Perfect Couple (Superlatives 2)

“Ooooooh,” everyone around me moaned.

“Ha, good one,” Kennedy commented.

Hooray, I’d qualified for the Snark Olympics. I hadn’t meant what I’d said to be that funny. I hoped Noah wasn’t mad. I opened one eye to look for him.

He was crawling across the towels toward me. When he reached me, he leaned so far over me that I felt a little uncomfortable. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kennedy leaning back to get out of Noah’s way.

Noah rubbed the tip of my nose with his, just as he’d done when we dated. And weirdly, though I knew he wasn’t attracted to me, butterflies fluttered in my stomach the way they had before he came out to me. He growled, “You know I’m going to get you during this game, don’t you?”

I giggled. Kennedy scowled beside me. Noah had taken this flirtation too far, and I had let him. If I didn’t end this, Kennedy would start giving me the silent treatment again, and I Just. Could. Not. Take it. I turned to Kennedy and asked, “Want to play?”

“Want to drive some bamboo under our fingernails later?” Kennedy asked.

“I’ll take that as a no.” I told Noah, “I’m not playing.” I hoped Brody heard me.

After Noah walked off, Kennedy told me, “Sit up. This should be pretty good. Football oafs, the band’s drum major, girls, a dog, the student council president, and a gay Goth in hand-to-hand combat? If only the drunk cheerleaders were allowed in, we’d really have a show.”

I did think it would be a show. I also thought it would be infinitely more fun to be part of it rather than watching it, but I wasn’t going to play when Brody was the one organizing. Obedient to Kennedy, I sat up and watched the teams gathering and dividing themselves.

Brody jogged out of the crowd. He reached our towel and held out one hand to me. “I thought you wanted to play football.”

I stared way up at him. His green eyes sparkled in his tanned face. He beckoned to me like the devil. I wanted so badly to play. But I knew taking his hand would be a slap in the face to Kennedy. And there was no sense in goading Kennedy to give me the silent treatment over a football game at the beach, when there was nothing waiting for me as a consolation prize. Brody was just toying with me again.

I opened my mouth to say no. Instead, a yelp escaped from my lips as I was grabbed around the waist from behind. Noah had disrespected the towel island by tracking sand right through it. He hoisted me onto his shoulder.

I told him to put me down, my voice lilting in time with his footsteps across the beach, but I didn’t protest too much. I wanted Brody to know I was mad at him for having his hands all over Grace, but I did also want to play football. This was the kind of Florida fun I was sick of missing out on. Noah was getting me where I wanted to go, in a way that Kennedy would have no reason to complain about later. As Kennedy sat alone on his towel, I felt incredibly lucky to have a gay ex-boyfriend. Noah set me down gently on my bare feet in the middle of the huddle.

Brody, bent over with one hand on his knee and his other holding the football against his hip, was lecturing the teams. He stopped in midsentence. “Harper. Thanks for joining us finally.” He stared at me and I stared back, acknowledging the heat between us.

“As I was saying,” he continued, “this is two-hand touch football. No tackling. If somebody gets two hands on you, consider yourself down. How else should we change the rules while ladies are playing?” He paused and squinted into the sun, thinking. “No nudity. If you pull off someone’s bathing suit, that’s a penalty. Like, a one-yard penalty.”

“I don’t know,” I spoke up. “If you manage to get somebody’s bathing suit off, I think you should gain a yard, because that would be pretty difficult and you should get a reward.”

“Harper,” Brody said over the laughter, “you are my kind of girl. You’re on my team, by the way.”

Across the huddle, Kaye raised her brows at me.

“Wait a minute,” Aidan said. “I missed something. How are we choosing the teams?”

Everyone in the huddle seemed to move a fraction of an inch backward. Aidan was the student council president, and he liked to govern everything.

“The teams should be equally weighted in terms of football experience,” Aidan said, “and . . . I don’t know. Height?”

“Watch it,” Tia said.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Aidan said.

“Parliamentary procedure,” Kaye spoke up, because she was the student council vice president and had twice as much sense as Aidan. “Who thinks we should re-divide the teams considering football experience, height, and whatever else Aidan deems worthy? This will take roughly six hours. All opposed?”

“Nay,” said everyone.

“Aye,” Aidan said testily.

“Ready?” Brody asked quickly, before Aidan could make a more detailed argument.

“Break!” all the guys said, clapping their hands and moving away, while most of the girls were left wondering what had happened. Kaye grabbed Aidan and used two fingers to curve the corners of his mouth up into a smile. Silently I wished her luck with that, because Aidan didn’t like it when she usurped his authority. I hurried after Brody.

I’d assumed this would be a pretty boring game: Brody scoring for his team, Noah scoring for his, and the rest of us standing around watching. But the two-hands-and-you’re-out rule made the competition exciting. Girls really could play. Tia got good at sidestepping Will and slapping two hands on Brody, sacking him. Other tackles weren’t so clear cut. Did your hands have to be flat on the person you were tackling? Did one hand plus one pinkie count? After a couple of scores, we’d had so many arguments about the rules that Will asked Kennedy to referee. Of course he said yes to this. The job massaged his ego and met his need to feel superior.