Page 19 of The Facade

She reached over to try to give me the paper back. “You don’t need to do this, Cambrielle.”

But I just shook my head and closed her fingers over her new lab partner’s name. “It’s fine.”

“But it’s Ben,” Elyse said with a shake of her head. “You can’t give him up for me.”

“It’s really fine, Elyse,” I insisted. “I don’t mind working with Mack.”

It would probably be way less awkward for me to work with him instead of Ben, anyway. I was bound to get all anxious and mess up all the recipes if I was worried about impressing my lab partner.

Elyse seemed to study me for a moment, as if gauging whether I was really sincere. And then after a long pause, she swallowed and said, “Thank you. I promise to return the favor.”

“Don’t even worry about it.” I waved the thought away.

But she said, “I’ll talk you up to Ben. I’ll tell him how awesome you are.”

“Please don’t.” My eyes widened and I put my hand to my chest. “That’ll only make it obvious that I like him.”

Elyse nodded. “Okay. But I’ll pay you back somehow.”

I stood from my chair. “Just find out what costume he’s planning to wear to the Halloween dance, and we’ll call it even.”

“Done.”

“I sawyou traded Elyse names before coming back here,” Mack said in a low voice near my ear once we made it to our cooking station. “You traded Ben to be with me?”

“You saw that?” I asked, surprised that he’d been watching us.

“And here I thought you just told Nash last night that you were going to talk to Ben.” Mack grabbed two aprons from one of the drawers, handing me the red one while keeping the black for himself. “This was your chance. Why’d you chicken out?”

“I-I didn’t chicken out.” I took the red apron and put it over my head.

“You didn’t?” He arched an eyebrow, clearly not believing me. “Then why the last-minute partner trade? You can’t tell me it was because you have secretly always wanted to make fantastic dishes in the kitchen with me. Because if that’s the case, we could have just done that at your house this week.”

“Yeah, it’s not that,” I said. “It’s, um…” I tried to think of an excuse that would cover up the real reason—that Elyse didn’t want to behispartner. But when nothing came to mind, I sighed and said, “I guess I might have been overwhelmed by the thought of cooking with him for the rest of the semester.”

Overwhelmed with joy, that is.

But I couldn’t tell Mack that now, could I?

Mack glanced at the station across the room where Elyse and Ben were currently reading over a recipe together.

He turned back to me. “You really like the guy?” His deep, brown eyes looked skeptically at me, like he couldn’t understand why I would like someone who was tall, gorgeous, and popular like Ben.

“Yes,” I whispered, since it was dumb to deny it when he’d already heard the truth yesterday in my room.

“Well, then how about I help you out?”

“Help me out?” I asked, suddenly worried he was going to walk right over there and ask Ben and Elyse if they wanted to trade back partners.

“Yeah.” Mack shrugged as he started tying his apron behind his lower back, the muscles in his triceps bulging against the sleeve of his white button-up. “I mean, I personally think you could do better than him, but if you really want to get to know Ben better, I can set something up.”

“Really?” I furrowed my brow, wondering if there was some sort of catch.

“Sure,” he said. “Carter talked about riding ATVs on the trails with everyone after school. Want me to invite Ben? I’ll be your wingman.”

My heart raced at the thought of Ben coming to my house.

He’d come to the back-to-school barbecue we’d thrown at the first of the year, and then I’d totally stared at him all night at the soirée a week and a half ago. But those had been big and more crowded events. He’d had all his other friends around him the whole time to keep me from going up and talking to him.

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