We all nod.
“Are we pairing up?” Natalia asks expectantly.
“Amara is with me,” Cooper says as he hits his knee to mine, the force nearly knocking me over.
She looks at us suspiciously but continues her questioning.
Thinking about spending a chunk of the night with Cooper has my stomach filled with butterflies.
Five minutes later, and we’re all sprinting out of the ice cream shop and into wildly different directions.
Cooper is taller than I am. Much taller. He’s also an athlete, and it takes me forever to catch up to him, and that’s only when he slows to a stop outside of a house.
More specifically, Old Man Willy’s place.
An old, crotchety man with more cats than toes.
There’s a local legend—okay,gossip—that he captures kids who trespass and turns them into his cats.
Stopping at the side of the home, Cooper’s beautiful eyes meet mine, shining with mischief. “You ready?” he asks with a grin, holding his hand out for mine.
“Not really,” I say on an exhale.I like cats, but I don’t want to be turned into one.
Grabbing my hand, Cooper doesn’t ask any more questions. Instead, he tugs me along to the front of the house, crouching down at the large garden pots in front.
Meow!
Cooper looks back, a bit panicked. “I forgot about the cats,” he whispers.
“How could you forget about them? They’re everywhere,” I gesture around us.
He bites his lip, his head rearing back in an attempt to get his dark brown hair out of his eyes. “Okay. Let’s do it and get out of here.” He scrunches his nose as if trying not to sneeze.
We both count down from three, running up to the door and ringing the bell. We don’t stick around long.
We’re around the side of the house by the time Willy opens the door.
Cooper stands behind me, his body tensing. I peek behind me to find him struggling not to sneeze.
But him sneezing would be bad. Very bad. The legend aside, Willy isn’t necessarily known to be the warmest man, and, well, he and Cooper’s grandpa have had a decades-long grudge. One that apparently has involved several generations.
So I do what any rational person would do. I grab his nose between my fingers, my palm clamping down on his mouth.
It’s not until I do it, watching his eyes grow wide and wild, that I realize how close we are. His body up against mine. My face so close to his.
I hear Willy on his porch, likely looking around. “Kids these days,” he mutters. The door closes loudly.
I let him go, and he immediately buckles over, sneezing into his arm. He does so quietly, but we both freeze, listening to see whether Willy will come back or not.
Cooper’s smile lights up the late afternoon sky.
Taking my hand without a word, we run off.
“We didn’t film it!” I cry after a moment, reaching for my pocket.
We come to a stop in the middle of a parking lot.
“I don’t think that matters,” he says.
