Dating Makes Perfect - Pintip Dunn Page 0,13

have more pressing matters. Such as: giving the most intriguing boy at Lakewood High a tour without tripping over my brown suede lace-up boots.

When I arrive at the flagpole, however, no one’s there. I sit on the stone retaining wall, which surrounds a bed of mulch and shrubbery, and carefully arrange myself in a pose. Ankles, crossed. Face, tilted toward the sun. Attitude, oh-so-casual.

Except…it’s colder than I expected. The wind bites into my bare calves, and I have to press my palms into the stone to keep from hugging myself.

I hold the pose for ten more seconds and then grapple for my phone. With any luck, my best friend Kavya Pai—as close to me as a sister, if I didn’t actually have sisters—is just now fluffing her pillow, as her snooze alarm blares for the fifth time. Last night, I told her all about my upcoming tour—dare I say date?—and she’s obligated to provide some much-needed emotional support. It’s in the best-friend contract.

Me: I’m at the flagpole, looking all sorts of cute, and he’s not here

Kavya: Don’t tell me you’re wearing the cat skirt again. It’s the third time this week

Me: News flash. I wear it among different people, so nobody knows I’m recycling

Kavya: Except for me. I know. But you do look adorable this morning. What did you do to your hair? Hello, good hair day!

Me: Awwwww…thank you

Beaming, I send her a dozen kiss emojis before I remember that she can’t actually see me. Damn it. Can’t fault Kavya for not being a good cheerleader, anyway.

Me: Ari let me use her special jasmine shampoo

Kavya: Nice. Hope you stole it

Me: NO. Sisters (and friends) don’t steal from each other…even if they’re obsessed with my ruby lipstick with the gold glitter gloss

Kavya: *cackle* You mean, my ruby lipstick?

Me: Whatevs. Take it. Take all my worldly possessions. Just be here to pick up the crumbling pieces of my body because he is totally. Standing. Me. Up.

Kavya: Now you’re offering up body parts? Relax. As much as I’d like a Winnie ear or a Winnie finger, it’s only 7:55

Me: Oh. You’re right. I’m early. Does that make me desperate? Should I leave? Hide?!

Kavya: Deep breaths, hon. Repeat after me. I am A-OK

Me: I am A-OK

Kavya: A-OK

Me: Does that sound like a steak sauce? *presses hand to stomach* I’m hungry again

Kavya: Of course you are. I mean, it’s been what? A whole hour since breakfast?

A shadow falls over me. Finally. Panicked, I shove the cell phone into my purse, in case he’s got mad skills at reading upside down. My heart battering against my chest, I look up.

But it’s not Taran. Instead, it’s another Thai guy, a whole lot taller, but in some people’s eyes—the ones who should probably get their visions checked—just as cute.

I scowl. “What are you doing here?”

Mat arches an eyebrow. He tried to teach me that trick once. For hours, we sat in front of my mirror, as the ten-year-old Winnie tried—and failed—to make her left brow rise in that smug, questioning way.

When I admitted defeat, Mat consoled me by praising my tongue-rolling skills. He even went so far as to pretend that he couldn’t roll his tongue, a lie that I totally caught him in six months later. Still, it was nice of him to try and make me feel better.

Too bad he hasn’t shown the same consideration since.

“I go to school here,” he says. “Last I checked, you don’t own this particular patch of lawn.”

I resume my basking-in-the-sun pose. “We don’t talk at school,” I say loftily. “It’s one of our rules.”

He blinks. “I wasn’t aware we had rules.”

“Oh, yes. They govern our every word and action. I’d be lost without them.”

Up goes that eyebrow again. I hope it gets stuck there, the way body parts always seemed to in the moral tales my parents used to tell us when we were kids. If you hit your elders in one life, you’ll have overly large hands in the next. If you speak ill of a person, you’ll be reincarnated with a pinhole mouth. Surely there’s got to be a karmic consequence to arrogance.

“Where are these so-called rules written?” he asks. “Let me guess. In your diary, where you pour your heart out every night, rhapsodizing about yours truly.”

He’s kinda right—and also entirely wrong. Once, a couple of years ago, I jotted down the rules in my journal, next to a drawing of Mat with the devil’s horns and a forked tail.

But I’ve never, ever waxed poetic about him.