The Dating Deal (8 page)

“You really do look stunning,” he agreed, his eyes twinkling with amusement.

“Thank you.”  I did a little curtsy, trying to act as though I wasn’t about to die of embarrassment. 

Finishing my performance, I swooped the wrap off in record speed, placing it back on the display.  Then I tried to act calm.  Composed.  Semi-normal.  “What are you doing here?”

“I was in the mall,” he said.  “I thought I’d drop by and say hi.”

I’m sure my face gave away how thrilled I was that he thought to do that.  Maybe that’s why he said the next thing. 

“Are you going to be off pretty soon?” he asked.  “I want you to hear my band.”

“Uh, tonight?”

“Yeah.  There’s no school tomorrow.  Saturday, remember?”

“Yeah, but …”

“It’s not at a party,” he said quickly, seeming to understand my hesitation.  “It’s at Flips.  So no drinking or anything.  Totally Mormon friendly.”

Flips was a new pizza place.  But it was more than just a pizza place.  It was our school’s hangout.  Think Chuck E. Cheese, but for teenagers, and instead of mechanical animals on stage, think cool bands, that was Flips.

What was extra cool was the bands didn’t only play there, they worked there too.  They waited tables and bused and, you know, “worked.”  That’s how Flips paid them, for their work, not their performance.  But we teens, we definitely came for the performances.  Although the pizza was seriously good too.

“We’re dead tonight,” I told him.  “I can get off now.  Only, I don’t have my car.  My mom was going to pick me up.”

“I can give you a ride,” Trent offered.  Then he raised an eyebrow.  “If you’re not afraid of my driving.”

I called Mom and she said it would be okay, although she seemed a little hesitant.  “Do you really have to stay out so late?”

“Well, the place closes at twelve,” I explained.  “And Trent has to clean up before he can lock up.”

Mom consented.  Lucky for me, she hated seeing me mope around the house, picking at my Conner wounds.  Also, Mom liked Trent.  She thought it was sweet that he was so protective of Wendy.  And she was a lot like Nina.  She thought it was romantic that Trent had rescued me from Aspen’s torment that day in class.

At Flips, I had a blast.  It was fun walking in with Trent, having people glance up from their conversations and stare.  They were beginning to really believe we were a couple.  Imagine it, Megan The Mormon and Trent The Party Guy, a pair.

No way!

Trent bought me a soda and we played air hockey and I beat him in skee-ball and I was having a blast.  But then it was time for Trent to go backstage and set up with his band.  None of my friends were around.  Suddenly, I felt anxious, as though I was being abandoned in a foreign country.

I was going to be alone.  That wouldn’t have been so bad.  I definitely could have dealt with it, alone.  Only did it have to be in front of every cool person from school?

Trent got me settled into a table up front.  “Don’t leave,” he said before going backstage, seeming to notice my anxiety.  “Seriously, I really want you to hear us.”

“I won’t leave,” I promised.

Then I sat alone with my root beer, playing with the straw.  Trent had hooked me up with a great table.  I didn’t want to lose it.  It was right near the stage.  But I felt conspicuous being all alone.  How long would I have to sit here before the show started?

“Hey, Megan, can we sit with you?”

I looked up to see Brooke Hunter and a group of her friends. 

“Sure,” I said, probably a bit over-eagerly.  I didn’t really know Brooke all that well, and I sure didn’t know her friends, but I was elated I wouldn’t have to sit alone any longer. 

“This is a great table,” Brooke said with a smile.  “We usually have to sit in the back.  Is Baggage playing tonight?”

It was weird.  Brooke asked about them as though I was an authority on Trent and his band.  I played along, having fun.  Why not?  It wasn’t everyday I was assumed the-one-to-know about a cool, hot guy and his band.  “Yep,” I said, real casual-like.  “Baggage is playing.”

There were two other bands that played first.  They both only played a few songs, though.  Baggage was the main event. 

When Trent came out on stage my heart did some sort of weird flip thing.  He gave me a smile, and in return I blushed bright red for him, and gave him a big, dopey grin the size of Texas.  Baggage played their most popular songs first.  It was cool.  I felt proud, as though Trent really was my boyfriend.  Okay, I knew he wasn’t, but no one else did.  As unlikely as it seemed, everyone believed the hot guy on the stage was my true “significant other.”

Once everyone finally stopped applauding, Trent made an announcement.  “This next song is really special.  And a really special person wrote it.  She’s sitting at that table right over there.”  Trent pointed at
my
table.

I stared at him in bewilderment.  What was he
talking
about?

Trent only smiled.

Boy, he had a great smile, but my stomach knotted.  What was going on?

The music started.  It was my song, The Road Home.  Trent’s band was playing my song!  Whoa!  And it was
beautiful
.  I sat motionless, stunned.  Through the whole thing, I didn’t breathe.  I just sat, listening.

When it was over everyone stood, applauding.  Hordes of people, cool people from school, came up to me, gushing about my song.  Telling me how beautiful it was.  How romantic it was.  How it made them cry.  And then, Trent was there, beside me.  “I hope you don’t mind,” he said.  “Us playing your song.”

“No, I don’t mind.” I hugged him, because that’s what I do when I’m excited.  I hug.  But once I had him in my arms, I woke to reality.  I was hugging Trent Ryan. 

“It was beautiful,” I told him, quickly pulling away.

“Well, it would have been better with you up there on stage,” Trent said.  “You should have been the one singing it.”

