“Right,” Harper said, still serious. “If you’re sick openingnight and Claire has to take over as your understudy, we’ll understand.”
“It would be a small price to pay,” Kinsley added. “And from here on out, stay as far away from Cooper and his offers of auditioning help as you can.”
I should have agreed and let the subject drop. Instead, I found myself saying, “It’s not like my father and Cooper’s mother are a sure thing. They hardly have anything in common. I mean, when they exchanged books they liked, she gave him ones on fitness, self-improvement, and a rom-com. He gave her Tom Clancy novels, Russian authors with unpronounceable names, andThe Art of War. He’s a workaholic. She thinks you should take time out of every day to meditate. He never watches sports at home. She’s devoted her life to being a football mom.” I stopped short, unsure if I believed what I was saying about our parents’ chances or whether I was just trying to convince Harper and Kinsley that kissing Cooper wasn’t so bad.
Because if I really believed that our parents wouldn’t last, I didn’t have a reason to keep things up with Cooper, did I? I’d never pointed out their differences to him.
“Maybe your parents won’t end up together,” Kinsley said, “but Cooper is still seeing Dahlia.”
Yeah. And I needed to remember that.
Throughout the week, TC texted me every day. Most of the time, talking to him was nice. It served as a reminder that someone thought me worthy of real attention.
Another daily ritual was Dahlia glaring at me at school. Sometimes she also said cutting things like, “Is the reason they call you the drama queen because you cause so much drama?”
Whenever I saw Cooper in the hallway, he would nod an acknowledgment or send me a knowing smile that said heunderstood what I was going through. It was stupid of me to look forward to those moments, but I did.
And every time I saw him, I thought of our impending kiss.
I shouldn’t have been super nervous when Friday came, but I was. As soon as I woke up, butterflies took flight in my stomach and refused to settle down. Cooper and I would be enacting Operation Have My Father Catch Us Kissing tonight. At school, the butterflies were full-on doing laps around my insides. I obsessively checked the time. That night as I got ready for the game, I switched clothes three different times, trying to decide what to wear.
Since I was no longer grounded, instead of sitting with my father and Ms. Nash in the front, I found a spot mid-bleachers with Harper, Kinsley, Jonathan, and some of his friends. Selena and Boden sat with us too. I hadn’t been able to convince Selena to come to the games to sit with me, but when Boden asked her, she suddenly thought it would be fun to support the team.
She may have claimed that she didn’t believe in flirting, but she did a fair imitation of it, giving him teasing smiles and nudging her knee into his. They tried briefly to include me in their conversation, but I checked out when they started discussing Calvin and Hobbes. Not the comic, the philosophers. Yeah, I didn’t know that the characters were named after philosophers either.
The game was Cooper’s best. He had an abundance of energy. When he ran, no one could catch him. When he threw, he always hit his target.
The crowd was wild with ecstasy.
Dahlia and her friends sat a couple of rows behind me, cheering loudly. I wondered why they’d chosen seats so close to me.
After a touchdown, one of her friends said, “Cooper is awesome! You’ll have to give him a big kiss after the game. Are the two of you going out tonight?”
“He’s busy after the game,” Dahlia said. “But after that...” She let the sentence drift off meaningfully.
Yep. They’d sat behind me on purpose, tossing out little daggers and watching to see if one hit. I refused to give them the satisfaction. If my dad did end up marrying Cooper’s mom and the Nashes moved into my house, I was going to ban Dahlia from ever stepping foot inside.
Logically, I knew it was stupid to develop a crush on a guy who had zero interest in me. I just didn’t seem to be able to stop myself.
The game lost some of its excitement for me. I kept hearing Dahlia’s words: “But after that ...”
Did she mean on Saturday, or was he going to see her after our date? It felt like he was cheating on me, which I knew was ridiculous.
I texted TC and said I hoped things were going well with his game. If I wanted to start having a thing for football players, I should concentrate on him, not on a guy who already had a girl waiting in the wings.
When the game ended, I said my goodbyes to my friends. Selena gave me a hug and whispered, “Good luck. You’ll be able to pull this off. You’ve got the acting skills and normal teenage girl hormones. Should be a piece of cake. Just because everything else you’ve tried has gone wrong doesn’t mean this will.”
She really should have stopped her pep talk after the part about the hormones.
Dad, Ms. Nash, and I went down to the field to wait for Cooper to emerge triumphant from the locker room. Claire hadmade plans to hang out with some friends, so she was escaping the night’s ice cream trip. Once our parents had sufficiently congratulated Cooper, the two walked off together toward the parking lot.
Cooper and I trailed behind them. Anyone who saw us would think we were leaving as a group. It wasn’t until we got to our cars—my father’s Cadillac and the Nashes’ Civic sat close together—that Cooper and I split off.
It felt odd driving off with him, just the two of us alone as though this was a real date. I had to keep reminding myself it wasn’t.
Cooper apparently had no problems with butterflies in his stomach and was ravenous. We went to a drive-through because he wanted to ensure we had plenty of time to enact our plan and, I suspect, to mess with me because I’d told him I refused to go to McDonald’s for our first date. We didn’t go to McDonald’s. He pulled into a Sonic.
While we waited in the drive-through for our order, he took a notebook from his duffel bag, opened it, and handed it to me. “This is the plan for tonight.”
