by Tara Sivec
“Unfortunately, Mr. Bagley won’t be able to make it to the dinner.”
“He won’t?” Bobbie asks with a loud gasp, her hands flying up to press against her chest like I just told her someone in her family died.
“I won’t?” Quinn also asks from behind me.
I subtly bring my elbow back and right into his gut, making him let out a soft grunt.
“He, uh… doesn’t like steak,” I tell her.
“Yes I do!” Quinn happily informs her.
“He has a thing,” I try again, as Quinn smartly steps up next to me, moving his stomach away from my elbow.
“Oh, you mean that one thing?” Quinn asks as Bobbie’s eyes bounce back and forth between us.
“Yes! That one thing you have to do, and why you can’t make it to the dinner,” I stress that last part, staring at him a little harder.
“Right, right, the thing….” He trails off, breaking my stare to smile at Bobbie. “I do have a thing. But I actually cancelled that thing. The other thing is still a go, but I moved the time of that thing for this thing, so now I don’t have any things!”
“I’m about to punch you right in the thing,” I threaten Quinn through a whisper, while Bobbie claps her hands together happily.
“We have never, in the history of the Summersweet Athletic Boosters, sold this many tickets to one event. Everyone is just so excited for our guest speaker!” Bobbie gushes as Quinn shoos her away with one hand in an Aw, shucks! manner. “We’re already able to afford the new uniforms for the football team, as well as the band, and we haven’t even sold tickets for the raffle baskets yet.”
“What about the cheerleaders? Are they getting new uniforms too?”
Quinn’s question to Bobbie and the serious look on his face just makes me want to rip off my tank top and shorts and throw myself at him.
What the hell kind of game is he playing?
After Bobbie assures him that the cheerleaders will also be getting new uniforms, she says goodbye, saying she’ll see us both at the dinner.
“You can count on it!” Quinn shouts to her as she walks away, giving me a cheeky smile when I look at him with a raised eyebrow.
“What the hell are you doing? You’re not going to the steak fry.” I shake my head at him.
“Sounds like I’m the guest speaker. And now you need me to help you with something. You wouldn’t want to let all those kids down, now would you?”
His smile is so big it’s infectious, and I can’t help but return it. But not for the reason he thinks.
Hovering my earbuds by my ears, I start backing away from him.
“I think you’re forgetting I’m friends with two professional athletes,” I remind him, watching his smile falter. “They’re a couple of duds, but I’m sure they know someone much more impressive than the quarterback for the Sharks. Pretty sure Shepherd went to college with Vick Anderson. Now there’s someone who can sell a lot of tickets.”
“Take it back,” Quinn hisses in horror, when I mention the quarterback for Baltimore, the Sharks’ archrivals.
Since my heart can’t stand looking at his handsome face or his playfulness any longer, knowing he only stayed on the island because he needs a favor and not because he wants to get to know me better or anything, I force out a laugh, turning my back on him as I walk.
“I’m not helping you with any favor! I don’t need you. Go home!” I shout over my shoulder, putting my earbuds in and reaching for the Power button on my iPod.
But you want him…
We’re not talking about want—eat shit!
“I dare you!”
Quinn’s shout right before I turn my music on has my feet stuttering to a stop, kicking up sand as I quickly turn back around.
“Who did you talk to?” I growl, cursing every single one of my traitorous friends, while my heart starts thumping and my adrenaline starts rushing with the need to scream Yes!
“Doesn’t matter.” Quinn shrugs. “Did it work?”
The hopefulness on his face, my burning need to know exactly what kind of favor he needs and the physical impossibility of me turning down a dare, not to mention wondering whether or not this thing involves clothing, has me cursing under my breath.
“Fuck. Me.”
“According to TMZ, we did that on Wednesday,” Quinn retorts with a wink and a click of his tongue, which is in no way adorable at all, and I make sure he knows it by giving him my best resting bitch face.
“I’m sensing some hostility here.” Quinn nods seriously.
“What happened to the NDA? I thought I wasn’t allowed to talk about you. I’m certain that includes helping you out with anything,” I remind him.
