Playing Hooky with the Hottie - Maggie Dallen Page 0,20

wants to do more.”

“More...photos?” she asked. “That’s great.”

Was it great? Maybe. I mean, I hadn’t actually thought this could work, but I’d underestimated how easy it was to sell a falsehood on social media. “It just seems wrong.”

I blurted out the truth that had been nagging at me all day yesterday, making it impossible to really revel in the success or even truly enjoy the fact that for once Justin had looked at me like maybe I wasn’t just another one of his teammate buddies.

“How so?” she asked.

“It feels like a lie.” I bit my lip as I looked at her. “I don’t like to lie.”

“You don’t?” Emma’s feigned shock was not amusing, but she laughed at her own joke. “Tell me something I don’t know, Girl Scout.”

I shrugged. “I mean it. He made it look like I was...I don’t know…”

“Having fun?”

I nodded.

“Wasn’t that the point?” she asked.

“I guess.” I sort of mumbled it, because something about this still didn’t sit right, no matter how my friends tried to spin it.

“Let me ask you this,” she said, shifting so she was facing me. “Were you pretending to have fun, or was that you actually having fun?”

I opened my mouth to say I’d been pretending, but then my memory called up those moments by the fire pit when Will had been cracking me up with those old TV shows, or even when we were in the house, and he was making me pose…

“I guess I’d kind of been having fun.”

“So then, there’s no lie here,” Emma said.

I tilted my head as I considered. “Yeah, okay. Maybe you’re right.”

“So then why do you still look like someone beat you in the five-hundred-yard Freestyle?”

I let out a short laugh because she knew that was my event. I never lost. But then the school came into view, and the dilemma in front of me reared up all over again.

“He wants me to play hooky,” I said.

The silence was too much. I looked over to see Emma gaping at me.

“I know, right?” I shook my head. “He’s nuts.”

Her grin was sudden and beaming. “He’s genius.”

“What?”

She shifted. “He challenged you, didn’t he?”

“I...what? He’s crazy, Em. I’m not doing it. Obviously.”

“Obviously.” Her voice was too mild. Her tone filled with amusement. “Do you have any tests today? Any pressing assignments?”

“No, but—”

“And are you or are you not three seconds away from getting a full-ride scholarship to the college of your dreams?”

I bit my lip. It wasn’t official yet, but...the odds were good. In fact, I already had an offer from my backup school so I was feeling very confident that this time next year I’d be swimming for a college team of my choosing.

“So what’s the harm?”

“What’s the harm?” I repeated with all the horror I felt.

“Let’s look at it this way,” she said. “You always go after what you want, right? You don’t take no for an answer, you work hard until you get it, you—”

“I get the point, Em.”

She leaned forward, her short black curls bobbing around her face as her eyes widened in earnest. “So put that single-minded focus into getting Justin to like you.”

“That’s not the same thing—”

“Isn’t it?” Her voice was all frenzied with excitement. Emma was excitable like that, and when she got fixated on something, she never let go. “Think about it. You want Justin to be your date for homecoming this weekend, right?”

I shot her a look because...obviously. He didn’t have a date yet, and I’d much rather have a date than go stag with my friends and watch him from the sidelines.

She knew this.

“So do what you need to do to make it happen.”

“Besides...I bet Will doesn’t think you’ll do it,” she said.

I pictured Will’s teasing grin, that wicked light in his eyes, and I frowned at the road. She was right. He didn’t think I would.

I gripped the steering wheel harder as I pulled into the school’s parking lot.

“So?” she said as I parked.

I turned off the engine and turned to face her. “Take notes for me in Biology.”

She tipped her head back with a whooping noise as I got out of the car.

8

Will

I knew she’d come.

She couldn’t resist a challenge. Hint that she wasn’t brave enough, and she’d leap in headfirst, fists clenched and ready for battle.

I knew it, but I was still grinning like an idiot when I saw her waiting by the door like I’d instructed.

“Excuse me,” I said as I strolled up. The school’s exterior was deserted because the first bell had just