Slowly, Stella turned and then winced. A fully dressed Will in sweats and a UCLA T-shirt rushed toward her.
“Where does it hurt?” he asked.
“My big toe,” she said with a hiss. The rolling pin was heavier than it looked.
“Sit.” He ushered her back into the kitchen toward the closest chair and eased her down. “Take off your shoe.”
As Stella slipped the sandal off her prickling foot, Will moved to the fridge and pulled out an ice tray from the freezer. He upended the cubes onto a towel by the sink, then brought the wrapped bundle to her. He took a knee, guided Stella’s foot to rest on his thigh, and placed the bunched-up towel over her big toe—already in the process of swelling. She hissed again from the shock of the cold on the pulsing heat.
“Too cold?” Will looked into her eyes.
A new wave of awareness flooded Stella’s cheeks. She shook her head.
As if he saw through her bravado, he said, “Just bear with me for a few minutes. It will feel better soon.” His free hand moved up to her calf and began massaging it.
Stella’s lungs stopped working. Oh, it was feeling better, all right. The discomfort moved to more inappropriate places. She shouldn’t even be thinking along those lines. Will was just helping her. Doing a nice thing. His concern for her well-being was pretty obvious. Nothing more.
So caught up in her thoughts was Stella that she failed to notice that Will was talking until he looked up at her again. He was so handsome. Her chest ached. She had missed him.
“Thanks for checking on Nana,” he said, his gratefulness all over his expression.
“I love Nana,” she replied, swallowing the sudden lump in her throat. “It’s no biggie.”
“Well, I owe you one. Seriously, anything you need.”
Asking him to homecoming was at the tip of her tongue. It was a crazy thought. Never in a million years would Will say yes. Again Stella’s fantasies were overtaking her common sense. She blamed the lapse on the toe. The pain was making her delusional.
Forcing the thought to the deepest reaches of her clearly confused mind, she said instead, “Don’t worry about it.”
“You cut your hair,” he mumbled. He seemed to be concentrating too hard on icing her toe.
Her hand flew up to her head. “Ye-yeah. I thought a change was good.” Nerves invaded her stomach. She didn’t know how to feel about the possibility of Will hating her bob. It prompted her to say, “You like it longer?”
He whipped his head up so fast that Stella thought he might lose his balance. “No! Um … I mean … it’s nice.”
“Nice?”
And the blushes kept coming. Stella was afraid she might pass out. It had been months since she’d last seen Will. If she was being honest with her traitor of a heart, her feelings for Will were as real now as they had been then.
“What happened?”
The exclamation came from the kitchen entrance.
Will and Stella turned their heads toward Nana. She had arrived without their noticing. Ribbons were tangled in her waist-length hair. Bangles jingled on her wrist. The boho skirt she paired with a sleeveless ribbed shirt highlighted her thin frame. Pushing seventy and she looked good. Stella could only wish she would look as good when she was Nana’s age.
“Rolling pin met with toe,” Will said, answering her question. He lifted the makeshift ice pack and set Stella’s foot back on the floor. Then he stood and dumped the ice into the sink.
Despite feeling the void Will left behind, Stella put together a bright smile. “I’m fine, Nana. I was clumsy. My toe is nice and numb.” She left out the fact that her heart and mind might not be.
“It completely slipped my mind that you were dropping by today.” Nana deposited her own groceries beside Stella’s on the table. Will busied himself putting away what Stella had left out, then started on the contents of his grandmother’s eco-bags. “You will stay for dinner. I’m making lasagna and garlic bread.”
Stella’s mouth watered. Nana’s lasagnas were legendary. No one said no to the creamy, layered pasta. She was about to say yes when she remembered the date she was supposed to go on in a couple of hours.
“Nana, I want to, I really do,” she said, already hating the idea of leaving.
“I hear a but coming.” Nana eyed her.
“It’s Friday,” Will chimed in. “She probably has plans or something.”
