little off guard.
* * *
As with everything we do together, George is a formidable opponent, but I win the match by a point in game five. “Best of three,” George says quickly as I put my paddle down on the table.
I laugh and shake my head. I’m sweating now, and I try to push my dress sleeves up even farther. Why did I wear wool? George takes off his sweatshirt—he’s wearing a white tee underneath, and it’s more fitted than what he normally wears, showing off his muscular arms and broad shoulders from swimming. I quickly look away, because it feels like a weird thing to notice.
“Nope,” I say. “A deal’s a deal, and I won, fair and square.” I walk across the table to him, and hold out my hand so we can shake on the match. He takes my hand, but doesn’t shake it exactly. He holds on to it, gently touches my knuckles with his thumb. I meet his eyes, and he opens his mouth to say something. Then changes his mind and doesn’t say anything. We stand there like that for a minute, both breathing hard, not talking, holding hands.
“I’ll still do the speech with you,” I finally say. “We’re co-presidents, aren’t we?”
“Co-presidents,” he says softly, his hand still on mine. I should let go, but I don’t. “But aren’t you even the least bit curious to see who you’d match?” he says.
I think about Sam, who texted me a picture from a hike he was on with his dad this morning in Phoenix. Wish you were here, E! But Laura is his match. In coding club last week we discussed the fact that one person’s highest match might not be the other person’s highest match, and how we might go about solving that dilemma. But even if Sam were my highest match, I’m not his. He’s dating Laura. And the two of them have kind of started to grow on me as a couple.
I look back at George, standing right in front of me, breathing hard, holding on to my hand. He’s Hannah’s highest match, but what would happen if we ran his name through the app?
“Not even the slightest bit curious?” George prods again.
“Nope,” I say, forcefully enough, so I wonder if maybe it’s possible I’m lying, a little bit, even to myself. “Not in the least.”
“George! Emma! Dinner,” Mrs. Knightley calls us from downstairs. George quickly drops my hand, and as I follow him down the steps, my fingers are still warm and tingling. I ball my hand into a fist, trying to fight back the weird feeling of wanting just another moment, alone, standing there like that with him.
Chapter 20
Jane and Sam and I are sitting near each other on the bus ride to Princeton the following Tuesday afternoon, and Sam is showing the two of us photos on his phone from his Thanksgiving trip back to Phoenix. He slides through mountains and sunsets and tall-armed cacti and then a huge Thanksgiving turkey on a platter, which I have to look away from, as I think about that poor beautiful bird who was murdered. But Jane is really interested, asking questions about the desert biome and climate in Phoenix. I tune them both out and look through my notecards again, rehearsing my presentation one more time in my head.
“Hey, Emma.” George says my name and touches me on the shoulder. I remember the way his hand had lingered on mine on Thanksgiving and I close my eyes for a second.
He and Hannah were sitting a few rows back when I’d gotten on the bus, but he must’ve moved up to the seat behind me while I was listening to Sam and looking at my notecards and I didn’t notice. He leans over the seat now. “You ready?” He moves his hand, and I reach up to rub the warmth away from my shoulder.
“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess?” I say.
George shoots me an empathetic smile. “It’s just regionals. All we have to do is score in the top five to go on. We’ll be fine.”
I nod. I know all that. There’s only one other high school in our region that even has a serious coding club like we do. And in all our years participating, we’ve never scored lower than third in the region, and that year, when George and I were freshmen, the president really bombed our oral presentation, and our project, coding solar energy, was kind of