Perfect Couple

by Jennifer Echols

  “I got knocked out,” he explained.

  “Oh!” I gasped. “Brody!”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” he said nonsensically. “It was an accident. The thing is, usually the quarterback doesn’t get hit in practice. The whole team is relying on the quarterback during games, so we don’t take chances in practice. We just got tripped up this time. We were running a new play. Somebody shoved Noah off balance. He couldn’t catch himself, and he elbowed me. Hard. I don’t know if you’ve noticed Noah’s bony-ass elbows. I fell straight back”—he lifted both forearms and fell back a little to show me—“and landed right on my helmet.” He cradled the back of his head in one hand. “At least, that’s what they tell me.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “No.”

  “You had a concussion?” I’d known football was rough, but I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard this story before. Why hadn’t somebody told me?

  Of course, there wasn’t a reason for anybody to tell me. Brody and I had had no link with each other until the yearbook elections on the first day of school. And even now . . . a very choice set of circumstances had placed us alone in the beach pavilion.

  “Yeah, a concussion. But I recovered quickly, and the doctor was impressed,” he said, like he was trying to talk me into something. “The doctor lectured my mom about it, though. A second concussion could be serious. If that happens to me, my mom’s pulling me out of football completely. Don’t tell anybody, because that’s my secret. Only Noah knows.” He shrugged. “If my mom nixed my high school career, I could still walk onto a college team, maybe, but my chances of starting would be pretty much over.”

  “Would you even want to play college football if you’d already had two concussions?”

  He threw up his hands. I took this to mean that after a second concussion, every possible choice would suck.

  I nodded. “The reporter wasn’t imagining things. You’re being more careful.”

  “I have to be. When the newspaper said I was so daring and fun to watch, it’s not that I had any great talent. I just wasn’t scared. And now I am. I don’t care about getting hurt, per se, but I don’t want my football career to end. It has to end someday, sure, but not now.” He looked past me, across the pavilion and out a window to the ocean.

  “You’re talking like you’re about to get a second concussion,” I pointed out. “How long have you played football? Since your dad started coaching you in third grade, right?”

  He blinked at me, surprised.

  “That’s what Noah told me,” I explained.

  “Yeah,” Brody said slowly, “third grade.”

  “You’ve played football since third grade without a head injury. Then you get one as a result of a freak accident. There’s no reason for you to be playing like you’re about to have another.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, I don’t want you to get a concussion either. That would make it difficult for us to take our Superlatives photo for the yearbook, and I have a deadline!”

  He grinned, which made me smile too.

  I said, “But if worrying about a concussion makes you lose your magic, your football career is going to be over soon anyway. Might as well play like you mean it.”

  He nodded, then thought better of it and shook his head. “I don’t know how to unworry about it.” He tilted his head to one side, considering me. “A few minutes ago when I was trying to look at your eye and I told you to relax, you did, pretty much instantly. You just took a deep breath and did it.”

  “I have a lot of practice,” I said. “It’s a coping mechanism. I’m super high-strung.”

  “You?” he asked in disbelief. “You’re always so calm.”

  “Me?” I laughed. “No, I’m not. I was able to relax when you told me because I trust you.”

  He watched me solemnly as he said, “You shouldn’t.”

  Maybe he meant You shouldn’t trust me with your eye or You shouldn’t trust me with your granddad’s car. But he was so near, I could only interpret his words as innuendo. You shouldn’t trust me when I’m alone with you.

  I gave him a sexy smile. I didn’t have a lot of experience with this, but I attempted it anyway. I said, “Between you loving football and Mr. Oakley trying to explain it to me so I can take pictures of the games, you make even me want to play.”

  Brody raised his eyebrows. “That could be arranged.” He glanced around the pavilion. “So, will this place work for our yearbook picture?”

  I’d been hoping he wouldn’t bring that up, because I didn’t want our conversation to end. But maybe he did.

  “Now that I look at it,” I said, “no, it won’t work. There’s not enough light. We can’t take the photo on the beach right now either, because it’s too bright. All that white sand tends to mess with the camera’s light meter.”

  Brody widened his eyes at me in fake exasperation. At least, I hoped it was fake. “Don’t you have a night setting on your camera?”

  “Yeah, but that slows down the shutter speed to let more light in, which means I would need my tripod. The shutter’s open too long to keep the camera still if someone’s holding it. The picture will be blurry. We should try again on the beach at sunset. The light will be perfect then.”

  “Does that mean you want to go back to the others?”

  I asked, “What else would we do?”

  He shrugged dismissively. But he held my gaze as he said, “Get to know each other better. We were voted Perfect Couple. I feel like I hardly know you, even though the senior class thinks you’re the love of my life.”

  7

  BRODY’S WORDS SET MY HEART beating rapidly, but I threw back my head and laughed like nothing was wrong. “You’ve known me since kindergarten.”

  He shook his head. “Not really. You look completely different today.”

  “You mean I look like everybody else,” I said ruefully.

  “No, ma’am,” he said firmly, “you do not.”

  Speechless, I stared at him. His eyes flicked ever so briefly to my bikini top, then back up to my face. My chest and upper arms burned in a delicious way, a feeling I wasn’t ready to give up just because I hadn’t brought a tripod.

