A hot blast of pepperoni-laden air rolled over Avra as Stavro’s Pizza kitchen door swung shut. She inched ahead in line for a table with her family.

“Yep, me and the idiot sisters are eatin’ fine tonight.”

She swiveled—that voice.

The guy from Humanities 301 thumbed through change he pulled from the pocket of his cut-offs. Cisco. And she didn’t shower and change after soccer practice—why?

Her brother’s elbow knocked into her. “It’s gotta be meat lovers,” Drew’s stuck-in-puberty voice rasped.

Cisco glanced in her direction. Her gaze skittered back to her brother. Please, God, tell me Cisco didn’t just catch me staring at him!

Her attention drifted to Cisco’s corkscrew curls that brushed the shoulders of his ancient Whitey’s Bait & Tackle—Size Counts T-shirt. The girl behind the register tracked Cisco from under dark lashes like she was having a conversation with the back of his head.

“I want ham and pineapple.” Her brother, Kurt, shot an I’m-slumming-in-Stavro’s-with-my-family look at a couple of girls behind them.

“Veggie,” Avra said, distracted by Cisco’s gaze on her. “Let’s get three.”

Cisco’s forehead crinkled like he was trying to remember where he’d seen her.

Avra feigned fascination with the Best Pizza in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, plaques on the wall. She frowned at the reflection in the window of her droopy ponytail and unisex soccer uniform. Beside her reflection in the glass, the counter girl wore her Stavro’s polo as a second skin. What was the use? Avra turned toward her family.

Mom eyed them. “We’re celebrating Kurt’s first day of college, the beginning of Avra’s junior year, not graduation—”

Drew huffed. “What about my senior year of high school?”

Mom dropped her gaze from the illuminated menu on the wall. “We’ll get two large pepperonis.”

The girl bit a hangnail and watched Cisco. The gummy corners of “Isabel” curled off her red plastic badge. Overhead, a cardboard pizza twirled in the draft from the air conditioning vent. Isabel blinked at her customer and scrawled the order on a guest check.

Dad threaded an arm around Mom’s waist. “And spicy cheddar cheese poppers.” He batted his eyes through his glasses at Mom and made her laugh. They melted against each other and glided toward the empty bench talking in quiet voices.

I want a guy who will love me like that―forever.

She looked at her brothers. “When I’m married, my kids will have whatever kind of pizza they want. And I’ll bake cookies―”

Drew’s blue eyes brightened in his freckle-spattered face. “Make some chocolate chips tonight.”

Kurt shot her an evil grin. “Who’d marry you, Avra? Morgan?”

“Puleeese.” Avra made a gagging noise. She caught Cisco’s smirk out of the corner of her eye and stopped, mid-gag. Warmth crept into her face. Oh, great. Cisco and everyone in Stavro’s was going to see her face go apple-red under the track lights.

Cisco’s smirk widened into a smile. “I can’t remember the last time I had really good entertainment in the pizza line.”

Metal scraped across metal in the kitchen, and she looked toward the swinging stainless steel doors. Isabel gave her the L.O.D., as Kurt called it. The look of death.

She narrowed her eyes at Isabel. Trust me, sister, humiliating yourself in public is not the kind of attention you want. Look at me. Look at you. Which one of us is likely to get the guy? It’s not rocket science.

“Hey, what about baking cookies tonight?” Drew croaked.

Cisco pushed off the partition separating the counter area from the dining room and joined them. “That’s what I’m talking about! My half-price-plus-a-buck specials sounded pretty good till I heard you guys discussing homemade cookies.”

The corners of Avra’s mouth turned up. Dark hair curled on Cisco’s bare ankles above the loose laces of his tennis shoes. Her stomach quivered like it did when the soccer ball hurtled toward her. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, and turned away with a flutter of her hand. She shrank into herself—the result of being too tall for too many years. Just disappear. That’s what she was good at.

Cisco nudged her shoulder with his. “Thanks again for the show.”

She eyed his shoulder, even with hers. “Sure, Cisco, anytime.”

Cisco jutted his chin at her. “The lady knows my name.”

Heat swept back to her face. Isabel’s L.O.D. burned into her.

Cisco winked. “See you in Humanities Wednesday—Avra.” He pushed out the door, pizza boxes balanced in one hand over his shoulder. A two liter Orange Crush dangled from in his other hand.

Breathe, Avra. It was just a wink. But he knew her name.

Isabel’s gaze raked over her as though she were a palmetto bug. She tossed a boxed pizza onto the counter in front of a man in a rumpled three-piece-suit. Isabel must have been all of five-three, but in some weird way, she made Avra feel small.

Avra trailed Kurt’s faded Ron Jon Surf Shop T-shirt toward the corner table where her parents sat. She would be translucent again by Wednesday, a blur guys look through but never see. This is what she prayed for when she hit five-eleven in the fifth grade.

