Page 52 of The Future Play

Mackie slips her arm off my shoulder, but I grab her hand, flaring my eyes at her.

“You—”

“Gotta run. I have to… meet Miles. Yeah.”

“Mackie,” I hiss.

She kisses my cheek. “Love you. Bye!”

In true Mackie fashion, she smacks my ass as she turns to walk away, trouble in her eyes.

I watch her go, knowing I’m now alone with Jamie. And the scarier part is that I might want to be. Why did she leave me? I need a chaperone, so I don’t do something dumb and get my heart crushed all over again.

Slowly, I spin around and plaster on a smile. Not too big of one because we haven’t talked yet, despite how much I appreciated all the little things he did for me over the past week.

“Hi. Thanks for coming.”

He stares at me for a moment, then steps in, resting his hand on my arm as he kisses my cheek. “You were amazing. Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” My stupid voice comes out all breathy, andugh. For half a second, I thoughthe takes my breath away.

I need to get my head back in the game and not let my heart rule here. He did nice things, but that doesn’t magically fix things between us, and I need to remember that or I’ll end up with a more bruised heart than before.

“I might have to start calling you the volleyball queen.”

“I’m notthatamazing. It’s just a rec league.”

He shakes his head. “In your second match, you did some crazy combination of spin, lunge, and dive, then twisted and bumped the ball perfectly to your teammate. I wish I’d taken a video of it.”

“I—wait. Second match? How long have you been here?”

“Well, I had to take Cal to soccer practice this morning, so Ididn’t get here until a little while after the start of the second match.”

“So you were here for the whole thing?”

He shrugs, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Pretty much. I wanted to see you. And… I know how it felt when you came to my game. I guess I was hoping I could make you feel the same way.” He looks around before meeting my eyes again. “So, any plans right now?”

“Nope. I was just going to shower and head home.”

“Any chance you’d let me take you out for ice cream to celebrate?”

Even though part of me wants to channel that anger to protect myself, it’s pretty well dead at this point. This is an easy first step. Ice cream to break the ice.

“Sure. That would be nice. I’ll just go shower quick, then we can go.”

“I’ll be here.” His warm smile does something to me, and as I walk away, I can’t ignore the rush of excitement that runs through me.

I hate that I still want him. Especially since I still don’t fully trust him or his intentions. But I guess there’s only one way to find out.

Hopefully ice cream will help me cool off, otherwise I might make some bad decisions that my heart will hate me for later.

Jamie

I successfully gotAmanda to get ice cream with me. Now I just need to not fuck anything up tonight. It’s not a date, but it’s a start, and I’ll take it.

“So…” Amanda drawls as we wait for our ice cream to be ready. “How much have you been stalking me?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say smoothly.

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