Beware of Bad Boy

CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Taking joy in living is a woman’s best cosmetic.”

  -Rosalind Russell

  CALEB

  I woke up on the couch and remembered Gianna sleeping in my bed. Walking down the hallway, I half expected her to be gone. A peek through the cracked door showed me her sleeping form. She looked good in my bed, wearing pajama shorts and a tank top, with a sheet tangled in her legs. Even with her hair all messed up she was still the most beautiful girl I’d ever met.

  Pushing the door open, I ran in and jumped onto the bed. Simulating an earthquake, I yelled, “Wake up, princess! I’m bored and need your grouchiness to entertain me.” Her eyes snapped open in alarm, but when she saw me she scrambled upright to take a swing at me.

  “You scared me, Caleb!” She fought a grin while trying to appear mad.

  I dodged out of the way, laughing at her. “I’m hungry, make me some breakfast.”

  “Why don’t you make me some breakfast? I’m the guest here,” she grumbled, laying her head back on the pillow and pulling the sheet over her.

  “Fine, lazy, but get up and get ready. We’ve got things to do today. Do I always have to be the responsible one around here?” I joked, earning a glare.

  “I need to go home. My mom will be expecting me,” she argued.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of Julie. She loves me.”

  “She’s the only one,” she muttered under the sheet.

  “That’s not nice. I’m going to have to tell mom you’re being mean to me,” I threatened.

  Gianna threw the sheet off her head to shout, “She’s not your mom!”

  Thank god for that, I thought to myself. Otherwise I’d have been making out with my sister last night. About last night, what would she do if I kissed her now? Better not. I couldn’t mess around with her like that. I turned away, shutting temptation out.

  “I’ll go make breakfast. I hope you’re not counting calories ‘cause we’re eating pancakes.” While in the kitchen, I was determined not to think about Gianna naked in my shower.

  Thirty minutes later, I’d already eaten when Gianna came out of the bathroom dressed casually with her dark blonde hair still wet. “Go ahead and eat while I take a shower. I left a pen and paper on the table. Your homework for today is to write down all the things you’d do if there were no consequences.”

  “Why should I do that?” she asked belligerently.

  “Because I said so and I’m the boss.” It was that simple. Whether or not I’d actually rat her out to Julie, I didn’t know. If she didn’t do what I said, I’d decide then.

  “Whatever, go take your shower. You stink.”

  After my shower, I found Gianna sitting on the couch with an amused, self-satisfied look on her face. I sauntered over to the dining room table to read her list.

  1. Punch Caleb in the face.

  2. Steal Caleb’s car and go for a joy ride, which may involve crashing into a brick wall.

  3. Find a way to get Caleb expelled from my school, so he’ll have to live somewhere else.

  I glanced up at Gianna to take in the smug grin on her face. “What?” she asked innocently. I rolled my eyes at her and kept reading.

  4. Go tagging (that means spray painting your name in public places, white boy!)

  5. Get a tattoo

  6. Street dance downtown at the 16th Street Mall

  7. Quit cheerleading

  8. Go on a road trip to Vegas

  9. Punch Caleb again

  10. Ditch school

  11. Make new (real) friends at school

  12. Go out clubbing and get drunk off my ass

  13. And other things that are none of your god damn business!

  My eyes moved to Gianna again but she didn’t meet my eyes. “You better not make fun of me. You wanted the list, so there it is.” The list wasn’t particularly creative or adventurous in my book, but it was a start.

  “I wasn’t going to make fun of you. But before we’re done, I’ll find out what number thirteen means. I think I should be able to help you out with most of that. Of course, we won’t be doing anything to harm me or my car.” That was for sure.

  “What do you mean that you’ll be able to help me out? I can’t do those things. My mom would kill me, especially if I quit cheerleading. I think she’d rather me get a tattoo than quit cheerleading.” Her sour expression reminded me of Chance when my dad told him to do his homework the other day. Watching my dad parent another boy was odd for me. But I had to say, at that age I’d put up a much better fight than Chance.

  “Well, you don’t have a choice, remember? You do what I say, or I tell your mom your secrets.”

  “You have to be the most horrible stepbrother ever,” she said, as if it would hurt my feelings. I took that as a compliment. Not being devious would be boring.

  “Yep, time to go. I called your mom and already let her know you’ll be helping me at the downtown library with a school report. I told her we want me to get a good grade, so we’d be home late. We’ll take my car, because it’s cooler than yours.” With that, a reluctant Gianna and I left the apartment and trekked to where my car was parked.

