Gettin' Lucky (17 page)

“I have a date with Clay Ellwood on Friday,” she admitted tearfully.

At that, I had to laugh. “Of course you do. Have fun.”

“I’ll try,” she said wistfully. She stood up, brushed off the seat of her jeans, and gathered her books for next period. “Thanks for agreeing to talk to me, Cassie,” she said.

I felt a pang in my gut. Alana was the only person who called me Cassie, and I hadn’t heard that nickname since … well, since early January. Normally it drove me crazy. Now it was upsetting me for totally different reasons.

Jeez, sometimes breaking up with a friend is, like, ten times more painful than breaking up with a boyfriend. I do not understand how Lindsay Lohan can be so capricious about it. “Anytime,” I said sincerely.

“And …” She paused. “If you ever want
to hang out, or … whatever … just let me know.”

“I will,” I promised her.

I meant it too. I just didn’t know if or when that time would ever come.

Fourteen

“Raise.”

“Raise.”

“Fold.”

“Crap—I’m out.”

“—”

“—”

“Uh, Cass?”

“Huh—what?”

I snapped up and blinked, taking in my five poker buds sitting around our table, eagerly awaiting my turn. I wanted to fake it, to pretend like I’d been paying extra-special attention all along.

Unfortunately, I had no idea what was going on.

I’d spent the first half hour of our
evening aggressively setting out munchies and making sure the iPod playlist was ambient without being overwhelming. Then I shuffled and reshuffled the deck, despite the fact that Andy was only going to do the same once she arrived and took her seat as dealer. I racked up the chips. I counted my money. I recounted my money.

Anything to avoid having to look Elliot in the eye.

In the past week I’d been forced to seriously reevalute my feelings for Elliot. First there was my sudden and all-consuming obsession with the back of his neck. Then there was my disappointment at the fact that it was Jesse, and not him, who had shown up as my surprise gentleman caller at the house.

And then there was That Kiss.

Try though I might, I could not wipe the memory of that kiss from my mind. It had been, no joke, electric—maybe even more so because I hadn’t seen it coming, but it had somehow been emotional in a way that Jesse’s never were.

I kind of wanted to kiss him again. No, that’s a lie. I
really
wanted to kiss him again.

But that would be wrong, I knew. For starters—and I don’t care if you think I’m
crazy—he is, as discussed, an Aries. My sixth-grade best friend was an Aries, and shortly after exchanging a blood oath of friendship, we had a falling out over a pair turquoise-sequined barrettes. She sucked, okay? Aries sucked, as a match for me.

So you could see where I had my misgivings.

Then there was the fact that even our kiss seemed to have set something offbalance between Elliot, Kelly, and me. What if we started kissing regularly (mmm, there I was, distracted again), and all of a sudden the three of us couldn’t hang out anymore?

No way. Not an option.

Which meant that as far as Elliot and his kisses were concerned, I was out of luck.

“Um, Cass?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s your story?”

Right. The game. Whoops.

“I, uh …” I ran my fingers through my hair and tried to concentrate. I had a decent hand, actually—four of a kind—but the community cards were swimming, and I couldn’t make heads or tails of the table. I barely dared look up and across the table at Elliot, but when I did, he was hunched
down over the table, furiously fixated on his cards and defiantly resisting eye contact.

“Uh, you know? I fold,” I said finally, shaking my head as though that would clear out the mental cobwebs. “Actually, I kind of have, like, a stomachache. Maybe the avocados were bad this time.”

Kelly looked at me like I had suddenly started speaking Japanese.

“I think—I think I’m gonna go—,” I said, pushing back from the table and grabbing my coat off the living room sofa.

Kelly opened her mouth to protest, but thought better of it when she noted the look in my eye. On my way out I heard Marcus whoop with delight—I’m sure he had turned over my cards and realized how lucky he’d gotten when I folded.

On the drive home I willed myself to get it together. I couldn’t, though—there
had
to be some way in which Elliot and I were compatible. Maybe I needed to explore numerology, or the Chinese zodiac? Maybe we were both lions, or rabbits, or, um, “springs” or “cools.” Maybe our doppel-gängers had been hot and heavy in some alternate universe, or in a past life.

