by Gwen Hayes
“What about Micah?” I turned back to the mirror and used Mom’s cold cream to get the dayglow off my face.
“Do you like them both?”
“I don’t like either of them that way.”
“Right.”
“Can we not do this now? I look like a poster for domestic violence awareness.”
And I felt battered on the inside too. Did I like them both? Did that make me a bad person? One of them was bad for me, and I didn’t trust him. The other was probably perfect for me—I really didn’t trust him either.
An hour later, Tyler dropped me off at Hootenanny’s, our small town answer to T.G.I.Fridays. On the way, we had picked up a pair of those ridiculously large sunglasses that Paris Hilton wears. They did the trick, but Hootenanny’s wasn’t brightly lit by any means. I bumped into the hostess podium and a table on the way to meet my date.
He stood when I arrived—score one for Mr. August. “I’m Jake Faraday.”
“Hi Jake, I’m Layney Logan.”
Jake was cute. I think. Hard to say in the dark.
“I’m sorry,” he began. “But your sunglasses are still…um…on. In case you forgot or something.”
“Yeah. I know. I just came from the optometrist. My pupils are dilated. I’m very sensitive.”
“Okay.” He smiled.
I think.
The waitress brought us the special desert the staff had preordered for us—a huge hot fudge sundae for two, with whipped cream and cherries on top. At the risk of sounding like a girl, a dose of chocolate went a long way in soothing the rotten—not to mention confusing—day I’d been through.
“So, Jake, tell me about yourself.”
“I’m a junior. I don’t have a girlfriend…but I’m looking for one. And I’m on the cheer squad.”
The spoon of ice cream stopped short of my mouth. “You’re a cheerleader?” I blurted.
“Yes. And I’m straight. Just to be clear.”
“I would never have…okay, you’re right. I probably would have.”
“It’s okay. Most people do. But cheering isn’t just for gay guys anymore. In fact most are really there to score with the hot girls.”
“Um, oh.”
Jake had this strange way of punctuating the end of his sentences—like it was the last word of a cheer. He startled me several times and drew attention to our table. I wanted to wave to people. Hey, look, it’s Too Loud Guy and his legally blind, blind date.
“Actually, the first cheerleaders were all men. Did you know that?”
“I had no idea.”
“The first squad was from the University of Minnesota. They were called yell leaders.”
“Well, okay.”
“Females didn’t start participating until 1923.”
“Wow, you sure know your cheer history.”
“It’s my ticket out of this town.”
Jake then proceeded to fill me in on every detail I never needed to know about cheerleading. Including the difference between a Herkie and a hurdler, the correct spelling of pompon, and that he was hoping to get a full-ride scholarship to the state college after competitions next year.
My general disdain for the girls who wore the short, pleated skirts might have lessened a little when I heard how long their practices were every single day. Yeah, a lot of them were snotty and were granted privileges because they were pretty or rich—but it sounded like they also worked really hard. And I respected that. I just wished sometimes they would work a little harder on being less stuck-up.
Jake got louder and louder until I decided I was really glad I was wearing the anonymous dark shades. The further I shrank into the corner of my booth seat, the more gregarious he became. He was nice, really nice. He was just very…excited about his future.
“So, Jake. What do you want to do after college?”
“I’m hoping to get my Master of Library Science.”
A librarian? Mr. Herkie wanted to be a librarian. Once again, the sunglasses shielded my date from my incredulous eyes. I guess, in a strange way, Foster did me a favor by trying to break my nose.
“What about you? What do you want to do after college?” he asked before he shoveled another bite, totally encroaching the boundary between our separate scoops.
I sat back, miffed about the sundae poaching. Clearly I wouldn’t be giving Jake Farraday a rose at the end of this date. “An investigative reporter.”
“Like newspapers?”
“They are my first choice.”
He didn’t notice I had stopped eating. “Aren’t they, like, dying? I mean, not just the local paper. Aren’t a bunch of them going bankrupt?”
He would have ducked if he could see the überglare I shot him. Then again, he wasn’t wrong.
“You don’t really have that TV reporter vibe either.”
While I didn’t want to be a glossy newscaster sitting behind a desk on Channel 4, I could totally pull off live reporting in a war zone or an interview with the president. Better than Mr. Too Loud could pull off shushing someone in the stacks.
Jake started talking about cheers again, and I tried to de-bitter my mood. It wasn’t his fault that the industry was changing. Sure, he could have been a little more tactful about my lack of television-worthy attributes—but he was only the messenger. Too many things were changing this year—the roadmap I’d worked on so hard the last four years was becoming riddled with detours.
I realized, too late, that I had been tuning Jake out and he was waiting for a response. So I nodded.
Big mistake.
He popped out of his seat. “Great. I won’t be as loud as I would during a game, since we are inside.” He readied himself, rolling his head and shrugging, and then took a deep breath. “Ready? O-KAY!”
O-GOD! Not ready. Not ready.
What had I agreed to? I recalled something about a cheer he had written. Did I want to hear it? I looked around the dining room hoping someone else would stop him. He had their attention—but nobody made any moves to interfere.
