Come on, I had no problems touching her last night. I raise it again and place my hand over hers.

Under my fingers, Beth stiffens. My heart beats once against my chest, creating an ache. I don’t want her to hate my touch. “We’ve started everything ass backwards. I like you. Let’s see what happens.”

“Date you?” she asks.

“Date me.”

“Like friends…” Beth scrunches her face in disgust “…with benefits?”

I can almost feel her body under mine again and I shake away the memory. I’m not going to prove to her I like her if we have a repeat performance of last night. “No. Friends who go out together. I pay. You smile. Sometimes we kiss.”

She raises a skeptical eyebrow on the word kiss and I immediately backtrack. “But we date first—for a while. Friends who like each other and want to date.”

“I never said I liked you.”

I chuckle and a warm tingle enters my blood when she gives that small, peaceful smile.

“You haven’t said you hate me.”

“Friends who date,” she says as if she’s trying to find the hidden meaning in the phrase.

“Friends who date,” I repeat and squeeze her fingers.

Beth tenses and withdraws her hand. “No.”

She pads down the stairs on bare feet. “No. This isn’t the way things work. Guys like you don’t date girls like me. What angle are you playing? Is this about the dare?”

Her words cause me to flinch, but they aren’t a surprise. Last night, I pushed her too far. I showed her no respect. She has no reason to believe me, yet I want her to. “No. The dare is done.”

“Because you won last night?”

No, I didn’t. The dare required that Beth and I stay at the party for an hour. We barely lasted fifteen minutes. “It’s over, Beth. I don’t play people I care about.”

Myriad emotions cross her face, as if she’s wrestling with God and the devil. “You could be playing me. If this is the dare, just tell me.”

“I did tell you. The dare is over.” I told Lacy that no one gets hurt on my dares. Especially in this one. How could I be so blind? I thought Beth walked away from the trust fall because she wanted to hurt me. I thought she wanted to watch my team lose. Wrong. Beth didn’t jump because she doesn’t trust and, because of this dare, I’ve ruined any trust she could have had in me.

“Did you win then?” Beth stubbornly holds on to the dare. “Were you dared to make out with me?” The hurt gives way to panic. “You fucking asshole, you did play me, didn’t you? Does everyone at school already know? Are you here for bonus points? Try to fuck the girl, tell your friends, then convince her you want more?”

“No!” I shout, then remind myself to rein it in. I created her doubt when I accepted the dare. “No. What happened between us last night wasn’t about any dare. I didn’t plan it and I would never tell anyone.”

“So, I’m a secret. We’ll date in private, but not in public. No thanks.”

Damn. I can’t win. I rub my hand over my head. “I want to be with you. Here. At school. Wherever. I didn’t play you. Just trust me.”

Beth angles her body away from me. Trust must be the ugliest word in her vocabulary.

Desperate to make everything right, I blurt out, “Ask me for anything and I’ll do it. Trust me with something. I’ll prove to you I’m worth trusting.”

She assesses me: Nikes first, blue jeans, Reds T-shirt, then my face. “Will you take me into Louisville again?”

The nausea I fought all afternoon returns.

Anything but that. “Beth…”

“I won’t disappear again. I need you to drop me off someplace and I swear I’ll be at the same exact spot you left me at the exact time you tell me to show. You’re asking me to trust you, well…you’re going to have to trust me first.”

It doesn’t seem fair, but fair went out the window the moment I touched her last night. It possibly went out the window the moment I accepted the dare at Taco Bell. “I did trust you.” My mouth shuts and everything inside me hardens. The words taste bitter on my tongue. “I told you about my brother.”

Beth bites her lower lip. “It’s a secret?”

I nod. I really don’t want to discuss Mark.

Worry lines clutter her forehead. “Drunken admissions don’t equate to trust.”

I sigh heavily. She’s right. “Fine. I have a game two weeks from Saturday in Louisville, but you’re sitting through it. I’m not budging on that requirement. Take it or leave it.”

Beth’s face explodes into this radiant smile and her blue eyes shine like the sun. My insides melt. This moment is special and I don’t want to let it go. I’m the one that put that look there. “Really?” she asks.

Do I want her to come to my game? Do I want the opportunity for her to see that I’m more than some stupid jock? “Yes. Don’t play me, Beth.” Because I’m falling for you, more than I should, and if you betray me again, it will hurt like hell.

The smile fades and she solemnly answers, “I won’t. When we go into Louisville, I just need an hour to myself.”

An hour. To do what? See Isaiah? I guess she could. I only asked her to date me. She’d probably bolt if I said the word relationship, even though I have no interest in seeing anyone else. I went too fast with her last night.

This time, I’ll go slow. “I’ll give you an hour alone in Louisville. Then we’re going on a real date, even if it kills us.”