Will’s words did unexpected things to Stella’s heart. How did he know? And more important, would he tell Cam? Then the craziness of her thoughts caught up with her. Of course he’d think she had plans. What teen didn’t on a Friday night?
* * *
STELLA SAT AT her favorite booth in her favorite diner with Tommy talking a mile a minute about how more people should be conscious of their civil rights. It was the debate team captain in him. And his passion for the Black Lives Matter movement.
She admired all those things about him. How he stood up for what was right. How he had aspirations to study law and eventually enter politics to make a difference. She should have really been paying more attention. She had ideas too. Thoughts. Opinions.
But that was kind of hard when every two sentences the image of Will’s abs kept popping up in her mind. They resembled dinner rolls, he was so ripped. Shame wrapped Stella like a blanket on a chilly night. Will wasn’t her date tonight. Tommy was. He was a great guy. And that smile? Who wouldn’t like that smile? It was what won him the student council presidency.
What would Franklin say?
The second her best friend’s disapproving expression replaced Will’s abs, Stella mentally slapped herself and forced her brain to focus on the most important things: Tommy and the marginalized youth of today.
* * *
WILL PUSHED AROUND pieces of lasagna on his plate. Normally, he would be halfway through the pan of creamy, meaty goodness by now. But … but … his taste buds didn’t seem to be working properly. The buttery garlic bread should have been soaking up the meat sauce and making sweet, sweet love in his mouth, but …
“William, where’s your head at tonight?” Nana asked, finally fed up, it seemed, with his lack of an appetite.
He sighed, setting his fork aside. “When did she cut her hair?”
“You mean Stella?”
The twinkle in her eye said she knew exactly whom he meant. He nodded.
“Oh…” Nana rubbed her chin as if deep in thought. “About a month before school started. Right about the same time her braces came off.”
That was right. When she smiled, there wasn’t any metal in her teeth anymore. How could Will have missed that? He had been too distracted by the way the edge of her hair kissed her jaw. It suited her. Too damn well.
“You know she’s on a date tonight,” Nana said, reeling Will back from his daydream of running his fingers through her hair.
“She can do whatever she wants,” he replied, biting back what he really wanted to say. He had been on dates too. None of them lasted more than the night. Hookups, really. But what could he do? The one he wanted, he didn’t deserve.
“Is that so?”
He dropped his gaze to his half-empty plate. The raise of Nana’s eyebrow was too honest. Too telling.
“You know, when your pappy was younger, it took him a really long time before he got up the courage to ask me out.”
The mention of his grandfather was enough to lift Will’s bowed head. The man had died when Will was only seven years old. He had few memories of him. So any story was welcome.
“That doesn’t sound like Pappy,” he said, remembering his grandfather as a confident man.
“Oh, he was a shy guy, my Andrew.” A look came over Nana’s face that spoke of how much she missed him. “But the important thing is, he finally got up the courage to ask me out. He needed to be honest with his feelings to get what he wanted.”
Leaning forward, Will picked up his fork and started shoveling the remaining lasagna into his mouth. No matter that he didn’t tas
te the food. It was to keep him from answering. His tongue had grown too big for his mouth, anyway.
Will knew the story was for his benefit. Being honest with his feelings? Seriously? Nana was laying it on thick. But what she didn’t know was that Pappy was a far braver, far greater man. Because Will? He was taking everything to the grave. His tombstone would eventually read: Here lies the poor shmuck who kept it to himself.
THREE
BRACKET PARTY
The next Friday, Stella strode into her room to find Franklin waiting for her. He was hovering around the bracket board, studying the guys. They had made plans to meet and go over her date for that evening. He turned when he heard her come in.
“You’re back early,” he said, then frowned. “That’s not good.”
It definitely wasn’t. It was only eight p.m. Her date had started at seven. She removed her light jacket and threw it onto her bed before she sat on the edge, crossing her legs.
“Daniel’s definitely out,” she said, even if she hadn’t gone on her date with Joey yet. He was Saturday night. She didn’t need to compare the two to make her decision of who was moving forward. “The swimming shoulders and fantastic abs are not worth it.”