She scooted across the vinyl bench after Kurt shooting a glance at the door where Cisco had disappeared. Her hand touched the shoulder Cisco had bumped—like anything would ever come of it.

#

Cisco swung the Orange Crush beside him. His sisters would get into a brawl about the soda. How was he supposed to remember who liked what? If tuition wasn’t killing him, he’d be out of there.

A sea breeze rustled the moss-draped oaks overhead. He thought about Avra’s family in Big Tony’s who could have stepped out of Gibson’s Photography window. Their banter had splashed over him, making him thirsty for more.

Families intrigued him—not his, with Mamá cleaning schools three to eleven, Pop living on The Escape tied up behind the city marina. His kid sisters screeched at each other all day like it mattered. No, happy families interested Cisco.

He cracked open the pizza boxes in the twilight to make sure Big Tony got the order right.

His mind drifted to this morning’s class. Avra had smirked into her Humanities book without looking up when Mr. Smythe-Rollings called him “Mr. Carter” instead of Cisco. His lips curled into a smile at the memory. She was the kind of girl who blended on campus. But when you really looked at her, she was a treat—a sloppy-soft ponytail the color of caramels; ocean blue eyes; and long, toned legs beneath the soccer shorts.

He cut across the dirt yard to his front door thinking about homemade cookies, a house with two parents, and siblings that didn’t cuss each other in two languages.

He tripped on the jagged front step. What was he going to do about Isabel?

#

Jesse stood in the sand lot behind the liquor store—best free parking near Ocean U.—and locked the door of his Dodge Neon. He fanned his shirt away from his body in the muggy morning.

Someone lay on a horn. Jesse’s head popped up.

Cisco darted around the fan palms on the far side of the lot in his Geo Prism as if they were florescent cones. Jesse shook his head. Only Cisco could make that piece of junk look cool.

Cisco cut his engine and coasted to a stop through the grass that grew in fits and starts along the building. A cloud of dust poofed at his feet when Cisco hopped out in front of him.

Jesse grinned. “Hey, Bro.”

Cisco bumped knuckles with him. “My man. Where you been all summer?” Through the open window, Cisco snatched his backpack from the passenger seat, and they headed for campus.

“I’ve been nowhere at all—the whole stinking summer. You?”

Cisco beat his chest. “At the beach all day, every day!” He stretched lazily. “It’s the life!”

Jesse stretched his grin wider. “Still changing oil at Walmart, huh?”

Cisco grimaced. “Old man lock you up in the church all summer?”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it—mowing, clipping, swabbing down the decks—cold cash for college.” Just once he’d like to hit the beach. Dad would go ballistic, spewing fire like a dragon—a sermon and a half on the sins of the flesh—gaining steam as he went. “Tunes, man. Wrote tunes all summer.”

A city bus pulled up to the curb as they walked by.

Cisco nudged him. “You know that girl, the one on the left?”

“Sure, like forever. Avra Martin—I got a pack of A’s from working on group projects with her. Why?”

Cisco headed toward the gym. “Met her in Big Tony’s last night.”

“And—”

“That’s all.”

He narrowed his eyes at Cisco. “Yeah, right.” He leaned against the sun-warmed bricks on the south wall of the gym.

The undergrad girls headed toward them, their soft roundness barely camouflaged in store-starched clothes. He rapped on Cisco’s chest with his knuckles. “Look alive!”

“All right!” Cisco fended his back off the wall and rubbed his hands together. “Come to Papa.” He wiggled his eyebrows.

Jesse laughed. He missed Cisco’s humor, the hero-worship in the younger girls’ eyes. This was living. The girls’ breathless chatter, their short shorts, captivated him.

Billy stepped into the group, hit knuckles with Jesse, then Cisco. The girls giggled. Billy’s shower-damp hair curled on top of his six-foot frame. His cheeks glowed pink as if he’d taken sandpaper to his acne.

The crowd swelled beyond Jesse’s group. Students brimmed over the balcony of the Volusia science building, shouting to friends below. Others milled on the grass, squinting into the sun. Some guys tossed a Frisbee around. A peal of laughter erupted from the Alpha Delta Pis.

Ah, Sleeping Beauty Kallie. Jesse shot a smile at the girl wedged on the wrong end of the A D Pi bench. Her face was pale, her body rigid. Her gaze clamped on his like a lifeline in a sea of unfamiliarity. If she was trying to disappear, she failed―in those traffic-cone-orange jeans and green Converses. But she looked smokin’ hot just the same.

The Sigma Nus camped around the A D Pis. Jesse frowned. Frat boys. He nodded at Kallie and settled his gaze back on the faces in his circle. “It was so boring in New Smyrna Beach this summer . . .”

Cisco, Billy, and the girls glanced curiously at the A D Pi bench and back at Jesse.

He ignored their curiosity. “. . . that the Beach Gazette ran a half-page article on mosquitoes . . .”

