First and Tension (Summersweet Island 4)

“And we can’t just pretend to be friends to accomplish the same thing?”

Quinn scoffs at me, then presses one of his palms against his chest. “You wound me. I totally thought we were already friends. You shared your tots with me.”

“You stole my tots.”

“Details,” he says with a wave of his hand. “Besides, no one would believe we’re just friends. Would you look at us? We’re hot. A football player and a cheerleader were literally made to be together. Let’s give the fans what they want. And feel free to really fall in love with me instead of just making it pretend.”

Every teasing word out of his mouth that’s probably meant to annoy me just makes me want him that much more, the rat bastard.

“Fine. I accept your dare.”

There’s an entire minute of silence between us, where I almost start to worry if Quinn changed his mind as soon as the words left his mouth, but then a huge smile breaks over his face, and he lets out a whooping cheer.

“She said yes!” Quinn stupidly shouts, making all the cheerleaders look over this way, not even realizing what those words would sound like to teenage girls with hearts in their eyes and happily ever after on their minds.

“Oh, shit,” he quickly mutters, smacking a hand over his mouth when the sounds of the girls screaming as they jump up and down rival that of the thunderous roar of the crowd at the Super Bowl. “Well, you have fun with that.” Quinn is smirking at me again as he starts backing away from me, and I just stand here shaking my head at him. “Thank you. I really mean that. I’ll text you the details about the lunch.”

“You don’t have my number,” I remind him as he increases the distance between us, and I just want to run after him and make him stay.

“Oh, Bodhi gave it to me.” Quinn smiles.

“Of course he did,” I mutter, when Quinn pauses for a minute in the middle of the track as he thinks of something else.

“I totally knew you were going to say yes, by the way.”

“If you knew I was going to say yes to the dare, why did you bother spending all day annoying me?”

“Uh, did you miss the part where I said it was fun pissing you off?” he retorts with a playful roll of his eyes, clapping his hands together twice like I do when I need to get people in order. “Keep up! We’re having fun now! Also, I dare you to do a toe-touch thing.”

With a sigh, another shake of my head at him, and another curse at Bodhi for giving up my secrets, I go through the motions, thankful I stretched with the girls a few hours ago. Clapping my hands together in front of me, then throwing them up in a high vee, I bend my knees and wind up, launching myself into the air and executing a perfect toe-touch before landing softly on my feet with a few bounces.

Quinn whistles with wide, impressed eyes, clapping for a few seconds before he gets serious once more. “I dare you to take off all of your clothes and go streaking around the track.”

I throw my head back and laugh before trailing off with a sigh.

“That’s not how it works.”

“Why not? A dare is a dare,” Quinn questions, making me wonder where all of this fun has been all my life.

“No, you only take a dare if it’s something you really want to do, deep down inside. I don’t want to take my clothes off and go streaking around the track, so that’s a no from me.”

“Interesting,” he muses, crossing his arms in front of him and tapping his lips with one finger. “So you really did want to kiss me, and you really do want to date me.”

Dammit.

“Fake date you,” I remind him, when he drops his arms and shoves his hands back into his pockets.

“Right, right, of course. Lots of technicalities in these dares.”

Wanting to both smack and kiss that smirk off his face, I start walking backward away from him this time before I do something stupid. A smack would probably put me in jail, and a kiss would probably put me in a grave… from making my head explode.

“I have to go now. As you can see, I need to hose down some teenagers,” I tell Quinn, pointing over my shoulder to the still screaming group of girls before I turn my back on that maddening smile and walk away.

“You don’t even want to give me a goodbye kiss?” Quinn shouts after me, the girls now breaking the sound barrier as I sigh and continue walking toward them.

“Payback is a bitch, Bagley!” I shout back over my shoulder, ignoring the sound of his laughter, which my ears somehow instantly zone in on through the ruckus.