“Australia.”
“Australia?”
“I’d love to go there.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I just think it would be really cool.”
“But why Australia? For some reason you don’t strike me as the kind of girl who’d enjoy getting all up close and personal with nature.”
“What do you know?” I worked to lace my voice with indignation, knowing it probably came out sounding more like amusement. “I love nature.”
“Nature, maybe. Giant crocodiles? Snakes? Poisonous jellyfish?”
I dropped my obviously failing façade, unable to suppress my shudder. “All right, maybe not that whole part.”
Ben smirked. “Thought so. Then what?”
“It just seems so amazing. Foreign. I feel like it’d be a completely different experience. Plus, I’ve heard it’s beautiful – the coral reefs would be incredible to explore. The accents are an added bonus.”
He laughed. “You’re willing to travel all the way to the other side of the world – literally – for cool accents?”
“They’re not just cool,” I defended myself. “They’re sexy. And I said that’s a bonus, not the whole reason I want to go.”
He rolled his eyes. “Please. If the accent is what you want, I can teach you to speak with it right now.”
I raised my eyebrows, challenging him. He just grinned and turned down to his phone, typing in it furiously for a couple of seconds. When he looked back up, he turned the screen toward me and I saw three words written on it: Good eye might. I frowned in confusion.
“What?”
“Say them.”
Furrowing my eyebrows skeptically, I complied. “Good eye might.”
“See? You just spoke Australian.”
“How are those three words Australian?”
“Good eye, might,” he repeated. “Like g’day, mate. Aren’t Australians supposed to say ‘mate’ all the time?”
I burst out laughing. “You’re pathetic. As nice as your little impersonation is, I’d prefer to hear the real thing. Okay, your turn. Since Australia clearly isn’t your first choice, where would you want to go?”
He tilted his head to the side as he thought, and bit the side of his lip softly – something I’d noticed he did a lot when he was thinking. After pondering for a second, he turned back to me. “Ireland.”
“Ireland?”
His eyes were bright with excitement. “Don’t you think it would be awesome? The place sounds amazing, and it would be so interesting. They have so much culture and tradition. And leprechauns are awesome.”
I couldn’t stop from giggling at his childlike excitement. “You do know you’re probably not going to find a leprechaun casually walking around on the streets of Ireland, right?”
“And I still think it would be awesome. Sorry.” He grinned sheepishly. “I think I got overly excited for a second there.”
“You think?” I teased him.
“Shut up.”
The silence that followed sat comfortably between us, never feeling strained or awkward. It was getting close to five in the afternoon on Friday, and we’d been lying on our backs in the park talking about everything and nothing for almost two hours now.
After I’d agreed to meet him, I’d snapped out of my unreasonable bad mood. If he was talking to me to get close to Annie, so what? I still enjoyed his company. Annie had almost choked with laughter when I’d told her about my most recent theory, claiming that if I really thought that Ben liked her and not me, I should be put in a mental hospital. Despite my reasonable arguments – they wouldn’t be talking so much otherwise – she refused to accept even the slight possibility that I might be correct. Either way, I had decided I didn’t mind.
I sighed contentedly, closing my eyes and basking in the pleasantly warm sunlight. “Greece.”
“Germany.”
“Argentina.”
“Russia.”
“Do you think we’ll ever go to all these places?”
“Why not? We’re in high school, we’ve still got time.”
“Maybe you could ask for a trip somewhere as a graduation present. It’s not that far off.”
He groaned. “Change of topic please, I don’t want to think about the future. I have zero idea what I’m going to do with my life after school ends.”
“You’ve still got a couple of months to sort it out.”
“Change of topic,” he repeated.
“Okay, what?”
“Oh, right, I’d forgotten to bring it up. I read that book you told me about the other day.”
I grinned. “And what did you think? Isn’t Sarah Dessen amazing?”
