Most Likely to Succeed

Instead I said, “Prom is in April. A lot could happen before then. It’s too soon to tell.”

“Excuses, excuses,” he said dismissively. “Nothing can happen before tonight, though. Will you sit in the van with me on the drive to the game?”

“I have to,” I said, “because I owe you a shoulder rub.”

He raised his eyebrows provocatively as if I’d said something very sexy. That’s what I’d been counting on. Granted, he hadn’t asked me out in the past week, or made anything that could be called a move on me. But we’d also seen each other only in public, usually fleetingly, like touching hands as we passed in the hall. Maybe we just needed some quality time together. We wouldn’t be alone in the cheerleading van, but we’d definitely be stuck next to each other.

And I intended for something to happen.

When the classroom had filled with reps, Aidan swept in to take his proper place on the throne. As he sat down in Ms. Yates’s chair, Sawyer sent him a message by noisily unzipping his backpack and thumping Robert’s Rules of Order onto the corner of his desk where Aidan could see it.

Sawyer’s threat worked. Aidan didn’t deviate from the rules. He simply called on the committees to report about the student council’s homecoming responsibilities. That is, he called on me to report on the various committees I headed.

I told the classroom that preparations for Monday’s election of the homecoming court were going well. This meant I’d put some junior cheerleaders I trusted in charge. Preparations for the parade float build were also going well, because I’d delegated Will to handle them. He’d designed a gorgeous beach scene that he swore we could pull off with nothing but wood, chicken wire, and crepe paper, and he’d drafted Tia’s contractor dad to take off work for once and supervise construction. Finally we got around to the dance.

“The dance preparations aren’t progressing as I’d planned,” I admitted. “I did find a potential place to hold it off campus.” No need to bring up that the place was a gay bar. “But when I spoke with Principal Chen on Tuesday about moving the dance, she said we couldn’t hold it off campus for liability reasons. If the dance is an official school function paid for with student dues, it needs to be held here on school grounds unless our lawyers okay a new location, and we don’t have time to call them in.”

“So it’s dead?” Will called from the back of the room. “If we can’t have it here, and we can’t have it elsewhere, it’s dead.”

“It looks dead,” I admitted. “I hoped one of you would have a brilliant idea. Throw me a Hail Mary pass here.” I held up my hands, ready to catch the last-minute idea a rep would toss at me.

Nobody said anything. All eyes were on me, waiting for me to solve this problem myself.

“Well, y’all have my phone number,” I concluded. “Text me over the weekend if you come up with something. If we don’t have a solution by Monday, we won’t have time to get the word out to students and parents, and the dance will definitely be dead.”

The meeting progressed normally after that. Aidan didn’t make a sarcastic comment about the dance or question why I’d pursued it in the first place. He didn’t have to, because he’d already won.

But when he dismissed the meeting and the reps were filing out to the lunchroom, he walked over and put both hands on my desk, bending close, his face inches from mine. “Will you eat lunch with me today? We need to talk.”

I eyed him. “About student council?”

“Of course,” he said.

“About me resigning as vice president?” I asked. “I refuse to have that discussion again.”

“I don’t want you to resign as vice president,” he said soothingly. “I was angry that night.” This was as much of an apology as I ever got out of Aidan unless he also dropped his suave politician facade. This time he didn’t.

“Will Ms. Yates be there?” I snapped. “I really enjoyed the last time I tried to eat lunch with you two.”

“Just you and me,” he said.

“All right. Let me do something first.” I watched him return to Ms. Yates’s desk to gather his papers. Then I faced Sawyer.

He was watching me, like he’d heard the whole conversation and expected an explanation.

“I’m eating lunch with Aidan,” I said.

Sawyer nodded. He had no expression on his face, which was never a good sign.

But if he had nothing else to say, I wasn’t going to hang around and try to draw him out. He still hadn’t done anything to make me think he wanted us to get together. As far as I knew, the crush was all on my end.

I walked to the lunchroom with Aidan and a crowd of reps. Aidan went through the hot food line while I visited the salad bar—mainly because I was hoping for another word with Sawyer, not because I wanted salad. So much for not caring what Sawyer thought. I hadn’t lasted five minutes. But I didn’t see him anywhere.

Eventually I slid my salad onto a table across from Aidan, not in the teacher section but far away from our usual table too, in an unpopulated corner. As I sat down, he asked, “What’d you get on your Crime and Punishment paper?”

He uttered this like it was a casual question. It wasn’t. He’d asked me all about my grades when we’d dated. But looking back on our time together, I realized my shoulders had tightened and my stomach had twisted with stress every time he’d grilled me. The constant competition with him over the years had been no fun. Being his girlfriend had made it worse.