Page 31 of Enchanted to Meet You

“Stalker.” I resisted the urge to get up and look out my window to see if I could see his room. It never occurred to me to try it before—then again, until Saturday night, I hadn’t even known which room was his. “And it’s a playlist. A normal amount of music, at a normal volume, that only sounds insane to people with delicate, aging eardrums.”

“I’m seventeen.”

“Seventeen going on seventy, apparently, if a little Top 40 sends you into a panic.” I sat up and reached for the volume dial on my speaker, turning it down exactly one notch out of some small, grudging mercy, and immediately regretted the gesture, because it meant I could hear him breathe out something that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. “For the record, I talk to Nora and Clementine with this exact volume going all the time and neither of them has ever once complained.”

“Maybe they’re being polite.”

“Or maybe you’re just fragile.”

“I played through a torn ligament in October. I am not fragile.”

“That says more about your poor decision-making than your resilience, but sure.” I got up off the bed and started pacing the narrow strip of carpet between my desk and my dresser, phone pinned between my shoulder and my ear, twisting a piece of hair around one finger without noticing I was doing it until it was already too tightly wound to pretend otherwise. “Why are you calling, anyway? You’ve never called me before. We text like normal people.”

“This required an actual conversation, not a string of typos.” A pause that made me think he was choosing his next sentence with more care than usual, which put me instantly on guard. “You need to come to my game this week.”

I stopped pacing. “Absolutely not.”

“It’s not a request.”

“When I went to the gym with you, you said I didn’t have to do it and I chose to anyway. I assume this falls under the same category.”

“Fine. It’s a demand, then, dressed up as a request for your comfort.” I could practically hear the smugness through the phone, and I hated how easily I could picture the exact expression that went with it—one eyebrow up, mouth doing the thing where it almost smiled. “Tomorrow at seven. Home game. You’re coming, and you’re dressing up.”

I finally gave in and wandered over to my window, tugging the curtain aside with two fingers, and there it was, same as always—his house, four doors down and across the street, porch light on, one upstairs window lit gold against the darkening sky. There was no shadow there now, but he must have been there before if he knew my light was on.

“Define dressing up,” I said, letting the curtain fall back into place and forcing myself away from the window like a normal person.

“Crofton colors. Full effort. The kind of thing people notice.”

My stomach did something considerably less pleasant than the earlier drop. “Wait. Please tell me it’s not against Parkhurst.”

Surely, I would know if there was a Parkhurst soccer game tomorrow—especially against Crofton—since I went to almost all of Sebastian’s games, but I had a sudden sinking feeling in my stomach. Even if it wasn’t happening tomorrow, I knew there was another match between our schools before the end of the year. What if Rhys still wanted to keep up this fake dating ruse by then? What would I do?

“It’s not against Parkhurst.” A beat. “Why? Would that be a problem?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know that it would be an enormous problem. My entire family would be there, and there is no way I could show up in your colors while my own brother’s team is on the field—so thank goodness, but also—” I dropped back onto my bed, staring up at the pink canopy like it might offer some kind of guidance. “Red and gold. In public. Where people who know me could see me.”

“That’s generally what ‘dressing up for a soccer game’ means, yeah.”

“You understand that’s a problem for me, right?”

“I promise you nobody at Crofton is going to recognize the girl from Parkhurst wearing my jersey number.” He said it easily, but there was an edge underneath it that hadn’t been there a second ago. “Besides, it’s not optional. Kelcey’s coming. And when Parkhurst is playing, she goes in full Parkhurst gear cheering for Justin, despite the fact that she goes to school with me and has zero actual stake in a Parkhurst game, purely because that’s what girlfriends do. If you show up looking like you got dragged there against your will⁠—”

“I am being dragged there against my will.”

“Which is exactly why you need to look like you’re not.” A pause, and when he spoke again his voice had dropped into something almost coaxing. “You need to outdo her. Whatever she does for Justin’s baseball games, you do it louder for me. Bigger sign than she’s ever made. More enthusiasm than she’s ever shown. If Kelcey’s out there at a baseball game in a Crofton jersey with his number painted on her cheek, you’re doing that and then some at my soccer game tomorrow.”

“You want me to paint your number on my face.”

“I want you to commit to the bit, yes.”

I flopped backward onto my pillows, one arm thrown over my eyes, and let out a groan loud enough that I heard him laugh properly this time, low and startled, like it had slipped out before he’d decided whether to allow it. “This is insane. My entire life has become an elaborate theater production and I didn’t even audition for the part.”

“You auditioned the second you kissed me in a coat closet.”

“Actually, you’re the one who started it by announcing to Justin and Kelcey that I was there for you.”

“Semantics.” Something shifted in the background of the call and his voice dropped a little quieter, like he’d moved somewhere more private. “Look, I know it’s a lot to ask. I know the whole thing isn’t exactly low-risk for you because of your family. But if this doesn’t look convincing, all of it was for nothing, and neither of us gets what we actually need out of it.”