When Jesse’s crew scattered for their classes, he shot a glance at Kallie’s cascade of straight blonde hair that slipped over her shoulders like silk. She didn’t look his way. She clenched a salmon-colored class schedule in her hand. He should welcome her to OU, but he hadn’t recovered from meeting her last Thursday. In three minutes, she’d slipped into his soul.

#

Someone jostled into Avra as she funneled through the doorway after Humanities. She pushed a tress of hair behind her ear and looked up. Cisco. Oh, great. He was going to think she ran into him on purpose. “Sorry.” Feeling the heat rush to her face, she ducked her head.

“Make cookies the other night?” Cisco asked as they pressed into the hall and melded with the stream of students.

She resisted the urge to look around to see if he was talking to her. They walked in step, shoulder to shoulder. “Yeah.”

“Chocolate chip?”

She nodded. The hottest guy in Humanities 301 was making polite with her. What was wrong with this picture?

“Quite the conversationalist, aren’t you?”

She shrugged. She wasn’t practiced up on small talk.

“Have it your way.” He held the glass door open for her. “Next time you bake cookies, invite me over.”

Her eyes popped open like Garfield’s Odie. Her mind whirled. He was kidding, right? “You don’t know where I live.” That was inane.

“If you invited me,” Cisco said in a singsong voice, “you could tell me your address.”

She laughed. “We’ll see.” She shuffled away in a fog. Maybe there was something to “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” Who’d a thunk it? She should have tied a chocolate chip cookie around her neck eons ago.

She glanced back over her shoulder. Cisco’s dark curls, bleached white in the sun, bobbed away with the current of students flowing toward Atlantic Math Building. I guess he remembered me.

#

Cisco threaded through the flotsam of students toward the math building. We’ll see? I don’t think so, Avra Martin. He didn’t get maybes, only yeses. The girl had family, cookies, and legs you’d have to be in a coma not to appreciate. He bet a lot went on under those blue eyes of hers. Suddenly, he wanted to find out.

 
Chapter 2

 

Avra chewed on the end of her pencil, the metallic wood taste on her tongue. Across the aisle, Kallie Logan’s green Converse bobbed time to the scritch-scritch of Professor Martinez’ dry erase marker against the whiteboard. Blonde hair that must have spent serious time with a straightener spilled over Kallie’s shoulders nearly to her waist.

Kallie’s elbow slipped and her calculus notes swished to the floor. Her chair creaked as she bent to retrieve the sheets, swiveling the heads of every male within ten feet.

Avra checked her answer against the one on the board. Correct, as she expected.

Why did Kallie have to be in Avra’s direct line of vision three times a week? And why did the girl pick her to chat up before class? This morning Kallie said she transferred from the University of Miami—a good fifteen steps up the college food chain from Ocean Community College.

Maybe Avra should move to a new town to drum up some male attention. Like that would happen. Dad said her stick-straight hair and high cheek bones gave her classic beauty, that she was the only one who noticed her acne. But dads were supposed to say things like that. Of course, Morgan had followed her around for as long as she could remember. But that eyedropper of male attention was it for the two decades she’d been alive.

She was over the whole elvin invisibility cloak she prayed for in elementary school. You can pull it back now. Puleeese. She stomped her foot under her desk.

The girl with purple hair in the next desk shot her a sideways glance.

Avra shook her foot as though it had gone to sleep.

A snippet of Sunday’s sermon flitted through her mind—love your enemies, pray for them. She rolled her eyes.

Avra took a deep breath. Okay, she’d pray for Kallie Logan Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays when she got to calc. God knew the prayer was more about her than Kallie. So, would you work on my jealousy—maybe make me content? And for Kallie—I don’t know—whatever she needs. But she doubted a girl like Kallie needed anything.

Avra slumped in her seat. God either would or wouldn’t take away her jealousy. It was up to him.

#

Avra wiped the flour off her hands onto her soccer shorts. “I don’t know what the big deal is about cookies. If you can read, you can bake. You could do this at your place.” Stress made her irritable. And Cisco standing in her kitchen was the definition of stress. Why was he here anyway?

Cisco held the cookbook in one hand and waved the other at her. “What? Are you kicking me out?” His mop of sun-bleached ringlets bounced as he moved. “First you invite me, then you uninvite me.”

She smiled for the first time since he got there. “You invited yourself.”

“Yeah, well . . .”

She cocked her head at him. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you invite yourself over?” she said.

“Two cups brown sugar.”

“Okay, okay.” She reached for the sugar canister. “Answer my question.”

“Cookies.”

“What? You don’t have an oven?”

“Yeah, I got an oven.” He pressed his lips together. “But no can do. Idiot sisters. Kitchen trashed twenty-four seven.”

“So, why my house?”