“Oh, I ripped those up as soon as I got to my hotel room.” He chuckles. “Didn’t you hear Tyler screaming from there? It was quite loud.”
Nope. I am not going to laugh. He’s not funny. This entire situation is not funny.
“I’ll give you some time to think about whether or not you want to accept this dare. I don’t have a checkout date for the hotel, so you know where to find me. Oooh, maybe we’ll run into each other!”
With that, he gives me a salute, then turns and starts jogging away from me down the beach.
Oh, this is not good. This is sooo not good.
CHAPTER 8
Quinn
“Go away.”
“I’ll take a large decaf, black, and she’ll have a large morning roast with three sugars and a splash of cream.”
“You can’t just cut in front of me in line at Island Brew and order my coffee for me!”
“I thought you’d be impressed I remembered how you take your coffee.”
“I’d be more impressed if you didn’t order joyless bean water.”
“My trainer would kick my ass if I had caffeine. Decaf is a sad, lonely existence. I might need a hug.”
“Go home.”
“Home to the hotel? Excellent idea. I’m exhausted. I woke up a little too early this morning, trying to make sure a beautiful woman running on the beach didn’t get mugged.”
“How’d that pepper spray taste in your mouth? Your eyes are still a little red and puffy. Might want to get them checked out.”
“Why don’t you come back to the hotel and check them out for me?”
“I can’t believe you just asked me that.”
“Emily Flanagan, I am shocked! I just wanted to sit in the lobby and chat about the favor I need from you and the dare you can’t turn down. So, I guess sexual harassment is why you got fired from the Vipers. Wow… just when you think you know a person.”
“You don’t know me. And I—” Clap-clap. “Don’t care—” Clap-clap. “About the dare—” Clap-clap. “Go away!”
“That was a cute little cheer. Did you just make that up last night, when you couldn’t stop thinking about me? Wait! Come back! Teach me the arm movements for the cheer, so we can do it together at the steak fry!”
“Oooh, I’ll have what she’s having. That looks delicious.”
“No, he won’t. He’s not staying.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No, he’s not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No, he—”
“Look, I can do this all day. It’s the offseason, and I’m bored. Wouldn’t it just be easier to let me sit here next to you at the counter at The Barge, which I’ve been told has the best diner food anywhere?”
“Check, please!”
“You didn’t even finish your cheeseburger and tater tots. Oh, these are good.”
“Stop eating my tots!”
“Stop refusing to accept my dare. This favor I need includes food. Really good food, which neither one of us has to pay for.”
“How good?”
“Baby, you will weep after one bite of the truffle mac and cheese.”
“No.”
“I saw you shiver. The truffles turned you on, didn’t they? Just accept the dare, and I’ll tell you all about this super easy and really quick favor.”
“Go home.”
“I can’t believe you’re going to just abandon the tots like this. Now I see why you got fired. Oh my God, did you just throw a tot at me?”
“Fancy running into you at the grocery store! Chili Cheese Fritos, Cool Ranch Doritos, dark chocolate truffles, cookie dough, Oreos, and a whole wheel of cheese. Is someone having a bad day because of me?”
“Go. Away.”
“Not until you accept my dare. Come on, you know you want to.”
“The only thing I want to accept right now is that your fly is open.”
“Like I’m gonna fall for—Shit!”
“Getting a dick pic on the internet is horrifying enough; I don’t need to see one in person. Have a lovely day. Now, go home.”
“Are you following me?”
“I think you’re following me. I was in the pharmacy first. Got a little headache and needed some aspirin. If you’re looking for condoms, they’re in aisle four, and I’m an extra-large.”
“I guess I’ll need an extra-small then.”
“Yikes, tough break. Sounds like you’re going to have a really bad evening. My condolences.”
“Please go away.
“Not until you accept the dare. Wow, you actually flinch when I say the word dare. This is fun! I dare you, I dare you, I da—Heeey, don’t walk away now. It was just getting exciting. And you forgot your extra-small condoms for the horrible evening you’re going to have!”
