Page 87 of Better Than the Movies
He looked up and grinned.
“That’s right. Little Liz,” I said, and pointed to myself and rolled my eyes. “I feel the exact same way. I’m supposed to go with Joss, and I’m sure it’ll be fun, but I’m with you. That’s not how I’ve always daydreamed senior prom would be.”
I pictured Wes’s face, and my hands felt hot. I shook them out and said, “The more I think about it, the more I don’t want to settle. I want the possibility of more, even if it doesn’t work out. I want to take the chance for a magical night, because even if it flops, I can at least have a date with possibility instead of a friend.”
He tilted his head a little and smiled at me. “You might have a point, Liz.”
“I know I do.” I was getting worked up at the thought of going to prom with Wes. Someone needed to douse me with cold water, fast. Because suddenly it felt like it was all I’d ever wanted. “Trust me when I tell you that sometimes the person with the most ‘magical night possibility’ is the last person you’d expect. Sometimes there can be someone you’ve known forever, yet never really noticed.”
God, I wished I’d noticed sooner. My brain was spewing out little montages of Wes and me—in the Secret Area, at Stella’s, on the way home from the party…
How had I not noticed sooner?
“I think I know what you mean,” Michael said, staring at me intensely, and alarm bells started going off in my head. I wasn’t sure why he was looking at me like that, but now definitely wasn’t the time.
Adam popped his head in the doorway and said, “We need you guys. We’re doing team Cards Against Humanity.”
“Yes!” I shouted my response, thrilled to be interrupted.
Adam tilted his head and gave me aWhat’s-the-matter-with-yougrin, and Michael was still eyeballing me. I cleared my throat and tried to recover, saying with a casual look, “I mean, count me in.”
“I’ve never played that on teams,” Michael said, giving me a weird look.
“Me either,” I agreed, anxious to find Wes.
“We’re only playing teams because Alex wants to pair up with Wes.” Adam gave me a look of commiseration, like we were of thesame opinion, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. “She says it’s more fun that way, but I’m pretty sure she just wants to share a chair with him.”
“Well, let’s do it.” Michael gave me a nice smile, but it did nothing for me. At all. It just reminded me that I needed to get down to that card game before Alex ended up with my happy ending.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“He had kissed her long and good. We got banned from the pool forever that day, but every time we walked by after that, the lifeguard looked down from her tower, right over at Squints, and smiled.”
—The Sandlot
“Thank God we parked close.” Wes started the car and turned on the windshield wipers as the rain pounded down. “We would’ve been drenched if we’d been a second later.”
My heart was beating in my neck. The inside of the dark car felt intimate against the roaring storm, and I was wholly unsettled. Since the moment I’d realized the way I truly felt about Wes, I’d been overwhelmed with a sort of panicked need to tell him. To make sure he knew before Alex got comfortable on him. “For sure.”
“Sorry about my sketchy friends.”
“Nah—it’s cool.” He was referring to the fact that his friends had played Cards Against Humanity for about five minutes before deciding theyallwanted to go along when Noah got the pizza. I’m fairly certain I was smiling maniacally when Alex climbed into the minivan. “I was supposed to go home as soon as the movie ended, anyway.”
“Yeah, what’s with that? You’re months away from leaving for college, but your dad’s still all over your business. Is he a smidge overprotective, maybe?”
He looked over his shoulder before putting the car in drive and pulling onto the street, and the new song from Daphne Steinbeck—“Dark Love”—was starting on the radio. It was slow and heavy on the sexy building beat, and I considered switching the station because it felt like too much.
It was too perfect.
I said, “Big-time. Even though he’s moved on with his life, he never forgets about my mother’s accident and the fact that sometimes the things that seem unlikely to happen in lifedoactually happen.”
“Wow.” He glanced over at me. “Pretty tough to argue over that one, eh?”
“I don’t even bother.”
The rain intensified, and Wes switched the windshield wipers to full speed. He pulled out slowly onto Harbor Drive, the busy street that ran parallel to Michael’s neighborhood, and the bright, multicolored lights from the businesses lining the road were completely blurred by the downfall. I leaned forward, cranked the defroster, and said as casually as I could, “So Alex, huh? You’re going to ask her out?”
“Did Michael say that?” He craned his neck closer to the windshield, taking his time as we neared an intersection. The stoplight switched to green, and he accelerated when the cars atthe cross street all came to a stop. All clear, we got back up to speed, but in the distance I saw a Jetta zip out of a gas station and onto the road in front of the Suburban we were following entirely too closely and—