“Two cups granulated sugar.” Cisco set down the cookbook and leaned against the counter. His arm brushed hers, toasting her pale skin with the Cuban brown of his. “It was kismet. Life happens. I like the family—the mom, the dad, the bros—you.” The mischief seeped out of his eyes as he held her gaze.

 She sucked in a breath. “Butter, we need butter.” She yanked open the refrigerator. Cool air spilled over her clearing her mind. She turned Cisco’s words over in her brain. Just as she thought—Cisco was into her family, not her. She kneed the refrigerator door shut.

#

Sweat trickled down the back of Kallie’s neck under her blanket of hair. The toes of her sneakers kicked up dust clouds on the berm of the road as she wound her way toward home, part of a sparse string of students moving away from campus.

A faded maroon Neon rolled to a stop beside her. Jesse poked his head out and motioned for her to get in.

His ignoring her on her first day of classes still stung. Jesse had been the only person she recognized all week. She peered through his window, shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun. “Thanks, but walking places is the only exercise I get.”

“So, what did you think of my songs the other day—before they put you to sleep?” He grabbed the back of his neck with one hand.

If the guy didn’t have cocky written all over him, she’d think he was nervous.

Sun glinted off the chrome of his rearview mirror as she sang, “I’m sliding down the pain. Sliding down the pain.” She eased into another tune, “Your breath’s on my lips, a memory settling there to stay, but you’ve gone away.” The notes floated in the heat.

Jesse’s light brown eyes widened. “You nailed those lines exactly the way I wrote them. How’d you do that?”

“My sister calls it songographic memory.”

Jesse leaned out the window. “Cisco!” he yelled at a guy on a bike whose white-brown curls whipped in the wind as he flew toward them.

Cisco’s brakes screeched. The beater bike fishtailed sideways and came to a stop in front of Jesse’s car. “Hey.” Cisco’s chest heaved a couple of times as he caught his breath. He motioned toward the bike. “Ran out of gas before payday.”

Cisco leaned close to Kallie and squinted at her. “And you must be Kallie with the evergreen eyes.” He stood upright and smirked at Jesse.

A smile stretched across her face. “Yeah, that’s me.”

Jesse eyed his friend. “Get lost.”

Cisco laughed and nodded at Kallie. “Nice to meet you.” He grinned at Jesse and sped off.

She turned a smug look on Jesse.

Jesse coughed. “You sing, huh?”

“A little.”

“How much is a little?”

She twisted her hair up in a knot and stuck a pencil through it. “Ten years of voice lessons. I’m a voice major.”

Jesse’s lips made a silent circle. “So, what did you think about my stuff?” His elbow rested on the door, and his hand massaged the back of his neck.

“The music rocks. Lyrics remind me of Boxer Rebellion. Voice—pure, natural talent—”

“Yeah, baby!”

“—A little rough, could use some training.”

Jesse pursed his lips and studied her. “You could teach me.”

“Join Chorale.”

Jesse shot her a not-in-this-decade look and rolled the Neon ahead a few feet.

“Maybe I’d turn you into a soprano.”

“Right.” Jesse pulled away from the curb and stopped. “How about you give me a lesson on Friday?” He shouted over his shoulder as he drove away, “Show up at six in the shed.”

Her mind drifted to the day last week when she met Jesse Koomer. She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop on his personal jam session in the church shed. A dragonfly buzzed her head, and she shooed it away. Jesse would get his singing lesson.

#

Avra nudged the screen door open with her hip, watching the cocoa slosh in the mugs she carried. Her brothers and Cisco had piled onto the back porch after a game of mud football in the park. The three-hour rain still dribbled off the roof.

Lester, their pit-bull-in-a-poodle’s-body, tangled in her feet. She shoved him out of her way and heard his toenails dance across the porch. He growled at Cisco, then walked past. Even Lester had nearly warmed up to Cisco.

She’d been right—Cisco was into her family, not her. In fact, he’d been over to hang with her brothers a half-dozen times since they made cookies.

Cisco slouched against a post. “That’s what I’m saying. How come Drew always gets to QB?”

Kurt leaned against the siding with his long, muddy legs sprawled across the gray-painted boards. “He’s fast and little.”

Avra handed Kurt a mug.

Drew poked his grimy T-shirt with a thumb and took the cocoa she held out to him. “I the man! Two TDs!” The spike had gone out of his hair, and brown dirt smeared across the freckles on his cheeks.

She put a mug into Cisco’s dirty hand and wrinkled her nose. “You guys are gross.” She surveyed his mud-slicked jeans and T-shirt and shook her head.

Cisco leaned toward her. “Aw, Avra, how ’bout a hug?”

She gave him a saccharine smile and planted her feet in front of him, body language daring him to follow through with his threat—a trick she’d learned dealing with brothers. “I pass.” Avra studied the mud streaked across one cheek and into his hair as the seconds ticked by. She was so close she could trace the few proud hairs on his chin, the fullness of his lips. His eyes were warm and dark like hot fudge, and she couldn’t look away.