But I didn’t live in an alternate universe.
I lived in this one. And in this one, Elliot Forest and I were destined, it would seem, to be just friends.

I was in a complete daze as I unlocked the front door to the house and let myself in. But what I found once I’d entered woke me up pretty quickly.

It seemed that Dad was home, back from his lunch shift early. And he was looking pretty angry.

I came upon him as I made my way into the kitchen. That was my first stop whenever I got home—it was where Maxine usually hung out. Tonight, however, instead of her wagging tail and lolling tongue, I found Dad sitting at our kitchen table, a big old comic book thundercloud dangling over his head.

’Hello, Cassandra,” he said quietly. “I’m glad you’re home.”

This could not be good. Nothing that began with the use of my full name ever ended well.

“Hey,” I said as brightly as I could muster. “What’s up?”

“That’s a good question,” he said slowly. “If, for example, I was to ask you what was up, what would you say?”

“Not … much?” I ventured, confused.

“Well, what about these new friends of yours? What do you do when you hang out with them?”

Uh-oh.

“Nothing?” It was a question. A question that basically acknowledged the fact that I was
seriously
busted.

“So you’re telling me that when you get together with your friends, for hours at a time, on a weekend night, you do nothing at all? You just—what, cease to exist?”

Jeez, Dad could be pretty sarcastic when he was trying to make a point.

“Um … well, sometimes … we play cards,” I offered vaguely.

He nodded. This was obviously the answer that he’d been waiting for. “‘Cards.’ I see. And by ‘cards,’ you mean poker, right?”

I sighed deeply. “Yes, poker.”

Now it was Dad’s turn to sigh, as he ran his fingers through his thinning hair. I knew he had to be pretty furious with me, since he’s usually very careful not to exacerbate his male-pattern baldness. “I saw the website. With the footage. I just wanted to see those astrology columns you’ve been
telling me about. Imagine my surprise. I can’t believe you’ve been running a weekly game. Cass, we’ve talked about this.”

“Yes.”

“You know how I feel about gambling.”

“Yes.”

“Look at me when we’re speaking.”

I obliged, grudgingly.

“Cass, I know that lots of kids play poker these days.”

Gee, you think?

“And I know that you’re a responsible girl—”

“I am—,” I insisted.

“
And
that we live in Vegas, where gambling is as much a part of life as, oh, I don’t know, breathing.”

“Yes.”

“But you know my history with gambling. It’s dangerous, Cass, and it can become an addiction. And I don’t want you getting caught up in any of that—at all. No matter how harmless a simple game of poker may seem to you.”

I nodded solemnly.

“I like to think that we have a good relationship, that we’re very open and honest with each other.”

“We are,” I agreed.

“I don’t think I’m excessively strict.”

“You’re not.” I meant what I was saying.

“So I would think that you would at least have the respect to adhere to the few rules that I do put out there.”

I was silent. There was nothing left to say. I’d blown it, of course. I’d totally violated Dad’s trust, and I just had to pray that I hadn’t damaged it forever.

“You’re grounded.”

“Okay.” That much I expected.

“For one week.”

“Huh?”

A week? A week was nothing. I could spend a week locked in my room having DVD marathons of WB teen programming of the nineties. Hardly was that a punishment.

I looked at Dad. His eyes were twinkling, and I could tell he was struggling not to let the corners of his mouth twitch into a grin.

“You’re going easy on me?”

That did it. Dad finally had to chuckle. “Don’t get me wrong, Cass-I’d better never catch you gambling again. But I love the horoscopes—and I love the fact that you didn’t let Jesse get the best of you.”

“Yeah, me too.” I had to smile.

“I don’t like that your friends gamble, but I’m glad to see that you’ve made some new friends. You’ve been much happier lately than you were when you and Jesse first broke up. That much is obvious. I was pretty worried about you for a while, there.”

“Yeah, me too.”

He stood up and gave me one last glare—this one devoid of much bite. Then he reached out and hugged me. It felt nice. Lying to him all this time had actually been pretty hard on me; in a way, I was glad to have everything out in the open. And the punishment was both totally deserved and totally tolerable.

“So, I guess I should go sequester myself in my room, huh?” I asked.

