Page 2 of This Means War

Cole laughs, and even though he’s enemy number 1, I like the sound. It buoys my depressed mood ever so slightly, and I allow myself to relax into my chair.“

Looks like you’ve done well for yourself in thebill paying department,” he gestures to my outfit, and I refrain from telling him that I’ve borrowed the whole outfit from my roommate who is going to be furious with me if I can’t get this mustard stain out. I also refrain from mentioning that I’m only dressed this way because I had to come straight here from a job interview. An interview for a job I most definitely didn’t get since I overheard the secretary saying that Mr. Nelson, my interviewer, had his niece coming in for an interview next. Funny, I missed the part of the job ad that said, non-family need not apply.

“I am able to pay my bills,” I reply vaguely. Which is true. I have no spending money to speak of, and I exist largely on off-brand Pop-tarts and yogurt, but I pay my rent without fail thanks to my jobs subbing and coaching girls running at Faith Christian, a small middle school right outside of Holland, Michigan. Of course, the job I didn’t get today was a cozy office job. One that would’ve afforded me the opportunity to buy name brand Pop-tarts. But it’s fine. I do love the girls I coach, and I’ve never really been one for desk jobs anyway.

Cole finishes his beer and slides the empty mug across the counter, raising his finger to indicate he wants another.

“How about you?” I ask, fighting to sound less interested than I actually am. Mentally I kick myself for striking up a conversation with him in the first place. I should’ve pretended not to recognize him. Or better yet, been all,Oh my gosh, I forgot that you evenexisted Cole Jacobson!

“I too pay my bills,” he says with a wink that makes me frown. He’s bordering on chummy now, and I’m not having it. Not from him. Not from the guy who made me the “yeah...no” girl for my entire high school career.

Let me explain. Growing up Cole was literally the boy next door that I fell in love with. He, of course, didn’t know about my feelings, but I had great fantasies about us one day getting married. As my brother’s best friend, he was over at our house all of the time, and I imagined that one day he’d realize the depths of his own feelings for me and we’d live happily ever after.

But then, at the end of my eighth-grade year, his dad’s company transferred him to Houston. I was devastated; but my best friend at the time, Whitney Donovan, convinced me that this was the perfect opportunity to confess my feelings. “What have you got to lose?” she’d cajoled me. “He’s leaving.” Her words were what convinced me to attend the good-bye party Josh threw him despite Josh having emphatically told me that I wasn’t invited.

At the time Josh had been crushing hard on Whitney’s older sister Tori, so when Whitney and I walked in behind Tori, Josh had had no choice but to let us stay. No choice but to let us join in on the game of spin the bottle that formed on one side of our cavernous basement. I spent the next four years of high school wishing Josh had made us leave.

I still vividly remember sitting there on myparents’ gray carpet, watching eagerly as the bottle Cole had just spun twirled around the circle, slowing down until at last, by what I’d assumed at the time was the hand of God, it stopped directly in front of me. I barely contained a squeal of excitement as I looked up from the bottle to meet Cole’s gaze, my knees already inching forward to the center of the circle. Cole’s eyes found me, and he gave a soft chuckle. “Yeah...no,” he said, then he grabbed the bottle and spun it again. That time it landed on Ashley Allen, a senior cheerleader, and Cole happily kissed her while I made a mad dash to the bathroom to prevent anyone from seeing my tears.

Now I know what you’re thinking: that’s not that bad. At least not bad enough for me to harbor a decade old grudge. He was almost eighteen, I was thirteen, it made sense he wouldn’t want to kiss me. The thing is, if it had all ended there, I may have been able to forgive him and move on. But it didn’t. Instead, those fateful words, “Yeah...no,” followed me through the next four years. I became the “Yeah...no” girl.

Freshman year I ran for class president, and Whitney Donovan made a last-minute decision to run against me. And guess what her slogan was?“Vote for Lydia Hamlin? Yeah...No.”She told the whole school the story of those words, and I lost by a landslide. Needless to say, we weren’t best friends anymore after that.

Then there was the time I asked Theo Murphy to the Sadie Hawkins dance. His answer, “Yeah...no.”Followed by raucous laughter.

