Winging It Read Free Page A

him. But everyone else in the world does, including me. So…yeah. If the plan works, I’d be happy. And there’s no reason it can’t work! You and I just need to spend a bit more time together and make sure he sees us. And everyone else…we can tell them we were keeping it quiet so it wouldn’t be weird. Right? I mean, we weren’t sure how it would work out, we didn’t want to make a big fuss, so we were quiet about it. People would believe that. You’re not dating anyone else, are you?”
    He didn’t answer right away but finally said, “I’m not dating anyone. But, no, I’m not going along with your plan. Because even if you don’t believe any of those really good reasons why it’s a bad idea? I still don’t want to do it, because I don’t want to let that asswipe think he’s beaten me! I mean, if he ‘steals’ you from me, he wins, right? I lose? Fuck that, no way!”
    Okay, I admit I hadn’t thought about that. Really, I guess I hadn’t thought about any of this all that much. I’d gotten the inspiration, I’d acted, and now I was trying to figure everything out afterward. “He wouldn’t really be winning,” I tried. “I mean, you’d be fooling him, right? He just wouldn’t know it. You’d have a little secret. That might be fun?”
    “No, it wouldn’t be fun. I want to beat him, and I want him to know I’m beating him.”
    This wasn’t good. Not good at all. “You could tell him eventually. Or I could.” Like when we were on our honeymoon in the Caribbean, I’d mention it and we’d both have a good laugh. “Once he gets to know me, like, for me . I mean, this is really only going to work if he ends up liking me in the end, right? This is just a strategy for getting his attention, a way to cut past all the other girls who want to be with him.”
    “All the other stupid girls, you mean?”
    “Come on, Toby. Help out an old friend. Be a pal.”
    He was quiet for way too long, and then he said, “If I do it, you give me the trophy.”
    “What?” I honestly thought I must have misheard him.
    “The trophy. If I do this…we pretend to be going out, for a maximum of two weeks. And then, assuming this works and Scott makes his move, you have another two weeks of him thinking he won before you tell him the truth. You can tell him nicely, your way, or I’ll tell him my way. And no matter what—if the first two weeks don’t work and he doesn’t make a move, or if he dumps you after he finds out, or whatever—you give me the trophy.”
    It would have been easier if I’d been able to pretend I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I did. The last year we’d been on the same team together, when we were thirteen years old, we’d tied as team MVPs. One trophy, with both our names on it, but the coach had given it to me. He’d said something patronizing about how Toby would have plenty of chances to win more trophies in the future and this would mean more to me than it ever would to him.
    Patronizing, but it had ended up being true. Toby’s hockey career had taken off, and mine had gotten stuck in neutral. The trophy didn’t mean much to him; it couldn’t, not with all the other hardware he’d taken home over the years. But to me, it was the last time I’d really been proud of myself on the ice.
    And now Toby wanted to take it away. “ Why? ” I said, then cleared my throat and said, “I mean, why do you want it?”
    “Why do you want Scott ?”
    I didn’t really have an answer for that, at least not one that I’d share with Toby. “I have to think about it,” I said. “The trophy, not why I want Scott. I’ll… Can I call you tomorrow, before school? And if I say yes, can you drive me to school? That would look good, right?”
    “You’re honestly considering it? You’d trade the trophy for this? For him?”
    “Maybe.” I wasn’t sure I believed it, either, but…yeah, maybe I needed to stop holding on to the past. “I’ll call you in the morning and tell