Cherry (20 page)

Emma held her breath . . .

And Savannah squeezed her hand . . .

And then entire sold-out, maximum capacity crowd watched with baited breath . . .

. . . as Oliver launched the winning shot up into the air
and through the rim—swishing perfectly—nothing but net!

Oliver did it!

He won!

Technically, the whole team won, but every other guy on the court knew it was almost entirely Oliver, which is why they wasted no timing mobbing him at center court. “We woonnnnnnnn!” Savannah yelled, twirling around in a circle as she and Emma ran out on the court to join the celebration.

“THIS IS SO COOL!” Emma yelled back as her shoes squeaked on the sweaty hardwood floor and her heart pounded against her chest and her brain took a mental picture, managing to turn the magical, adrenaline-filled moment into a memory even while it was still happening.

Luckily, Emma also managed to remember to grab her real camera too, and she snapped a few dozen winning pictures of the celebration. She'd taken more than a hundred shots during the actual game, but these victory pics were by far the best. Especially when Trevor Morgan hoisted Oliver up into his shoulders and carried him around the court in a giant victory lap.

After all the cheering and twirling and screaming finally died down, everyone, including the team and the cheerleaders and Emma and Savannah, made their way back to the school bus. The girls shared a seat up front near the coaches and trainers and members of the staff, who had clearly given up on trying to keep any sort of order on the ride home. Savannah pulled out her green notebook and scribbled down a few notes for her article, while Emma
pulled out her camera again, hoping to snap a few more candid shots. Mostly she focused her lens on Oliver. And his blue eyes. And his cheekbones. And perfect jawline. He made her job easy. “He's like a joke,” she said, looking at his face in the viewfinder.

“What?” Savannah asked looking at this picture.

“His face . . . I mean, the eyes alone . . .” Emma couldn't help but smile.

“Yeah,” Savannah said playfully, “if you're into that sort of thing.”

Emma turned around to snap more pictures and saw that Oliver had moved up a few rows. Now he was sharing a seat with Caroline. She was still wearing her cheerleading uniform, her midriff and thighs and cleavage all showing. Oliver was wearing a mesh practice tank top, his arms and abs and jawline all perfectly visible too. Even from twelve rows away Emma could see the attraction simmering between them.

“Uh-oh,” Emma said. “That's Caroline. Dylan's ex-­girlfriend.”

“The cheerleader?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“
And
. Alex and Oliver have been . . .” Emma stopped, realizing that they hadn't actually
been
anything, and they hadn't actually
done
anything either. “Well . . . I don't know exactly
what
they're doing, but they're neighbors and they car pool, and they went on a date and played flip cup at a party last weekend. I don't know. There's a lot of mind games . . .”

“
And Alex is Dylan's best friend?”

“No. That's Zoe.”

“Okay,” Savannah said, putting the pieces together. “So. The girl Dylan
doesn't
date anymore is sharing a seat with the guy Alex
isn't
really dating at all.”

“Well. Yes.”

“Is it possible I'm missing the point?”

“There's no point,” Emma admitted, “but I have a feeling Alex won't be very happy if they hook up right now.”

“Because she likes Oliver?”

“Technically, she's not
sure
yet how she feels about him, but I think she does.”

“And does Zoe like Dylan?”

“No. Well. I don't know. Zoe's dating Austin.”

“I give up,” Savannah said, laughing. “Your friends are complicated.”

“It's one of the many thing I love about them.” Emma laughed.

She and Savannah spent the next hour of the ride home talking about everything and anything. Their conversation were always so easy and effortless. After a while Emma turned around, stealing another glance at Oliver and Caroline.

“Are they kissing yet?” Savannah asked.

“No. Just sitting all close . . . but it looks like any minute now . . .”

Savannah turned backward to look too. Oliver and Caroline were both sitting with their heads pressed again the bus seat, their foreheads only a few inches apart.
Savannah turned her attention back to Emma, pressing her forehead against the seat only a few inches from Emma's forehead, just like Oliver was doing to Caroline. “Looks like they're having a bad case of basorexia.”

“Basorexia? That's supposed to be a real thing?”

“It's
your
thing,” Savannah explained. “I've been meaning to tell you I looked it up. Basorexia is the feeling of having the overwhelming urge to kiss someone. Urban Dictionary said it could also be defined as a strong craving for kissing, or a hunger for it . . .”

“Oh well, if Urban Dictionary says so . . .”

“It's real, I swear.”

“Awesome. My weirdness has a word and a definition,” Emma said.

“I feel pretty good about all your weirdness,” Savannah replied.

Emma smiled. Honestly, at this moment . . .

. . . EMMA
actually felt pretty good about all her weirdness too.

“Happy Valentine's Day,” Emma said as she realized that the time on her cell phone had just switched to midnight. They'd been on the bus back from Santa Barbara for almost two hours.

“Hey, yeah, you too,” Savannah said, realizing it was officially tomorrow. And then she asked, as if she just remembered, “Did you get my carnation?”

“Your what?”

“I sent you a carnation today. Or yesterday I guess.”

“You did? Just one?”

“Ha, yeah,
just one
. Sorry. I'll make it a dozen next time.”

“No, no, one is great. Like, so nice. I got it. I got two, actually. But I thought they were both from Nick, since the one he sent me had a card.” Emma didn't know what else to say, but she got the feeling Savannah was waiting for
something more. She finally managed a “Thank you.”

“You. Are. Welcome,” Savannah replied. “Sorry about the lack o' card. I'm pretty good with words usually, but I didn't quite know what to say.”

Emma totally knew the feeling.

“Actually—that's a lie.”

Emma caught Savannah's eyes.
What was a lie?