“No way!” I protested.  “You were awesome!  Amazing!”  I had to fight the urge to hug him again.  But as it was, we were still standing really close from the hug I’d just given him, and although there were still gobs of admirers surrounding us, for a moment, it was as though we were alone.  Just the two of us.  Trent and me. 

Magic.

 “Well,” Trent cleared his throat, taking a step back, “I better get busy.”

I sat for a while with Brooke and her friends, eating up their compliments and everyone else’s.  It was incredibly thrilling, though everyone was confused and thought The Road Home was a love song, about the death of a boyfriend, not my brother.  But, hey, that was okay.  It was great to have fans—and confused fans were better than no fans. 

So, I was having a terrific time.  But, all I really wanted to do was rush home and bake Trent cookies.  A giant locker’s worth. 

*  *  *  *  *

Once everyone had gone home, I helped clean up.  Then Trent sat with his guitar, and strummed my song.  “Sing it,” he said.  “Up here, on stage.”

I shook my head, feeling shy.  But then without even realizing I was going to, I got up there and started singing anyway.  I wanted to.  Needed to.  Hearing the music made me want to sing, and it was fun to grab the mike and belt it loud and strong, and move to the music up on stage.

I glanced over at Trent and he was smiling as though he was really pleased.  He seemed to be having as much fun as me, so I went on singing and dancing to the dim, empty room, having the time of my life.

“You should do that for a real audience,” Trent said on the way home.

“Oh.  I couldn’t,” I told him, and then laughed.  “I don’t know if you know this, but I’m shy.”

He grinned.  “I hadn’t noticed.”

I besieged him with questions about my song.  How did he know the words?  How did his band learn the song so fast?

Trent surprised me by pulling off to the side of the road.  It made me grip the door handle with alarm.  What was he
doing
?

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, sensing my panic.  “I just wanted to talk to you for a minute.”  He was silent a moment, then went on, choosing his words with care.  “Your song, it’s sort of like you explain the unexplainable.  At least it had always been unexplainable to me.  Only now, I don’t know.  Your song, it touched me.  It’s comforting.”

I sat back in my seat, unable to speak for fear of crying.  His words touched
me
.  They were the sweetest, kindest words I had ever heard in my entire life.  And the most amazing part was—they’d come from Trent Ryan.

When I didn’t say anything, Trent went on.  “I couldn’t get your song out of my head.  And when I played it for the guys, they got into it.  We played it, like, all day every day for the past week.”

Hearing that filled me with excitement.  Baggage was the coolest band around.  And they liked my song!  And to have heard it played by them, and better yet, sung by Trent, this was like, the best night of my life!

Sunday I had car trouble and got to church late.  But, hey, I got there, a little oily smelling, but no holes in my nylons, so I considered myself lucky. 

As I was standing in the chapel doorway, scanning the congregation for my family, my heart sped up about a thousand beats per second because guess who was there, again?!  Trent and Wendy!  They were sitting in the overflow.  When I saw them, I about tripped over a chair.  (Graceful entrances aren’t exactly my thing.) 

I wanted to go sit with them.  I really, really wanted to sit with them.  But I couldn’t get my stupid, almost-tripping-over-a-chair feet to move in their direction.  Instead, the cowards scurried over to sit with my parents.

It was testimony meeting, and the whole hour was jam packed with spirituality.  I couldn’t have asked for a better meeting if I had prepared it myself, telling the congregation, “Okay guys, make it super tear-jerky.  This is for my pretend boyfriend.”  I kept wanting to look back to see how Trent was doing, what he thought of the spiritual fest.  But I didn’t look back, not once.  Well, okay, once.

It was when Conner got up on the stand to bear his testimony, which I’d never seen him do before in my life.  He actually
bore his testimony
.  Only, I got the feeling he was up there more just to prove a point.  Because it was mostly about the pitfalls of dating non-members.  And at one point he looked straight at me, saying, “Sometimes you just don’t know what you’ve got until you don’t have it any more.  Then you realize how special it is.”

My heart started pounding like crazy.  Thump, thump, thump.  And he was staring at me in church, from the pulpit.  That’s not allowed, is it?  It’s like a rule or something.  What was he trying to do to me?

I had to look away.  I glanced back at Trent.  He raised his eyebrows, like “I told you so.”

But after traumatizing me, Conner went on to talk about the church.  “It’s special,” he said, “you may not even realize how special until it’s not in your life anymore.”

This wasn’t like Conner, coming to church two Sundays in a row, let alone bearing his testimony.  I hadn’t even been sure he
had
a testimony.  He’d always said, “Yours is strong enough for both of us, Megan.”

Either he had really changed, or he was up there for all the wrong reasons.  And I had the sinking feeling it was the latter.  He was proving a point.  It made me feel funny, but I hoped I was wrong.  I hoped he was up there being honest.  I hoped he really had gained a testimony.

After the meeting, Conner came up to me before I could get to Trent.  “I have to go to work,” Conner said.  “So I can’t stay.  But I hope you understood what I was trying to say up there.”

I looked at him quizzically, saying nothing.  I
didn’t
understand.  Did he bear his testimony, or try to woo me?  And if it was the wooing, which I got the feeling it was, what brought it on?  Seeing that Trent had come to church?  Seeing that Conner might actually lose me as his little loyal puppy dog?  The one that wagged its tail any time he gave it the tiniest bit of attention, even after it had been kicked around and rejected by him?