“Act like a woman?” I fire back.
“Yes! Chrissy is beside herself. You need to suck it up and just get over it.”
My chin tilts to the sky. It’s a perfect, cloudless blue, like my eyes, my dad used to say, and I attempt to focus on that and not punching my mother in the face.
“I tell you what,” Lance says. “If Mariah decides to come, we’ll be there. And if she doesn’t want to go, then we won’t.” He glances at me, his eyes searching mine. “But right now, we have to go. Have a good day, Ms. Stevens.”
Tears dampen the corner of my eyes as he takes my hand in his. Mom storms off toward Peaches while Lance walks with me to my car. I don’t try to slip my hand out of his grip because I’m not sure he’d let me.
The locks pop as I hit the button. My purse goes across the driver’s side seat and onto the other.
“I’m tempted to say this day can’t get any worse, but I feel like that would backfire,” I sigh.
“She’s a piece of work.”
“No kidding.”
When I turn around, he’s taking me in. Not in a way that makes me think he’s mentally undressing me, but with a gaze that’s more intimate than that. A series of goosebumps prickles my skin.
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?”
“For coming to my defense.”
He lifts his shoulders and lets them fall. “It was really just a chance to get to touch you a lot. But if you think it was for you, then good.”
“Of course it was,” I giggle. As my laugh dies off, so does the easiness between us. The space that was filled with nonchalance is replaced by text apps and almost-kisses and fake dates exchanged between the two of us under various names and situations. “This is weird, isn’t it?”
“We’re the same two people we were last Friday.”
“That’s a bold-faced lie.”
“Fine.” He gives in. “I know you don’t like sucking cock with a rubber on and—”
“Lance,” I hiss.
“But I knew that on Friday too. I just didn’t know it was you.”
I climb into my car because I need space. When the engine starts, I crank the air conditioner, despite the reasonable temperature.
He grips the top of the door and dips his head inside. His hair has fallen to the side, and his cheeks are freshly shaven.
“You know,” I say, turning the fan down a bit, “if you kept your mouth shut, you could almost look sweet.”
“I am sweet.” A playful grin kisses his lips. The ones I almost kissed last night. “I’m settling into this role of the knight in shining armor quite nicely.”
“Is that what you are now?”
“Jonah. Your mom,” he razzes. “Who else will it be?”
Resting my head on the seat, I look up at him. A question lingers on my tongue. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yup.”
“Why were you meeting Nerdy Nurse today?”
His eyes dart first to the building, then the opposite way to the road. He swishes his lips together like he has a mouth full of mouthwash.
The answer doesn’t matter, not in the grand scheme of things. He’s still him and I’m still me. But I still want an answer.
He clears his throat before answering. “You know, I’m not sure.” The tables turn. “Can I ask you something?”
“I guess.”
“Why did you send me a message on the app last night?”
Fair enough question. One I didn’t expect to have to answer. I give the possible responses consideration, all reasonable and honest in one way or another, before settling on what seems to be the truest.
“I wanted a distraction,” I admit.
“From what?”
“You.”
He looks away, a lopsided grin splitting his cheeks.
“I have no business getting involved with you in any way, Lance. I got home last night and kept thinking about you and your grandmother and Whitney’s inopportune timing and …”
“And what?”
My stomach drops. “And what comes Monday?”
“Work? Cupcakes? Avoiding Principal Kelly?”
The swallow I force down my throat burns. Glancing around, I say a prayer my mother isn’t watching and getting enjoyment out of this. She would too because it hurts me.
“Monday is going to be a lot easier for me as a bystander than someone who’s dipped her toe in the pool,” I tell him. “Whitney interrupting us was a save.”
He runs a hand down his face, his long fingers stretching over his chin. “So the message last night was really to distract you from Monday. Not from me.”
“No, from you,” I say, wiping my palms on the sides of my seat. “I wanted History Hunk to remind me I’m desirable. That when Lance is in my office after having almost kissed me and is chatting up random girls, maybe I won’t feel so boring. Or dull. Or dispensable in comparison. Because History Hunk still wanted me.”
“You think that?”
“Think what?”
His voice lowers as he peers into my eyes. “You’re dull?”