Perfect Couple (20 page)

“Did you see Brody?” she asked.

I didn’t understand what she meant. “Did I see Brody? You mean right after the game? Oh, boy, did I. We were
making out
, I tell you, and not just a little.”

She tried again. “Did you see Brody leave?”

“Did I see Brody leave?” I hadn’t, and I wasn’t sure what she was getting at.

“Is there an echo?” Tia asked, exasperated. “Brody just drove off with Grace.”

Brody just drove off with Grace. Brody just drove off with Grace.
I’d heard Tia, but what she’d said did not compute.

She called to Will, “Did you know Brody was going out with Grace again?”

“No.” Will rounded the car to stand with her and peer inside at me. “That’s shocking. I don’t understand why he would do that.”

“You warned me about him,” I said quietly.

“Yeah,” Will admitted, “but . . .” He stared up at the sky. He couldn’t think of a
but
. “Yeah,” he repeated.

Tia could think of plenty to say. She was asking me questions about Brody, bad-mouthing him, and grilling Will about how he and Brody could possibly be friends. I didn’t really hear her. I was remembering the first time Mom had found out about my dad cheating on her. I was very little. She had told me, “I don’t know why that girl thinks he’s going to stay with her. If he cheated on me with her, he’s just going to cheat on her with the next girl.” And he did.

Once a cheater, always a cheater.

Tia clapped her hands, looking irate. Apparently she’d
been trying to snap me out of my daze for a while. “Here’s what you’re going to do. See that truck over there?” She pointed across the rapidly emptying parking lot.

“Sawyer’s truck?” I asked.

“Exactly. You’re going to march right over there and get in the truck with Sawyer. You’re going to drive around town until you find Brody and Grace, and you’re going to make out with Sawyer right in front of them.”

I squinted at her. “Is that going to help somehow?”

“No,” said Will.

“Well, it’s sure as fuck going to make
me
feel better,” Tia said. “How could he do this to you?”

I was having trouble holding my eyes open, and I felt dead. But somewhere deep down, I was almost as angry as Tia sounded. I’d attracted Brody in the first place by wearing a bikini like Grace. Now, acting like Grace to get revenge on him made a perverted kind of sense. “Okay.” I started to tumble out of the car, then paused. “Should I take my laptop and shit or leave it here?”

“Leave everything in Will’s car. People are in and out of Sawyer’s truck and it can get sticky.”

“You don’t have to do this, Harper,” Will told me. “I vote no.” He said to Tia, “I don’t see what this is going to solve.”

“We’re not
solving
at this point,” she said. “There’s nothing
to
solve
. We’re getting even. Maybe you don’t have revenge in Minnesota, but this is how we roll in Florida.” She turned to me again. “Let’s go, girl.
Vámonos.
We’ll be right behind you.”

I stumbled off the seat and staggered toward Sawyer’s truck. The floodlights far above me seemed brighter than they should have been, and the night was blacker. A sudden stiff breeze rattled the fronds of the palm trees scattered around the parking lot, reminding me that a hurricane still barreled toward us.

As I approached the truck, Sawyer, blond hair dark from a shower, looked up from talking with Noah, also freshly showered after the game, and Quinn, dressed completely in black. “What’s up?” Sawyer asked me.

“Brody just left in his truck with Grace. They are probably having sex or whatever. Tia says you and I should find them and make out in front of them. Revenge kissing.” I laughed like I’d gone insane.

“I think you should go home and go to bed,” Quinn said.

“I think you should do the revenge kissing,” Noah said.

“Wait a minute,” Sawyer said. “If they’re having sex, why can’t we have sex too? Revenge sex.”

“That would make me uncomfortable,” I said.

“I guess I’ll take what I can get.” Sawyer opened the door of his truck for me. It screeched on its hinges. “Hop in.”

As Sawyer started the engine, Will cruised up, stopping so that Tia could talk through the passenger-side window to Sawyer. They decided that we would swing by Brody’s house and Grace’s house near downtown before ending at the harbor. It was a common place for teenagers to park and cops to harass them. Irate old men wrote about the harbor’s parking lot in their letters to the newspaper about the downfall of today’s youth.

“You look nice,” Sawyer said as he crossed the high school campus and pulled onto the road through downtown. “I’m not just telling you that because we’re about to revenge-kiss.”