Franklin gave her a once-over, then looked at Daniel’s photo. “What happened? I rated him four stars for looks and three hearts for charm.”
“First of all, the movie sucked. I can’t trust a guy with no movie-selection skills. It’s going to be a long year of duds at the cinema, and you know how much I love watching movies.”
“That can’t be all of it. You can’t disqualify someone for having bad taste.”
“Says the guy who broke up with someone for wearing kigurumi onesies to bed.”
He glared at her in outrage. “Don’t you bring Hayden into this! He was definitely five stars, five hearts in my book. But the onesies thing? Just no! But, seriously, what happened with Daniel?”
She felt a blush coming on, but it was for the worst reason. “He kept running his hand up my thigh while we were in the cinema, so I walked out on him twenty minutes into the movie.”
“What!” Franklin’s eyes were so wide, Stella could see the whites. “That asshole!”
“Where are you going?” Stella grabbed his wrist as he passed her bed on the way to the door.
“I’m going to shove my shoe up his ass so far that even his future grandchildren will feel it. No one sexually harasses my Stella. No stars, no hearts for him!”
Stella smiled and squeezed his wrist. “And for that I love you. We were bound to run into a creep in this process. Let’s just hope he’s the only one.”
He regarded her with intense scrutiny. “Should I start chaperoning you on these dates? Because you know I can.”
“And be the third wheel?” Stella’s heart melted when he nodded. “You hate being the third wheel.”
“I hate seeing you taken advantage of more.”
She got up and hugged him. Then she said, “You don’t have to do that. Just take him off the list of potentials.”
“I’m also drafting an anonymous tip about him for the wall of the Shame Bathroom. Girls will want nothing to do with him after I’m done.”
“Do what you must.” She gestured to the board.
With chin held high, Franklin produced a red marker, drew a circle around Daniel’s head, and slashed a line across it. The finality in his strokes made Stella feel infinitely better. She breathed easier as she sat back down and looked through the bracket once again as Franklin wrote Joey Esposito’s name into the rectangle for the next round, right under Tommy’s.
“Shame about Kevin, though,” Franklin said, referring to her date after Tommy. “He had potential. That dimple. Four stars, four hearts.”
“They all have potential. Why do you think we had to put them in a bracket? Although, I got the feeling that Kevin was more interested in taking selfies. Of himself. Of us. Of our food. His eyes were on his phone more than they were on my face or my cleavage.”
“Makes sense. He’s the official photographer of the Oak Hills High Herald, or OHHH, for short.” He breathed out a sigh, then looked at Kevin’s picture longingly. “A shame, though. Guys seem to be running out of proper social skills in this day and age.”
Stella waved at the board. “Either way, I owe Tommy another date. I wasn’t entirely in the right headspace when we had dinner.”
“You were thinking about Will the entire time, weren’t you?” Franklin wiggled his finger at her, a suspicious gleam in his black-coffee eyes. The eyeliner he had around them gave his look a sharpness that made people pay attention.
“Not the entire time.” She sighed. She had told him all about the laundry-room incident. “You should have seen him. Just in boxers. It was art, I tell you. Plus we have to give him credit for not telling Cam.”
“How are you so sure?”
“I’m still going on dates, aren’t I?”
“Don’t even think of going over to the dark side again.” Franklin gasped, pointing a warning finger in her direction. “We’re doing this because you’re moving on from this silly crush of yours. He’s a no-go.”
“I wouldn’t call it silly. But you’re right,” Stella said with a lot less enthusiasm. She really shouldn’t be thinking of Will. He was in her rearview. Needing a break from Boyfriend Bracket talk, she steered the conversation toward the future. “How far are you in your applications?”
“Just finishing up the essay portion. Mine’s about Coco Chanel. Yours?”
“Diane von Furstenberg.”
“How feminine transformative of you.”
“Shut it! She revolutionized the way women dress.” She tweaked his arm playfully. “I just can’t believe it’s finally here.” She pushed off the bed and approached her desk, where all the applications were stacked. “We’ve been preparing for this since eighth grade. And now it’s here.”
