Claire groaned, drawing our attention to her. She leaned her head back on the seat in annoyance. “Do I have to be here? It’s bad enough to be the third wheel on someone’s date. Now I’m the fifth wheel with all of you. Can’t you just drop me off, and the rest of you can get on with your double date without me?”
“It’s not a double date,” I said. “Doubling with your parents is lame.”
Madeline nodded in agreement. “Plus we’re going somewhere better for our first date. Right, Coop?”
No one called me Coop. My mother knew I hated that nickname. In elementary school, some kids had called me Chicken Coop, and I’d had to threaten them with violence to make them stop.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Sorry, Claire,” Mr. Seibold said, shooting us a look in the rearview mirror. “From now on, we’ll all be more inclusive in our conversations.” He asked Claire if she’d chosen a monologue for a regional contest the drama club was in, and she and Madeline talked about that for the rest of the drive.
Several times, Madeline’s thumb went over my hand, gliding back and forth over my skin. If she was doing it to send some sort of message, I had no idea what it meant. I kept checking her expression, but she never looked at me.
Did she think my mother would turn around and check on us again? Was it possible that she just ran her thumb back and forth whenever she held a guy’s hand and the motion was habit?
How could she not be thinking about it when I was hyperaware of her hand intertwined with mine?
When we pulled up to the ice cream place and it was time to get out of the car, I couldn’t drop her hand fast enough. I took in deep breaths of the cool night air to clear my mind.Must not think of Madeline that way. I looked at the strip mall in front of us, the bright store lights, and the cars parked all around us.
By the time we stood in line to order ice cream, I felt like myself again. My mother was paying less attention to Mr. Seibold and more attention to Madeline and me. All the hand-holding in the car had been worth it.
Right after I got my ice cream—a triple scoop, because Mom was allowing it for once—a familiar voice behind me called, “Cooper!”
I turned and saw Jasper striding up to me. I stared at him in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
“Just came in for some ice cream.” His voice sounded natural enough, but the expression on his face said, “I came to save you from the Seibolds.” He gestured to a table across the room where Amelia and Dahlia sat. She wore a low-cut black sweater, and her dark hair lay in a smooth curtain down her back.
Jasper nodded a greeting at my mother. He was the sort of guy that parents naturally liked: clean-cut, polite, and quick to smile. “You don’t mind if I steal Cooper for a minute, do you,Ms. Nash? We’ve got a history assignment we’re working on, and we need to nail down some of the details.”
She glanced over at the table. “Don’t be too long.”
This wasn’t the most ideal place to spend time with Dahlia since my family and fake girlfriend sat not far away, but I had no other choice but to follow Jasper, and anyway, spending time with him felt like a reprieve. A bit of normal life wedged into an improv play that Madeline and I were performing. I could at least talk to Jasper, Amelia, and Dahlia for a little while.
When I reached the table, Dahlia greeted me with a welcoming grin. She was Madeline’s opposite in many ways and not just because she was friendly and approving. Dahlia with her dark hair, sultry eyes, and tanned complexion, was a sharp contrast to Madeline’s blonde hair, pale skin, and bright blue eyes. Dahlia looked like she could be a Bond girl. Madeline looked like she could be Barbie’s little sister.
Jasper sat down. It felt strange to be the only one standing, so I sat down too.
“Sorry about the game,” Dahlia purred. “You played really well.”
This statement caused Jasper to spend several minutes complaining about the holes in the defense. The whole time he spoke, Dahlia’s eyes never left mine.
Jasper thought Dahlia would go out with me, but she’d flirted with a lot of guys on the team, given them her phone number, and turned them down. Maybe she just liked seeing how much attention she could get, and I was the next ego boost on her list. In a school where a lot of guys had their own cars, she wouldn’t be impressed by my ride, a ten-year-old Civic—when my mother let me borrow it.
Amelia finally cut off Jasper’s rant by saying, “The coach willmake sure the defense does better next week. And if not, you’ll just need to run faster so Cooper can get the ball to you.”
“Problem solved,” I told Jasper. “Run faster.”
Dahlia dipped her spoon into her ice cream with lazy strokes and peered at me from underneath lowered lashes. “Do you think you’ll go pro?”
If I wanted a chance with her, the obvious response was yes, and really, what did it matter if I claimed more talent than I had? Still, I hesitated to answer. “Who knows. A lot can happen between now and then.”
She slowly ran her tongue over her spoon. “Well, you’re amazing now.”
“Thanks.” I’d almost forgotten that I held a bowl of ice cream. I took a bite.
“What else do you do?” she asked.
“Do?” I repeated.
