Operation Prom Date (Tactics in Flirting #1)(41)
Her eyes remained on mine; I forgot how to breathe. “Maybe one more time,” she said, and the breathlessness in her voice implied she wasn’t totally unaffected by our closeness. Or maybe my imagination was getting carried away.
I cleared my throat and went over everything again.
“Okay, I’ve got it,” she said. “You better hold on.”
“Just promise that if your crazy driving makes me fall off, you’ll come back for me.”
“I would’ve before that crazy driving comment; now you’re on your own.” With that, she punched the gas. We jolted forward, and I realized I should’ve taken it out of sports mode. At her happy whoop, I decided to let it ride. She made a few wide circles, and then the wind picked up, making the waves choppy.
We bounced our way back to shore, and I took over the controls once we were a few feet away. I climbed off the Jet Ski, then helped Kate down, my hands lingering on her waist longer than needed.
But she didn’t pull away. “Thanks. That was fun.”
Once everything was put back in the shed, I sat down on the grass near the shore. Kate lowered herself next to me and started pulling up clumps. I needed to remind myself that she and I weren’t a possibility again, because every time I was around her, I tended to forget. Or perhaps I simply wanted to forget.
“So, how are things going with Mick?” I asked, doing my best not to cringe. “You guys hanging out a lot?”
“No. Just the poker night and then yesterday we went for a hike with some of his friends. I’ve got more competition than I realized, but it’s going…okay. I think.”
“Well, that’s good.”
She nodded and formed her clumps of grass into a nest. “I’m still afraid to broach the prom topic, but since we’re pretty much at four weeks and counting, it’s only a matter of time before someone asks him, or he asks someone, and I’m not sure he’d choose me right now.”
“He’d be an idiot not to.”
She smiled. “Thanks. But we didn’t come here to discuss the Operation. Today it doesn’t exist.”
I wanted to say good, and then pull her into my arms and kiss her. See if I couldn’t get it to not exist ever again. You’re trying not to ruin the friendship, remember?
She’d made it clear that I was her only friend and that she needed me, and while she’d jokingly added “no pressure,” I felt it. Because I needed her, too, more than I realized. Kissing her would change everything, and the risk of messing up our friendship was too high. Especially when I factored in how her endgame of taking Mick to prom obviously hadn’t changed. I’d like to think I’d be big enough to smother the rejection and continue to be her friend regardless, but I knew it’d be too hard if we crossed that line.
“I want to talk about you.” Kate grabbed my hand and my throat went dry as I tried to remind myself of all the reasons I’d vetoed crossing the line. “I can tell something’s weighing on you, and I think it has to do with your dad.”
Damn. The girl saw right through me. “It’s nothing.”
“No, it’s not.” She bumped her shoulder into mine. “This is what friends are for. To listen to you vent or rant, and to be on your side, no matter what.”
There it was. Another mention of us being friends. Shoving away my conflicted feelings over that, I ran a hand through my hair and allowed the frustration I experienced whenever I thought about my dad and the future he insisted on to take center stage. “He wants me to be a lawyer.”
Kate wrinkled her nose the way she’d done when I mentioned fishing. “A lawyer? I can’t imagine you being a lawyer. You’d probably charm everyone into letting you win, but still…You? In an office wearing a suit? It doesn’t compute.”
“All the men in my family are lawyers. I feel ungrateful, because his success has given me a pretty cushy life.” I felt even more ungrateful knowing that Kate and her mom worked so hard for their life. That she worried about how to pay for a prom dress—I liked that she’d outplayed Pecker and his friends to help her with that, though. “But he gets more and more stressed the bigger the case, and if you think I get grouchy, I’ve got nothing on him. It’s like he’s the guy I remember from my childhood only once every few months, and I know my mom feels it, too.
“He’s already set me up with an internship with his firm this summer, and then college will start, and… I don’t mind working, but I want to keep on rowing, and I’m interested in several fields. I’d like a chance to explore them and see what I really want to do.”
“What fields? Astronomy?”
“That’s one of them,” I said, and the fact that she knew me so well helped soothe my frustration. “You called me obsessed with the water, but I’m also pretty obsessed with what’s in it. I’d love to study marine biology and do something in that field. It’d keep me on the water a lot, which is my favorite place to be.”
“Now that…?” Kate studied me, and she even added a chin stroke, as if she were super deep in thought. “That fits. You should talk to your dad about what you really want to do.”
Just the thought sent trepidation through me. He’d yell, my mom would try to get involved, and then he’d declare his word the end all, be all, and we’d have to live with the even grumpier version of him. “He’d freak if I so much as mentioned the idea of changing degrees. I’ve tried to hint at it a few times, and even that’s enough to make him get all grouchy and shut down any further attempts at talking about it. He’s got my entire college and career planned out and I haven’t even started yet.”