Page 15 of Choosing Her
I snorted at the idea of being grateful for what he was doing for me. He could claim all he wanted that he was doing this to break the curse, but I knew it was really just an experiment meant to entertain him. I’d heard the way they were all laughing at me on that date with Hanna—that wasn’t the sound of my concerned friends, it was the sound of guys who knew they’d gotten away with a great prank.
“How about this girl?” Mako asked, shoving his phone into my face again. I was getting a little tired of this barrage of photos he was pushing at me, but it was better than Tino’s initialidea of getting a bunch of girls to line up and kiss me, like a kissing booth. I’d veto’ed that one as quickly as Bear had veto’ed Tino’s other suggestion that maybe I needed to kiss Poppy. His reasoning there had been that she’d managed to melt Bear’s cold heart, which seemed just as impossible as breaking the Saylor curse. I had to remind him that aside from being Bear’s girlfriend, Poppy was also Saylor’s best friend and bringing her into the mix in any way would just make an already messy situation even worse.
The photo Mako was showing me now was of a blonde girl with her hair pulled up in a high ponytail. She had a bright smile and looked happy, although I couldn’t say that she was exactly my type. But then again, did it really matter what my type was? I hated to say it because it felt like admitting defeat, but I didn’t think going on a massive number of dates like this was a way to fall in love with anybody.
“Fine,” I said. I couldn’t keep veto’ing everyone he put in front of me or he would stop asking my opinions altogether, and I’d end up in another situation like the other night. “But how old is she?”
“Senior,” he said. “Her name’s Emily—you’ve probably had her in a few classes before, you just don’t remember.”
I looked at the photo again but I couldn’t say she looked familiar at all. It was pretty much inevitable to end up in at least one class with everyone in your grade, so he was probably right.
“Anyway, she just got dumped by her boyfriend,” Mako continued. “Looking to have some fun. Perfect for you, right?”
I raised my eyebrows. “What do you mean by looking to have some fun?”
Mako rolled his eyes and pulled his phone back to begin typing something. I was a little worried he was texting her for me as we spoke. Mako and Tino were acting like managers for me, responding to the girls and arranging dates for me. All I had todo was show up. They said it was because they cared about me playing well in hockey, but I had a feeling it was just because they knew I wouldn’t do it myself and that would take away all of their fun.
“I told you,” Mako said, “part of breaking this curse is kissing them. Can’t you loosen up a little?”
“I guess,” I muttered. H’es been going on and on about this whole true love’s kiss thing and I was beginning to worry that he genuinely thought it was true. At first, I thought he was just joking about it, but he’d become more adamant the longer the dates continued on. “But she knows I’m not looking for anything more?”
He waggled his eyebrows at me. “Unless it turns into more, right?”
“No,” I said immediately. “That’s not an option.”
I could deal with one meaningless date and a goodnight kiss. I could not deal with those dates turning into actual flings or relationships. I was not on the market for that and I wouldn’t let him bully me into doing it.
“But what if that’s what it takes to break the curse, Crossy?” Mako asked earnestly. “Are you really so hung up on one girl that you won’t do what it takes to get your hockey career back on track?”
“I’m not hung up on her,” I said. And I wasn’t. I knew what happened between Saylor and I was in the past. I’d embraced my mom’s sentiments about how the magic would never come back now and how the real version of Saylor wouldn’t live up to who I imagined her being.
But that didn’t mean I was going around looking for another relationship, either. My time with Naomi was fun, but it had also been incredibly distracting, and I needed to focus on school right now. We were only a month into the semester and I was already behind. I needed to get my head on straight and soon, orI would be barred from playing in any more hockey games until I raised my grades—not that I was much use on the ice right now anyway.
“Repeat after me, Mako,” I said. Then, enunciating the words carefully and slowly, I said, “Not looking for anything.”
Mako rolled his eyes. “Relax. She's not either. Like I said, she just broke up with her boyfriend. Can I tell her you’re free Saturday?”
“Fine,” I sighed. I didn't want to be doing this, but he was right. I couldn't just sit around and wait for this stupid curse to get better on its own.
“For Crossy!” The barista called, sliding the three drinks across the counter. I took mine and Saylor’s, leaving Mako to grab his own. He eyed mine as he did.
“I can’t believe you’re going to just walk up and give that to her,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I shook the iced coffee a little, enjoying the way the ice rattled. “I think it will be a good way to break the tension, don't you?”
“If you say so, man.”
“She likes iced coffee,” I reminded him.
“Yeah but she doesn’t like you.”
I took a long sip of my coffee, hoping he couldn’t see on my face how much those words hit a nerve. I knew he wasn’t wrong—from all the moments Saylor and I had seen each other in the last couple of months, she’d made it very clear that she didn’t like me. That was what the iced coffee was for, wasn’t it? I was essentially trying to bribe her into not hating me anymore. But it hurt to know that it hadn’t always been like that. There had been a time when she did like me, when her face lit up as she spoke to me, when I thought there might actually be a future there.
It made me wonder when it was that she started to properly hate me. When I showed up at her door, there to see Naomiinstead of her? Or was it earlier—like when she realized that I was never going to call her? I hated to think of that time, when she probably wondered if I’d forgotten about her or moved on, having no idea that I was searching high and low to find her again.
“Well, I’m hoping this will help that,” I said. Of course, I didn’t expect one iced coffee to undo the months of damage, but I hoped it could be a start.
Mako and I split up as we reached the second floor, with him turning right into his history class and me continuing straight to get to English. With only a minute until the final bell, the hallway was almost empty, with just a couple other stragglers running to their rooms. When I turned into English, the room was loud and crowded. I had to weave through groups of students crowding around desks and catching up on whatever gossip they’d missed since class yesterday. My desk with Saylor was in the back corner of the room, as far away as possible from the door, and I was a little worried that something was going to go wrong in the final stretch of the walk and cause me to drop the iced coffee on the floor.