“Are people saying I stopped wearing contacts and started dressing like Grace just to get Brody?”

“No,” Sawyer said, “and I hear everything. Who told you that?”

“Kennedy.”

“Kennedy,” Sawyer repeated, low and husky, like Tia cursing in Spanish. “Why do you care what he says? Why don’t you just wear what you want?”

“I guess I don’t know what I want.” I paused. “But everybody dresses the way they do for a reason, right? Even you.” I gazed doubtfully at his beat-up flip-flops.

“Not really,” he said. “I only have four shirts.”

I blinked against the passing streetlights. “And you don’t
eat anything you want. You’re very strict about that.”

“I’m a vegan because I don’t want to cause the death of an animal,” he said. “I mean, I’m not so strict about it that I’m going to insult other people for eating what I don’t. I serve what I’m told to serve at work. But I’m not personally going to eat it.”

“It’s an anticruelty thing?”

He glanced over at me, seeming to consider this for the first time. “Yes.”

“You didn’t seem concerned with cruelty when you made fun of Kennedy’s eyebrow piercing.”

Sawyer’s glance turned to a glare. “When I first moved to town two years ago, Kennedy ribbed me for one solid hour of PE because my dad had just gotten out of jail. You should have heard all the jail jokes. Oh, he was a fucking laugh riot, right up until I punched him.”

I’d known Sawyer got suspended for fighting on his first day of school. I hadn’t heard why.

“So fuck Kennedy and his eyebrow,” Sawyer finished.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Sawyer heaved an exaggerated sigh. “It’s crazy for you to apologize, Harper. You didn’t do anything.”

“I know. I just don’t think Kennedy deserves to be made fun of. Like when you made that joke about him the day Noah and Quinn came out.”

“I made the same joke about Brody,” Sawyer pointed out, “and he didn’t mind.”

“Kennedy’s dad puts a lot of pressure on him,” I said carefully.

Sawyer rolled his eyes. “If you want to know what people are saying about you, they’re saying you’re hot.”

“Really?” I asked skeptically.

“Yes.”

“I felt like I needed to wear glasses so my face would have something in it. It just looks kind of blank to me, not pretty.”

“We all have issues,” Sawyer said, almost kindly.

I nodded.

“But that is the most fucked-up thing I’ve ever heard. You thought you weren’t pretty, so you wore glasses? That’s pathological.”

“Sawyer!” I protested. “Why are you so mean?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

He slowed as we cruised past Brody’s house. A car was there—probably his mom’s. The outside lights were on, waiting to guide Brody safely into the house after his date with Grace.

“You should have gotten Most Original,” Sawyer said. “You would have, if you hadn’t been elected to that couples
thing with Brody.” Satisfied that Brody’s truck wasn’t parked anywhere around his house, Sawyer drove on down the dark, palm-lined street. Will was right behind us. The headlights of his Mustang shone through the back window of the truck cab.

“Who’d you vote for in the couples thing?” I asked Sawyer. “I still haven’t found anyone who admits to voting for Brody and me.”

“I voted for myself,” Sawyer said.

“And who?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Sawyer!” I exclaimed.
Sawyer
voted himself Perfect Couple That Never Was with a mystery woman? I was dying to know who.

“It’s a secret ballot!” he protested.

I took a different tack. “Are you going to ask her out?”

“No,” he said quickly. “It’s just a fantasy.”

“You never know until you try.”

“This I know,” he said ominously. He was after a girl he thought he couldn’t have. And I was afraid he was right, if I’d guessed correctly which girl he had in mind.

“Is it Kaye?”

I watched blush creep into his cheeks. He asked evenly, “Why would you say that?”

“You wanted to be in the Superlatives photo with her
and Aidan, but only in costume. You bug her constantly and taunt her. You act like a seventeen-year-old with a crush, or a twelve-year-old with borderline personality disorder.”

He winced, but that was the only indication he heard me, or that I was right about Kaye. The blush slowly drained away, leaving him looking pale.

“I keep secrets,” I told him.

“Good.” He slowed in front of a house that must have been Grace’s. Several cars were parked in the driveway, but not Brody’s truck. Sawyer turned the corner and headed for the harbor.

“Brody told me you’ve started working out with the football team instead of the cheerleaders,” I said.

