Shut Out(27)

“Hardly,” I said, flinging a little water at him. “Only if you hire a butt double.”

Randy stuck his tongue out at me and flung some water in my direction.

I had to admit, I was pretty impressed that he was helping me clean up. I figured he’d be running back to the TV the second his plate was clear, the way he usually did.

“So back to what we were talking about earlier,” he said after a pause. “What’s up with the girls?”

Of course he had an ulterior motive. I was on my guard again instantly. I shut off the tap just as the bubbles from the dish detergent began to ease over the rim of the sink.

“Do you really want to know?” I asked quietly, gesturing for Randy to move the plates into the soapy water.

“Yeah.”

“All right. We’re on a sex strike.”

Randy, God bless him, just sort of blinked at me, confused.

I reached into the top drawer and pulled out a sponge and a dishrag. “Okay,” I said, handing the rag to him. “The girls are tired of the rivalry. It’s been going on for too long, and you guys don’t even have a reason to fight.”

“Like hell,” Randy argued. “We have a ton of reasons to hate those—”

“Randy, can you even tell me how the fight started in the first place?” I asked.

He opened his mouth to answer, then paused, lips still gaping. “Uh…” He swallowed, and I passed him a plate I’d just cleaned so he could dry it while he thought. “It started… It started because…”

“If it takes you this long to remember,” I said, dunking another marinara-covered plate into the foamy, bubbly water, “then the fight isn’t really worth it.”

“Okay, so what does this have to do with all you girls being weird?”

“I told you,” I said. “We want the rivalry to end. So we’ve decided that none of the boys on the teams are getting any action until the fighting ends. A sex strike.”

Randy stopped drying the dish I’d just handed him. “You’re shitting me.”

“No.”

“Like… just no sex?”

“Shhh.” I tensed and looked over my shoulder to make sure Dad and Logan were still safely in the living room, TV blasting. “Not just sex. It could be anything.”

“Like fooling around, hand jobs, BJs. All of it?”

I cringed and glanced over my shoulder again.

“Yes,” I hissed through gritted teeth. “All of it. Keep your voice down. If Dad hears us…”

“Right, sorry. So this will last until the teams stop fighting?”

I nodded and handed him another clean plate. He took it, but he didn’t start to dry it immediately. Instead, he just shook his head back and forth, lips tight like he was holding back a laugh.

“What?” I asked.

“Sorry, but do you really expect something that stupid to work?”

“It’s not stupid,” I said. “What’s stupid is your little rivalry with the soccer team. It happens every fall, and it’s getting worse. People are getting hurt—you got hurt. My plan to end it is genius. If there’s one thing we can withhold that’ll make you do anything, it’s sexual favors.”

“It’ll never work,” Randy said, finally drying the plate he’d been holding for the past thirteen seconds and placing it on top of the growing stack of clean dishes. “The girls will never last.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because we’re not going to stop fighting with the soccer team, and I know you girls can’t last forever. Hell, I bet if I tried hard enough, you wouldn’t be able to resist me right now.” He gave me an exaggerated version of a seductive smile, batting his eyes and everything, as he leaned over to kiss me.

I shrugged him off, annoyed. “Don’t you want the rivalry to end?”

“Not really.”

“You know, Randy…” I hesitated, then said, “When we got back together, you promised you’d grow up and behave like an adult.”

He stiffened. “Well, Lissa, we both made some promises we didn’t keep, huh?”

One second.

Two seconds.

I couldn’t believe he’d just said that. Couldn’t believe he’d brought it up. We turned to face each other, my jaw dropped and his set firm. He’d been teasing before, but he was mad now, and so was I.

Three seconds.

Four seconds.

My fists clenched at my sides as, with every second, the tension grew between us. The air thickened and I forced myself to steady my breathing. This was the closest we’d come to a fight in a long time—and less than a minute ago, it wasn’t even a fight.

The worst part was that, logically, we should have been on the same side. He should have wanted this to end as much as I did. Or maybe he didn’t see himself as the victim at all. Maybe he enjoyed the chaos.

The idea made my head spin.

Five seconds.

Six seconds.

I was beginning to think we’d never move again when my brother’s voice penetrated the silence.

“Yo, Lissa! Randy!”

I turned my head, pulling my gaze away from Randy’s, just as Logan appeared in the doorway. For a second, his eyes darted between us, and I knew he could tell something was up. Logan wasn’t as dense as Randy. Or as compassionate as my father. Instead of asking about it, though, he just shook his head, as if shaking the knowledge of all tension out of his mind.