He bit his lower lip again. “To be honest, I prefer the style of writing of the guy who wrote the first book you told me to read. The really sad one that left me depressed for like a week after I read it.”
“John Green?”
“That’s the one.”
“He is amazing.”
I stretched back a little and sighed in contentment. I was extremely comfortable, but the afternoon was growing chillier by the minute. Because we’d left from there, I was still wearing the same outfit I had worn to school – jeans and a light, short-sleeved shirt. I had been fine earlier, but I couldn’t help wishing I’d brought a jacket to keep myself warm.
“To be honest, though,” he stopped for a second, as though figuring out how to phrase his thoughts. “These weren’t really what I imagined.”
“What do you mean?”
I suppressed a laugh at how his eyebrows were slightly furrowed in concentration. He seemed to be struggling to string his thoughts into sentences. I was suddenly struck by the notion that in that moment, he looked just like a little boy. I fought the sudden urge to hug him.
“When you said your guilty pleasure was reading romance novels, I didn’t imagine these kinds of novels. I mean, they’re cheesy and all but although I personally don’t like them, I thought they’d be…stupider?”
“Stupider?”
He sighed. “Okay, I don’t really know where I’m trying to go with this.”
I laughed. “I don’t either.”
“Ignore me.”
“Gladly.”
I shivered as a gust of cool air hit me. I looked down at my arm to find it covered in goose bumps. I rubbed it with my hand to try to make them disappear.
“Are you cold?”
“A little. I’m fine, though.”
I felt my cheeks burst into flame as he started to take his jacket off without a second thought. “Here, take this.”
“I’m fine, Ben, seriously.”
“Take it.”
“I’m not that cold.”
“Well, I’m getting hot in this. I’m not going to wear it, anyway, so you might as well take it. I saw you shiver, you know.”
I sighed, accepting the jacket and smiling at him. “Thanks, Ben.”
The jacket felt marvelously warm, and I closed my eyes for a while in content. The next time a gust of wind hit us, it even felt pleasant. I pulled the jacket a little tighter around me. The park was growing emptier by the second – the hordes of little kids by the playground were slowly dissipating, their tired mothers leading them away. We were lying on a small hill a little away from where the majority of the people were.
“So you’ve had me reading all these novels you’ve liked before, but I have no idea what you’re reading right now. What was the last book you read?”
“The day of the party I finished The Rescue, by Nicholas Sparks. Right now I’m reading Love On The Lifts, by Rachel Hawthorne.”
“How long until you cry?”
“Okay, first of all, I don’t cry in every book.” I ignored his skeptical gaze and barged on. “And second of all these aren’t really the kind of books you cry with. They’re really lighthearted.”
“A romance novel Elle likes that’s not even a little tragic? Hallelujah!” He threw his hands up in the air and grinned at the sky for a couple of seconds before turning back to me with a smirk.
I rolled my eyes. Hilarious, Ben. “I like to call these fast-reads. They’re usually not very long, really easy to read, often predictable but overall super sweet.”
He grimaced. “I have a feeling you forgot to mention ridiculously cheesy and incredibly cliché.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but promptly snapped it shut when I realized he was right. They were cheesy sometimes, and although I could usually guess what was going to happen after the first few pages, I still enjoyed reading them. “That doesn’t mean they’re not good.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“You should try reading one. Anything by Rachel Hawthorne. Or Catherine Clark. There are a bunch of amazing authors like that.”
He grimaced. “I think this is where I draw the line on this romance novel thing. I read The Truth About Forever, and I don’t think I can take more cheesiness than that.”
I narrowed my eyes. “At least give them a chance. These kinds of novels are great examples of the kinds of guys I wish existed. If you want to have any chance at winning the bet – and let me remind you, you haven’t done anything about it – you should give them a chance.” I honestly didn’t care if he read them or not, but I thought it was funny how he’d actually taken the time to read every book I’d suggested to him.
