I plopped back down in my seat. Frozen.
“ . . . did you see her face? Shocked . . .”
“ . . . most romantic thing in football . . .”
“ . . . luckiest girl in the world . . .”
My face went hot. Even my ears burned. I wanted to crawl under a seat. I felt like such a liar.
“You’re gonna be okay, hon. Just take a breath,” Mimi whispered as the Jumbotron finally moved away from me. “Don’t be embarrassed. It’s sweet the way he proposed . . . he wanted everyone to know he’d found the girl of his dreams.”
“Is that what he said?” My voice was barely a whisper.
Mimi beamed. “He said the moment he saw you, it was meant to be.” She sighed and looked over to him, his back to us as he watched the kick-off on the field. “I’ve worried so much about you since that Bart fellow, but Max is going to make you happy, Sunny. He’s the calm in your chaos.”
The calm in my chaos . . .
God.
What a lie.
If I’d thought I was angry before, I was wrong. He’d end up hurting Mimi when the charade ended. She’d be disappointed in me, in him, and her love of football would probably be tarnished.
Didn’t he ever think about anyone but himself?
I exhaled. “Mimi, there’s something I should tell you . . .”
My phone pinged with a text. Isabella.
OMG. WTH just happened?
Max Kent asked me to marry him, I replied.
DUH. The whole world saw that. I just picked my jaw up off the ground.
I’m going to kill him, I added.
Why?
One word . . . Heisman. I typed out furiously, my fingers flying.
I admit it. I swooned a little. I’ll be his fiancée if you won’t.
Max threw to Tate in a twenty-five-yard touchdown, but I barely noticed. I seethed.
Come sit with Mimi and take her home after the game. I have to go, I sent her.
Won’t it look weird if you leave the game?
His problem, I texted. I can’t stay here. I was going to cry. Tears pricked at my eyes at his deception, itching to fall, and I knew that once that dam burst, I’d have a hard time explaining why I was so upset.
You’re like super popular now. Maybe you can hook me up with one of those hottie football players. Just kidding. Not kidding. Sorry. Not Sorry.
Mimi gasped when our defense caught an interception from the Louisiana quarterback. Our offense came out to the field, snapped the ball, and Max threw it straight to Tate who ran it in for another touchdown. My chest constricted. I didn’t care who won. I hated football right now.
A few minutes later, Isabella was sitting in my seat. I told Mimi someone hadn’t shown up for their shift at the library, and my boss Pam had texted and asked if I’d come in. It sounded ridiculous, especially since I’d just gotten engaged on national television, but there was no getting around the fact that I had to disengage before I fell apart. Mimi kept asking if I was okay and if she’d done the right thing by not telling me, but I hugged her and assured her my exit had nothing to do with Max and everything to do with picking up extra money, especially if I wanted to plan for a wedding.
I cringed as I told her. Lies made more lies.
Plus, there’d be questions:
When’s the big day?
Who are your bridesmaids?
What kind of dress will you get?
An invisible dress because there’d be no wedding!
I walked past the crowd, who eyed me with intense curiosity, and kept my head down. Just as I slipped into the breezeway, I glanced back one more time to see Max on the field again calling a play. Even though hundreds of people stood between us, I felt his intensity.
“That was a pretty little show,” came a silky voice in front of me.
I spun around. Bianca.
She did a slow clap and then fluffed her brown hair over her shoulder with blood-red fingernails. Up close, her gray halter top was the perfect complement to her dark complexion, and her matching skirt dripped with blue lace, the same blue as the players’ uniforms. My eyes went back to that necklace, and my fingers itched to yank it off her neck.
She sucked her bottom lip through her teeth. “You must have been practicing that look of shock all week. I suspected something from the very beginning, you know . . . especially when I heard him say in class that you guys met at the toga party last year. Max wasn’t even at that party. I know because I was.”
I stiffened and pivoted around to leave, but her nails dug into my arm.
“Oh no, you’re not running off,’ she said, her eyes narrowed. “I bet he’s paying you. You seem like the type who’d need money. Not that I’d blame you. He’s a maniac in the sack, and who can blame you for wanting someone to notice you.”
“You’re babbling,” I said quietly. “Can’t you just congratulate me, Bianca?”
She scoffed. “I’m not stupid. I know Max. All he cares about is football, honey. And if he’s asking you to marry him at a game—it isn’t because he wants to live happily ever after. It’s because he wants the attention. He has to have it all, so much that there isn’t room for anything else.”
My hand tightened on my purse. “You don’t know the Max I know.” Why was I defending him?
“I know what he likes, and it isn’t sweet little girls like you. He likes his sex hard and his girls harder. You”—her brittle eyes raked over me and found me lacking—“are way too nice for him, and if you’re smart, you’ll leave before it hurts too much.”