Cora Carmack - All Lined Up

Dallas’s friend doesn’t smile. Instead, she turns to Dallas and asks, “Are you okay? I saw that hottie you went off with inside, and you weren’t with him. I was worried.”

I think of the guy on the balcony, and the surge of bitterness I feel is so powerful I can taste it on my tongue.

“That hottie,” I begin, “is a tool.” God, I’m even talking like her. “Be glad she wasn’t with that asshole.” There. That was better.

The girl’s hair is barely longer than mine, but when she tosses her head, she somehow has the same effect as if she were tossing a mane as long as Dallas’s. She fixes her gaze on me and says, “Hey, Romeo, I was talking to Dallas. Not you.”

Emerald eyes meet mine, and we both burst out laughing. Whatever tension had been wracking Dallas disappears with her laugh. I stop before she does, just watching, enjoying the way the Shakespeare mention makes her face light up.

“What? What did I say?” her friend asks.

Dallas takes a step closer, hesitates, and then crosses to stand beside me.

“It’s okay, Stella. I’m fine. Promise.”

Stella’s gaze flicks back and forth between the two of us.

“You sure? How much have you had to drink?”

“None.”

Stella’s eyebrows raise, and some kind of silent conversation passes between the two of them. When Dallas faces me, her expression, like her friend’s, is hard to read. I miss her openness.

“I should probably go,” she says. And unlike when we were kissing, this time I can tell she means it.

Part of me is relieved that one of us is able to step away, but I’m both ashamed it wasn’t me and disappointed that it was her.

I shove my hands into my pockets. “Okay, Daredevil.”

Her friend snorts. “Daredevil?”

Dallas doesn’t look away from me, and neither of us bother replying.

“It was nice to meet you, Carson.” She holds out her hand, and I take it. A handshake isn’t exactly what I want, but I’ll take it. She smiles, and I smile, and I can’t resist using her hand to tug her a little closer.

I lean down to her ear, wishing I could talk to her without her friend watching us like we’re the best new reality show on TV, wishing she would be the Dallas she was ten minutes ago. “You’re not going to make me beg, are you?”

She pulls back to look me in the eye, and her lips are distractingly close to mine.

“For what?”

Even though she definitely kissed me back, I still find myself anxious to ask, “Your number?”

“Oh.” Her face falls for half a second before she smiles, and that one second of disappointment undoes me. What does she want? And more important . . . how do I give it to her? “Right. Give me your phone.”

I hand it over and wait while she programs her number in. Her friend Stella is still there watching silently, and this is quickly becoming the strangest night of my life. But when she hands back my phone and our fingers brush, I know I wouldn’t have it any other way.

She smiles and turns to go, but I can’t resist pulling her back one more time. This time I’m less controlled and when I whisper into her ear, my lips brush against her skin. Her fingers wrap around my forearm and squeeze.

“One more thing I’m willing to beg for, Daredevil.”

The goodbye kiss she gives me is short and chaste and only lands on the corner of my lips, but I feel it all the way down to my knees.

I watch her leave, and am disappointed when her friend is the one to look back over her shoulder and not Dallas. They don’t head back inside, but instead slip through a gate on the side of the house. I stay outside for a few minutes, but then decide that I have no interest in sticking around now that Dallas is gone.

There’s a sliding door at the back of the house, and when I open it and step back into the noisy house, I pull out my phone.

I start scrolling through my contacts while I meander through the crowds looking for a familiar face to say my goodbyes. I reach the Ds, and Dallas isn’t there.

My stomach falls, and my feet pull to a halt in the middle of the room. I shouldn’t be this devastated by a girl not giving me her number, but I also don’t know how to block out the feeling that’s spinning through me. I go to shove my phone back in my pocket when I see it.

Daredevil.

It’s two names down from where I had expected to see Dallas’s name, and the spinning sensation in my chest doesn’t lessen, but spirals even faster.

“McClain, why are you grinning like an idiot?”

I look up, and there’s Levi Abrams on the couch with a petite brunette sitting in his lap. Silas Moore and a few other teammates are with him, and my grin falls.

The world wastes no time in reminding me exactly why I shouldn’t be getting distracted by girls or parties or anything like this.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Abrams.” I look around at the rest of the team members. The new coach is strict about inappropriate conduct, so I’m surprised there are this many players here and at how wasted they all are. They take shit for granted . . . things I would kill for. But I’m used to feeling that way. Growing up poor makes you hyperaware of all the other things people take for granted. But in this case . . . it might eventually work to my advantage. Let them rest on their laurels. It makes it that much easier for me to catch up. “I’m heading out. See you guys at practice.”

I hear some calls at my back, some asking, some daring me to stay and party with them. I just wave a hand and head for the door.

And maybe I’m borrowing trouble, but as I head for my truck, I type out a quick text.

Still thinking of that list.

Dallas’s reply comes a minute later, and I settle in behind the steering wheel, not bothering to turn the key in the ignition.

Who is this? Carson?

I hope there are not any other guys

out there making a list like this one.

And if there are?

I’ll just have to make sure my list is

better.

Maybe I should make a list of my own.

Maybe we should make one together.

Maybe we will.

