I guess it had been too much to hope that I wouldn’t see Cooper today.
“I didn’t answer because I knew you would yell at me about Dahlia, and I didn’t want to deal with it.”
“Yeah, about that ...”
I let out a deep prolonged sigh. “It’s too early in the morning. Can’t yelling at me wait?”
He held up a hand in a gesture of compromise. “I’m not yelling at you. I’m asking in a perfectly calm tone whether you were trying to make Dahlia look like some clingy sidepiece if she ever happens to speak to me after a game, or whether you were setting up my mother to look unstable by having her drag me away and then tell off Dahlia? I’m just curious as to which of those outcomes you wanted.”
“Even though your voice is calm, I feel like this technically counts as yelling.”
He shut his eyes for a moment, gathering patience, then pinned me with a glare and waited for me to say more.
I took out my book for first period. “I said those things aboutDahlia for your benefit. This way, if she flirts with you while your mother is around, your mom won’t think it’s strange.” Also, and this was petty of me, if Cooper was still dating her after our fake relationship ended, I didn’t want his mother to like her. Let Ms. Nash think Dahlia was horrible. She wouldn’t be wrong. “It’s all part of our cover. Speaking of which, did your mom believe my story about why you sent the extra flowers?”
He slid his phone into his pocket with an unspoken sigh and leaned on the locker next to mine. “I doubt it. If she had, she would’ve given me a lecture about not blowing my money on frivolous things. Instead, she asked me a bunch of questions. Which means she either thinks I’m hiding something or is worried I’m insane. I’m leaning into the insanity defense. That’s what I’ve sunk to.”
“Tell me about it. I know the rules of football games now.”
“You really don’t,” he said.
“Well, I still have to go watch them.” What else did I need from my locker? Concentrating on my books was hard while Cooper stood nearby. He and his broad shoulders so easily stole my attention.
He leaned a little closer. “Did your dad believe the story about the flowers?”
“He remained uncharacteristically silent on the subject. I’m not sure what that means, but it’s giving me an existential crisis.”
“Why?”
“What sort of actress am I if I can’t convince my father that I like a guy? And not just any guy—” I fluttered my hand in Cooper’s direction—“the hot quarterback. That really shouldn’t be a hard sell. Half the girls in school drool over you. If I can’t pull off a convincing crush, I might as well turn in my thespian card and find a new hobby.”
“Um ...” Cooper said and stared at me.
“What?” I asked.
He tilted his head in question. “I don’t know how to respond when you say something nice about me. I mean, thatwassomething nice, right? The way you said it with disgust is kind of throwing me off.”
Was he fishing for compliments? We’d already established his hotness. He’d taken a picture of me saying it. I turned to face him. “What I’m saying is that we can’t make any more mistakes, and that means you’ll have to do what you can to keep your homewrecking date out of the picture.”
“My homewrecking date?” He snorted, but I wasn’t retracting the title. In fact, I planned on calling her that for the rest of her life, including in Cooper’s yearbook, if I managed to snag it.
“The easiest thing to do,” Cooper said, “would be to tell Dahlia the truth, and then ...”
“No,” I cut him off. “The girl has no moral character, and one of us is smart enough not to trust her with damaging information. I don’t know how forgiving your mom is, but if my dad learns that we faked a relationship to ruin his, I may find myself whale-watching in Norway for the rest of the school year.”
“Norway?” Cooper repeated.
I’d figured his mother had told him the reasons for my parents’ divorce. He didn’t seem to know them. “That’s where my mother is. She’s a marine biologist.”
Cooper lifted his eyebrows and considered me. “How long has she been there?”
“About four years.” I shut my locker. “Humpback whales are apparently more interesting to watch than your children.” Although the truth was, she hadn’t been all that interested in being a mother before she left. Peyton and I had always jokedthat her favorite child was her career. We were just the things that got in the way of it.
He kept staring at me. I’d said too much, been too bitter with my last statement, and now he would either say something pitying or tell me I had to let my mother follow her dreams. That’s what people usually went with.
He didn’t say anything.
“Why are you staring at me?” I asked.
