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I swung my ball toward the pins and knocked down four my first time—which was pretty good for me. When I turned around to wait for my ball to come back, spotting Connor standing behind Jade’s chair, his hands gently on her shoulders. He let them rest there, coasting his fingers over her sweater before he ducked his hands underneath her hair.
“Aim for the middle!” he called to Madison, who was lining up her ball with the pins. He smoothed Jade’s hair behind her, combing through the strands. Though her attention was on her phone, she leaned into his touch.
My ball clattered back into the ball return, but my thoughts were stuck on his hands on her. His actions were so easy, simple. Natural. It should’ve been easy for me, too. I mean, it wasn’t like I was jumping Alex in public—simply touching his shoulder shouldn’t be a big deal. Why was it so hard for me to initiate it?
“You did great,” Rachel said, giving me a thumbs-up. “Right, Ava?”
Connor leaned down and brought his cheek level with Jade’s, whispering something to her. The level of awareness I had for them was alarming—and a little stalkery—but I couldn’t bring myself to turn away. He told me to pay attention, and I couldn’t help but note everything he was doing.
At least I wasn’tliterallytaking notes. That’d be harder to explain.
Alex grabbed his green ball and wasted no time in bowling his turn, arcing his foot behind him like an expert. His form had paid off—the ball sailed down the lane and clattered into the pins, sending them all scrambling. “He’s giving you a run for your money, Ava.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Ava stared down at her phone. “One strike doesn’t match my level of awesomeness.”
“It comes close,” Alex replied, and sat back down beside me. He leaned over and swiped up my soda, taking a drink from it.
With him leaning so close, it was my chance. Take Connor’s advice, take initiative. Where would’ve been a normal place to touch? His hand? Wrist? Bicep? With how close Alex sat, contorting to touch his bicep would’ve been awkward. I couldn’t touch his hand while he held my cup.
Whereas Connor made every move seem effortless, here I was, thinking through every scenario like I was rehearsing for a crappy school play.
Stop overthinking it, I told myself sternly, and laid my hand down on Alex’s lower thigh.
He jumped at the contact, and that’s when everything fell apart.
The bottom of his cup caught on the edge of the table, sharply upturning the glass and causing it to tumble from his apparently weak grip.
Straight into my lap.
I shrieked, but there was no dodging the pop as it immediately soaked into my white shorts. Alex jerked his chair back, trying to avoid the waterfall, and my hand fell from him.
For a moment, I just sat there with the crushed ice in my lap, listening to the sound of pop dripping off my legs and onto the floor.
The shocked silence of the two Brentwood Bobcats tables only lasted for a brief, heavenly second before Jade’s voice crept through, tinged with amusement. “There she goes again.Clumsy!”
Alex swore and Rachel jumped to find napkins, but my humiliation refused to let my awareness extend beyond that. Refused to see whether or not Madison was watching or averting her gaze, refused to see what Connor’s expression was. No doubt, he was fighting a laugh.
I hated him infinitely more in that moment because this was all his fault.
My bowling shoes slipped as I shoved away from the table, leaving Alex to sop up the mess, Jade’s laughter ringing in my ears.
Iwasn’t sure I’d ever leave the grimy bowling alley bathroom.
Why would I, when the Top Tier was no doubt still laughing at the waterworks fiasco?
I scrubbed a wad of paper towels along my denim shorts, hopelessly trying to work the pop stain out of the white material. In a distant part of my brain, I knew they were ruined, but right now, worrying over them was the only way to keep from totally falling apart.
Though I’d had a handful of embarrassing moments—like answering an equation wrong for a mathletes competition or getting into a minor fender bender with Nina Bradshaw’s brand-new Ford Focus—there was only one memory that took the cake and frosted it, too.
Cheerleading tryouts. It all went back to cheerleading tryouts.
I let out a sharp exhale, focusing on the mirror. My eyes were red, but I hadn’t let any tears fall this time. Back then, though, I’d felt much of the same. Embarrassed—no,mortified. I could still remember how my face had looked that day. The pawprints Madison had drawn on my cheeks had dissolved into black smudges on my skin.
The group audition was held at the football field, where we’d all perform to the same song at the same time. She’d grilled me on the exact footsteps, the pacing. Madison had told me the song, taught me the dance, and we’d memorized it to a tee. To her, getting on the squad was the most important thing in the world.
Important enough to stab her best friend in the back for it.
Because instead of teaching me the song we were supposed to learn, Madison taught me a whole other set of choreography, ensuring that if anyone was going to be seen as ridiculous on the football field, it wasn’t going to be her.
