Chapter Seven
“I didn’t know what to say,” Avery wailed over the phone to Lexi. Normally, they texted each other after school, but this situation was so out-there that she didn’t feel like she could detail the whole thing over text. Even with emojis.
“So, tell me again. What exactly did he ask you?”
“He just asked for advice. Said he didn’t want to ask Dad, because he was new and…”
“Didn’t want to be the needy guy. I get that,” Lexi said. Then she went silent.
Avery knew something was coming.
“And you just said you didn’t have time.”
“I don’t have time,” she said, eyeing her planner.
“You don’t have to tell me that. You don’t even have time to see me half the time. But here we are, spending—hang on a moment, let me look—twenty minutes on the phone talking about how you don’t have twenty minutes for him. Was that in your planner?”
A thread of nervousness pulled tight in her belly. They’d spent twenty minutes on the phone? This was why she always texted. She grabbed for the planner and looked at the rest of the day. She breathed. It was okay. She could just read for a few minutes before going to bed. Or not at all. She finished her last book a couple of nights ago and still hadn’t settled on what to read next. No harm no foul. She flipped the book shut again and nudged it slowly down to the bottom of her bed with her foot. Then she grabbed it again and laid her palm on the cover as if she could absorb her whole future inside just by touching it. Just having her hand on it was comforting.
“No, but I can pull time from—” she began.
“That’s my point exactly. You found time for this, so you can find time for him. I mean, if you helped him play better football, that could fix your whole problem with Mr. Duchamp,” Lexi said, articulating the idea that had been rattling around her head since she said no to Lucas.
“There’s a big problem with that, though. I don’t play football. I don’t know what it’s like to be on the field,” Avery said.
“Your dad hasn’t played football for, like, a hundred years, either,” Lexi countered. “Check your planner again.”
Lexi was the only person outside the family who knew why she kept planners. She didn’t only have one for this semester but also for the years that were laid out ahead of her. Not as detailed, of course, but with her goals and dreams for the next year, and the one after, and the one after that. So she wouldn’t miss anything or forget anything or be surprised by anything.
“I’m serious,” Lexi said when Avery didn’t answer right away. “If someone asks you for help, and you can help them, you should.”
Avery half laughed, but a cold finger of dread traced its way down her spine. Lexi was right. It’d felt wrong saying no to someone who had asked her for help. And she couldn’t help but think that if a girl had asked her for help with a geography assignment, she would have found time to help her.
“At least do one of your pros and cons lists,” Lexi said before a muffled stream of half curses and grunts came over the phone.
Avery opened the planner up to her pros and cons section. “What is going on over there?” she asked once the noise had stopped.
“My comforter was eating me. And I was lying on the end so I couldn’t get out. And suddenly I was trapped and then…”
“I got it.” Avery rolled her eyes with a grin. “You safe now? You showed your comforter who was boss?”
Lexi sniffed. “Ah sure did.” She continued, her voice clear and un-muffled. “Anyway, the football bit is easy. You’ve been sitting on the bleachers for years watching your dad. There’s no way you don’t know your shit about football. Who’s always explaining what’s going on at the games? Why your dad is playing one guy and not the other? What the plays are? Where the players are all supposed to be? You called it that time Munchkin was out of position for the play. You saw it even before the whistle blew,” Lexi said. “This is a win-win-win. You do a good deed for someone, and you might help your dad out, too. It’s going to be good karma.”
Maybe Lexi was right. And she had thought about karma when she’d asked the universe for Lucas to come back and help her.
“Wait, what’s the last win?” Avery asked, avoiding agreeing with her.
“The fact that he could very well be the hottest guy in school.” Avery could hear her glee behind the words.
“Oh God. I didn’t tell you. I drove him home from dinner, and I swear, we almost kissed. At least, I don’t know what happened, really. I’d got my friendship bracelet caught on his sweater…”
Lexi cackled. And then laughed more, and more, until she was squealing in gasps down the phone.
Avery waited patiently.
“Oh, honey. I can’t tell you how tickled I am that the friendship bracelet I made you nearly got you kissed! It’s like I booby-trapped it for you! Hey. Maybe I should make more. I can call it the BoyTrapper. I wonder if I should trademark that—”
“Do you want to hear the rest of the story, or do you want to gloat a little more?” Avery asked with fake impatience.
“Sure, sure. Go ahead. You were stuck on his arm?” Lexi encouraged.
“Well, it was weird. We both tried to free me, and then our faces were like really close and…” She stopped. It just sounded too lame for words. Also, she hadn’t been kissed for so freaking long that maybe she’d misread the whole situation?
“And?” Lexi prompted.
“Urgh, I don’t know. Maybe it was nothing. Well, nothing happened, anyway. And he acted this afternoon like nothing had happened, so…?”
“So are you going to help him?” Lexi asked.
Avery took a moment to compose a mental pros and cons list.
Damn. “I mean…I guess. Maybe for a couple of weeks I can stop reading before bed and put those twenty minutes somewhere else in the day.”
“Your nighttime reading is thirty minutes,” Lexi pointed out, knowing her planner as well as Avery did herself.
“The extra ten minutes will give me time to get home or whatever. It’s buffer time.”
“Buffy time?”
“Buffer…never mind.”
They hung up, and Avery flopped over onto her back and stared at the ceiling. So a couple of things were settled. They definitely hadn’t nearly kissed in the car. That was her overactive imagination, clearly. And yes, she was going to have to find him the next day and tell him that she’d help him. That was all. It was good. If he improved his game, her dad could keep his job. It really was a win-win. Okay, it was a win-win-win.
But she wasn’t going to think about the kissing thing, no matter how hot he was. It didn’t happen, and let’s face it—he ran off afterward. Helping him would just be about helping her father. That was all.
That. Was. All.
She flung herself over onto her stomach. That was all, she silently repeated.