The One That I Want(9)
Author: Jennifer Echols

We all walked into the Varsity together but got divided at the vast counter when we placed our orders. Ten cashiers boomed, “WHAT’LL YA HAVE?” with no patience for socially handicapped teenagers. They insisted that we move the line along by splitting up instead of standing behind one another.

It was terrible of me, but I felt a brief moment of joy seeing that Max did not offer to pay for Addison’s dinner. This didn’t mean he wasn’t into her, but he definitely presented no certification that he was.

I was the last person to get served, and none of the others waited for me before sitting down. The restaurant was huge, with lots of different rooms of seating. But predictably, Max and the others were all the way in the back, in an elevated room with a view of the skyline out one wall of windows, the Georgia Tech stadium out the second, and more skyline and the 1996 Olympics torch out the third. By the time I found them, Max was on one side of the booth with Addison next to him, and Carter was on the other side. I slid into the empty space.

As I sat down, I swear Addison glanced up at me, then scooted closer to Max as if to say, Mine. Like I hadn’t gotten that message already.

“So, are you dating anybody?” she asked Max.

I cringed on her behalf. Addison had always told me there was nothing wrong with flirting, and whenever I’d advised her to tone it down, she acted like she had no idea what I was talking about. She thought she was asking a casual question, “Are you dating anybody?” when she was actually yelling at Max, “DATE ME, DATE ME, DATE ME.” At least she would run him off, talking like this. I wouldn’t land him, but she wouldn’t either.

Incredibly, Max did not ease out of the booth and run for his life. He smiled, and bright spots of color appeared on his cheeks. He said, “No, I’m not dating anyone right now.”

“He makes girls mad,” Carter laughed.

Max gave Carter another warning look, then gave up and chuckled along with him.

Addison gasped at Max. “You?”

I could only imagine what Carter meant, if both boys found it so funny. Maybe Max was known as a heartbreaker around his school. I could understand that. He was so handsome, with the edges of his eyes crinkling as he smiled.

Registering Carter’s voice and remembering that he was sitting at the table too, Addison turned to him. “What about you?” she asked as an afterthought. “Dating anybody?”

“We just broke up,” Carter said.

“Awwwwww,” Addison said, poking out her bottom lip and giving him her sad, sad face.

Carter laughed again, though seemingly not out of embarrassment for her. He acted like he really enjoyed Addison’s baby face. Boys were disgusting. I attacked my dinner.

Addison refocused her attention on Max. She teased him with inane comments I didn’t bother to listen to. Max had a nice laugh that lit up his face, like he wasn’t afraid to show his appreciation for a joke somebody else had made, unlike Robert, who only laughed at his own. Carter munched french fries.

In the midst of Addison’s flirting, Max glanced up at me several times, his eyes so dark that they took me aback. At first I thought he was shooting me looks for ruining his kicking mojo. But he seemed so sympathetic that I started to wonder whether he was worried about me. I supposed I had gone silent very suddenly. There was a difference between keeping my mouth shut and sulking. So I sat up a little straighter and made a point to laugh periodically and interject a comment for every twenty of Addison’s.

Suddenly she frowned at my plate and sneered, “What are you eating?”

“A grilled chicken sandwich,” I said evenly. I’d been expecting this. The sandwich was good, but it wasn’t what people normally ordered at the Varsity. She stuffed her face with a burger and fries. Carter chowed down on two of each. And Max—

—was eating a grilled chicken sandwich, I saw as I glanced over. Ha! With great restraint, I gazed deliberately at her, then nodded toward Max’s tray like I was trying to stop her from offending him.

Her eyes slid to his sandwich and widened. She said without missing a beat, “Well, Max can probably eat whatever he wants to, Gemma. You’re eating grilled chicken because you just lost fifty pounds.”

Both boys stared at me, Carter stopping with a french fry halfway into his mouth.

I could feel myself turning bright red, but I just smiled sweetly at all of them.

“You did?” Carter finally asked.

“Yep.” I took a bite.

“That is hard to picture,” Max said.

Well, don’t, I almost blurted, but it was too late. They already had.

“Don’t you want some of my fries, Gemma?” Addison pointed to her plate. “Or the rest of my milkshake? Gosh, I can’t finish it all, but I’ll bet you could.”

Have I mentioned that I did not like my best friend very much? After a sip of diet soda, I tried to pretend I wasn’t mortified. I changed the subject by asking the boys, “What did y’all do at football camp?”

They looked at each other. Then Max said, “We were actually in two different camps. We were divided up by position. So Carter was in quarterback camp—”

“You’re the quarterback for your team?” Addison asked, genuinely interested in Carter for the first time. The quarterback for our own team was the most popular guy in school—so popular that even Addison, with her formidable powers of acting like a ditz so boys would like her, could not turn his head in her direction.

“Yeah,” Carter said. A blush crept into his cheeks, and one corner of his mouth turned up in a tightly controlled grin. Aw, the big guy was embarrassed at the attention.

“There’s more to you than meets the eye,” Addison said in the same flirtatious tone she’d used with Max thirty seconds before. “You’re silent but violent.”

The boys and I burst into laughter. For the first time, I felt like we were sharing something and she was the odd chick out.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

I turned to Max to let him explain, but his lips were pressed together, suppressing a smile. I put Addison out of her misery. “That’s a term usually reserved for describing a fart.”

“Oh!” Sixteen emotions passed across her face in the space of half a second. Like magic, she turned the situation around. She leaned diagonally across the table and patted Carter’s muscular forearm, her bottom lip poked out in sympathy. “I didn’t mean to call you a fart.”

Carter’s blue eyes widened. I thought he would be speechless. But then he said, “Max is the one who’s full of hot air.”