Franklin came up beside her, arms crossed. “You’re not actually entertaining the possibility of not getting in, are you?”
“Of course not! Because it’s not going to happen. You and I are brilliant. In a year we’ll be sharing a crappy apartment in one of the boroughs and studying at one of the best fashion-design schools in the country. Maybe even the world.”
“You really have your heart set on Parsons, huh?”
“Why not Parsons?” A dreamy look came over her as she stared at the application. “It’s in NYC, which is one of the seats of fashion. The city of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. Plus, their teachers are fantastic. They shot Project Runway there. And let’s not forget the alums who have gone on to create global fashion brands. Parsons is the ‘it’ school.”
“FIDM is just as good. If not better.”
“You just don’t want to trade California weather for blizzards and humid summers.”
“My hair will not forgive me.” He faced the full-length oval mirror standing in one corner of her room and checked his makeup.
Stella smiled. She and Franklin had shared the same dream since they’d met in sewing class. She was pretending to go to soccer practice while he was pretending to go to ballet class. It was New York or bust. Mecca of fashion in the country. The only reason they’d applied to other schools was because their guidance counselor made them. Something about having safety schools being a smart idea.
A ping pulled Stella out of her thoughts. Franklin fished out his phone from his back pocket and checked his messages. A grin formed on his lips afterward.
“I know that look,” she said, barely having to glance at him.
Franklin made a sound that was akin to taking the first bite out of a decadent slice of chocolate cake. “Speaking of five stars…”
“Oh! Is that the guy you were telling me about? The one with the extensive vinyl collection? How may hearts was he?”
“Three hearts.” His lips quirked. “I can always work with that.”
She rolled her eyes. “All looks and hardly any charm. I’m surprised you aren’t in a committed r
elationship yet.”
“Commitment is for my thirties. I’m here to party. And speaking of which, my prospect just invited us to a frat one.” He showed her the message.
“That’s three hours away!”
“All the best parties are.”
Stella wondered if she could say no. She had so much to do. Finishing her essay, for one thing. Completing her Parsons portfolio, for another. Tim Gunn would want her to stay home.
Franklin read her mind before she opened her mouth to refuse. He stood by the bracket and pointed at the fourth name on the left side. “He’s going to be there.”
Joey Esposito, running back for the Oak Hills Otters. Five stars, four hearts. Stella considered her options. She had a new dress to finish, but she also liked the jock enough to drive three hours. If she went to the party, she wouldn’t have to go on a date with him the next day. It meant more sewing time. She moved to her closet and threw open the doors.
“Then help,” she said over her shoulder. “I’m not showing up at a frat party wearing clothes from a previous date. It’s bad luck.”
Her sewing soulmate eagerly came to her aid. “It’s a frat party, so we need something eye-catching.”
“Nothing too revealing. I want to feel sexy, not like bait.” She sent him a pointed glare. “Remember what Tim Gunn says about showing skin.”
“We’ll go with your midriff, then. Got to show off those abs while you still have them.”
“Hey!”
He pulled out a light cropped sweater and a flared jean that Stella had found at a thrift store and updated. “Pair with those leather wedges.”
She nodded. She might joke, but Franklin had never styled her wrong. His taste was impeccable. And his eye for fashion was always on point. If Stella ever considered anyone her competition, it was him.
“I’ll accessorize with hoop earrings and multiple rings.”
Franklin pursed his lips into a smile. “Perfect.”
* * *
WILL TRAILED CAM into the noisy frat house. Every square foot brimmed with partying coeds. He was too preoccupied with the Morla predicament that he had yet to solve to fully appreciate the “fun”—Cam’s word—surrounding him. Angry e-mails were already flooding his in-box. Fans wanted the next chapter ASAP. There were even quite a few death threats. Talk about pressure. Cam slapped him on the shoulder hard enough to wake him from his think-haze.
The Boyfriend Bracket Page 3