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all their blus­ter over how much they loved Whit, it was just that-- blus­ter. They found him amus­ing, but they weren't re­al­ly his friends. If they were, he would have been with them tonight.

I knew what that was like. I had spent plen­ty of birth­days with no par­ty, no friends, no one around but my broth­er and my fa­ther, who had to be there, my moth­er an ev­er-?omi­nous pres­ence. There was noth­ing worse, in my ex­pe­ri­ence, than a mis­er­able birth­day.

With a deep breath, I made a de­ci­sion. Old-?fash­ioned or not, con­de­scend­ing or not, Whit­tak­er was ba­si­cal­ly a good guy. And he de­served a good birth­day. As of now, it was my job to make that hap­pen.

“I'll have the filet mignon, medi­um,” I told him.

Whit­tak­er smiled and sat up a bit straighter. “Good choice. Ap­pe­tiz­ers? Dessert?”

“It's your birth­day,” I said. “Your night, your choice.”

193

HEART­BREAK­ER

'Yes! An­oth­er win­ner!" I cheered, rais­ing my fists in the air as Whit­tak­er pulled his car through the se­cu­ri­ty gate at Eas­ton. It was pitch-?dark out­side and the se­cu­ri­ty guard waved us through with­out even look­ing up from his mi­ni tele­vi­sion. For the first time all evening I re­al­ized that I was re­luc­tant for the night to end. Once I had re­laxed and de­cid­ed to treat the whole thing as a night out with a friend who just want­ed a good birth­day, I had ac­tu­al­ly start­ed to have a good time.

“How much?” Whit­tak­er asked glee­ful­ly.

“Two dol­lars and fifty cents,” I said, hold­ing up the scratch-?off card. “Told you this was a good in­vest­ment.”

The en­tire car was lit­tered with scratch-?off lot­tery tick­ets. On the floor at my feet were dozens of use­less cards, while stacked on my lap were the few win­ners. Five dol­lars here, twen­ty dol­lars there--it was all adding up.

“You may even make your mon­ey back,” I told Whit­tak­er, pick­ing up the last card. He'd dropped a hun­dred dol­lars at the

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con­ve­nience store on the high­way. The guy be­hind the counter had looked at us like we were nuts, but had pa­tient­ly count­ed off one hun­dred of the tiny game cards.

“Lot­tery tick­ets. I nev­er would have even thought of that,” Whit­tak­er said, down­shift­ing as we climbed the wind­ing hill.

“Re­al­ly? This is the first thing ev­ery­one at home does on their eigh­teenth,” I said. Of course, I guessed peo­ple like Whit­tak­er nev­er played the lot­tery. I should have been sur­prised that he even knew the lot­tery ex­ist­ed. I scratched off the last square. The sym­bol there didn't match any of the oth­ers. “Noth­ing,” I said, toss­ing it on the floor.

“So, what's the fi­nal tal­ly?” he asked.

I reached up and turned on the over­head light so I could see bet­ter. Quick­ly I flipped through our win­ning cards and did the math in my head. “One hun­dred two dol­lars and fifty cents,” I an­nounced. “You made a prof­it.”

“Wow. Good for me,” he said.

'You just have to take them to a lot­tery deal­er to cash them in," I said, straight­en­ing the pile in my lap.

“You keep them,” he said.

“What? No,” I said. “These are your birth­day tick­ets.”

“Yes, but it was your idea,” Whit­tak­er said as he pulled the car in­to the cir­cle that front­ed Brad­well and the oth­er un­der­class­men dorms. “I in­sist.”

An un­pleas­ant warmth spread through my chest. A hun­dred dol­lars. That was a lot of mon­ey. To me. Clear­ly, to him it was

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chump change. Throw­ing it out the win­dow was no prob­lem for him.

“Okay,” I said fi­nal­ly. “Thanks.”

He pulled the car to a stop at the curb and put it in park. In­stant­ly the vibe in the car went from sil­ly and cel­ebra­to­ry to se­ri­ous and load­ed. This was it. The mo­ment of truth. End of the date time. I had al­ready de­cid­ed hours ear­li­er that if he tried to kiss me, I would let him. It was what he want­ed, that much was ob­vi­ous, and it would be a small price to pay for ev­ery­thing he had giv­en me, ev­ery­thing he could give me. But now that the time had come I won­dered if I could go through with it. The more time I spent with Whit, the fonder I was of him, but not in the way he want­ed me to be.

Tags: Kate Brian Private
Source: readsnovelonline.net