Cisco blew his breath out and sat back against the post. She’d won.

Before she could move away, Cisco ran a muddy finger the length of her nose. “Gotcha.” A wide, innocent smile crawled across his face.

Avra laughed. “You’re like having another brother.” But I’m glad you’re not.

Kurt stretched to high-five Cisco. “Hey, Bro!” Sludge smeared through his short brown hair and down his neck.

“Hoo, buddy,” Drew croaked, “you better watch your back! Avra will get you when you least expect it.”

Thanks, little brother. Smirking at Cisco, she spun and retreated to the kitchen. She swiped the mud off her nose and rubbed it between her fingers. Just how would she get Cisco back?

#

Jesse lagged behind while the other students jockeyed out the door. A veil of hair blocked his view of Kallie’s face. Her long fingers snapped the clasp on her backpack, and she scooped it into her arms as she stood. Jesse grabbed the back of his neck for a fraction of a second and took a deep breath. He set a handwritten sheet of music on her desk.

She looked up, surprised. “What’s this?”

“A song I wrote.” He darted for the door. “Tell me what you think of it,” he flung over his shoulder. He wanted an objective opinion. Kallie knew music. She’d tell him if he was any good.

Nausea settled in the pit of his stomach as he dodged between students. The girl could annihilate him. If he wouldn’t look like a freak, he’d run after her and take the song back.

#

Jesse slammed his books down on the snack bar table, jarring Cisco. “What’s with you? You’ve got a silly grin on your face and you’re off in la-la land.”

Cisco frowned. “Not anymore.”

“What gives?”

“Just thinking about chocolate chip cookies.”

He sat next to Cisco. “Having them for lunch?”

“Naw. Just dreaming. Your mom or sister bake cookies?”

“Yeah, snickerdoodles, oatmeal raisin, Christmas cookies—”

Cisco gave him a wistful look. “Must be heaven.”

“Yeah, right. My old man can suck the sweetness right out of the air.”

Pain sliced through Cisco’s expression. “You’ve got issues with your old man, but at least the Rev didn’t ditch his family.” Cisco pulled him out of his chair in a headlock. “Come on. Let’s do lunch.”

Billy cut in line between them. He hummed the latest Modest Mouse song, oblivious to the dirty looks from the students behind them. Cisco jumped in with the lyrics. In a heartbeat all three of them were belting it out, full voice, in the lunch line.

He grinned at Cisco and Billy, lapping up the attention like a drug. People in a fifty-foot radius turned toward them. Some sang along. Cisco drummed out the beat on Billy’s tray, bongo style. Even the sourest of the counter help smiled.

“Hey, guys,” Jesse said a few minutes later. “It could work—our band was born in the student union at Ocean Community College. It’ll be in the papers years from now.” His untouched burger and Jell-O jiggled when he hit the table with his fist. “Cisco on drums.”

Cisco beat out a quick rhythm on the table.

“I’ve got guitar, vocals.” Enthusiasm snowballed inside him. “Billy, how many years of piano did your ma make you take?”

Billy looked around self-consciously. “Six.”

“Bingo, we’ve got keyboard!”

Billy looked unconvinced.

Cisco jumped up. “We’re in, man!” He high-fived Jesse and the less-enthusiastic Billy.

“Hey, Bill, didn’t you get into the snack bar grooving on our tune?” Cisco.

A corner of Billy’s mouth turned up. “Yeah, that was cool. The girls—”

“Yeah, man,” Jesse said. “The girls. Hang on to that thought.”

#

Kallie struggled through the chords to Jesse’s song for the fifth time, her fingers stilling on the piano keys. A cooling breeze blew in through the French doors behind her.

Aly’s pixie, the exact shade of Kallie’s hair, popped around the corner from the hall. “What are you doing?”

Kallie twisted her hair and held it up off her neck to catch the breeze. “Quit reading over my shoulder. You know I hate that. You can’t read music anyway.”

“I can read the words,” Aly said with fourteen-year-old logic. “I bet a guy gave you that.”

“Go away. Scat. Leave me alone.”

Aly bit her lip. “You don’t have to yell at me.”

As usual, Aly’s hint of tears triggered Kallie’s guilt. Aly would be more stable if she had a dad. They’d both have a father if Kallie hadn’t screwed it up for them.

Kallie dropped her hair. “Okay, okay. Give me a half hour of peace and quiet, and I’ll let you use my iPod.”

Aly gave her a weak smile. “Deal.”

Kallie clenched her teeth and forced herself to focus on Jesse’s You’re Callin’ My Name. She mastered the chords and added the lyrics.

 

Something draws me to you, girl.

You’re callin’ my name

And I’m hearin’ your voice deep inside.

 

Kallie smoothed the song sheet with her palms. Warmth stole through her. Was she the girl in the song? She sang the next verse.