Dad winked at me. “First feed the dog.”

That, I could handle.

The very pretty coed who had abandoned her dreams of going to Stanford just so she could follow her high school crush to New York had just found said crush making out with her first official college girlfriend. Naturally, she was devastated.

I could
totally
relate.

I was knee-deep in raw cookie dough and Diet Coke and teetered in that awkward space between a sugar rush and a sugar crash. It was Saturday afternoon and I had been watching television for about five hours. I was actually sort of starting to gross myself out. Even Maxine had given up on me, wandering off to the kitchen in the hopes that between-meal food might magically appear in her bowl. I had twenty-four more hours to go of my grounding, and at this rate, they’d have to forklift me out of the house when the punishment was officially over.

The doorbell rang, and Maxine went ballistic. She hated when delivery guys or whatever showed up. I loved how she totally thought she was intimidating despite weighing, like, thirty pounds.

I answered the door absently, my mind still half-focused on the drama unfolding on the flat screen in the den, and contemplating the next course in my junk-food feast. What I found when I opened the door, however, cleared my head of all of those trivial matters.

“I, uh, heard you were under house arrest.”

I dropped my cookie dough spoon on
the ground. Maxine immediately grabbed it between her teeth and dashed off to relish her new toy.

“Hi,” I said, sort of meaning,
wow.

Believe it or not, it was a gentleman caller—this time, a
real
gentleman. My eyes almost bugged out at the site of Elliot in my doorway. He was as scrawny and wide-eyed as ever, which made him downright adorable.

I’d been building toward trying to talk to him—like, for real, talk to him—all week in school. But I’d always chickened out at the last minute. I’m sure Kelly could see through all of my spasmodic behavior, but she was either far too polite or way too disgusted to call me on it.

Elliot looked confused. “Can I, uh, come in?”

I realized I“d been staring at him silently for a beat or two too long. “Of course!” I said, now overcompensating with an enthusiasm that smacked of mild psychosis. I stepped aside to let him in.

“My father’s not home, so we can’t go into my room,” I explained, leading him into the den. I wasn’t looking to violate any more house rules in the foreseeable future.

With Elliot over, the television suddenly seemed about six times too loud. I turned it to mute and sat down awkwardly on the couch.

“What’s up?” I started.

“I … well … we never really talked after the other day.”

“True,” I said. Suddenly my mouth was very dry.

“I know you talked about wanting to stay friends. Because … well, I’m not totally sure that I get that. But I think it has something to do with us not being compatible.”

“Astrologically compatible,” I confirmed. “Aries, Libra. Bad news.”

“Right.” He dove into the ever-present messenger bag and fished out a piece of paper. He proceeded to unfold the paper and smooth it out over his leg. He cleared his throat nervously. “This was something I found,” he explained. “And I guess that’s why I’m here. I thought you might like to hear it:
‘You are a sympathetic person who feels deeply for others. You are very sensitive and understanding when it comes to your friends, and you show them lots of understanding and compassion.’”

He paused and looked at me expectantly.

“That’s the description of a Pisces,” I said suspiciously. “What are you reading that to me?”

“Because my birthday is March twentieth,” he explained, which makes me—”

“On the cusp! You’re on the cusp!” I stood up so quickly, I knocked my half-eaten tube of cookie dough on the floor. Maxine, never one to miss an opportunity, dashed in, grabbed it, and took off. I watched her go.

“Do you need to …,” Elliot asked, waving in the direction of the dog.

“Eventually,” I said. I was way too riveted by what he had to say.

“So the thing is that I think a Pisces and a Libra are—”

“A lot more compatible than an Aries and a Libra,” I finished for him, warming to the thought.

“And, you know, supposedly Pisces are really introspective and creative, and really into movies and things like that. Which, you know, is not exactly my forte. So was thinking you could maybe … help me?”

“I could,” I said, shyly. “I can’t play poker anymore, anyway.” I blushed.

“Then we’ll have to find something else
to do,” Elliot said. By this point, we were both standing, and he slowly moved closer to me until the space between us was little more than a centimeter or two. He reached out and took my hands in his. “If you really are worried about ruining the friendship, I understand. But I kind of hate that idea.”