Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 8

after you this year while you tell me I am too young, and that you don't want to start something just to leave next year."
    Rachelle crowed with laughter. "Oh, that's good, Hinata. We can get together at the end of the year when your charms finally wear me down, you can take me to prom, and then next year you can be heart-broken because I've left you behind!"
    Hinata's smile firmed, becoming more an actual expression of his inner feelings. Rachelle cracked up again. Caroline laughed, and then one by one all the other girls joined in. In the midst of their hilarity, Hinata felt a prickling sensation on the back of his neck. The pressure, like callused fingers brushing just below where the ends of his ponytail feathered against his skin, sent a shudder through him.
    Turning to find the source of the touch, Hinata was captured by the dark blue eyes of the very boy he'd been enquiring about. Sound faded away, and the rest of the world stood still around him. Something hot and urgent flashed between them, and Hinata pressed a shaking hand against the place burning low in his belly. He took a half step forward.
    "Hinata. No. Your mother would ruin him. His father works for one of her companies." Hinata jerked against the hand on his arm. He broke the connection to the blue-eyed godling across the hallway to stare down at the small, neatly manicured hand wrapped around his bicep.
    "What?" He raised his eyes to Caroline's.
    "His father just got a job at Kenkyusha Electronics. He was talking about it in English class. We had to read an essay aloud, something about a person we looked up to. He wrote about his father. How proud he was that his daddy got a good job with Kenkyusha Electronics, and how his daddy planned for him to be the first Jenkins to ever go to college."
    She turned him, shaking him lightly. "He told us all about living in the hills, and how no one in his family had ever had a chance like this. Hinata. Your mother would crush him."
    Hinata swallowed thickly. "Is he still there?"
    Rachelle shook her head. "No, he's walking down the hall. Don't look though. He… Christ, one day I want a boy to look at me like that. Don't look Hinata. I don't think he'd be able to resist if you gave him even the littlest bit of encouragement."
    Hinata fixed his gaze on Rachelle's. His breath burned in his lungs. He whispered fiercely to the older girl. "Smack me."
    Rachelle's eyes widened as her mouth dropped open. Hinata lowered his lashes. "Please Rachelle."
    Crack
    Hinata opened his eyes, whispering two more words to his best friend before he fled the group of girls in whose company he spent every school day. "Thank you." He ran with his hand pressed to the swiftly reddening hand-print on his cheek. He very carefully made sure to turn his feet in the opposite direction from the tall blond boy.
    As he moved farther and farther away, he heard Rachelle explaining the smack to the girls angrily squawking at her. "This way his mother will get a report that he tried to get fresh with me, and that I— like a good girl— would not allow it. Then when we start 'dating' at the end of the year, she won't object." Hinata could imagine her one shouldered shrug, as well as the looks of relief most likely flooding the other girls' faces. Only Caroline would be disbelieving, and she would wait to talk to him privately. He made for the single occupancy bathroom next to the principal's office which he'd been granted use of last year. He didn't really need it any more, not since Rachelle and Caroline had taken him into their Posse, but at times like these, when he felt too shaky to face the world, the solitude behind that locked door called to him.
    Hinata made it to the bathroom, and managed to flip the lock to the engaged position before the blurriness at the edges of his eyes became streams of hot, salty water streaming down his face. He would buy Rachelle the pretty earrings she'd saved for all summer. He would not have gotten away from the others in time if she had not understood, and helped him.
    CHAPTER 3
    Peter watched the girl from his remedial English class walk up to a chattering group of girls standing just outside the open doors to the courtyard. He winced slightly, hating to say the word remedial , even if only in his mind. The English literature class was only remedial because of his being an upperclassman. For everyone else in the class it was normal sophomore English. The girl's name was Caroline, which reminded Peter of his