A second later, Webb leaned toward me. “You’re ridiculous. Jack was flirting with you. Would it have killed you to flirt back?”
I shook my head. “One convo about feelings and suddenly you’re a relationship expert? I will not be a casualty in your questfor a Matchmaking Merit Badge. Besides, if that was flirting, he’s terrible at it. He was being friendly.”
“Hawk,” Webb demanded. “Tell him I’m right. Tell him he and Jack would be great together.”
Hawk stood up. “I’m gonna go put our order in since Katey’s busy.”
I frowned as I watched him walk off, wondering if I’d imagined his changed mood.
“Knox—”
I turned back and regarded my brother with something like amusement. “I promised I’d come here and see Jack, and now I have. We’ve seen each other. Let it go, Elsa. Whatever’s gonna happen will happen without your intervention, okay? I appreciate your concern—all your concerns—but I’m a big boy, and I can take care of my own shit. I’ve been doing it for years.”
“More like youhaven’tbeen,” Webb shot back, his eyes intent on mine. “You got a serious wake-up call a couple months ago, Knox. A hard reset. A do-over. You get to choose what happens with the rest of your life, whether you wanna suffer through it or actually enjoy it. So what are you gonna pick?”
That was a damned good question.
CHAPTER THREE
GAGE
“Alrighty!Are we enjoying ourselves or what?” the portly, middle-aged guy who’d insisted we call him “DJ Tony” yelled through his mic. “What an amazing turnout!”
The crowd of maybe five hundred people assembled in the school gym—a solid mix of high school students, their parents, and some twenty-somethings like me who’d been lassoed into this nightmare with a rope made ofpure guilt—cheered politely, just as we had the last seven times he’d said this.
“That was ‘Love Shack,’ requested by Jeriann Gerstner for her sweetheart, Eddie Gerstner! And thank you, Gerstners, for that fifty-dollar donation to the Averill Union Athletic Association! Fifty dollars for the dance, but their love is priceless, folks!” DJ Tony shouted. “Remember to place your auction bids at the front of the gym, everyone! The boys’ gymnastics team is volunteering this hour, and they’ll bebending over backwardsto help you out!” He snort-wheezed at his own joke. “Get it? Do you get it? Because… gymnastics?” The crowd groaned, and he sighed happily. “Anyway, next up, let’s rock out to a fun Rick James number that Michael Herzog requested for his wife, Traci! Traci, if you accept Michael’s handfor this dance, he’ll give the AUAA twenty-five dollars!” Tony hesitated. “But, uh… I’m sure his love for you is priceless, too.”
There was more polite applause and good-natured laughter as Traci pretended to reluctantly accept her husband’s hand—except, judging by her expression, it wasn’t entirely fake.
I winced and ducked my head so only Hawk, propping up the wall to my left, could hear me. “Does anyone else feel like Michael should have consulted with Jeriann so they could coordinate their pledges for Traci and Eddie? I have concerns that there might be a hard freeze happening tonight in the immediate vicinity of the Herzogs’ house.”
Hawk clapped a hand over his mouth to cover his snicker. “It’s like you know them.”
I did, sort of. Silly as it sounded, it was weirdly comforting to know that people were people, wherever you lived.
“She accepts!” DJ Tony screamed, like that was a big surprise. “Let’s dance, Averill Union! Everybody on the floor!” His voice boomed so loudly through the mic that my brain shook inside my skull even before the music began blastingand the residents of the three towns that sent their students to Averill Union started dancing.
Ordinarily, I’d be out there with them. I’d had a shit day, and if you couldn’t cut loose with your terrible dance moves when you were thousands of miles from home among people you’d just met and weren’t likely to know for very long, then whencouldyou, really? But at that moment, I was feeling sorry for myself, and annoyed at myself for feeling sorry for myself, and then feeling sorry for myself because I was so annoyed at myself for feeling sorry, and anyway, nobody had asked me to dance. So instead, I told myself I was better off being a wallflower.
I was selfishly glad that no one had asked Hawk to dance either, since that meant he’d stayed by my side since we’d arrived with Webb in his truck.
“Hey, I’m grabbing another water,” Hawk said, shaking his empty bottle at me. “You want?”
I shook my head.
What Iwantedwas to get over myself and restore my equilibrium. But the tensiometers for the irrigation system, which I’d ordered literally my second day in town, weresitting at a warehouse in Massachusetts due to some shipping malfunction. And the app prototype I’d been working on kept crashing. And, worst of all, I’d discovered that the only thing more lowering than obsessing over Knox Sunday when he was sitting a foot away from me was obsessing about the man while he was out enjoying his lunch with Webb andJackand I was stuck in the office with Aiden, who’d miraculously recovered from the stomachache that had kept him home from school just in time to scarf half my burrito and beg me for help making a robotic dog-treat dispenser for his science fair project.
I’d agreed, obviously, because Aiden was adorable, and chilling with him was the highlight of my day every day, but it hadn’t totally dispelled my frustrated mood.
Contrary to popular belief, optimism was not an innate characteristic for me. I’d workedhardfor that shit. My oldest brother was perpetually salty, and my middle brother was a Disney princess, but I liked to look at things more practically. If I didn’t like the way things were, it wasn’t because life was out to get me or because the universe was trying to teach me a lesson, it was because there was anactionI could take that I hadn’t taken. For example…
I took my phone out of my pocket and tapped it against my thigh. Icouldjust pull up Grindr right now and make plans to burn off my frustrations later. Heck, statistics suggested I might even find a guy here at the fundraiser. The idea didn’t inspire me, but maybe what I needed was to stop waiting for inspiration.Maybe I just needed to hook upmedicinally,to cure myself of this weird… lumberjack fascination thing that I had for Knox.
Before I could decide, an old lady in a long, flowered dress who propped up the wall to my right leaned in my direction and sighed at me loudly. “The problem with society today,” she said severely, “is that kids don’t know the right way to have fun.”
“Oh?” I smiled politely, slid my phone away, and wondered when I’d crossed that shadowy line between being a “kid today” and being someone who was expected to commiserate about “kids today.”
Rest in peace, Gage’s youth.