 

But you’re that mysterious pond in the woods.

Nobody knows how deep.

Nobody knows you’re even there.

 

The mood of the song lingered in the air. The day she met Jesse she’d taken a piece of him home without his knowing. This time, Jesse chose to give her a slice of himself.

In her mind, she saw him standing over her desk—his lean medium frame looking taller from that angle than the five nine she estimated him to be. Flyaway brown hair, kissed with gold, poked in every direction, as if he scrubbed his fingers through wet hair on the way to the car every morning. They’d never swum in the shallows and now they were fifty feet deep. She would have to swim for her life. The guy had talent and more than a little ego. No way would she go down.

 
Chapter 3

 

“Avra!”

She heard her name yelled up the stairs as she stepped out of the shower.

“Dinnertime!”

She slipped into sweats, her legs wobbly from a grueling soccer practice. She ran a brush through her hair and jogged down the stairs, a towel still draped around her neck. She breezed into the dining room. “Cisco! Who let you in?” She hated surprises.

“I was sitting on the couch when you flew by after soccer.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. Great. Why hadn’t she looked in the mirror before coming down? Irritation and warmth blended inside her like well-shaken salad dressing. She slid into her seat. Her calf brushed against Cisco’s and she jerked away.

Drew blew out a noisy breath. “Mom invited Cisco to stay for dinner. Is that okay with Your Royal Highness? Now, can we pray? I’m starving.” He bowed his gelled head. Eyes slid shut around the table. Cisco’s gaze darted around the room and stopped on Avra—the first time she’d ever seen him uncomfortable. He ducked his head.

Her father prayed, “Lord Jesus, thanks for this food, the family, and Cisco. Thanks for loving us as we are. Amen.”

Talk swirled around her. Being this close to Cisco made her feel she was running at ten thousand feet and couldn’t quite catch her breath. Get over it already. He was a family friend. Lester sat behind Cisco’s chair, his curly head cocked to one side as if he waited for his master to finish eating.

She listened to the timbre of Cisco’s voice, not paying attention to what he was saying until she heard her name.

“Kurt goes, ‘Avra’s no fun; she’s a techno nerd.’ So, I say, ‘What kind?’ Drew says, ‘Sound tech.’ And I say, ‘Hello! My band needs a sound tech.’ ” He snapped his fingers. His arm grazed Avra’s.

She set down her water glass with a thud. Cisco glanced at her, gave her another millisecond look. “So, Avra says, ‘Stick it in your ear, dweeb boy.’ Or something like that—she meant Kurt, not me. Anyway—” He faced Avra. “—what’s it gonna be? You going to tech for us?”

Her face heated under Cisco’s full attention. Kurt lifted a newly barbell-pierced eyebrow at her reaction.

Cisco waited for her answer.

Look somewhere else—anywhere else. “Whatever.” Was there any chance Cisco wouldn’t notice she was blushing from two feet away?

Cisco drilled her with his eyes. “Not ‘whatever.’ Are you going to do it—yes or no? I gotta tell Jesse.”

She bent over her plate, willing everyone to look away. Fine. “Yes.”

#

Avra gathered the calculus worksheets scattered across her desk into a pile and slipped them in a folder.

“Uh, Avra . . .” Kallie stood beside her desk, chewing on her bottom lip. “Did you get this stuff today?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I was hoping you might help me figure it out. That is, if you have time.” Gossamer hair spilled over Kallie’s perfect skin, making her look like Legolas’s twin sister. “I’m in way over my head. I had this feeling you might tutor me.”

Avra puckered her forehead as though she were sorry. “I’m kind of busy this weekend.”

Kallie’s eyes flashed surprise and flitted to the whiteboard. “Maybe another time.” She rushed out of the classroom.

Jealousy tasted like three-day-old coffee in Avra’s mouth. She knew why Kallie thought she’d help. An invisible cord stretched between them, woven by Avra’s prayers. God, I am such a jerk. Forgive me. She so thought she was over the jealousy. Obviously not. She’d make it right.

Avra’s feet moved in slow motion across campus. She spotted Kallie sitting in the Student Union in a group of girls. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich oozed onto a brown paper sack in front of her. Avra swallowed, took a deep breath.

Kallie’s chin lifted toward her when she sensed Avra’s presence. A girl with blonde curls licked mustard off her finger, cast a curious glance at Avra, and refocused on Maddie Shoewalter, who clicked blood red fingernails on the lunch table as she talked.

Avra hooked her hair behind her ears. “Do you still need help with calc?”

“Yeah.”

“Would eleven tomorrow work for you?”

Kallie’s puzzled green eyes peered up at her. “Eleven’s good.”

Avra scrawled directions to her house across a page from her notebook and handed it to Kallie. “See you tomorrow.”

She strode away, hearing Kallie’s faint “thanks” behind her.