As he showed me the moves he choreographed to the words he had written, I wondered where Foster was hiding and if he thought this was hilarious or not. Maybe he still felt really bad about blackening my eyes. Maybe his stomach did little flips every time he remembered how my mouth felt under his. Maybe he was just as confused as I was.
But maybe I really did deserve to get smacked in the face every time I kissed him.
Chapter Ten
Mr. September
“I’d like to make it clear from the start that I am gay, gay, gay. Like, when I come out of the closet, I’m usually wearing my sister’s prom dress kind of gay.”
I looked at Mr. September across the bench and said the first thing that came to mind. “God, you’re so lucky.”
He blinked several times, not sure what to make of me. “I am?”
“Do you know how many times I wished I were gay? Of course, knowing my luck I wouldn’t understand girls any better than I do boys, but still.”
Mr. September, aka Morgan Harris, and I were enjoying an autumn afternoon at the pumpkin patch. We’d each gotten a hot cider and settled in for the getting-to-know-you portion of the date when he blurted out his sexual orientation.
He sipped his cider, regarding me closely over the lip of the cup. “Boys are supposedly easier, but I’m not sure I buy that either. Of course, I don’t date high school boys.”
I turned toward him. “Me either!” He cocked his head a little. “I mean usually. Before this calendar thing, I didn’t date. I consider these interviews anyway.”
The rigidness in his spine loosened as he exhaled. “I was really worried about this date. I’m not exactly hiding in a closet, but I don’t usually make announcements about my queerness either. There just aren’t a lot of photogenic alternatives for your calendar on the math team. I’m sort of…it.”
He wasn’t joking. I’d seen the math team. They were most likely the future generation of the most important and influential people on the planet
(think Bill Gates), but they weren’t the easiest to look at. Columbia High School, fifteen miles away, was the opposite. If I were to voluntarily date high school boys, I would have started in their campus math labs.
I patted his arm. “Don’t feel bad. I worry about every date. Not to weird you out or anything, but you should know that my co-editor is hiding behind one of the scarecrows, watching our every move.”
Morgan jerked his head sideways, trying to see behind anything tall enough for someone to spy from. “Is he cute?”
“He’s not without visual appeal,” was the least incriminating thing I could think of to say.
Morgan and I finished the ciders and walked around the farm, stopping at the petting zoo for a few minutes of quality time with really cute baby animals and a lot of kids with runny noses. He told me about the college guy he met last weekend that he hoped would be his boyfriend soon.
“How do you know, though?” I asked.
“I don’t understand the question.”
We were heading toward the pumpkins, so I walked gingerly to avoid the mud. “How do you make the leap from ‘I like looking at you’ to ‘I want to be your girlfriend’? I mean boyfriend, as the case may be. How do you know that this guy is the one for you and not that guy?”
“Oh that’s easy. I usually assign each guy a destination.”
“Are you speaking math? I don’t understand you.”
“Okay, pick one guy and tell me what locale in the world you think he best represents.”
I picked up a perfectly round pumpkin and thought of Micah. “Someplace…warm. With tiki lights and drum music and sand.”
“That pumpkin is too perfect,” he answered. “You want one with a little character. Okay, now pick another guy and do the same thing.”
I set the pumpkin down and thought about Foster. “Someplace noisy and confusing. With lots of different smells and bad weather and foul language. And a lot of energy. Like New York.”
“Okay,” Morgan handed me a strangely shaped pumpkin. “Now, where would you rather live?”
Paradise? Or the city? Sun soaked and mellow or messy and scary and dark and exciting and eclectic and…
“The city,” I answered with a sigh. A big, heavy sigh. “And I’ll take this strange, misshapen pumpkin too, I guess.”
* * *
“Press Enter, Ms. Logan. You’ve done all the damage you can do.”
My hand shook, and every time I got near the keyboard, I pulled it way like I’d touched a hot burner. “I can’t, Mr. Blake.”
“We’ve gone over the layout several times. It looks great.”
“What if there is something we both missed. Why isn’t Foster here?”
The jerk scheduled a photo shoot when we were supposed to be sending the live version of the Follower into cyberspace. The first issue was hitting the stands, and he was MIA.
“Layney,” he began sagely, as if he’d had to talk me off the ledge a hundred times in the last four years. Which he had, of course. The man had the patience of a saint. “The best part about a digital version is we can fix it instantly if we need to.”
He was right. When we used to go to print, changes were impossible. This was progression, right?
I still wished Foster were there.
Ugh, did I really just think that?
“Jimmy already said he thought it looked great, but he wanted you to be the one to have the final say. So have your say, Ms. Logan.”
The tone of Mr. Blake’s words made me wonder what else he was really trying to say. Jimmy Foster wanted me to have the final say, so if it sucked, he could pass the blame to me. No big surprise.
I shot a covert glance over my shoulder. Mr. Blake had his arms crossed and he was studying me. He shook his head as if he could read my thoughts.
I suppose it was possible that Foster was attempting to be magnanimous. Unlikely but possible. But if he was giving me the upper hand for any reason other than to cover his own ass, I still suspected ulterior motives.