Over and over again, that phrase was used against me. Always sure to make me a laughingstock. It even popped up in youth group my junior year. Our leader Miranda, a cool college girl with pink hair and a nose ring, suggested one night that we practice abstinence. She was going on and on about how oftentimes believers can find themselves in sexual situations where they are so overcome by lust that they may find themselves struggling to remember their beliefs. Her plan to counteract this was to put on abstinence skits. She went around giving us specific scenarios and pairing us up so that we could practice what we might say should we find ourselves in such a situation. It was a mark of how cool we all thought she was that any of us even agreed to this in the first place.

My partner Liam and I practiced our scene as we’d been told. When it came time to perform in front of everyone, I stepped up to him, feeling stupid as I pretended to try and kiss him. As I leaned in, Liam went off script, taking a step back and looking me up and down he said with a cheeky grin, “Yeah...no.” The laughter of the group in the minutes that followed still haunts my dreams.

“Attention airport guests,” a voice comes over the loudspeaker, yanking me from my memories. “Unfortunately, we are experiencing flight delays owing to inclement weather. Please standby for more information.”

Flight delays? I frown, glancing out the windowto see that while Cole and I have been talking, the light snow I’d driven through to get here has turned into a full-on blizzard. Groaning, I put my head in my hands. I do not want to be stuck at this airport with Cole any longer than I have to be.

“Great,” Cole sighs and pulls out his phone, opening the weather app to view the forecast. “Snow for the next eight to ten hours.” He sighs again, knocking back the last swig of his beer then standing up. “We’re not going anywhere tonight.”

I’m about to ask him how he can be so sure, when my eyes catch sight of the flight signs on the wall over his shoulder. The big white letters next to the flights have very suddenly switched to flashingcanceled. Oh no.

“You’d better finish your drink quickly or leave it,” Cole says. “Unless you want to end up sleeping on one of the chairs in the terminal.”

“Wait, what?” I stare at him without comprehension.

“Look around.” He gestures to the hordes of people I suddenly notice streaming towards the various service desks. Anxiously I throw back the last of my own drink. “Everyone here is now trying to find somewhere to sleep. They’ll be asking the airport to pay for hotels. It’ll take hours.”

“So what are you suggesting?” I ask him. My head has started spinning a little from the rum.

“I know a guy,” he tells me, holding up his phone. “He can get us booked into some rooms at the airport Holiday Inn if we move fast.”

He knows a guy? What is he in the mob? I eye the windows once more, debating my options. I can’t drive home in this, that’s for sure. Especially not when I’ll just have to turn around tomorrow and drive back. And it’s not just my safety I’m thinking about. The cost of gas for that trek is outside of what I’ve budgeted for this trip.

“I think I’d better just get in line,” I tell him, gesturing to the forty people deep lines snaking around the terminal. “Better to be at the hotel the airport chooses, so I can make sure I get all of the flight updates.” No way I’m telling him the real reason. The airline will surely pay the cost of the hotel room if I book through them.

“I’ve got an app for that,” he says reasonably. I have no good response to this, so instead I choose to simply shuffle slightly sideways towards the closest line. “You did hear me say rooms,” he adds, “plural. This isn’t me trying to seduce you or something.”

Now that gives me pause. His words instantly turning me into that thirteen-year-old girl sprinting out of the circle as he kissed some other girl. I straighten to my full height, throwing back my shoulders like I don’t have a blob of mustard splattered across my chest. I’m not sprinting off this time.

“Please, as if you’d have a chance even if you were.”

Then I see it, the spark of amusement that lights in his eyes at my words. Which, okay, may be because I made the mistake of tossing my hair,which obviously didn’t have the desired effect since my hair is currently securely fastened into a bun. Basically, instead of pulling off the hot-girl-with-long-hair move, I provided him with the perfect demonstration of how to act should he ever find himself holding a slip of paper that saysSeabiscuitwhile playing charades. Even so, that spark ignites something inside me. He thinks the very idea of him not having a chance with me is funny? That he’s just that irresistible? Yeah...no.

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