She’d bet Kallie didn’t miss all four proms in high school, didn’t have a geek like Morgan as her only admirer.

#

Avra sat at the dining room table, her books fanned around her. She twisted a pencil in a plastic sharpener. Shavings dropped onto the rough draft of her report. Her gaze drifted out the window where Cisco threw the football to Kurt. His muscles flexed and relaxed in fluid motion. The pencil tip snapped inside the sharpener.

The screen door smacked shut, and the guys’ footsteps scuffed across the kitchen floor. Cisco followed her brother into the dining room. Kurt flopped onto the living room couch. Cisco pulled out a dining room chair and straddled it backwards. He lifted his eyebrows at her. “Hey kid, what’s with the shy girl thing? Red face, looking down, the whole bit.”

He’d shoved her out of her comfort zone by walking into the room. She scraped the shavings into a pile and glared at him. “I’m sharpening a pencil.” She knocked the sharpener against the table, trying to dislodge the lead.

“I meant at dinner the other night.”

“I embarrass easily, okay?”

“Hey—” He held up his hands. “I’m not dissing you. I’m all about being embarrassed.” He reached across the table and took the pencil sharpener from her. He pried the lead out with the paper clip from her report and handed it back. “Homework?” He jutted his chin toward her papers.

Breathe in. Breathe out. They were just having conversation. She relaxed her shoulders, softened her tone. “Report on Y2K.”

He raked his fingers through his hair. “You wanna hear embarrassing? My pop holed up with some dude in an underground house—stockpiled food, water—then Y2K was a bust.”

“Everybody’s dad has idiosyncrasies.” She shrugged. “Mine alphabetizes cans in the pantry.”

“My dad ditched his family.”

“My dad counts things.”

“My dad lives on a sailboat at the city marina.”

“When I was a baby, Dad counted all the hairs on my head. He said God does it, and he wanted to see if he could do it.”

He stretched across the table and fingered her hair. “Sounds reasonable. I could get into that.” He tugged and released the tendril as he stood.

Her scalp tingled. She didn’t want him to leave. “Lots of people are left by their fathers.”

He flipped his chair around to push it under the table. “Easy for you to say. Things function at your house. At mine, they dysfunction.”

“You do have a perfect dad.” Her voice was quiet.

Cisco grunted. “You’ve never met him.”

“I’m talking about God.”

“Man, Avra, you’re hitting me out of left field. What’s God got to do with this conversation?”

Make him understand, Lord. She bit her lip, staring into the deep brown of his eyes. “God will never ditch us.”

“Listen, I know you’re sincere, but it just sounds so out there. Not where I live.”

“Check out church sometime.”

“Maybe. Your dad invited me.” He moved toward the door. “I think he likes me.”

“What’s not to like?”

Cisco’s eyes swerved to hers. He lifted his brows.

Her face heated under his gaze. “That’s not what I meant—”

“See ya, Avra.” He pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen.

#

Jesse’s gut clenched as he slid into his seat one second before Professor Marquez cleared her throat to begin class.

In the flurry of notebooks popping and paper shuffling, Kallie dropped a folded sheet of paper on his desk. He covered it with his Lit book and grinned when she returned from the waste basket. Her face gave nothing away. What did Kallie think about You’re Callin’ My Name? Did she guess he’d written it for her?

He scanned the paper. Promise . . . delves below the superficial . . . melody brings out the pathos--what the heck was pathos?He thumbed to the glossary of his Lit book. Pathos—expression of strong or deep feeling.

He rubbed his thumb across his chin, reading the rest of her comments. She liked the song. His jaw relaxed.

Kallie’s affirmation rubbed salve into the part of him Dad rejected. Dad would never hear his songs. Creating music, or any art form, was pretty much loafing in Dad’s mind. A man labored hard with his hands or his intellect. That much he’d absorbed from his father. He worked hard at his music. Not that he ever expected to see any appreciation from Dad.

After class, Jesse stood outside the door till Kallie stepped out. “Thanks.” The connection he’d felt that first day slid back into place as their eyes connected.

“Anytime.” Unasked questions swirled in the green depths of her eyes.

Questions he didn’t want to answer.

#

Avra led Kallie through her living room. Kurt and Drew sprawled on either end of the couch, hair damp from showers, their usual Saturday morning ratty T-shirts and gym shorts replaced with board shorts and this year’s shirts. As if a girl like Kallie would give them a second glance.

“Kallie, my brothers. Kurt and Drew, this is Kallie,” she flung over the railing on the way up the steps.

Kurt’s eyes swerved from the TV to Kallie and stopped as if somebody hit his internal pause button. “Hey.” Oh, yeah. He had it bad. She’d seen more than one guy on campus look at Kallie like that.

“Hi ya,” Drew said. “You can come watch ‘Sponge Bob’ with me when Avra bores you cross-eyed. I’ll save you a seat.” He thumped the couch cushion beside him, flinging dust particles into the morning sun.

