“The baseball is a nice add. Thought you might have forgotten that other sports exist outside of hockey.”
I see what he’s asking between the words. He’s not talking about the sport, but Cooper. Zach doesn’t have a reason to ask or worry about him. I want to ask why he’s beating around the bush, but I don’t.
There are answers there, I don’t think I want to hear or face. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Cooper and I work this way.
What way is that?My heart taunts. She’s got a sarcastic little voice. Thinks she’s smarter than she really is—look at the mess she led us into before.
“I like emojis. Look at my contacts. Everyone has something that’s associated with them.”
Zach’s phone rings with a notification, the text he sent himself from me, before he rambles off contact names and the emojis next to them.
“Mom and a flower?”
“She owns a flower shop.”
“Meave and a paint brush?”
“My sister is an artist.”
“Do I even want to know why Jaxon is a trident?”
“Probably not. I’m also pretty sure he updated that himself.”
“Would I be able to update mine after a date? I have a baseball clinic I’m volunteering with this weekend, and we finish up pre-season two-a-days next week, but?—”
“I’m free next weekend,” I interrupt, or unattractively blurt out, with an eagerness I’m going to tell myself is confidence.
“Friday?”
“It’s a date.” I have to suppress my excitement.
“I’ll text you our plans.” He wiggles his phone, giving me a wink.
Zach returns my phone, and I immediately add our date to my calendar, and send a quick text to Elliot that contains one too many exclamation points. We finish walking to classmaking simple small talk before we split to go to our respective classrooms.
I’m a robot heading to my unassigned but self-assigned seat.
I’m going on a date with Zach.
And while we were talking, I didn’t fumble over my words once! I was cool. He made a joke, I kinda made a joke back. He didn’t think my contacts were weird. I didn’t think about kissing Cooper once.
Because it meant nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was practice.
And I’m going on a date with Zach.
This is great. This is what’s supposed to be happening.
So why am I running my fingers over my lips?
Maybe I’ll kiss Zach on ourdate.
That’s one way to stop thinking about kissing Cooper. Because I’m not. I can’t be thinking about him like that. I’m not thinking about him, or his hand gripping my hair with the right amount of intensity that it blissfully hurt, or the sounds he let out when I bit his lip.
I’m not—my thoughts are cut off by a smoothie cup being placed in front of me.
“Elliot said you left in a daze this morning, and this was still in the blender.” I turn to find Cooper casually leaning onto the row of desks in the lecture hall. Elbow bracing his weight. “Thought you might be hungry.”