Stella kept me out late again on Saturday (thankfully not at another party, but at the coffee place just off campus). Even after we turned out the lights for bed, we stayed up a while longer talking across the small space that separated our twin beds. Because of that, I snooze two too many times, making me a few minutes late for church on Sunday morning. When I squeeze past Dad sitting in his usual spot at the end of a pew a few rows from the back, his gaze turns steely.

I knock a hymnal off the shelving on the back of the pew, and it thumps against the carpet, drawing even more attention to my late entrance as the youth minister finishes greeting the congregation. Dad shifts, flexing his fists on his knees, and I rush to pick up the book and plop myself down beside him.

That would normally be the end of it. I would sit incredibly still until all the eyes left me, but somehow in my rush to sit down, I ended up with a few stray strands of hair in my mouth. I claw at my cheeks, trying to find the offending hairs and pull them away.

Dad makes a low grumbling noise that reminds me of a grizzly bear.

I show him my teeth in a grimace barely passable as a smile. If he wants a proper and polite daughter, he shouldn’t have spent my childhood dragging me to places where I was predominantly surrounded by men.

I fix my gaze straight ahead, taming my hair and clothes just in time for the youth minister to say, “We’re so glad to have you all this morning. Please take a few moments to greet your neighbors and say a warm hello to any new faces.”

The pianist and the organist start an upbeat version of “Joyful, Joyful,” and I wish that I had managed to be just a few minutes later. Maybe it makes me heartless, but this is my least favorite part of church. Dad and I are immediately inundated with former players and parents of players and teachers. It used to be that they all wanted to stay on good terms with Dad so that their kids would get more playing time. I had hoped that Dad’s new job might make us a little less popular, but no luck there.

Dad’s all smiles, shaking hands and laughing, his loud voice carrying and no doubt drawing more people toward us. I stand there awkwardly, smiling (horrendously fake) smiles and nodding along like I know a good daughter should. Mostly the men talk to Dad, and the women talk to me since there’s no mom to play that role. I get compliments on my hair (which I know is a hot mess because it’s hella windy outside) and my outfit (which is lined with wrinkles and smells of Febreze since I just grabbed it off the floor of my dorm room).

And of course . . . there are the questions.

“How’s college?”

“Have you settled on a major?”

“How are your classes?”

“How does it feel to be all grown-up?”

Plus a few questions about Dad and the university team, like I know or give a crap about that.

On the surface I’m all Oh, haha. I’m great. Loving it. Everything’s great. Just great. Hah. Hah. And underneath I’m like Dear God, why is this hymn SO LONG?

It’s the college inquisition, and it’s enough to make any recent graduate vow never to visit home again. Unfortunately for me . . . I don’t have that option.

One year. Two, tops. Then I’m getting out of here. I have to.

I shoot Mrs. Dunlap at the piano a desperate look, not just because I want her to speed up, but also because she’s one of the few people in this building that I actually want to talk to. In addition to playing the piano during the service and teaching the second-grade Sunday school class, she’s been my dance instructor since Dad and I moved here four and a half years ago.

The youth minister steps up to the pulpit once more, and people begin making their way back to their seats. I let out a sigh of relief when he tells us to bow our heads.

I try to listen, but I zone out not long after “Dear Heavenly Father.”

There’s too much quiet in prayers, too much time for my mind to wander. I think about how miserable it was to roll out of bed this morning and watch Stell go right on snoozing while I struggled to kick-start my day. Then I feel guilty for thinking I’d rather be sleeping during church . . . during a prayer, no less. But that only makes me think about the other things I feel guilty for . . . like the seriously hot stranger-danger make-out session I had two nights ago. Then I chastise myself over feeling guilty about something that in the grand scheme of things isn’t really that bad. But then the minister says, “Amen,” and I concede that while kissing someone isn’t bad, thinking about it when I’m supposed to be communing with the big guy upstairs probably isn’t winning me any bonus points.

We stand to sing a hymn, and even though the words are written up on a big screen hanging above the pulpit, I grab a hymnal so that I’ve got something to do with my hands. I follow along in the book, but don’t sing myself. I sound like a hyena on my good days (a hyena in the jaws of a lion on my bad days), and I’m too self-conscious that other people will hear me.

I hear Carson calling me a daredevil, and God, how wrong he was. If I were a daredevil, I would have said screw Dad and auditioned for real dance programs instead of caving to what he thought was best (and what his money provided). I would have found a way to make it all work—the auditioning and the moving and the money. That’s what daredevils do. I also wouldn’t have run off like a timid preteen when Stella caught us together. As if that weren’t pathetic enough, I’d then lied to Stella and told her that maybe I’d had a few drinks after all.

Because, of course, that was the only explanation for me doing something fun and out of character like actually hooking up with a guy.

A guy who didn’t answer either of the texts I sent him yesterday. Clearly he’d gotten over the fascination he’d had with me on Friday night. Maybe he’d been drunk.

I don’t know if I always hate myself this much and I never think about it, or if it’s a product of the reflection that’s inherent in church and religion and being wildly unsuccessful at growing up. Feeling like everyone around me can see the failure written across my forehead certainly doesn’t help either.