  “Your car is not cooler than mine,” she commented while I backed out of my spot. “By the way, where are we going?”

  “We’re going to buy some spray paint.” Traffic was light late Sunday morning, so I maneuvered through the streets with ease.

  She gaped at me. “We can’t really go tagging! It’s the middle of the day! Do you want to get arrested?”

  “No, I definitely don’t want to get arrested again, so we’ll just have to be very careful.”

  “Again? Oh my god! You’ve actually been arrested? What the heck for?” I could tell she was both shocked and dying of curiosity. Hello? Juvenile delinquent here. Getting arrested was like a rite of passage. It was the second and third time around that wasn’t fun anymore.

  I smiled mysteriously at her just to rile her up. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  The nearest hardware store wasn’t really near at all, so it took some time to get there. When we found the spray paints, she picked out hot pink and aqua blue. I grabbed your basic black and white. There was beauty in simplicity, as my mom always said. Dante and I used to do this in middle school. Even though this was baby stuff, it brought back good memories.

  I hadn’t been to our favorite tagging spot for years. It was an industrial area full of warehouses and big ugly brick buildings. Since it was Sunday, there wouldn’t be many people around. We parked in a mostly empty lot and got out of the car to search for the right spot.

  Gianna was as nervous as a guy getting laid for the first time. I shook my head at her and grasped her from behind to whisper in her ear, “The police are after you, Gianna. They have a stakeout going on, just waiting for you to show up here with a can of spray paint.”

  She squirmed out of my arms. “Shut up, Caleb! Not all of us are okay with having a rap sheet. So, where are we doing this?” Along with her nervousness, I could also sense her excitement, like a guy having his first threesome.

  “How about around the back of that building?” I motioned to a warehouse which didn’t have any cars parked out front.

  We made our way around back and I shook her cans of paint, then mine. She had a look of concentration on her face while just staring at the wall. “Well, what are you waiting for?” I asked her.

  “I can’t decide what to write.”

  “If you want, I’ll pose nude for you and you can paint me,” I teased her.

  “And what if some poor old lady or little kid sees it? I think I’ll just write my name.” She began painting so I did too. Twenty minutes later, I heard her announce, “Done.”

  Backing up, I examined her work. She’d written Gigi in aqua blue with hot pink around it and underneath she’d wrote, DCK Breakin’ Crew. It was dripping in spots, but not bad.

  “What does DCK stand for?”

  “That’s the name of our crew, D
enver Cool Kids Breakin’ Crew. Jared came up with it.” Her cheeks were pink and it was obvious she had some idea of what would come out of my mouth next.

  “Figures that douche would come up with something so lame. Sounds like something that’d be on a Disney show.”

  “Well, we could change it, but we’ve had it since middle school. It’s what we’re already known as,” she said defensively. Jared was still a douche, even if he came up with the name when they were little kids.

  She stood back to look at what I’d painted to the right of her artwork. “You are such a pervert.”

  “Doesn’t make it any less true, princess,” I studied my handiwork. I liked it. I’d drawn an arrow pointing towards her name and words saying, She’s Hot For Me. I’d also signed my name in cursive at the bottom.

  Gianna tried to kick me in the shins, but I dodged her puny efforts. She was about to try again when a back door of the warehouse opened, about thirty feet from where we stood, and a middle-aged guy came out with a trash bag in each hand.

  He took one look at us then at the spray cans in our hands and yelled, “I’m calling the cops, you punks!” He dropped the trash and hurried in our direction, pulling a cell phone out of his pocket.

  “Run!” I told Gianna, already planning to come back later and snap a picture of our artwork. Poor girl was frozen in shock, so I yanked her by the arm to get her moving. I had to take the time to grab all of the cans of paint because the police did have my fingerprints on file. Of course, they’d have to go to the trouble of dusting for prints on paint cans. You’d think they’d have more important things to, like solve felonies.

  We ran all the way to my car and scrambled inside. Cautiously, I turned to Gianna, expecting to see her scared and in tears. Instead, a big grin stretched across her face and she appeared exhilarated.

  “Did you have fun?”

  Still wearing the grin, the words burst out, “Yes, I think almost getting caught made it more exciting! What are we going to do next?”

  I couldn’t help myself. She was so cute in all of her juvenile delinquent joy. I carefully captured her face and then her lips with my own. She was momentarily stunned, but kissed me back. A new warmth inside of me expanded. I drew back, relishing the sudden shyness in her eyes.

  “Now we go eat lunch then visit a friend of mine.”