  Now that Kennedy had made motions to forgive me, he would miss me. He would look around the beach for me. He would give me the third degree when I eventually returned to our home base on the towels. But I didn’t care about that while Brody was gazing at me.

  I was alone with him. Neither of us was going anywhere for a while if we could help it, but I couldn’t think of a thing to say to him—which underscored why we were a terrible match in the first place. I wondered if he felt the same way about the title we’d been elected to. I said, “I’ve been racking my brain about this. Why do you think the class chose us for this?”

  “Well, our study hall also chose Sawyer as our representative on the student council, so a good portion of our school is obviously on crack.” When he saw my face fall, he said, “The good kind of crack.”

  “Crack—you know, the nutritional kind.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sawyer was the only candidate,” I reminded him. “We had no other choice, except to elect nobody. Though come to think of it, maybe that would have been better.”

  “Look,” Brody said, almost impatiently, “here’s what I really think about the Superlatives, if you want to know.”

  “Of course I want to know.” He was acting like people usually didn’t want to know what he thought, which was sad.

  He searched my eyes for a moment. Not glancing at my ass or sliding his gaze to my cleavage, but measuring me, as if deciding whether he could trust me on another level.

  He said slowly, “I think it’s pretty strange for the school to tell students we can’t kiss and we’re not supposed to hug each other in the halls, then make us vote on two people who should date but don’t. I mean, the other titles are bad enough. If you get a good one, like Most Athletic, you feel like you have to live up t
o it. That’s why I’m glad I didn’t get something like that.”

  I wondered if he was telling the whole truth. I bet he would have appreciated getting Most Athletic. It would have caused him a lot less trouble than Perfect Couple That Never Was. I saw his point, though. He was already stressed out about being quarterback. Getting named supreme athlete of the school would have set higher expectations for him and hiked his stress level even more.

  He went on, “And what if you got a bad one, like Most Likely to Go to Jail? That’s just mean to Sawyer.”

  “Aw,” I said. “It’s sweet of you to care. Who did you vote for?”

  “I voted for Sawyer, obviously, but it’s still mean. I’m predicting the school won’t vote on these titles much longer. Somebody’s going to sue.”

  “I don’t think so.” Most of the titles weren’t insulting, and most parents had no idea their kids had received them unless they looked through the yearbook when school was almost over.

  “Oh, yes,” Brody said, nodding. “The first thing they’ll sue about is a couples title like ours. The rule is that it has to be a girl and a guy. Why not a guy and a guy, or two girls?”

  His words floored me. This was the sort of philosophical discussion I would have with Quinn or some other free thinker in journalism class or art class. I wouldn’t have predicted this devil’s advocate position to come from the mouth of the quarterback.

  I shrugged my camera bag off my shoulder, set the case on the floor at my feet, and leaned against the pavilion wall again. “How long have you known about Noah?” I figured that’s who we were really talking about.

  “Forever,” Brody said. “I mean, he actually came out to me in middle school. But we’d been good friends since we started football together in third grade, like you said. I wasn’t surprised when he came out.”

  “Did he ever . . .” I wasn’t sure how to ask this, or whether I even should, but I was dying to know. “Were you ever the object of his affection?”

  “Why do you ask?” Translation: I shouldn’t have asked.

  Heart palpitating again at the idea that I’d offended Brody, I hurried on, “You’ve been super accepting of the whole thing.”

  He laughed long enough that the tension between us disappeared. Then he said, “Well, middle school is just difficult.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Back in middle school, Noah and I did have an uncomfortable five-minute conversation,” he admitted. “But you know, I distinctly remember having a crush on Tia back then.”

  “Tia!”

  “Yeah. I think all middle school guys—the straight ones, anyway—fantasize about getting in good with the wild girl. But I realized someday a couple of her boyfriends were going to duel each other in the parking lot. I didn’t want to be one of them.”

  That sounded about right—at least, for the Tia I’d known forever. Tia had turned over a new leaf in the past couple of weeks, since she started dating Will. I asked, “You don’t think Will’s going to suffer that fate, though, do you?”

  “No, opposites attract,” he said. “Opposites may repel at first, but in the long run, they’re the best thing for each other.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I don’t think the school should officially pair folks up. People don’t naturally operate as permanent couples. You get married and swear that you’re one body, operating as one unit. Half the time you unswear it a few years later and swear it again with somebody else. Everybody in my family is divorced. My parents, my grandparents, everybody. Christmas day might as well be Halloween, because it’s like we’re going from house to house, trick-or-treating. People stay individuals as they move through life, in and out of relationships. Being a couple is temporary, like cars in a train. They’re detachable so you can switch them around. I’m not saying that’s how it should be. I’m just saying that’s how it is.”

  If Brody had said this to me when we first entered the pavilion, I would have been crushed that he wasn’t coming on to me after all. These were not the words of a guy who was interested in a girl and wanted her to be interested in him, too. But we’d been talking for so long, and our conversation had delved so deep, that I no longer thought he was measuring every word against whether it would advance his cause with me. Now he was just telling me the truth.

