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“Norma Jean! Didn’t you say that you had to be down at the band practice at twelve o’clock?”
“No. It was one thirty,” Norma Jean said, scrunching up her face like she was thinking about it.
“No. I’m sure you said it was twelve o’clock,” Sally said, trying to look around Peter to givethat lookto Norma Jean. The look that said if she wanted to go with Peter, she needed to pretend to need to get to band practice. Sally wasn’t very good at that look. She wasn’t very good at subtlety at all. She was much more of a straightforward, I’ll just be nice to everyone, I don’t want to make any waves, I’d rather be kind, kind of person.
“Oh!” Norma Jean said, jumping up, running over, and grabbing onto Peter’s arm. “I totally forgot about that. Oh, Peter, I need you to help me walk to the grandstand where the band is practicing. Please. I don’t want to be late.”
“I don’t see anyone over at the grandstand.” Peter gave Sally a look, and Sally thought that maybe he seemed a little disappointed.
Disappointed because she was friends with Norma Jean? Or disappointed because he had hoped to go to the diner with her?
She wasn’t sure. And she had to dismiss it. There was no way she could have anything to do with Peter while she and Norma Jean were friends and Norma Jean was infatuated with him.
She wouldn’t do that to her friend. Peter was off-limits to her.
“Please. Can you please help me walk over? I just don’t think I can do it on my own,” Norma Jean said as she slipped her arm around Peter’s waist and started to limp toward the grandstand. Peter had no choice but to follow along with her, steadying her.
“I’d appreciate it if you take care of that foot. Get it looked at,” Peter said over his shoulder.
Sally nodded, not looking at his face, but rather her eyes were caught on the hand that hung at his waist. It was big and brown, with long fingers, a hand that knew how to work.
She liked that kind of hand.
But she stared at it for a few moments before she remembered what she’d just thought. Peter was off-limits to her.
Chapter 2
Peter walked reluctantlyaway from Sally. He was pretty sure that Sally’s foot was hurt a lot worse than anything that might have happened to Norma Jean. After all, Sally had landed on the bottom, and from where he stood, it looked like her foot twisted underneath her. He hadn’t seen her putting any weight on it.
Norma Jean was just faking it, but he wasn’t sure exactly why. It was annoying the way she was clinging to him and pretending so much. Like he didn’t have a brain. But maybe he didn’t, since he had enough brain to figure out that she wasn’t really hurt but not enough brain to figure out why she was pretending.
Regardless, he couldn’t make Sally admit that her foot hurt, and he couldn’t make her do anything about it when she refused to admit that there was a problem to begin with.
Sally was a mystery to him, his opposite in a lot of ways, although she rendered him speechless when he was around her.
Not speechless. He just wasn’t able to summon up his normal sense of humor. He supposed she made him nervous because he wanted to make a good impression on her. But she seemed uninterested. Or maybe he knew that she was rather serious herself, and he tried to tone down the part of his personality that might not mesh with hers.
