The Art of Lainey (7 page)

“You’ll have to figure out how to run into him, preferably in places where Alex isn’t with him.”

There are a handful of places Jason frequents regularly that I might be able to “accidentally” cross paths with him. I nod. “Got it. I’m all about seizing opportunities. And I won’t be too aggressive.” I skip over the positioning strategy because I don’t want to listen to Bianca tell me I need to date someone else again.

“Exploit enemy weaknesses,” I say. “I wonder what kind
of weaknesses Alex has. Younger men, apparently.”

“I’m finished.” Bianca pushes the silver pizza pan toward me. “What would you say are Jason’s weaknesses?”

“Sex?” I offer.

“What else?” She’s not going to say what we’re both thinking—that sex probably isn’t a weakness if he’s getting it from another girl.

I tick a few more off on my fingers. “Alcohol. Food. World Cup soccer.”

“Does he get jealous?”

“Uh . . . I don’t think so.” I slump down in my chair a little.

“What about that time sophomore year?” she asks. “You and Matt Clifton after the Aquinas game?”

“Oh, right.” We lost when I missed a penalty shot wide, and I refused to go home until I put twenty shots in each upper corner of the net. The boys’ varsity goalie saw me practicing as he was walking to his car and offered to stay and play keeper for me. “It wasn’t even like Matt was hitting on me. He probably just felt bad that I had to chase down the ball each time I kicked it. But you’re right. Jason made snide comments about how he was a no-talent hack for at least a month afterward.”

“So then if you were to date someone else, that might do more than level the field. It might put you in a position of power . . .” Bianca’s voice trails off meaningfully.

Dude, she is fixated on this idea.
“Forget it, Bee. It’s not like it would be fair to date some other guy when all I’m doing is
thinking about Jason.”

“So find a guy to pretend to date,” she says. “Adding a little deception to the mix.”

“Where am I supposed to find a guy like that? Fakedates dot com?”

“Not online.” Bianca shakes her head violently. “I said a guy, not an ax murderer trolling for victims. Let me think on it.”

The wind chimes do their weird clunking thing, and Micah and Leo saunter into the shop. I glance up at the clock. It’s almost four. Time to set up for the evening. The guys cruise past our table without even so much as a grunt in acknowledgment. As I watch Micah swipe at the screen of his phone, I get the beginnings of a great idea. “Micah,” I say, my voice slick like honey.

“No.” He doesn’t even look back.

“Come on,” I wheedle. “Come talk to us.”

He pauses just outside the doorway leading into the kitchen. “I have to help Leo prep the line, Lainey.”

“Oh, sorry. I just had a quick question about your girlfriend.” I clear my throat. “I mean, your
ex
-girlfriend.”

Bee inhales sharply. She looks from me to Micah back to me again. She’s onto my plan. “Now
that
would be unpredictable,” she says.

And deceptive.

And flexible.

Micah mutters something to Leo, who nods in reply and disappears into the back. Then he turns toward Bianca and
me. He’s sporting a new eyebrow piercing, a shiny silver barbell above his right eye. It’s probably a starter piercing that he’ll replace with something black and spiky, but right now it looks strangely delicate amongst his masculine features.

“So what?” he says. “What’s your point?”

“She broke up with
you,
right? How’d you like to get her back?” I give him my most charming smile as I smooth the wrinkles from my Denali T-shirt.

His face tightens up. Something—pain or doubt—flashes in his hazel eyes.

I’ve got him. I reel him in. “I have a foolproof plan.”

He rests his hands on the back of an empty chair. “What? Did you find some Wiccan love spell on the internet? All I need is a lock of hair and three tears?”

“This is the real deal,” I say. “We can make her think you’re over her. She’ll get jealous and then wonder if she made a mistake.”

“Oh yeah?” Micah’s voice is full of skepticism but I can almost see him turning the idea over in his mind. “And how are we going to do that?”

“We can pretend you and I are dating.” I’ve been feeling more and more undesirable since I saw Jason and Alex together, but for some reason even just the thought of a fake date replenishes some of my confidence.

“A pseudo-date,” Bee interjects. “It can help
both
of you win back your exes.”

Micah spins the chair around and straddles it backward. “I don’t know,” he says with exaggerated seriousness, looking
back and forth from Bianca to me. “I miss Amber and all, but dating Lainey? Even for pretend? Not sure if it’s worth it.”