  I said, “My family is like that too.”

  His mouth twisted. He nodded.

  And then, I couldn’t let it go, could I? I couldn’t just embrace the moment and my newfound, genuine friendship with Brody. I had to bring it back around to my superficial problem, the one that had kept me awake at night for the past two weeks, ever since the Superlatives elections. I asked, “Have you discussed this with Grace?”

  He nodded. “I have. I’ve said all kinds of things to Grace. But did she hear me? I don’t know. She has this laugh. Heh! Heh! Heh!”

  I knew the laugh. I hated the laugh.

  Brody said, “At first you think it’s a cute, nervous laugh. Except that’s her response to everything. She can’t possibly feel the same way about everything. Or can she?”

  My natural inclination was to smooth over arguments. Kaye had scolded me about this numerous times, and I had smoothed over her scolding. My automatic reaction was hard to turn off, obviously, even when I was smoothing over my crush’s problems with his girlfriend. Stupidly I suggested, “Maybe it’s you, not what you’re saying. You make Grace nervous.”

  “Why would I make her nervous?” Brody grumbled.

  Say it. Say it. Say it. Tell the truth. I felt like I was jumping off a cliff as I said it: “Because you’re so attractive. Maybe when you get as close to her as you are to me right now, she forgets what she was talking about.” It was a big, brazen mouthful, and after I’d gotten it out, I felt my cheeks turn bright red in the heat. I stared up at the vaulted ceiling as if it was very interesting.

  Something touched my neck. I nearly put up a hand to brush away a bug. But the touch was Brody’s fingertips smoothing along my skin, back and forth across my collarbone.

  I hardly knew how to process that he was touching me. I spent more time listening to my brain than paying attention to my body. I was all mind, and my body was just a vehicle to get me from home to class and back again, like my bike or Granddad’s car or the public bus. Sure, I put my look together carefully in the morning, and throughout the day I checked the neatness of my clothes and hair. Other than that, I never gave much thought to my body.

  Brody reminded me that I was made of bones and skin and muscle. He was connecting my body back to my brain in a way I’d never experienced. I flattened my hand against the rough stucco wall. My palm turned sweaty. His fingertips felt so good stroking me in—let’s face it—a first-date, innocent way.

  “Is everything okay, Harper? Now you seem tense again.” As Brody said this, he massaged my shoulder with a pressure so strong that it fell just short of hurting. It was intense enough, and good enough, that I wished he would do that to me everywhere.

  But after a few strokes of his hand, his fingers followed the strap of my bikini, trailing fire, down to cup my breast. He wasn’t technically touching me anymore since my bathing suit top separated his skin from mine. But I could feel the pressure of his hand, and the heat of it. Never mind what I’d thought about the innocence of his touch. Electricity arced from his body to mine.

  If he felt the same way I did as he slid his thumb back and forth across my breast, he didn’t let on. In the darkness of the pavilion, I couldn’t see the green of his eyes, but the shadows underneath were deep. He looked older than me, and serious.

  I giggled.

  “What’s so funny?” he whispered.

  “Um, where do I start? Most guys, if they were touching a girl’s collarbone and noticed she was acting tense, would take their hands off her before asking after her health, rather than touching her breast.” The last word came out as a sigh. I was pretty proud that I’d produced a joke under the circumstances, but inwardly I cringed as I heard myself. I sounded like I wanted him to s
top touching me. I didn’t.

  Incredibly, he was unfazed. “Most guys?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “You do this enough to have a test group?”

  “It’s all in the name of science,” I said faintly.

  “No means no,” he said. “They lecture us about this endlessly in PE. Do you want me to stop?”

  I shook my head.

  “Me neither.” He moved toward me. He was about to kiss me.

  The nearer he came, the more scrambled my brain got. His lips were so close to my ear that his breath feathered across my cheek.

  Suddenly he’d backed away from me. No! I wanted him to kiss me. Hadn’t I made that clear?

  He nodded toward the nearest arched doorway to the beach. Halfway understanding his message, I jerked my camera bag up by the strap just as Kennedy burst in.

  “Harper!” Glancing from me to my camera bag and back to me, he let me hear all the accusation in his voice. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  I smiled. “Sorry. I was right here.”

  His angry eyes cut to Brody. A breeze from outside caught his wet ponytail and flopped it forward over his shoulder.

  Brody didn’t do much. He gave Kennedy a subtle look down and back up. I wasn’t sure, but I thought this meant, Come at me, bro, because I can take you.

  Amazingly, I might have been right. Kennedy seemed to get the same message. He didn’t engage with Brody. He turned back to me and demanded, “What are you doing?”

  I held up my camera bag. “The light’s bad, but we were attempting to get our yearbook Superlatives picture out of the way.”

  “Because her deadline is coming up,” Brody chimed in. He said this without a trace of sarcasm. Brody didn’t really do sarcasm. But I heard the private joke in his words: Kennedy had been on me to meet this deadline. In a roundabout way, he was the one who’d convinced us to stand in a shadowy beach pavilion alone together. So there.

  Kennedy’s burst of anger seemed to have drained away. We’d managed to talk him down, just as I had in journalism class.