Kallie jogged up the stairs behind her. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

She closed the door after Kallie. Her porcelain doll, Justine, watched them from her faded floral pillow sham with layers of pink skirts fanned around her. Justine’s nose tipped in glass disdain as though the room were too shabby for her.

She glanced at Kallie. “Don’t mind my brothers’ drooling.”

Kallie sank into the lumpy, slipcovered chair in the corner. “I always thought I’d like to have some brothers.” Her features clouded. “Maybe then I’d understand males.”

Avra laughed. “They’re all about bodily functions—the louder the better.”

Kallie smacked her forehead with her palm. “So simple. I hope you explain calc as well as you do guys.”

An hour later Avra stretched the kinks out of her back. “So, if f of x equals three x minus six, and g of x equals three, then to find f of g of x, substitute x from f of x with g of x, and solve.”

Understanding lit Kallie’s face. “I get it! I really get it!” She high-fived Avra. “Thanks.” Kallie pushed up the sleeves of her shirt to her elbows. “You’re so together.”

“Me? I thought you were together.”

Kallie held up a hand. “Whoa, girl. I don’t have a clue about what I’m going to do with my life. I’m a voice major, but I’m going to pick up business courses. I need something stable.” She picked at her cuticle. “My parents divorced. My grandparents divorced. I’ve got to take care of myself. But not with math, that’s for sure.”

She offered Kallie a pretzel rod from the jar on her desk. “I said I couldn’t help you with calc because I was jealous of you. I’m sorry.” She glanced at her poster of a smiling Jesus over Kallie’s head and back at Kallie. Coming clean felt good.

Kallie’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Jealous of what?”

She cracked a wry smile. “All the guys turn and watch you walk by.”

Kallie’s mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope.” She’d settle for one guy in particular. No. Don’t even go there.

Kallie dismissed her words with a quick shake of her head. She licked the salt off her pretzel and stared out the window.

The rustling of leaves from the giant oak was the only sound in the room.

Kallie sat up straight and rubbed the small of her back. “Actually, I do have a brother. Maybe more siblings, for all I know. My dad and his new wife had Stevie.” She counted on her fingers. “Seven years ago. The last time I saw him, he was a newborn. I’ve got a suitcase full of issues.” She shivered as if to shake off the memories. Her tone lightened. “I should be jealous of you.”

Avra chewed on the inside of her cheek. Boy, had she been wrong about Kallie.“Yeah, you’re jealous of my calc grade.”

“Duh.”

Laughter rippled between them, and she looked up at Jesus’ smile.

#

At two in the afternoon Avra sat in the deserted Student Union paging through her Humanities text. The remains of a bagel lay in a paper basket beside a Styrofoam cup of iced tea.

She yawned and closed her eyes, leaning back in the hard plastic chair. She thought about her conversation on Saturday with Kallie. She’d been praying for Kallie on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for weeks now. She never would have believed it, but Kallie had needs after all. Calc tutoring was a given, and maybe she even needed a friend.

Cisco sauntered across the room toward her, his Walmart uniform shirt unbuttoned, exposing a snowy T-shirt. “Avra, what up?” He sat down across from her.

She jerked to full awareness. The guy oozed enough testosterone to disturb any girl’s equilibrium.

He waited for her to say something.

“You know that essay we have to write for Humanities on how the arts answer life’s unanswerable questions?”

Cisco grimaced. “Yeah.”

“So, give me an unanswerable question.”

His lips flattened into a thin line. “Why does a man check out on his family after eighteen years? Why does he wake up one day and decide he can’t live with the problems another day?” The pain in his eyes begged for an answer.

Lord?

Cisco pursed his lips. “Arts—drumming—doesn’t answer squat.” Cisco slouched in his seat. “I don’t know. Maybe it releases some anger. Psychobabble might say the rhythms give me structure, patterns. But drumming doesn’t answer the ‘why.’ All I know is that after two and a half years, he’s not coming back.”

“You just wrote your paper.”

“Great.” His voice was flat.

“Do you ever see your dad?”

“Not much. What’s the point? He’s over us or he wouldn’t have left.”

“Maybe he’s only over your mom.”

“That’s what he says. But I’m over him.”

“No you’re not.”

His eyes swerved to hers. He stared hard at her as seconds ticked by. Finally, he blew a breath out.

I’m so sorry you hurt like this. She reached across the table and gripped his hand.

He looked down at her hand and back at her eyes, emotions she couldn’t read playing across his face. What if he thought she was after him? She pulled her hand back into her lap, her skin recording the warmth of his skin, the feel of his thick knuckles under her palm.

He glanced at the clock on the wall. “I gotta go to work.” He stood. “Thanks for getting me started on my paper.” He reached over and tugged a lock of her hair. “See ya.”

Sun shone through the beveled window and splashed prism colors across his empty chair. What made him trust her?