At my mention of the bet, he grimaced slightly and my stomach plummeted. I immediately regretted mentioning it. I’d let myself forget that this was all with the intent of getting to Annie, and that he probably wished I’d let the bet go so he could focus solely on her.
“I mean-“
“About the bet,” he started at the same time I spoke, and I motioned for him to continue. Better to get it over with. “I kind of wanted to talk to you about that.”
I opened my mouth to say something just as his phone rang, making us both jump. He motioned for me to wait with one finger and answered.
“Hello? Oh, hey.”
The speaker on the other line had an incredibly loud voice, and it wasn’t difficult to decipher who was speaking. An unwanted lump formed in my throat at the sound of Annie’s unmistakable babble.
“Believe me, I know. No. Yes.” He chuckled, shaking his head.
Annie was speaking too quickly for me to make out exactly what she was saying, but there was no mistaking the fact that something had her extremely excited.
“This isn’t really a good time. Yeah, I’ll call you back. Thanks. Bye.” He hung up and gave me a half-smile. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay.” I took a deep breath, steeling myself. “Look, Ben, about the bet. If you want to call it off, it’s fine by me.”
Surprise registered on his face, which I was sure my face was mirroring. “Call it off? Do you want to call it off?”
I blinked. “Um. Wasn’t that what you were about to tell me?”
He smirked amusedly. “Not exactly. I’m still all for it if you are.”
“Sure,” I breathed.
“Yeah. That’s not even close to what I wanted to ask you, but if you don’t want to hear it…”
Excitement was bubbling in my stomach, my mind burning with curiosity. I couldn’t think of anything else concerning the bet that he’d look so worried about. Maybe he’d found something he could use to prove me wrong, but wasn’t sure if it would work. Or maybe, I smirked internally. He finally realized that there’s no way he’s going to win this.
“Go ahead.”
“All right.” He took a deep breath as though to steady himself. For some reason, it amused me to see him fidget.
Hah. At least I’m not the only awkward one.
“I realize that I haven’t exactly done much to prove my point. I’ve been brainstorming ideas, and I honestly couldn’t come up with evidence that was good enough.”
“I told you!”
“Until, I thought of this. Um. I can’t think of any other way that you could see what I want you to see, so I hope you’ll at least consider this. What would you think about…going out with me? Properly. Tomorrow, maybe?”
I ignored the way my heartbeat turned erratic. “You mean, like you’re taking me somewhere?”
“I mean as a date. An official one.”
I inhaled sharply. I was shocked by the giddiness that struck me, and at how a large part of my brain was screaming at me to accept. This is only for a stupid bet, Elle. Control yourself.
He noticed my silence, his smile faltering a little. “I mean, it’s okay if you don’t want to. I’d thought of asking you out before anyway, but then I realized that I could put it together with the bet, and-“ His mouth clamped shut. “I’m rambling. Sorry.”
He’d thought about asking me out before? I was still unable to formulate any words. I was stuck staring at him with my mouth slightly open, probably looking like a dumbfounded idiot.
“But…what about Annie?”
His forehead wrinkled, and he looked utterly baffled. “What about her?”
“Aren’t you going after her?”
He burst out laughing. “Me? With Annie? Why would you even think that? Is it because we’ve been talking?” He chuckled again. “I think you’ll laugh when you find out what we’ve been talking about.”
Oh. Oops.
“So what do you say?”
I stared at him. He doesn’t like Annie. Ben wants to go out with me. His words were still jumbled in my mind. The fact that he wasn’t using me to get to Annie changed the way I thought about him – considerably.
“Please say something, you’re killing me here.” He smiled worriedly.
“You want me to go out with you.”
“Yes.”
“Like an actual date.”
“Yes.”
“So you can win the bet.”
“Yes.”
“But not just because of the bet.”
“Yes.”
I blinked. “Hmm.”
“What do you say?”
I grinned. “Yes.”
He beamed back at me. “Yes?”
“Yes.”
*
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