“Whoa! Behind you!” a voice called above the whirring of bicycle wheels that turned to a squeal of mad braking.
Startled, I lost my balance, jostled the tripod, and only at the last second caught one of its legs before my camera could smash onto the asphalt. I wasn’t so lucky. My elbows broke my fall. I gasped in pain. Not that I cared, because a cloud scuttled across the sky. The fleeting light vanished. The colors of the Gum Wall muted. My knock-your-heart-open moment was gone.
“Are you kidding me?” I wailed in earsplitting frustration as I scrambled off the ground and checked my camera—thankfully, fine. My elbows, not so much. They burned. Even worse, the fall had ripped a hole in my favorite sweater, cashmere and scavenged for three bucks at a rummage sale.
“You okay?” asked the moment destroyer.
Only then did I lift my glare to a dark-haired boy with Mount Everest for a nose, jagged as if the bridge had been broken and haphazardly reset. Twice. I pointed the tripod accusingly at him. Everest was about to see some volcanic action. “You ruined my shot. Didn’t you see me?”
“I thought I had enough clearance, but then you… and your…” said the guy, waving at the general vicinity of my bottom.
“My what?”
“Well”—he cleared his throat and shifted on his mountain bike—“you got in my way.”
My eyebrows lifted. I got in his way?
He rubbed the side of his nose. “Can you take it now?”
I jabbed the tripod toward the cloud-filled sky. “The sun’s gone.”
“It’ll be back.”
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
“Not yet. I’m Quattro.”
Quattro, what kind of name was that? Then, I guessed, “Oh, the fourth.”
A startled look crossed his face as though he wasn’t used to girls with healthy gray matter. I smiled sweetly back at him. Hello, yes, welcome to my brain. With slightly narrowed eyes, Quattro inspected me as though he was recalibrating his first impression of me. I stared back at him. Mistake. He swung one leg over the bike, propping up the kickstand as if he’d been invited to stay.
I sighed. Here we go again. Why does the right trifecta of hair, height, and hamstrings give me the illusion of being more attractive than I am? It was more than a little annoying, especially after last night, when Brian Winston—senior at a rival high school and latest post-Dom conquest—lunged at me as if three dates qualified him for a free pass to my paradise. Sorry, despite my ever-changing stable of guys, I am virginal as fresh snow. Shocking, isn’t it? It was to Brian. And to Dom. And all the boys in between.
I quickly unscrewed my camera off the tripod, which should have been universal sign language for Sorry, but this chicky babe isn’t interested. But did Quattro catch the hint? No. He said, “I’m visiting UW. What do you think about it?”
This guy was harder to lose than a case of lice. But thanks to hot summers toiling at my family business, deploying pest control techniques on rats, wasps, bedbugs, and other vermin alongside my twin brothers and Dad, I knew exactly how to handle this situation.
I assessed Quattro with an expert and clinical eye: nearly my height, at just over five seven. Brown hair streaked with gold. The poor guy must have been color-blind. What other possible explanation could there have been for pairing purple shorts with red sneakers from Japan and an orange Polarfleece pullover? It was almost tragic how much he clashed. My eyes widened. The pullover hugged the lines of his V-shaped torso closely. Much too closely for an off-the-rack purchase.
“You didn’t actually have that tailored, did you?” I couldn’t help asking him, as I gestured at his chest. His barrel-shaped chest.
Quattro had the grace to flush as he plucked at the fabric. “Oh, this? Let’s just say my kid sister’s life goal is to be on Project Runway. She raids my closet for”—he made quote marks with his fingers—“‘practice.’ You should see what she’s done to some of my jeans.”
In spite of myself, I laughed and watched his eyes slide down to my mouth as I knew they would. I could practically hear my best friend, Reb, teasing me: Man magnet! Quattro was more appealing than I had first thought. Just as I was trying to decide whether to retort or retreat, the sun reappeared.
“Lo and behold,” said Quattro, his eyes gleaming with a decidedly self-satisfied look. The light illuminated his cheekbones, so chiseled Michelangelo might have used him as a model. I blinked, stunned.
Lo and behold, indeed.
Lifting the camera before the quirk in his lips could vanish, I zoomed in on hazel eyes that tilted at a beguiling angle that I hadn’t noticed either. Hazel eyes framed in criminally long lashes. Hazel eyes that were rapidly narrowing at me.
I snapped a few shots in quick succession.
“Hey, who said you could take my picture?” Quattro demanded before he wrenched around to face the wall.