The Cheerleaders(5)

“Monica! Wait up.”

It’s not Brandon’s voice. Of course it’s not Brandon calling out to me—why would he act like he knows me here?

I turn to face a guy wearing a Sunnybrook cross-country jersey. Jimmy Varney, one of Matt’s best friends. He smiles and nods at me. “Hey. How was your summer?”

“Good,” I murmur, afraid I’ll puke in his face if I open my mouth any wider. Jimmy’s eyes refocus on something—someone—over my shoulder. He raises a hand. “Coach! Yo!”

Jimmy rests a hand on my arm. “I’ll catch up with you later?”

I nod, and Jimmy darts off. Brandon is trapped as Jimmy descends on him. I pick up my pace and don’t stop until I hit the bathroom, where I shut myself in the first stall.

Brandon is the new cross-country coach.

I don’t even make it to my knees before I vomit into the toilet.



* * *



—

None of this would have happened if it weren’t for that white dress.

I got the job at New Haven Country Club in June. When I told my mom I needed a ride for my first day of work, she blinked at me and said, “God, Monica, if you wanted money, you could have asked me.”

But it wasn’t about making money, not really. I’d wanted something more than summer days spent in Rachel’s backyard, practicing straddles and aerials on her trampoline. I wanted a way out of evenings at the lake, Matt’s beer breath in my ear and hand on my thigh.

The members of the New Haven Country Club have the type of money that they can shell out eighty bucks for someone to watch their kids while they play golf and sit in the spa sauna all day. My title was Kiddie Camp Counselor, but all I had to do was accompany the kids to the pool and the tennis courts and make sure they didn’t die in the process.

On my first day, I saw Brandon hanging out at the lifeguard hut, swinging his lanyard around his wrist.

I knew where I’d seen him before: at Matt’s cross-country championships in New Jersey in the fall. Matt’s family had let me ride in the car with them so I could watch him compete. Laura, Matt’s older sister, noticed Brandon first.

“Damn,” she muttered, nudging me until I spotted him at the bottom of the bleachers. I had to look away, afraid Matt might catch me staring at the other team’s hot coach.

By the end of my first day of work, I had a name for him: Brandon.

By the end of June, Matt and I had broken up. We both knew it was coming; he was leaving for college in Binghamton at the end of August. But the thought of not seeing him waiting at my locker on the first day of school sucked so much, I asked for extra shifts at the country club just so I wouldn’t sit around the house thinking about it.

Rachel and Alexa thought the perfect place to debut Single Monica was at Jimmy Varney’s Fourth of July party, since Matt wouldn’t be there; he and his family were at their lake house upstate for the weekend. Rachel had just turned seventeen and passed her road test, so she and Alexa planned to pick me up when my shift at the country club finished at six.

That morning, when I packed the white dress to change into after work, I thought of Brandon.

He was skimming the surface of the pool with a net when I got out of the employee bathroom. Brandon looked up at me, his lips parting. His face went pink and my skin went warm under the dress.

I thought about the look on his face throughout the entire party that night.

That look made me feel like I could do anything. So I started to use my breaks to talk to him. At lunch, I sat in the empty chair next to the lifeguard stand, eating my mother’s chicken salad while Brandon told me about what I’d missed on my days off. A six-year-old girl who screamed and refused to get in the water until Brandon fished out a dead beetle from the bottom of the pool.

He never asked how old I was and I never asked how old he was. We both understood it would ruin whatever was going on.

A week later, when six o’clock came around and it was time to close up, I texted my mom that I had a ride home. I offered to stay late and help Brandon clean the pool. After, we sat on the edge, thighs almost touching, watching the waitstaff set up for a wedding inside the country club.

“That was cool of you to help,” he said. “I’m sure you’d rather be hanging out with your boyfriend.”

He nudged my knee with his, and I kept my head tilted down so he couldn’t see the flush in my cheeks. “Who said I had a boyfriend?”

“Sorry,” he laughed. “I’m sure you’d rather be hanging out with the guy you wore that white dress for the other night.”

I sliced my foot through the surface of the water. I didn’t say anything. Didn’t want to give it away that he was the guy I wore the dress for.

But he must have figured it out, because he asked if I wanted a ride home. He stood and extended a hand, helped me to my feet.

When he started up his Jeep, classic rock blasted from the speakers. Something about a blue-eyed boy and a brown-eyed girl. We were the opposite.

He really was going to take me home. I’m the one who told him where to turn, and when we reached my street, I told him to keep going and he did. He kept driving until we reached Osprey’s Bluff.

“Monica.” He swallowed, shut his eyes. I undid my belt and climbed into his lap, facing him. I held his hands on my cheeks for a little while, studying his face. He stared back at me in a way Matt had never looked at me, stroking his thumb along my jaw.