All in all, it was a totally fun, totally exhausting afternoon.
“What next?” I asked as we walked away from the carousel, after I’d somehow managed to convince Brett that the Como Zoo was closed because it was too cold for the animals. It wasn’t closed, but I was too cold, and technically I am an animal of some sort, so it wasn’t a total lie.
Fifteen minutes later, Brett was sound asleep. We gently put him into his car seat and started the engine so the minivan would warm up.
We stood outside the car for a minute, and I felt Conor looking at me, out of the corner of my eye.
“What?” I asked as I turned to him.
“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking. You must be freezing.” Conor moved closer to me, practically snuggling against my side.
All I could think was, He’s about to kiss me, this is a move, he’s totally about to kiss me.
Chapter 16
“So, let’s see how all those pictures we took turned out,” I said, backing away from Conor. “I can’t wait to see them!”
“Oh. Okay.” Conor shrugged.
I resisted the urge to ask him, What were you thinking?
Or maybe the better question was: What was I thinking? Because I’d had to drag myself away, because I was pretty sure that if he didn’t kiss me, I would kiss him.
Maybe the cold was getting to us and our survival instincts were kicking in, I thought. Not that kissing has ever saved anyone from frostbite, but you never knew.
We leaned against the minivan and let it shield us from the strong wind. I got out my camera phone and we started clicking through all the images we’d taken during the day, laughing at the goofy ones, deleting the embarrassingly bad ones. I decided to send one of me, Conor and Brett posing in front of the ice fishing palace to Jones.
A minute or two later, there was a little bell chime, and the icon for a text message popped up on my phone screen. Without thinking, I clicked on the button to open it.
You and Sean = cute! it said.
I smiled nervously at Conor. “Oops. Maybe I should use captions from now on.”
That’s not Sean, I typed back to her.
“She has a point, you know.” Conor adjusted his gloves, pulling them up higher on his wrists.
“What?”
“You and I do look good together. Not that I care about superficial things like that, but it’s true.” He pointed to another photo. “I mean, you have to admit we make a cool couple.”
A cool couple? What was he talking about? I flipped my phone closed. “Well, we should probably get going, don’t you think? Brett’s asleep, and it’s getting even colder—”
“Okay, but first, can I ask you something?” Conor turned sideways and leaned against the minivan.
“That depends.” I smiled at him. “What is it? Is it whether I’m going to use Jones’s line in my project?”
“No. It’s…” He peered into the minivan at Brett to check on him. “Why are you going out with Sean?”
I’m sorry, I thought. But isn’t that really, really personal? And also: I’m not really ready for this. “Um…what do you mean?” I asked.
“Why are you going to the party with him, when you and I obviously have more in common, and have more fun together?” Conor finally turned away from the window to look at me. “Why don’t you go with me instead?”
I didn’t know what to say. He had a point. Lately whenever I spent time with Conor, I noticed that we had more to talk about, that we never struggled for things to say.
“I’m really flattered,” I said.
“Oh God. That’s the kiss of death,” Conor muttered. “Whenever someone says that, it means, I don’t actually think of you that way.”
“But I can’t…I can’t change things and go to the dance with you,” I said.
“I don’t get it. Why not?”
“Well, first of all, I’d have to break my date with Sean.”
“He’d get over it. Believe me.”
That wasn’t exactly a compliment. “See, uh, we made a deal. Sort of.” This was sounding pathetic; it wasn’t about the fact we had a deal. It was that I was sort of stunned by what Conor just said. Maybe I was more interested in him than Sean. Only what was I supposed to do about it now?
“A deal?” Conor sounded suspicious.
“It’s this big Groundhog Day weekend thing…with my friends—skiing and going to a cabin up north,” I said. “They made me get a date, they insisted I bring someone. I mean, they only want me to be happy and everything—it’s not like if I showed up alone, they wouldn’t let me in the door or something.” I laughed nervously. “So anyway, the day we went to Buck Hill, Sean asked me to the Snow Ball, and I said I’d go with him if he came on this long weekend trip with me—”
“Wait a second. You’re going away with him for a whole weekend? Are you serious?” Conor asked.
I nodded.
“I mean…are you that serious about Sean? I didn’t realize,” Conor said.
“Really?” I asked.
“Well, yeah. If I knew about it, I wouldn’t have been spending so much time with you.”
What did he mean by that? Did he think it was bad manners? Was it? And why hadn’t Sean told him that the two of us were going away? Was he planning to come, or wasn’t he? Wouldn’t he have had to ask permission from his parents, and wouldn’t Conor know about that?
Anyway, was I serious about Sean, like Conor said? Not really, I had to admit. I liked him, but did I see us going out, long-term? I hadn’t gotten that far yet.
“No—see…we are going away for the weekend, but it’s not…like that. I mean, it is like that, but it’s only a little trip,” I said.
Conor shook his head. He looked a little disgusted by me at that moment. “No, you can’t have it both ways. You’re either with him or you’re not. And since you’re going out with him, and then going away for the weekend, I’m thinking you’re with him. I don’t know why you’d want to be, but that’s your problem.” He stepped away from the minivan. “Look, can we go now?”
“Yeah, okay.” I started to walk around to the driver’s door. But instead of getting into the car, Conor followed me around it.
“So what was the plan, exactly?” he said as I opened the door. “You needed a guy for the weekend? Were you comparing us or something?”
“Conor. Please,” I said. “I didn’t have a—a plan. Things just happened.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Things don’t just happen,” he said.
“But they did!” I protested. “Sean and I just sort of…we kept running into each other. And he seemed to like me, and you…you didn’t. I mean, you mocked me half the time, and ignored me the other half.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Conor said. “I’ve been nice to you since day one, since the day you got here.”
I had to shake my head at that. “Wait a second. Wait a second,” I sputtered. “Are you talking about you? Nice to me since day one? Have you listened to yourself lately?”
“What,” Conor said. “What are you talking about, I’m nice.”
“Yeah, now you are. Maybe. But how about the time you called me stupid? No, wait, that was like five times. Maybe if you had been nice to me, like you claim, I wouldn’t even have looked at Sean.”