“Girl, shake that Laffy Taffy… that Laffy Taffy. Shake—”
“Will you stop singing that song?”
“We’re in Chew on This, and I’m currently perusing a selection of the finest saltwater taffy. Exactly what song would you suggest I sing?”
“We are not in Chew on This. I am in Chew on This, helping Wren refill Shepherd’s vanilla taffy drawer, and you followed me. You don’t need to sing any songs, because you need to—”
“Go away, yes, we’ve established that. I’ll go away if you say yes to the dare. And show me the dance you guys did to this song when we played Kansas City. It was hot.”
“Have you been… watching my old videos? That dance was from my first season with the team, four years ago.”
“I was just scrolling, and it happened to pop up!”
“Uh-huh, sure. Creeper.”
“Don’t listen to her, Quinn. She has a poster of you hanging in her bedroom.”
“Wren! What the fuck?”
“My, my, my, how the tables have turned.”
“There are no turning tables. It’s a poster of the entire team, from the bicentennial game at Vipers Stadium. It’s a collector’s item.”
“Then why is Quinn’s face the only one rubbed off, because you kiss it every time you walk out of your room?”
“Wren Bennett, you’re my new best friend.”
“You, shut up and go home. And Wren, you’re dead to me.”
“I heard a rumor. Want to know what it is?”
“Oh my God… I can’t even grab a drink at SIG alone. I swear to all that is holy, Tess, if you snitched about my location, you’re—”
“She’s dead to you. Yeah, got it. Your friends seem to be dropping off at an alarming rate. Tess, I’ll take whatever you have on draft, and I promise, you’ll never be dead to me.”
“Don’t you dare smile at him or fall for his charms, Tess!”
“Sorry, I was actually daydreaming about the synthetic cotton-blend he’s wearing and how fast it would go up in flames.”
“Okay, so I guess I really do need to fear the pregnant one. Anyway, go ahead; ask me about the rumor I heard.”
“Is it the one about Quinn Bagley finally going the fuck home?”
“No. Haven’t heard that one. It’s about a dare I found out you took the night we met. Something about kissing me…. Oh, so you have heard it!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The shock and horror on your face right now says otherwise.”
“It’s constipation.”
“From the wheel of cheese, huh?”
“No! From your annoying ass!”
“Been looking at my ass, have you? It is a great ass. So, about that night… I found out you actually failed at a dare. Emily Flanagan failed. At a dare! You probably should have kissed me that night, and then you’d have a better dare track record.”
“I still can’t believe you failed. You successfully completed that dare in college with a naked Brett Crawford, the bucket of chicken, and two garden snakes. And you couldn’t even kiss one stupid man.”
“Well, now we’re definitely not getting matching BFF bracelets, Tess. I’m also gonna need to know more about naked Brett.”
“No, you don’t need to know more. And the successful completion of that dare included backstage passes to a Green Day concert.”
“And the successful completion of this one will restore your good name, so no one ever has to remember that Emily Flanagan failed so epically at a dare. Or you could just kiss me now and finally put that one in the win column.”
“For the last time, Bagley, go away. Tess, call the girls. I need a Sip and Bitch.”
“Daaamn, that boy can run. Someone must have warned him about Sip and Bitch, when they were spilling all your secrets.”
CHAPTER 9
Emily
“She said yes!”
“Tess promised me that Bodhi has been reprimanded, and he will no longer be divulging any more secrets to Quinn,” Wren reassures me after I spent the last five minutes talking her ear off about my latest troubles. “She hid all of his bongs, but between you and me, she’s going to crack long before he does. Bodhi is going to annoy the piss out of her.”
I laugh when I think about Bodhi chasing Tess all over this island until she gives in. And then quickly stop laughing when I remember Quinn did the same thing to me all day yesterday.
At least I never gave in before he left… but I’m not going to think about the fact that he left, because I don’t care.
“I feel sick,” I mutter, resting my hand against my stomach as I stare out at the fifty-yard line of the Summersweet Island High School football field. The bright floodlights illuminate the entire field, my green Sandbar Cottages hoodie keeping me warm with the cool evening breeze coming in off the ocean just beyond the visitor stands. I try to remember that I’m in my happy place, doing what makes me happy.
