the remaining effects Zac’s closeness had on my mind and body. “Eight hours of sleep is crucial to a body that functions at peak efficiency,” I told him, laughing.

“A body that functions at peak efficiency?” Zac repeated. He made a face at me. “Are you sure you’re really sixteen? You sound like Einstein.”

“What would you prefer I say?” I made my voice high and giggly, twirling a lock of hair around one finger. “I, like, totally need tons of sleep or else I’m, like, a complete zombie.”

Zac stared at me for a moment before we both burst into laughter. “I don’t think that’s much of an improvement. How about being normal?”

“What’s normal?” I asked, moving past him to where our books were still spread out across the counter.

“I think I’m pretty normal,” Zac said. “And I get this way by existing on four hours of sleep and five bowls of Lucky Charms a day.”

I faked a gagging sound. “Do you know how much sugar is in that stuff?”

“Yes. Lots. It’s good.”

“You’re killing yourself.” I tilted my head to the side, examining him. “You don’t really get only four hours of sleep a day, do you?”

Zac shrugged. “Sometimes. Sometimes less. I told you, I don’t exactly sleep much. My brain is too wired.” He held his hands up on either side of his head, wiggling his fingers and making buzzing sounds, as if electricity were coming out of his skull.

“No one can exist on that little sleep,” I insisted.

“That’s what the five bowls of Lucky Charms are for.” Zac leaned against the counter as I packed up my things. “Any time of night you’re bored and have no one to talk to, I’m most likely still wide awake. It drives my mom crazy. A doctor prescribed me some sleeping pills once, but then I started sleepwalking. One night I made pancakes while I was still asleep. My mom found me eating half-cooked pancake batter and decided my not sleeping was safer than my sleep cooking.”

I slung my backpack over my shoulder. “There are rituals you can do to help get your body ready for bed. Like a warm bath and meditation. It could help settle your mind and ease you into sleep.”

Zac shook his head. “Tried it all. My mind is never calm. It wants to do like five billion things all at once, twenty-four hours a day.”

“You should try to find a way to get more sleep,” I told him. “It’s important to your well-being.”

“Thank you for caring about my well-being,” he said, with a grin.

I blushed and dropped my gaze to the floor. “I should go. I didn’t realize how late it was. I need to get my sleep so I can function fully tomorrow.”

Zac nodded. “Okay. Thanks for coming tonight.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks for teaching me how to make a key.”

Zac laughed as he tossed the extra key to me. “Now you’ll have a career to fall back on in case the doctor thing doesn’t work out. We could open our own locksmith shop together.”

“Let’s try to survive this matchmaking business first.”

“Deal,” Zac said. He pointed a finger at me. “Don’t forget. You owe me a dance.”

“We have to pass the project first,” I reminded him.

“Oh, we’ll pass,” Zac said. “I have full confidence in our business skills.”