him for my boyfriend? I knew nothing about him. The things I did know were all superficial: the clothes and the music he liked. And if anything, learning all that stuff had brought me closer not to Nate but to Archer, since he's the one who'd taught me.
I stopped myself. That was a dangerous train of thought. And it wasn't like I really knew nothing about Nate. I knew he was talented, and passionate, and ... well ... really hot. If I got to know him better, I'd probably find tons of other things I liked about him. I just needed to give it a chance.
"Are you okay?" Archer asked.
"Yeah ... how do I look?"
Archer raised an eyebrow. I rolled my eyes.
"Aside from the obvious, how do I look?"
"You look cold. Are you sure you won't wear my jacket?"
He had an incredibly cozy-looking wool trench coat, but it was nowhere near as cool as my close-fitting hoodie. Right now "cool" trumped "cold" in a huge way. I shook my head.
Archer shrugged, and we closed the distance between us and Nate.
"Hey, Nate," Archer said.
Nate looked up, but he didn't stop playing. He gave Archer a half smile that wiped out all my second thoughts. Then he turned to me.
Wow.
It sounds crazy, but I swear, the way he turned, it was clear he'd just meant to note who was with Archer, then turn right back again. Then he saw me, and it was as if his eyes stuck. He didn't smile, didn't stop playing his guitar, but he focused. On me. Oh. My. God.
"I'm Nate," he said.
I almost blew it right there. It was a sheer act of will that stopped me from bursting into giggles and babbling, "Of course you're Nate! I've only been studying you for several weeks and using every bit of my energy to plot and plan for this very moment, and now you think there's even the slightest chance I wouldn't know who you are?"
Thankfully, I did none of this. I remembered what Claudia had said. This was the new me. I had to own it. The new me didn't giggle and gush. I didn't even smile. I simply raised my chin in acknowledgment and responded with a single word: Cara.
It was my turn to get Nate's half smile. Oh, wow. Now I understood why you couldn't look directly at an eclipse. The head-on effect had to be like this: completely dizzying and disorienting.
Archer jumped in, taking Nate's attention long enough for me to catch my breath. "I checked out those Brubeck sessions online. Great stuff."
"Yeah," Nate said. "Cool, right?"
He bent back over his guitar. Archer looked at me. He had said what he'd come to say; I'd been introduced. Were we done?
Were we? I'd kind of imagined something more, although if I listened to my imagination, I'd expect Nate to leap off his rock at the first sight of me, pull me into his arms, and swear he'd never met anyone as enthralling as me in his entire life.
I had a very vivid imagination.
Archer and I had already turned to leave when I realized something: I knew the song Nate was strumming. It was on my reprogrammed iPod. I knew it ... and I loved it. It was actually one of my favorites.
"Hey," I said, nodding to Nate's guitar. "I know that song. 'Disenchanted,' right? My Chemical Romance."
Nate didn't stop playing, but he rewarded me with another gaze from those eyes, which I was beginning to believe had their own gravitational pull.
"Yeah," he said.
"Except your version's a little different from Ray's."
He looked me up and down. I bit my cheeks to stop from smiling.
"I tweaked it a little," he said. "You like it?"
He was asking my opinion. I was having a conversation with Nate Wetherill. A DangerZone, a guy far too hot to actually exist in high school, cared what I thought. How cool was that?
"I do like it," I said. "A lot."
Nate smiled—a wide, open smile this time. "I saw them in concert a couple years ago. Black Parade tour."
"I read about that," I said. "They brought Gerard out on a gurney, right?"
"Yeah." Nate nodded. "Very, very cool."
Uh-oh. Nate was still looking at me, but I was out of things to say. I quickly scoured my brain, but before I hit on anything, he turned back to Archer. "Thanks for letting me know about Brubeck. See you at jazz band?"
Clearly we were being dismissed.
"See you," Archer said. He turned to walk off. I fell into