Free Heartbreaker Hanson by Melanie Marks Page A

attention, like he used to always give her, not just on her
birthday, but always. It had been a while since he did that though, so I could
see why it would make her so happy and relieved to get it now. (Sad, right?)
    “You
look good too.” Laurie smiled enthusiastically, “Did you bring Ethan?”
    Drew’s
eyes sparked with interest again.
    Heat
shot through me.
    “Uh,
no. I um, didn’t get a chance,” I hedged/lied. Then I dodged, “Excuse me, I’m
going to go see if your mom needs any help in the kitchen.”
    Not
going to lie, I had actually thought about inviting Ethan to the party. It had
been pathetically tempting to do it—so I wouldn’t have to be single the
whole night while I endured watching the pair together, kiss and snuggle and
dreamily stare into each other’s eyes. (Ouch!) But in the end I decided against
inviting Ethan, since I just wanted him at the party just to have someone to
pal around with, but I was afraid now that he was getting the wrong idea about
us, and might take the invitation the wrong way. I was already afraid I’d
caused a problem about that, and squirmed feeling I needed to be carful not to
lead him on in any way—at least not any more than I may have already … which Rider had indicated I was
doing—Rider with his smirk, and knowing gleam in his eyes. Rider that had
made my heart pound with his astute and astonishing awareness of me and my
life.
    I
quickly shook my head, trying to shake away all thoughts of Rider. The dude was
a player, and very bad for my heart.
    But
then again, so was Drew.
    So,
I spent most of the night in the kitchen—hiding/helping—but every
once in a while Laurie would drag me out to the party to mingle. There was this
guy—Wade—from my math class. He conveniently became my Ethan for
the night. Sort of. He kind of followed me around, chatting the whole night. I
didn’t mind. At all. Was eternally grateful, actually.
    “Who’s
that guy glued to you tonight?” my friend Kim asked me. “He’s really cute.”
    I
smiled. Kim is boy crazy, though too shy to actually talk to a boy. But she talks about them a lot.
    “His
name is Wade,” I said.
    Conveniently,
Wade came smiling up to me at that moment offering me a soda. So I played cupid
and said, “Hey Wade, this is Kim’s favorite song, go dance with her.”
    I’m
not usually so bossy. But with some boys you can be—Wade’s one of those
boys. Wags his tail to please you.
    I
really hoped Kim and him would hit it off—though I’d sorely miss my
companion for the night, that’s for sure.
    But
after the dance, Wade was back on my heels, so I let him be, since Kim had
moved on to drool over some baseball player.
    “I’ll
get that for you,” Wade said as I tried to grab a discarded root beer bottle
that someone had placed in the hanging lap over the kitchen table.
    He
smiled playfully once he got it. “We could play spin the bottle,” he grinned,
raising his eyebrows.
    I
laughed—hoping he was kidding.
    For
the rest of the night, Wade helped me as I did kitchen duty. I just assigned
myself to it because I felt uncomfortable all night whenever I left the kitchen.
Mostly on account of Kenny Hatchet. He would never take his eyes off me while I
was in his view. At least that’s what it seemed like to me, but of course I
could have been overreacting. It’s just the guy gave me the creeps. Not that he
was super ugly, because he wasn’t. He had big, pretty eyes. But he wore his
hair long and it was always flopping in his eyes, and he was always staring. Okay,
I guess it was only that he stared that bothered me, but it bothered me a lot.
I didn’t know the guy personally, he had never spoke a word to me, which was
weird in itself, since he had been spending a lot of time at our house practicing
with the band—well, until I told Nick not to let him in.
    Kenny
was a good drummer though. I had to admit, he added a lot to the band. He broke
out in a solo and I was amazed just how good he actually