In case you missed them I'm putting them, I'm posting all the entries of the Avery Diaries here so that they can be easily found on my extras page. :) There is, however, still time to enter the giveaway. Just click the link for the Avery Shaw Diaries in the upper left had corner of my blog. And a special thanks to Colorimetry, Reading Teen, I Am A Reader, Not A Writer, Book Passion For Life, Confessions of a Bookaholic and A Life Bound By Books for originally hosting these stories! You guys are the best!
"Too Hot To Handle"
(Avery)
Dear Diary,
I think I’ve gotten myself in over my head as far as Grayson
is concerned. It’s not that I don’t like him. I do. How could I not? He’s so
nice! He’s been so thoughtful and amazing since Aiden dumped me. But I
completely overestimated my ability to handle his… I don’t know what to call
it. His Grayson-ness, I guess. He’s
just so confident. And charismatic. And smooth. And gorgeous. And flirty. And
utterly ruled by his hormones.
I was an idiot for thinking he wouldn’t affect me.
I gave him back his boxer shorts after school today—which
was completely mortifying. He seemed disappointed that I didn’t want to keep
the gift. It was kind of cute in a really weird he-wanted-me-to-keep-his-underwear
way. I didn’t want to offend him, but I just couldn’t keep his intimate apparel
up on my wall!
I explained to him that I want to fill the spot on my wall
with a collage of souvenirs from our experiment and promised I’d pin up a sheet
of smiley face stickers in honor of his crazy underpants incident. That seemed
to placate him. Considering the way I blushed, he knew that the stickers would
be plenty to help me remember what he’d done. In fact, I’ll never look at a
smiley face again without picturing Grayson half naked. Not that Grayson needs
to know that!
After that I made the mistake of inviting him back to my
house. We needed to study for his physics test but I didn’t want to go to his
house where I might run into Aiden, and he refused to go to the library. I
can’t believe he is so scared of the library! It’s not like he’ll catch dork
cooties or something if he walks inside. Well, considering he was the one
driving us, he won the argument and we ended up back at my house. Where we were
alone since my mom doesn’t get home from work until dinnertime.
Mistake number two was deciding to study in my bedroom. On
my bed. The kitchen table would have been a much wiser idea. I always study on
my bed, so I didn’t even think about it. Plus, it was Grayson! Not only is he
older and popular and only interested in tall, athletic, gorgeous bomb-shell
girls, he’s practically family. I never in a million years thought he’d be his
normal player self with me.
Then again, he is Grayson Kennedy. I don’t think he almost
kissed me on purpose. I think he just got bored with studying and switched to
autopilot. Making out is just what you do when you’re Grayson Kennedy and
you’re alone with a girl on her bed.
He had this weird fascination with my hair. He kept pulling
it like we were in second grade. When I got mad and snapped at him to cut it
out—also very elementary school behavior, sadly—he tugged the ponytails off my
braids and started undoing my hair.
HOLY CRAP!
There was something about him taking my hair down that gave
me cardiac arrest. His hands were so gentle, and they moved so slowly, and he
was leaning in so close… The moment was so intimate that he may as well have
been undressing me!
There was a second there, when he finished undoing my braids
and raked his hands through my hair in an attempt to comb it out a little, that
his eyes fell to my lips and I thought he was going to kiss me. No, that’s not
quite right. He looked like he was going to push me back on my bed and make out
with me until I passed out.
I froze. I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t have done
anything even if I did know what I wanted. I couldn’t think. Grayson had
obliterated my ability to use my brain!
I was thrown into panic like I’ve never experienced. Panic
so intense that I simply shut down. Strangely, I was so shocked that I couldn’t
freak out. I didn’t start to cry or even hyperventilate. I couldn’t because I’d
stopped breathing. Stopped processing. Couldn’t move if my life depended on it.
I was completely transformed like one of those kids who’d been petrified by a
basilisk in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
I saw it in Grayson’s eyes the moment he realized what he
was doing, and that he was about to do it to me, of all people. He looked as shocked as I was, but he snapped
out of it almost immediately and plastered a ridiculously handsome smile on his
face.
He tousled my hair and teased me about my dorky braids as if
nothing had happened at all. I didn’t know how he could switch gears so fast,
but then, obviously he hadn’t been as affected by the moment as me.
I was a mess though. I couldn’t snap out of it until Grayson
asked me a question about his homework. Science was something I understood,
something I could process, so I grabbed on to his question like it was a
lifeline. I managed to not panic, but I never did calm down the rest of the
night.
I have no idea how I’ll ever be able to act normal around
him again. I have to figure it out though because he wants to work on our
experiment tomorrow night. I really hope that whatever he plans, it’s somewhere
very public. I don’t think hanging out with him alone is a very good idea anymore.
Maybe not even at all. At this rate, he’s likely to kill me long before we get
to the science fair.