“I think I knew what to say,” Savannah explained, “but it was, like . . . it was like there was just too much.”

Emma nodded. She totally knew that feeling too.

And then suddenly Emma felt like there was a reason to turn around.

And she was right.

Oliver and Caroline had finally given into their basorexia—­into all the urges and cravings and hunger or whatever it was—and were now in the midst of the inevitable make-out session. Their lips and hands and hormones were more or less everywhere.

Emma snapped a quick picture on her cell phone.

“Is it just me or does it look like he's trying to swallow her entire head?” Savannah whispered, so as not to disturb the horny couple.

“I guess this is unequivocal proof that two sexy people kissing is not an automatically sexy situation,” Emma whispered back.

Savannah had to bite down on her bottom lip to keep from laughing.

Emma was more certain than ever before that the pink shade of Savannah's lips was actually the same color as her
own. It was all she could think about for the rest of the ride home . . .

And she woke up the next morning thinking about Savannah's lips too.

But she wasn't thinking about their color as much anymore. Instead, now, she was thinking about the words that had come out of Savannah's mouth about that one carnation.

And all Emma could really think was
why?

Why did Savannah send her a flower?

Was it a
friendly
flower?

It didn't
feel
particularly friendly.

As Emma wiped the sleep out of her eyes, she remembered that she hadn't sent the Oliver and Caroline make-out picture to The Chat yet.

She wasn't sure who would hate it more, Alex or Zoe.

  *  *  *  

LAYLA
texted back to The Chat almost immediately:
Oh. Snap.

She knew Alex and Zoe weren't going to be happy to see that.

She was sitting by her cell phone waiting for Logan to text her. His first clue had said to be ready “bright and early” but she knew that Logan wasn't actually a morning person, so that was a joke. Still, it was almost 10:45 now, and she was getting antsy.

Thankfully, her phone buzzed again almost immediately. And this time it was Logan:
Your chariot awaits.

Layla grabbed her bag and flew down the stairs, yelling a quick good-bye to her mom on the way out the door. “Call me from Alex's!”
her mom yelled back. Layla didn't like lying to her parents, and she wasn't very good at it, but she had no choice. Even if Logan's parents had somehow been okay with some sort of sleepover situation, which they weren't, there was no way Layla's parents would've ever approved. She told her mom she was spending Valentine's Day with Logan, but she'd had to lie and say she was sleeping at Alex's house afterwards. Alex's parents were distracted enough not to notice, and Alex was happy to cover for her. Layla wasn't sure what Logan's actual plan was for their sleeping arrangements, which made her rather anxious and itchy, but she trusted he had figured something out.

Layla opened the front door. . . .

And there was Logan.

He was standing at the end of her front walkway, leaning against his car, holding a small bouquet of handpicked flowers.

Some people tried so hard to do so much, and none of it seemed to matter.

All Logan had to do was shift his weight and
lean
, even just ever so slightly, and something inside of Layla completely melted. Layla had felt this feeling before. This Logan-induced, full-body-meltage kind of feeling . . . but this time was different.

This time she could almost literally feel her heart drop out of her chest and all the way down into her feet, as if it were just too heavy, or too full, to stay suspended inside of her.

It felt like she needed to surrender herself—her feelings or her heart or whatever—to gravity.

“
What are you waiting for?” Logan asked, all happy and playful.

Nothing. And also everything
, Layla thought as she walked to greet him.

  *  *  *  

ALEX
wasn't sure how long she'd been staring at the Oliver-Caroline picture of doom.

But she felt powerless to stop.

She wanted to respond to The Chat, but she couldn't seem to do that, either.

She'd started typing a few different responses:
screw him
and then
ouch
and then
loser
with lots of extra
r
's tacked on and too many exclamation points, but none of that seemed quite right. Alex wasn't mad, exactly. She definitely wasn't surprised. “Disappointed” sort of—
kind of
—felt like the right word, but not entirely. Technically, Oliver was allowed to make out with whoever he wanted. He wasn't her boyfriend. He wasn't even a friend with benefits or anything like that. All things considered, he might not even be a friend at all. Oliver was simply her car pool driver. They'd
almost
—almost but not actually—kissed in his car one time.

And that was it.

He didn't owe her anything.

“
 . . .
” she finally managed to text The Chat.

She wasn't sure what the ellipsis was supposed to mean exactly, but it felt right.

Then Alex managed to put down her phone.

She decided she wasn't going to think about the picture anymore, which was easier said than done, especially as her
phone buzzed again. There was a new text. This one was from Oliver. It felt like he knew she was thinking about him or trying
not
to think about him. Either way, she closed her phone without looking at his text message. She didn't care what he had to say. But that defiant feeling lasted for only about two and a half seconds, and then her curiosity won out. She picked up her phone and opened Oliver's text.

Wanna hang out

UGH.

No.

She did not want to hang out.

And she didn't want to respond, either.

She put her phone back down again, but then, once again—almost immediately—it vibrated, signaling another text from Oliver. She didn't want to look but again—­dammit,
again
—she couldn't help herself. She had to check.

That wasn't a question

Alex hated herself for ever thinking that Oliver's lameness had been cute. She also hated that he didn't use any punctuation. There were no question marks. No periods. He was literally the worst.

She started to type
No thanks
—but decided to delete it.

Instead she wrote:
Why don't you call your favorite cheerleader?

She thought for a moment before sending it . . .

Too mean?

Too much?

Nope.

She decided it was just right and hit send.

Ha
,
Oliver texted back almost immediately.

Alex waited for something more.

You spying on me now?
he added after a minute.

Don't flatter yourself.

Don't try and tell me you don't want to hang out tonight