“You didn’t really think you’d ruined my mojo, did you?”
I jumped a little at the sound of his voice.
“You looked worried,” he said. “Carter was kidding.”
Max was so cute. But he’d asked Addison out, so I knew he wasn’t flirting with me. Max and I were friends. I could relax. RELAX, GEMMA.
I loosened my shoulders against the back of the seat and raised my eyebrows skeptically. “So you don’t really wear the same underwear every game?”
He smiled. “Yeah, I do.”
“And you’re not worried that a chick from the opposing team said you would get your ass kicked?”
He laughed. “Well, okay, but I don’t want you to feel bad about it. You didn’t know I have a problem. And you’re from the opposing team, after all. You should be glad if I lose my mojo.”
“I watched you at camp, Max.” This was hard for me to do, but I held his gaze, even as the MARTA rumbled over a connection in the track and rocked back and forth. I messaged to him that I thought I’d seen him watching me.
His brows dipped briefly, like he wondered what I was getting at.
“You don’t miss,” I told him.
He said just as seriously, “No, I don’t.”
I opened my hands. “Then why are you worried?”
A little movement in his cheek told me he’d been clenching his jaw. Finally he said, “I have to make every goal.”
I nodded. “Because there’s tension between you and Carter.” Understatement of the year.
“There’s tension between you and Addison, too,” he said. “You seem like an unlikely pair. Are you friends because you’re both majorettes?”
I took a breath, considering how to answer truthfully without prompting Addison to kill me. “When we were ten, I was pudgy.” Might as well admit it, now that Addison had blown my cover. “Self-conscious. And Addison—”
Had a big mouth. Was mean and spiteful. Did not have many friends. Any true explanation I could have given him would get me in trouble with her. So I said, “Our mothers were majorettes together in high school.”
“Really!” Max said.
“Yeah.”
“Best friends?”
I had wondered this myself. “You know, I’m not sure how close they were.” My mom planned a lot of balls for charity, where the movers and shakers in Atlanta could see and be seen, but she wasn’t outgoing. She spent most of her time by herself.
“Anyway,” I said, “our parents got divorced at about the same time.” I stopped myself there. Addison wouldn’t want me telling her date the uglier parts of her family background. So I left out that her dad had gone to trial for making a lot of questionable investments. At least he didn’t go to jail, but a huge chunk of their money was gone.
“Our moms threw us together in majorette class,” I said. “The nice thing about having a friend forced on you is, you’re never alone.”
“Yep.” Max nodded as if he really understood what I meant. “So nowadays, when the two of you aren’t getting along, you remember how you were able to talk to each other about your family problems back then. When you look at her, what you’re really seeing is the girl you became friends with in the first place, and it’s harder to get mad at her.”
“Yyyyeah,” I said slowly. This seemed sort of right. Addison and I had never talked about our family problems, as far as I remembered. We had never talked about much of anything. But I had spent the night at her house a lot during that turmoil, and I had enjoyed how loud and crazy it was with her older sister and younger brothers. She’d spent some nights at my house, and she’d probably enjoyed the silence that I hated so much. I had walked with her across the school yard while mean boys had yelled insults about her father’s mug shot in the newspaper, and she had walked with me when boys said my red skirt was as big as a caboose.
“How about you and Carter?” I asked. “Are you friends because of football?” I doubted this, since football seemed to be a sore subject between them.
“We both moved to town when we were nine,” he said. “I guess we found each other because we both were different. I was from California, and I’m Japanese, as you can see.” He moved his hand down his body, presenting himself, ta-da. “And Carter’s parents adopted him from Russia.”
“Russia!” I exclaimed. “Like, the country?”
“No, Russia, Ohio.”
I deserved that. Russia, like, the country? Good Lord. I’d made a clueless comment of Addison-esque proportions.
But Max seemed to like that. He’d asked her out, after all.
Then I second-guessed what Max had meant. Maybe he was serious. “Carter is from Russia, Ohio?”
Max rolled his eyes. “There’s no Russia, Ohio.”
That ticked me off. I was not as stupid as he seemed to think I was. “I’ll bet there is.” I unzipped my baton bag, pulled my phone from the side compartment, and got online. “Ha! It’s thirty-four miles north of Dayton.” I turned to him.
Again, he was closer than I expected, his face near my shoulder, leaning over to see my phone.
“You’re speechless,” I noted. “Probably for the first time all week.”
He smiled more broadly and watched me.
We eyed each other so long that I was sure he was looking right through me and could tell how hard I’d fallen for my best friend’s date.
I laughed nervously. “Carter’s from Russia?” I repeated. “He doesn’t have an accent.”
“Yes, he does,” Max said. “You’re not listening. It’s a lot more subtle now than when he was nine, though. The kids at school made fun of him.”
I winced, feeling sorry for nine-year-old Carter. “That’s terrible.”
“It was terrible when they made faces at me, too.” With his fingers, Max lifted the outside corners of his eyes.
“Yep. It was terrible when my bra was two cup sizes bigger, and boys called me Gemma Van Cleavage.”
I almost slapped my hand over my mouth. I could not believe I had said that to him. The problem with pretending to be extroverted was that once I started, there was no telling what would come out of my mouth.
But Max only laughed. “Yep.” Then he eyed me again. “So, listen.” At the last second, his gaze faltered. He looked down at his shorts and picked at a frayed spot on the hem. “What did Addison mean when she told you to keep your nose clean?”