Most Likely to Succeed

I wished I could switch my fantasies off.

“Hello, ladies.” He stood in the open doorway, waving with two hands like he’d been crowned homecoming king and was surveying his royal subjects during the parade.

Girls cheered him: “Sawyeeeeeerrrrr!” We were cheerleaders, after all. But some of us were more interested in Sawyer than others. The ones who had a taste for danger.

And then there was me.

He locked eyes with me right away. His eyes were clear and blue and made my heart race.

He moved toward me, then past me, into the back of the van with a huge canvas bag—probably containing his bulky pelican costume. Well, fine. If he wanted to ignore me for once, I could ignore him, too. Or pretend to.

That ended when Grace squealed, “Sawyer, damn it!” because he’d tickled her as he passed or bumped her with his bag. Her voice cut through me, my usual reaction to girls squealing when Sawyer bothered them. It hurt to be reminded one more time that Sawyer flirted with me exactly like he flirted with every other girl at school. I meant nothing to him, and if I ever thought we had the kind of electric connection I’d felt during the meeting today, that was my mistake.

At the same time, I felt the completely illogical temptation to do something to pull his attention back to me, before it was too late.

And then, having dumped his bag on top of the pompons—I heard the swish of the plastic strands—he came back up the aisle and collapsed in the seat beside me.

I felt like I’d won the lottery. Seeing Sawyer from across a football field or a classroom or the van made my heart race. Having him right next to me gave me a sensation like I’d stuck my finger in a light socket. But I needed to calm down. The school convoy would stay parked another fifteen minutes, waiting for stragglers. Maybe he was paying me a brief visit before settling with a girl he liked better for the trip.

“Give me some more room here. I’m hanging in the aisle.” He bumped me to make me scoot toward the window. “What’s the matter?”

“You, being rude.”

“No, what’s really the matter?” He gave me his special expression, an intense stare with one eyebrow raised like an evil genius, which cracked me up if I wasn’t careful. “Is Aidan still mad at you?”

“Yes.” I didn’t want to discuss Aidan with Sawyer, though. “And my mother’s mad at me for expending too much energy on extracurriculars, when she’s the one who wanted me to join more stuff in the first place.”

He kept giving me the nutty look. “That is so weird.”

“What is?”

“Parents who give a shit what their kids are up to.”

I felt guilty, suddenly, for complaining about my problems. According to rumor and the more reliable account I’d heard from Tia, Sawyer had actual problems at home. His mom up in Georgia had kicked him out two years ago, and he’d come to live with his dad, who’d just been let out of prison. His older brother ran the bar at the Crab Lab and had gotten Sawyer a job as a waiter, but there was no love lost between them. Tia had said their fights in the Crab Lab kitchen were legendary.

In short, Sawyer had been taking care of himself for a while. And he’d schooled me for complaining.

The next second, though, he relaxed and moved closer with his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. The late afternoon sunlight streamed through the window and into his eyes, making him squint, but he didn’t back away. “Seriously, why is your mom on you about that?”

I shrugged. “My brother is coming home from college for the weekend.”

“Already?” Sawyer asked. “Didn’t their school year just start?”

“He was there all summer,” I explained. “Currently he’s flunking out of Brown.”

“Barrett? Is flunking? He was the valedictorian here.”

“Well, I guess technically he’s not flunking,” I admitted. “He’s getting Bs and Cs. To hear my mother tell it, that’s flunking. She made him repeat those classes over the summer and bring his GPA up.”

“I see.” Sawyer’s tone made it clear he didn’t see at all.

“She was already disappointed that he didn’t get into Harvard and had to settle for Brown. His high school GPA was perfect and his test scores were phenomenal, but he didn’t have the extracurriculars to look well rounded. That’s when she got on me about adding some. But I tried out for cheerleader, and she told me that’s not what she had in mind. She’s like, ‘What career will that help you with, professional cheerleader?’ And I was already on student council, but she pushed me to run for office. Now that I’m in charge, she’s like, ‘Why are you expending effort on something other than school?’ It’s frustrating.”

“I can tell,” he said. “Maybe you should concentrate on another kind of extracurricular activity.” He put his arm around me, with his hand in my hair.

Here we went again. He came after me because something about me screamed target to him. I knew he was only making fun of me, like he made fun of everybody, and I should stay away from him.

Especially since I had a boyfriend.

My deep, dark secret was this: Lately when Sawyer touched me, my palms got sweaty. And I liked it. My make-out sessions with Aidan weren’t as frequent or intense as they’d been when we first started dating three years ago, but we did still have them. And of course, there were the few times we’d gone all the way. But nothing we’d done affected me like Sawyer getting a laugh at my expense.