Guarding Sophie Read Free Page A

shoulder. Her nose was still dusted with freckles, and he saw her glance up from her work as one of the customers passing by her with a cart called out, “Hi, Sophie!”
    â€œHi yourself,” she said. He’d never forget that voice, either: warm, with a trace of a smile. She kept dragging items over the scanner while she made small talk with the customer in front of her.
    She hadn’t seen him yet, but she was about to. What the hell was she doing here in the first place? She was engaged to another guy on the football team five minutes after they graduated from high school. He still hated the guy. He and Sophie were pretty good friends in those days. He was a football star, and she was a cheerleader. He’d been to her parents’ house several times for get-togethers. They knew the same people, went to the same parties, and Kyle had been too shy to ask her out for three years and seven months. He thought the prom was his big chance.
    He’d seen some of the other guys at school making idiots of themselves with a huge “promposal.” He wasn’t about to ask her over the school’s intercom system or string up a banner in the AP English class they were both in. He’d like to do the asking face-to-face and with a bit of privacy. As a result, he bought her a bouquet of soft pink roses, made an extra effort with his (wavy, shoulder-length, and unruly) hair, and put on the clothes he’d asked his mom to pick out for him that morning.
    He’d waited for Sophie’s electric blue Volkswagen Bug to pull into the high school parking lot. There was a cement bench under a tree a few hundred feet away; this might be a great place to talk with her for a few minutes if she accepted his invitation.
    His palms were sweaty. His heart was already racing. He’d wanted a date with her for so long. Out of all the girls he knew, she was the only one he wanted to go to the prom with. That is, if he had the courage to ask her in the first place.
    â€œIf,” he muttered to himself. “Not if . When . Think positive. She’ll say ‘yes.’ ”
    She got out of the car, and he met her on the sidewalk in front of the school gym. She wasn’t hurrying along as she usually did. She wasn’t smiling at him like usual, either. Something was wrong.
    â€œHey, Sophie.”
    â€œHey,” she said. She glanced at the flowers, glanced up at him, and he thought he saw sadness on her face. Maybe he imagined things. They were going to be late to class if he didn’t speak up now.
    He pulled in a huge breath and blurted out, “Will you go to the prom with me?”
    His heart sank as he watched tears rising in her eyes. She stared at the sidewalk they stood on and clasped her hands in front of her. He saw her take a huge gulp of air.
    â€œYou’re a day late,” she said. “Danny asked me yesterday.” She looked into his eyes again. “I wanted to go with you so badly, and I thought you weren’t going to ask, and I—I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish I could.”
    Her soft pink mouth quivered. She’d hurried away from him without another word.
    He’d thought there would be thousands of women in college; maybe it was best to not get so wrapped up in only one. Surely he’d forget Sophie as he’d forgotten the combination to his locker at school. It seemed to pop into his mind at random moments, and so did she. Obviously, he’d made a mistake. He’d tried looking her up when he went home after the season over the years, but she seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth, or at least out of Cocoa Beach.
    â€œWe hardly see her, either,” Sophie’s mom assured him when he ran into her one day at the local gas station in Cocoa Beach. “I’ll let her know you’re home. Does she have your number?”
    â€œProbably not,” he said. He wrote his cell number on the back of the receipt he