“Yeah,” Sawyer said. “Not the plays, of course, just the drills. I want to be able to run a 5K without having to sit down.”

“You’d just been in the hospital that week, Sawyer.”

“I want to be able to wear a pelican costume without passing out from heat exhaustion.”

“It was, like, ninety-five degrees that afternoon, wasn’t it?”

“I guess I just want to feel . . . worthy.”

“Worthy!” I laughed. “Sawyer, that doesn’t make sense. Everybody loves you.”

He eyed me skeptically across the cab.

“They do!” I protested. “In a love/hate sort of way.”

“Thanks for not making me feel any better.”

It surprised me that Sawyer felt bad in the first place.

He pulled his truck into the harbor’s parking lot. No streetlights shone here this late at night, which made it perfect for teenagers parked in clusters, blasting music and sitting on tailgates. They squinted into Sawyer’s headlights and shielded their eyes. We drove slowly until we saw Brody’s truck.

Sawyer parked in front of Brody, about twenty yards away. Sawyer’s headlights shone straight into the cab. Brody was behind the wheel. Grace was on the other side of the seat. They weren’t touching, as far as I could tell, but who knew what they were doing behind the high dashboard? They blinked like deer.

Sawyer switched off his engine and the headlights. We could still see the dark forms of Brody and Grace. In a few moments, when their eyes adjusted, they would be able to see us, too, and everything we were about to do.

“No tongue,” I said quietly.

“No tongue!” Sawyer exclaimed. “That’s like saying we’re going to have sex with no—”

I was already sliding toward him across the seat as he spoke these words. I slapped my hand over his mouth and gave him a stern look. “Did you just say that to me?”

“No, I did not,” he said through my hand.

Cautiously, I took my hand away. And then, before I could think this through any further, we were kissing. The strange, sleep-deprived vibration I’d been feeling all day pushed me against his chest.

He whispered against my lips, “Just a little tongue.”

I cracked up. I was so giddy and nervous that I couldn’t stop laughing.

“Come on, just a little,” he coaxed me. “You’ll love it. You’ll be saying, ‘Sawyer, stud, I am sorry I ever doubted your tongue.’ ”

“O-
kay
, use it.”

As the openmouthed kiss began, I hung on to his shirt with both fists, bracing myself until it was over. Quickly I found myself saying, “Mm,” and kissing him back. Tia and other girls Sawyer had been with said he was worth the trouble. Now I knew why. I leaned forward.

We both jumped at a knocking on the driver’s-side window. Brody, taller than the truck, glowered at us through the glass.

Sawyer reached toward the door.

“No,” I said, putting a hand on Sawyer’s arm. I could tell he was about to desert me.

“Sorry,” he said. “My man is serious.” He cranked the window down and asked Brody, “May I help you?”

“Yes, please,” Brody said in the same polite tone with a threat underneath. “I would like to talk to Harper alone for a minute.”

“Sure,” Sawyer told him, “if I can ‘talk’ to Grace alone for a minute.” He made finger quotes.

“If you can catch her,” Brody said.

We all looked toward Brody’s truck. It was empty. I could barely see Grace in the darkness, leaning through another truck’s window. She opened the door and got inside. The truck roared off.

Brody looked back at us with his brows raised like Grace’s departure vindicated him.

Sawyer rubbed my nape and told Brody, “Listen. This here’s my girl.”

He meant, I thought, that we were friends, and he was looking out for me. I’d never viewed Sawyer as anything more than an entertaining basket case, but he was standing up for me.

“Got it,” Brody said.

“Seriously, Larson,” Sawyer said. “Even Will thinks this business is shocking.”

“O-
kay
,” Brody said, ticked off now.

Sawyer turned to me. “Go,” he said. “I’ll wait here for you.”

14

I GOT OUT AND FOLLOWED Brody to his truck. He started to open the door for me, but I shook my head. I wasn’t going to sit where Grace had just been sitting, like I was her temporary replacement. I leaned against the hood. He leaned beside me.

He swallowed audibly. “I felt bad about leaving with her as soon as I did it.”

“Congratulations,” I said. “You know what would have been better? If you’d felt bad about it
before
you did it.”

He nodded. His nearly dry curls moved against his neck. He said, “I really wasn’t trying to get together with her again, because we really were never together in the first place.”