“You feel sick because you ate an entire pound of Vermont sharp cheddar and a bucket of raw cookie dough last night at Sip and Bitch,” Wren reminds me.
“Oh, shut it.” I roll my eyes at her. “I ran ten miles this morning to make up for it.”
And because I may or may not have been hoping someone would grab my arm again, but without all the unpleasantness of pepper spray. So I ran my usual route twice, like some pathetic loser.
“It was one thing for Bodhi to tell Quinn to dare me in the first place. But then he had to go and explain to him in more detail about how it’s impossible for me to turn down a dare,” I remind her. “And to really drive his point home, he thought he’d add in the super neat story about the kiss dare when he saw him in town. Why is everyone trying to ruin my life?”
The fact that the boys never shared that little tidbit of information during their social media troll tour is astonishing. I planned on taking it to my grave. It’s humiliating enough that Emily Flanagan did not complete a dare. Having Quinn know I was too chicken shit to follow through with the dare is almost too much to handle. He just isn’t aware that I didn’t want to ruin the perfect evening we had once I got to know him by throwing myself at him just like every other football groupie. Also, I don’t care how much coffee and water I drank, or how much pizza I inhaled after, I still threw up that night. Vomit was in my mouth. No way in hell would I allow the hottest man I have ever met to put his tongue in there as well.
“No one is trying to ruin your life,” Wren says with a roll of her eyes. “I thought helping out with coaching at
cheer practice tonight would put you in a good mood.”
I smile out at the formation of fifteen girls on the field, even when they all completely screw up a move in the middle of the dance they’ve been practicing for the last hour and a half.
“Girls! Get it together! You need to get those high-kicks in sync!” I shout over the music currently playing from a portable speaker sitting on the sidelines next to me. “Once more, from the beginning!”
Grabbing my phone off the top of the speaker that’s connected to the Bluetooth, I restart the song. While Billie Eilish sings about bad guys again, I keep my eyes glued on the girls, doing a toned-down version of their moves with them, and continue my conversation with Wren, who’s sitting on one of the sideline benches a few feet away.
“You know I love you more than anything for telling me Kristen had anniversary plans with her husband and needed a fill-in tonight. Coaching definitely cheers me up, pun intended.”
Before I tried out for the Vipers and moved to California, I was the varsity cheerleading coach for the high school. After I moved away, whenever I came home for a visit, I always made it a point to stop by and say hello to the girls and to give coach Kristen a break at practice. Kristen Gray and I cheered together all through high school, and she was the best person to take over the job when I left. I love being able to give back to my community, sharing my experience of being a professional cheerleader with these girls and spending a few hours doing what I love most in the world. It makes me forget about all my troubles.
Unless those troubles start with the letter Q.
I’m now realizing nothing in the world can make me forget about him.
“Can you just admit you’re not pissed Bodhi divulged your secrets and that you’re just sad and feel sick to your stomach, because Quinn left, and you screwed up yet another chance with him?”
I completely forget the next move I’m supposed to be executing, helping the girls out from the sidelines in case they forget. I don’t mess up. Ever. It doesn’t matter that I just learned this intricate routine less than two hours ago. That’s what life as a professional cheerleader is. A choreographer walks into the studio at 6:00 p.m., and by 7:30 p.m., you have to do the entire routine you just learned… absolutely perfect and game-day ready… by yourself… in front of everyone. Because at 7:45 p.m., that choreographer is ready to move on to the next dance you need to learn for the game that weekend, which will be nationally televised, in which you stand at the very front point of the entire forty-girl formation. If you mess up even one little thing, if you bob your head when you’re supposed to look left, you don’t cheer that weekend. And if you don’t cheer that weekend, an alternate will happily take your place. And your paycheck. We work forty hours a week, only to be paid for the handful of hours we work on Sunday. It’s hardcore and not for the weak. I don’t screw up, even when I’m wearing a hoodie and cut-offs, doing half-assed moves with no one watching.
