“I was sure Kelly was going to ream us out,” Charlie said. He shook his head. “I never know what to expect from her or what she’s thinking. It’s like sometimes she thinks we need to respect Courtney and always be nice to her, and then other times she couldn’t care less. Like she sees through Courtney the same way we do.”
“I think both are true,” I said. “I’ve actually been theorizing about this for a while. I think that she thinks we should respect Courtney as our boss since that’s, like, the objectively right thing for us to do, but then there are times like today where she sees Courtney the way we do.”
“And the day that Courtney made us stay even though our classes weren’t there.”
“Right! And did you see her face when she told Courtney to do the lane ropes herself? She totally knew what Courtney was doing and she wasn’t having it, so she called her out.”
“And Kelly definitely knew she was faking the whole ankle injury. Or at least playing it up.”
“But she couldn’t call her out on it as her boss, because that would be totally unethical. But we all knew.”
Charlie pulled up in front of my house, but instead of just pausing so I could jump out, he actually put the car in park.
“Are you coming in or something?” I asked jokingly.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Is that an invitation?”
I glanced at the driveway. Both cars were there, which meant Matthew was home—and he would not be pleased to see me anywhere with Charlie. He had barely even accepted that Charlie was driving me home every day.
“If only,” I sighed.
“Actually,” he said, “I had something I wanted to ask you.”
“Ask me? Color me intrigued.”
Charlie cleared his throat. “Has Matthew told you about the wedding we’re going to next week?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay, well, it’s our hockey coach’s wedding, and he invited all of us to come,” Charlie said. “And I was wondering if you… maybe… wanted to go with me?”
“Go with you?” I asked. “You mean, like a date?”
Even though we’d been spending a lot of time together over the past few weeks, we hadn’t been on an actual date until now, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. It seemed so… formal, especially at a wedding.
“Yes,” Charlie said slowly. “Is that a problem?”
“No,” I said immediately. I didn’t want him reading too much into my hesitation. “I mean… Isn’t it a little last minute?”
“Very last minute,” Charlie agreed. “Penny was originally supposed to come, but something came up and she can’t anymore. So now I have a plus-one, and I thought that maybe it could be fun for you to come with me.”
At least that answered one of my questions—I wasn’t just a last-minute thought to him.
“Okay,” I said because I couldn’t think of anything better to respond with.
“Okay?” he asked. “Like okay, you’ll come?”
“What about Matt?” I asked. “Will he be mad that I’m there with you?”
Charlie let out a long breath. “Honestly? Yeah, probably.”
“But you don’t care?”
“I think we can convince him it’s not a big deal,” Charlie said. “Say that Penny asked you to go with me because she felt bad for ditching me. Or that your mom suggested it. Or some other totally platonic reason.”
“And you think he’ll buy that?”
“I—” He tilted his head back and forth. “Well… I’ll figure it out.”