I clicked Send, and we were live.
I exhaled a breath I’d been holding since August.
We’d done it. It was a free blog still; the software we wanted was going to have to wait until we netted the results from the calendar. But the Follower still had a pulse.
We’d done it.
But I kind of missed the “we” part at the moment.
* * *
Still irrationally angry with Foster for deserting me at the launch, I threw my books into my locker. Before I could slam the door closed, a hand grabbed the edge of it. My girl parts recognized the scent of Micah’s cologne instantly, and they reacted as can be expected from parts behaving autonomously from the brain they are supposedly attached to.
I turned into the cage of his body and sighed. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself. I just wanted to remind you that in three dates’ time, you should be prepared.”
Did he absolutely have to smell so good? “Prepared for what, exactly?”
“Intense wooage.”
“Is wooage a word?” I leaned into the locker next to mine.
“It should be if it isn’t.”
“Micah, I’m just not sure about this. I haven’t exactly relaxed my position on dating, despite having been on nine of them. Probably because I’ve been on nine of them.”
He fingered a lock of hair on my cheek while closing my locker with his right hand. “I never doubted you would be a challenge.”
We both sensed our non-aloneness at the same time. Three feet away, Foster had rooted himself to the floor, his face a stern mask of fortunately unreadable emotions.
“Hey,” I offered, feeling foolish and indignant that I felt that way. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. It’s not like I had a boyfriend. I hadn’t been seeking Micah out. I didn’t know he was going to find me and flirt with me at my locker.
Yet I still felt like crap.
Micah dropped his hand, lingering slower than the situation called for. “I’ll talk to you later, Lois Layney.”
I nodded without making eye contact. My lips drew in tightly, like I was afraid he was going to swoop in and lay one on me.
Even after he’d left, Micah’s presence remained.
Foster just stood there. I finally gave in and looked at him, immediately wishing I’d left when Micah had. Foster’s expression matched my memory of the day we’d broken up—a little disbelief with a slightly angry chaser.
“Are you dating him now?”
“No.” Pushing off the lockers, steam gathered in my head where good sense should have been instead. “It’s none of your business.” I slammed the locker closed.
“None of my business?”
He reached for my shoulder, but I stepped out of his grip. “If I were seeing Micah, which I’m not, it would be none of your business.”
“I think it very much is.”
“Why?” I waved him off and started walking down the hall. “You know what, never mind. I don’t really care.”
“Why? I’ll tell you why. Because,” he blustered while catching up to me. “Because the contract, which you helped write, clearly states no physical contact. This is supposed to be about the story, not your personal life. You used to be more professional than this.”
I froze in my tracks. “This has nothing to do with the story, Foster, and everything to do with you wanting to manipulate me. And…and that stupid kiss.”
“Which one?”
“Both of them, okay? Neither of them should ever have happened. And now, because you pawed me in the girl’s bathroom, you think you have a right to tell me who I can and can’t date? It’s not like you stepped up and professed your undying love for me.” As the words tumbled out, I wanted to scoop them back in. “I’m not a pawn in your chess game. You do whatever it takes to keep me off balance and it isn’t going to work anymore.”
“Excuse me? I still have marks where you dug your shoes into my back.”
The memory sent a rush of heat to m
y face. “This is stupid, Foster. I don’t know why the kissing happened, but it needs to stop. And not because of Mr. March or you thinking you have some right to tell me how to live. It needs to stop because kissing you is destructive behavior.”
“Do you think you are any better for me than I am for you? You drive me insane. You’re the most annoying person I’ve ever met. Nothing I do is good enough for you and everything I say is exactly wrong.” He raked his hands through his hair and started back down the hall.
This time I ran to catch up to him. “I drive you insane? At least I don’t intentionally look for ways to set you up and humiliate you.”
“Layney, you addressed me as Lucifer in AP English yesterday.”
“It’s not like that embarrassed you. You probably liked it. I don’t purposely find things to make you self-conscious about the way you look.”
He stopped and drew in a deep breath, but that little vein in his temple showed me he was anything but cool headed. “You and I both know I don’t mean it when I tease you. I think it’s been made a little more than obvious that despite my better judgment, you appeal to me physically.”
“Oh, I’m touched.” I covered my heart with my hand. “I appeal to you physically despite your better judgment. All these flowery words—what’s a girl to do?”
“Flowery words?” It happened slowly, but Foster’s face changed by degrees until he was someone I didn’t recognize. His eyes darkened, his face grew taut, his jaw squared. I’d finally found the button.
Part of me wished maybe I hadn’t pushed it.
The other part was some strange girl waking up and taking over my brain. She wanted him to bring it. The adrenaline rush skittered through my body. The hairs on my nape rose to the occasion. I inhaled sharply, the air sudden and swift, and I felt like I could shoot sparks from my fingertips.
“Flowery words?” he repeated.
I was so afraid he would ruin the moment with something lame, like “I got your flowery words right here” that I closed the distance and latched onto Foster in a clinch that rivaled the covers of my mother’s romance novels.
