Page 21 of The Backup Plan
“I’m the oldest of four, and my brothers and I are so close. We always wondered if one of us had been a girl, how the dynamic would have changed. You sort of feel like one of them. That’s probably pretty weird to say right now since we just met.”
“It’s definitely more comfortable than Justin preaching your virtues to me while he swears up and down it’s not a marketing pitch, just my new bestie.”
“Whoa.” He tapped his hands together for a time-out. “Was he marketing me?”
“You’re a business major from a small town in Michigan where you were also a wrestler and homecoming king. Your twin brothers are high school seniors who will probably come here to play next year, and your best locker room singing is usually something in the big-band era. He says ‘Take the A Train’ is especially good. Shall I go on?”
Isaac stared at his hands and fought back a laugh. “Well, I’m flattered, because he obviously cherishes you. Can we leverage this to get him back for ditching us for the invisible woman?”
“Mindy.”
“The enemy.”
“Let’s leverage. It would serve him right if we sent him a wedding invitation and then we didn’t show up. I’m going to grab a water before we get too far into the plot. Do you want one?”
“Please.”
She scanned the rapidly filling room. “Save my seat.”
Someone called Isaac’s name as she wove between people on her way to the kitchen, and she stopped short when she rounded the corner.
The boy in the orange hat sat on the counter with a cup of beer lifted halfway to his lips for a drink. He froze when he saw her.
He wasn’t dressed for a party, and may as well have just come from the art building lounge in chino shorts and white sneakers. She watched him steady his breathing as his black T-shirt stretched across his toned chest. The hat was backward over a mess of brown curls, and Avery read the tension gathering in his arms and in the muscles of his neck.
“Hi,” she said.
He nodded and cleared his throat.
She tried again. “Nice to see you outside the lounge.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Just looking for another way to hang out with you and talk to myself. What are you doing here?”
His brows shot up. “Really?”
Avery sighed and opened the refrigerator, then bent low to wrestle two bottles of water from a case. Really? was just short of Don’t you know who I am? “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t care,” she muttered, cutting back across the living room as her heart sank. The unlikely connection she imagined crossing their couches was nothing under the harsh fluorescent light in the kitchen. He was a vessel for daydreams, and the mysterious hurt and frustration that drew her to him was nothing more than an artist’s will to make something out of nothing.
A sudden panic broke her stride.
He was a football player. The only men at the limited-access party would be her brother’s teammates, the ones who knew all about her.
Isaac practically leapt from the loveseat when he saw her, abandoning the girl who claimed Avery’s seat only seconds after she got up. “I missed you,” he declared, grabbing her hand in the middle of the room. “Stranger danger over there. Someone’s single friend.”
“In the kitchen, too.” She handed him a bottle and drank from her own.
“Let’s try the bonfire.”
“Tell me something funny first. Justin said you told dad jokes.”
“Hold on.” He cupped her chin and turned her face to his. “Avery, are you okay?”
His hazel eyes were pools of calm in the turbulence around them.
“Of course I am. I won’t leave you unattended anymore.”
“We’re sticking together.” He snuck an arm around her waist and pulled her to his side when he recognized someone. “Cam. What’s up, buddy?”