Page 87 of Witch You Would
“Hey,” Quentin said, nudging my arm. “You should ask her out.”
What should I say to that? Pretend nothing was happening?
“Yeah?” That was neutral, right?
“Come on, you two are a perfect pair! We’ve got bets going on how long it will take for you to hook up.”
I couldn’t tell him someone had already won the bet. It still felt weird, though, for people to think Leandro was perfectfor someone when he wasn’t real.
“Penelope deserves better than a hookup,” I said.
Quentin’s eyes got big, and so did his smile. “Oh? Sounds serious.”
Ugh, rule two: don’t break character. I pretended my arm hurt. “I hit my funny bone is all. The serious will stop once I canfeel my humerus again.”
“It’s okay to be serious about some things,” Quentin said. “Especially some people.” And then he wandered toward the piano,accepting a drink from someone as he went.
It might be okay for me to be serious, but not Leandro. I had to keep things up for another week. And then what?
Oh, shit, then what?
Penelope bounced up, eyes shining. “Dance break over, let’s go!”
I let her pull me into a turn, and then my body took over as I firmly told my brain to shut up and enjoy this while it lasted.
I stepped out of the elevator into the lobby, enjoying everyone’s reactions when they saw what I was wearing. Some peoplerolled their eyes or shook their heads, but most of them pointed and laughed, which was the idea.
Little Manny came up to me first. “Bro, that is sick. How did you even find it?”
Sam had gone thrift shop hunting for weeks, eventually ordering my outfit online. “Magic,” I said, wiggling my fingers athis eyes.
Today was our third field trip, to a cruise ship docked at the port. We wouldn’t actually be sailing anywhere, but we’d getall the perks of being on board: fancy food, unlimited nonalcoholic drinks, live entertainment, and—unless I’d been lied to—asoft-serve ice cream machine. I was going to eat a truly obscene amount of ice cream.
I’d already warned Penelope about it earlier, in my room. She’d laughed and said we could have a contest, because she wassure she could eat more than me. I took that as a challenge, and also a double entendre, and pretty soon she was coming onmy mouth.
Mmm. Maybe later we could...
“Oh my god, what are you wearing?” Penelope asked.
I turned around and had to stop my tongue from rolling down my chin like one of those old cartoon wolves. Her dress was thatdark red with a name like burgundy or oxblood, and the swishy skirt stopped a little past her knees. Her shoulders were bare,her upper arms partly covered with sleeve-like bits that had to be decorative since they weren’t holding anything up. Thefront curved and crossed over her chest down to her waist, which had me looking right at her perfect cleavage.
She had asked me a question. I tried to skip back to earlier in my brain-track, but the stream had frozen.
“You look like you’re going to prom,” she said. “In the seventies.”
I found my Leandro grin somewhere and put it on. “What, you don’t like it?”
“It’s so . . . yellow. And the frilly shirt is so . . . frilly.” She shook her head. “And we match. Again. How?”
“It’s honestly a little creepy,” Dylan said. He wore a much more normal light brown suit with a blue tie.
My bow tie was maroon, and the lapels of my jacket had maroon stripes along the edges. Not the same color as Penelope’s dress,but close.
“Clearly it’s fate, m’lady,” I said, giving her an elaborate bow. “We were destined to be the best-dressed team this showhas ever seen.”
“This is the first time they’ve had teams.”
“I said what I said.”
