Perfect Couple (Superlatives 2)

Obviously Kennedy wasn’t as worried about being associated with Quinn and Noah as he’d been when he’d sneered at me in Ms. Patel’s class on Friday. Maybe Tia was right: He picked a fight with me only when we had a date planned.

Off to themselves in the water, Brody held Grace. I could tell he was supporting her in deep water because she was higher than him. Her sunglasses still balanced on top of her head, and her bouncy curls were dry. In fact, he might have been holding her out of the water specifically to keep her hair dry, which was the dumbest thing I’d ever seen at the beach, and I’d lived here almost my whole life.

“Howdy,” I said, plopping down my ice chest and bag near Tia, Will, and the huge dog Will borrowed from the shop where Tia worked. The three of them lay on towels in the shade of an umbrella. Will still had trouble staying in the Florida sun for long.

He and Tia stared at me for a moment. Then he exclaimed, “Oh, Harper! I didn’t recognize you without your glasses.”

“I didn’t recognize you in a bikini,” Tia said. “Look at that bod! You could crack pecans with those abs. What gives?”

I spread out my towel next to them and lay down. “I don’t know if you heard Sawyer this morning,” I said, “but when he was sitting on the curb about to pass out after the race, he said, ‘Fuck everybody.’ That’s pretty much how I feel.”

The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Sawyer had been angry that he couldn’t run a race like everybody else. I was sick and tired of trying to make a statement with my look, and sabotaging myself in the process.

As usual, Tia didn’t press me for details. “Well, you look super cute in that bright red ‘fuck you.’?”

“I’m not complaining either,” Will said. Tia snagged an ice cube from her cup and placed it in his belly button. He jumped, grabbing his stomach like he’d been shot. Then he dropped the ice in her belly button. She shrieked. The dog jumped up. The ice slid off Tia’s tummy and onto her towel, where the dog ate it.

“Is Kennedy still maintaining radio silence?” Tia asked me.

“Yeah.”

“Wait till he sees you.”

“You look hot, Harper,” Will said.

Tia told him, “There’s ‘Thanks for being nice to my friends,’ and then there’s ‘You can stop being nice to my friends now.’?” She turned back to me. “Let’s go hang with girls. You can walk slowly by Kennedy like your very own Labor Day parade. Brody’s going to be pleased by your ass, too.” She stood and held out her hand to help me up. The dog lay down in her place.

We shuffled across the beach. The sun was really doing a number on my contacts. I squinted and followed the blur of Tia. It wasn’t until we’d reached the water that I realized she’d led me on a roundabout path that veered much nearer Kennedy than necessary.

I didn’t look toward the boys, but I recognized Noah’s wolf whistle.

Quinn said something under his breath that ended in “Harper.”

“What?” Kennedy asked. “Oh.”

Now that Quinn had drawn his attention to me, Kennedy must have been watching me pass. But I forgot all about them when I saw Brody coming toward me from the ocean, stepping over the waves—without Grace.

He put out his hand. Tia slapped it as she passed.

He kept holding it out for me. I slapped it. But before I could pass him, his hand enclosed mine. We both stopped calf high in the surf.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” he said. I couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, which made him somehow sexier. He was so near, and—like that morning—so nearly nude, with almost every inch of his tanned skin showing over tight muscles. I imagined I could smell him over the salt air and sunscreen. Suddenly my entire body was glowing.

Then my brain kicked in. What did he mean by “I thought you weren’t coming”? He’d been out in the ocean with Grace because he assumed I wouldn’t show up? It didn’t matter anyway. We had a date for a picture only. I said, “You thought wrong.”

“I sure did,” he said. “See you in a few.” He let my hand go. We walked on.

I hazarded half a glance behind me and caught him looking back too, at my butt.

And beyond him, Kennedy sat in the surf with his knees drawn up and his arms around them, watching us. Kennedy was a big guy, but this position made him look like an unsure kid.

Another day, my heart would have gone out to him. He was my geeky soul mate, the boy I belonged with. So what if he wasn’t a muscle-bound hunk ready to challenge Brody when he brazenly eyed me? As an independent woman, I didn’t need a protector. I wanted a sensitive guy with a great sense of humor and a fresh view of the world.

But today, my heart was cold to Kennedy. For the first time, I felt a pang of distaste when I looked at him. My skin tingled, wanting Brody to touch me again.

I sloshed after Tia until we’d waded shoulder deep where the other girls bobbed in the surf. Grace had joined them. They were all giggling at something one of them had said. Grace’s staccato laugh was easy to pick out among the others. But when she saw me coming, she called, “It’s Miss Perfect Couple with My Boyfriend.”

“Girl, I told you the Superlatives are whack,” Kaye said. “There’s no telling why the class votes like it does.” This was directly opposed to the way Kaye had acted when she was elected Most Likely to Succeed: like it was the most important award of her life. And I was surprised to hear she’d talked Grace down about my title with Brody. Kaye hadn’t mentioned this to me. She must have been worried I would worry. She confirmed this by grimacing sympathetically as I swam up.