“Oh, ha-ha,” I say. “You don’t really think I’m that bad.”

Micah smirks. “I don’t think of you at all.”

Zing. Ouch.
I remember flinging those exact words at him the day Jason and I broke up. I had no idea they could draw blood.

“It wouldn’t work anyway,” Micah continues. “Amber would never believe we were dating.”

I gather my hair into a ponytail and drape it over my left shoulder. “Why? Because you like your girls a little less smoking hot? A little freakier?”

Micah’s eyes flick down to my hair for a second. Then he smirks again. “More like a little smaller.”

I gasp. “You asshole. I am all muscle.” He ducks out of the way as I make a move to slug him in the arm. “Take it back,” I demand. “Take it back or else I might get, like, an eating disorder.”

Micah snorts. “Pretty sure an eating disorder won’t make you any shorter, dummy.”

Oh. That. I never really thought about it. I guess at five eight I am almost as tall as he is.

“Wow,” Bianca says. “It’s like you guys are already dating.”

We both give her a dark look, but she’s got a point. Micah and I sat next to each other in fourth and fifth grade, back before I got popular and he went all freaktastic rocker boy.
Maybe that’s why I still feel like I know him, even though we haven’t really said much more than “Excuse me” and “Do you have any more of those Caribou Cookies?” in years. My heart starts skipping in my chest. This plan could actually work.

I give him my most pleading look. “I’ll wear flats. Come on. Do it for Amber.”

Micah gets up and heads to the kitchen. He looks back at me over his shoulder right before disappearing into the back. “I’ll think about it.”

A
fter torturing me for a couple of days, Micah finally calls. “So how would this work anyway?” he asks.

I flop down on my bed. “We pretend like we’re dating and take each other to places where we know our exes will see us.” I cross my fingers as I glance around my room full of Jason mementos. Micah has to agree—he has to. I can’t ask just
any
guy to fake-date me. He needs this too. It’s like fate delivered him into my lap.

“And you think it’s that simple?”

“I think it’s a start.” Without mentioning
The Art of War
, I explain about leveling the playing field.

“So how long would we keep up this charade?”

“Good question. What about five dates each?” I suggest.

He whistles long and low. “That’s a lot of quality time together.”

“Well, what about either side can terminate the agreement early if it’s not working out,” I say. “I wouldn’t want us to spend our whole summer being miserable or anything.”

“What about rules?” he asks. “Things we can and can’t do?”

“Rules, yes. Good call. I think we both should be able to make any rules we want, but I haven’t thought that far in advance. Does that mean you’re in?”

He doesn’t say anything for a minute and I feel like he just needs one more nudge. “I’ll even let you have the first date,” I offer. “That way if it’s a disaster, we can call it quits and you haven’t wasted any time at all.”

“You are one determined chick.” He laughs under his breath. “Sure your ex-boyfriend is worth all this trouble?”

Two and a half years of kisses and late night texting and almost perfect life as Jason’s girlfriend flashes in my head. And then the thought of my senior year ruined while I watch from the sidelines as he hangs out with all of our mutual friends.

“Positive,” I say.

I meet Micah at his apartment at the end of the week for our first official “date.” His room looks about like I expected: band posters, mounds of dirty laundry, black sheets taped over the windows.

“You know, they have these things called curtains.” I stand with my back against the wall. There’s no way I’m sitting down in here.

Micah is sprawled across his unmade bed. He looks up from the TV long enough to roll his eyes. “So, the rules. What are they? You strike me as the kind of girl who
probably came up with a thousand of them.”

“Actually I only have a few.” I clear my throat. “Number one: no telling anyone else about the plan.”

Micah nods. “Okay.” His eyes flick back to the TV. He’s watching the Cartoon Mayhem channel—an episode of
Happy Cheetah
.

“Two: no touching. Three: absolutely no kissing.”

“As much as I have no desire to turn myself orange by brushing up against you and your spray-paint tan, I think we might have to touch occasionally to look like we’re dating,” Micah says.

“Fine. Minimal touching.” I hold out my arm and admire my silky bronzeness. “And by the way, this isn’t orange. It’s Desert Glow.”

