Perfect Couple (Superlatives 2)

Sawyer, muffled: “Fuck everybody.”

Brody: “Shut up. Just enjoy the view.”

Though I was in the middle of picking out faces from a huge group of slow runners, Brody’s voice made me look over my shoulder again. He had his hand on the back of Sawyer’s neck, pressing his head toward the pavement. Will was pouring water over Sawyer’s hair. Now Kaye and her cheerleader friends circled him. Sawyer was in good hands. I tried to concentrate on the last fifty people crossing the finish line, some of them grimacing with the exertion, others giving me elated smiles and peace signs as they passed.

Finally the race seemed to be over. I watched downstream for a few moments, but the street in front of me was filling with pedestrians as if the police had signaled that no more runners were coming. I heaved a deep sigh, rolled my shoulders, and started scrolling back through the photos to one group in particular. I was curious whether my obsession with the beauty of Brody’s body had been a product of my vivid imagination.

It was not. The image was tiny, but I ran my eyes over his shining muscles and his smeared race number, and looked forward to viewing the enlarged version on my computer.

“Whatcha looking at?” Tia asked, peering over my shoulder. “Got a Pulitzer winner? You seem very intent, even for you.”

“How’s Sawyer?” I asked.

“Oh, fine. Just stupid. Will’s walking him home. Don’t change the subject. Let me see what’s so intriguing in there.”

I handed the camera over to her and watched her look at the view screen herself. “I feel like a pervert,” I said.

“You should. That is disgusting. Be sure to e-mail me a copy.” She handed the camera back to me. “Have you scheduled your Superlatives picture with Brody?”

“I’ve been trying to find an in,” I said. “Seeing him like this makes it harder. We were elected Perfect Couple That Never Was, and I’m thinking . . . in what universe would we be a perfect couple? I’m not built like a gymnast.”

I looked down at the view screen and scrolled to the best photo of Brody alone. He was so beautiful, and he looked so happy running and shoving Will out of the frame, that my heart hurt. “Did you vote for Brody and me? You didn’t answer me before.”

“No,” Tia said. “I wrote you in as Most Artistic and Brody as Most Athletic. For Perfect Couple That Never Was, I put a couple of nerds who giggle together at the back of my calculus class.”

“So, you paired like with like,” I said. “That’s how I voted too. And of the guys at school, I think Kennedy is my perfect partner, but we’re already dating.”

“Yeah, you’re such a perfect couple that you’re not talking,” she said.

“How do you know?” I’d texted her grumpily from the Crab Lab while Kennedy was giving me the silent treatment, but she and I hadn’t caught up since. She had no way of knowing we still weren’t talking.

“He does this to you every week,” she said. “Every time you have a date planned.”

I thought back over the weeks we’d been going out. Tia was right about the timing. Kennedy couldn’t be picking a fight with me just to avoid spending time with me, though. Why would he do that?

The whole idea of him made me uncomfortable, so I changed the subject. “Do you think people elected Brody and me Perfect Couple because we have something in common that other people can see but I can’t?”

“No,” Tia said as Brody walked over. He must have poured a bottle of water over his own head. He was wetter than he’d been when he’d first rushed past me. His hair was dark and slick, still caught by the headband. He stood so close to me, and his green eyes were so intense, that I looked away shyly. I found myself staring at the dent in his upper arm where his deltoid disappeared underneath his biceps. This was the first time I had ever used eleventh-grade anatomy in real life.

I forced my eyes up his taut pectoralis major, all the way to his face. He seemed to be staring at the barest shadow of baby cleavage in the open neckline of my blouse. Then he saw I was watching him and cracked a guilty grin.

“Later,” I heard Tia say, but I was so focused on Brody that it took me a few seconds to realize she was talking to me.

“Later,” I responded faintly after she’d already walked away. I was sweating as much as Brody was now. I could feel drops rolling down my cleavage. Holding his gaze had gotten so uncomfortable that I glanced down at my old standby and savior, my mechanical wingman, the camera. “Brody, there’s a picture I wanted you to see.” I handed the camera to him.

The view screen was paused on the best photo I’d taken of the race: Noah in the foreground, slightly blurry, looking back over his shoulder, while Brody and Will were in sharp focus in the sweet spot of the frame, a third from the top and a third from one side. They’d just realized Noah was beating them, and their outrage was hilarious. Their bare chests weren’t bad either. I figured the perfection of the photo was so obvious that even a layperson like Brody would see it. He wouldn’t think my admiration for his body was gratuitous. No, that wouldn’t be obvious unless he scrolled through my camera and saw all the other photos I’d taken of him.

He peered at the view screen and burst into laughter. I watched his mouth. His bottom lip wasn’t swollen anymore, and the bruise on his jaw had faded. When he laughed that hard, the dark circles under his eyes disappeared too. He wasn’t some older, intimidating bodybuilder. He was seventeen, like me.