“More like glow in the dark.” He yawns. “Is that all you got?”

I nod. “Go ahead. What are your rules?”

“I’m kind of a no-rules guy.” He turns to me, a slow smile spreading across his face. “I’m curious, though. What are you going to tell your friends? And your parents? That getting dumped by Jason drove you to the dark side?”

“Well, Bianca knows and Kendall is out of town. They’re the main ones I talk to outside of soccer. And my parents are pretty laid-back as long as I’m home for curfews, so I don’t have to tell them anything specific. I mean, for all they know we’re just work friends hanging out.”

Micah snorts, as if the idea of us hanging out as work friends is all kinds of hilarious. “So no other rules?” he
asks. “At
all
?”

The way he’s looking at me makes me feel like there should be tons more, but I can only think of one. “No making up X-rated stories about me.”

He runs a hand through his mohawk. “What about R-rated?”

“I’ll give you PG-13.”

“Middle school kids can get pretty rowdy these days.” Micah licks his lips suggestively.

“That’s your sister you’re talking about, right?” I say sweetly.

“Not cool.” He throws a pillow at me. “Ugh, she’s actually going to be a freshman.”

As if she can sense us talking about her, Micah’s sister pokes her head into the room without even knocking. “Oh, hey,” she says. “I’m Trinity. I just wanted to say hi.”

“Hi. I’m Lainey.” I give her a smile and a beauty pageant wave. I’ve seen Trinity hanging out at Denali, but today is the first time we’ve officially met. She has dark brown hair like Micah, with little streaks of blue and green protruding from behind her left ear. She’s wearing a flowered dress, a trucker hat, and these weird black shoes shaped like cats. It’s a mix of masculine, feminine, and just plain weird that I don’t think I could pull off, but it totally works for her.

“I know who you are.” She giggles. Micah punches the volume on the TV up a couple of notches. “Cool,
Happy Cheetah.
Is this the episode where Cheetah and Bipolar Bunny go to the zoo to torment Anxiety Zebra?” She looks
back and forth from Micah to me.

“I have no idea,” I say.

“Lainey’s not into
Happy Cheetah
,” Micah changes the channel to an episode of
Celebrity Sightings.
“This is more her speed.”

He’s right. I listen as celebrity reporter Ashton Leigh reports the latest updates on Caleb Waters and
Flyboys.

“
Flyboys
is the story of two Air Force pilots who get kicked out of the military for reckless behavior and have to try to make a living as commercial pilots,” Ashton chirps. She flicks her stick-straight blonde hair back over her shoulder. “Currently the crew is filming scenes in Chicago.” The camera cuts to some grainy footage of Caleb Waters in what looks like a hotel.

“Ohmygod,” I say as Micah flips back to
Happy Cheetah
. “Chicago! That’s pretty close. What if Caleb Waters comes
here
?”

“Ohmygod,” Micah mimics. “I’m getting all horny just thinking about it.”

I wrinkle up my nose. “Ew, don’t talk like that in front of your little sister.”

“Don’t talk like that in front of your date,” Trinity chimes in.

It is superweird to hear myself referred to as Micah’s “date.”

Trinity clasps her hands together and I notice her fingernails are painted blue and green to match the streaks in her hair. “So, Lainey,” she says like she’s known me for
years. “I’ve been wanting to tell you how much I love your commercial.”

Micah makes a gagging sound without looking away from the TV. “I can’t wait to go to Hazelton Forest University,” he says in a high-pitched voice. “I’m doing a double major in soccer and celebrity stalking and a minor in tanning. It’s going to be totally to die for!”

Trinity laughs. A big laugh that shows a lot of gums and teeth. I used to laugh like that, before Kendall informed me belly laughing was uncool, especially with big horsey teeth like mine.

“Those would be the best majors ever,” I admit. I smile at Trinity. She’s so enthusiastic about everything. It’s pretty cute. “I like your streaks,” I tell her, mostly because I know how much being complimented by a popular senior will mean to her.

Trinity’s eyes go so wide that she looks like one of those anime girls my brother used to be obsessed with. “Really? I could give you one.”

“I, uh—” Crap. This is what I get for trying to be nice.

“I’ll use a clip instead of glue so you can take it out right away if you don’t like it.” She looks so hopeful that I can’t bear to tell her no.