Beth rejoins me on the steps. Her knee rests against mine and we lapse into silence.

Typically, silence with girls makes me uncomfortable, but this one doesn’t bother me.

She doesn’t have anything to say. Neither do I.

I’m not ready to leave and it appears she’s not ready for me to go. Beth, out of anybody, would tell me what she really wanted or thought.

She finally breaks the silence. “How do I take my name off the homecoming list? Does it require a two-thirds vote of the student population or do I have to ask someone in the front office?”

Panic flickers through me. “Stay on the court.”

“No. Way.”

“Do it with me. I’ll be right by your side the entire time.” Putting her on the court was my way of pissing her off, but now I want her on it—with me.

“That’s your world. Not mine.”

But it could be her world if she tried.

“Nothing will happen with homecoming for another month. How about this—if I can find a way to completely wow you by then, you agree to stay on the court and if I can’t, then I’ll help you remove your name.”

Silence as she contemplates. “Are you asking me to dare you to wow me?”

Even I see the irony. “Guess I am.”

“Should I remind you that you have a lousy track record with me in regards to dares?”

I sit up straighter. “I don’t lose.”

Scott knocks on the door and points at his eyes then points at me. He leaves again.

Hell. “Did you come home drunk last night?”

The last time Scott and I talked, we were on good terms. Something’s changed.

“No, but you did leave this.” Beth flips her hair over her shoulder and reveals a red-and-blue spot on her neck. Everything within me wants to disintegrate and hide beneath the porch. I gave her a hickey. I haven’t done that to a girl since middle school.

“He hates me,” I say.

Beth laughs. “Something like that.”

Beth

I PUMP MY HANDS HARDER INTO HIS CHEST and ignore the world around me. My wrists hurt, but I must keep the heart going. I must.

Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.

“Breathe!” I yell.

Lacy tilts the head back and blows into the mouth. The chest moves up, then back down.

Lacy begins to pull away.

“No, Lacy, check the vitals.” She puts her ear near the mouth and nose. I wait. She places her fingers against the artery in the neck. I wait again. Lacy shakes her head. Nothing.

“Your turn,” I tell her. I’m frightened that I won’t be able to give the heart enough pressure if I go another round. Lacy scrambles toward his chest and I slide my body near the head.

She counts out loud with each compression.

A long beeping noise comes from the team next to us. “Flat line,” says Mr. Knox.

“Yes!” says Chris. “This is ours!”

Of our entire health class, it’s down to me and Lacy against the combo of Ryan and Chris.

With his hands clasped together, Ryan pumps his dummy’s chest.

“Breathe!” says Lacy.

I blow air into the mouth, check vitals, and freeze. With my fingers against the neck, I feel something. It’s faint, but there. Lacy gestures for me to pump, but I shake my head. Our dummy—he’s alive!

The boys start compressions again and a wretched noise blares from their machine. Mr. Knox unplugs it. “You boys forgot to check vitals.”

Chris swears and Ryan falls onto his ass.

Suck it up, boys. Get used to losing.

Mr. Knox glances my way.

“Congratulations, Lacy and Beth. You’re the only two who kept your patient alive. Good call on the vitals, Beth.”

Good call on the vitals. Mr. Knox walks away as if this isn’t the most amazing moment of my life. I did something. I saved a life. Well, not really, but I saved the dummy. But I did something right. This unspeakable, overwhelming sense of…I don’t know…I’ve not experienced it before…this feeling of…joy? Anyhow…it floods me. Every part of me.

I—Beth Risk—did something good.

Lacy points at Chris, then at Logan standing over his dead dummy. “We won.” In her sitting position she moves her shoulders in a crazy little dance. “We won. We won. We won.”

“Your girl is a sore winner.” Logan edges closer to us.

“It’s kinda hot though,” says Chris. “Now that you experienced the rush, are you going to take on more dares from us, baby?”

Lacy laughs. “I didn’t take the dare. Beth did.”

Logan and Chris nod at me in appreciation. I shrug in return. For the past week, we’ve been feeling each other out. Lacy talks to me. Ryan talks to me. Sometimes, I talk back. On Monday, I caved to their brow-beating and began sitting with them at lunch. When Ryan’s feeling bold, he takes my hand. When I’m feeling bolder, I hold his hand back.

At the mention of the dare, I fish a black marker out of my pack. Ryan’s last words before we started CPR were that Lacy and I couldn’t hold out; that we were too weak to outlast the combination of him and Chris. I write the four most beautiful letters on my palm and turn it for Ryan to see: can’t.

As he leans against the wall, that brilliant smile spreads across Ryan’s face and he shakes his head. Warm fuzzies race through my bloodstream. I love that smile. Maybe a little too much.

“I’m not wowed,” I say to him. It’s been four days since our agreement and Ryan’s done nothing to “wow” me.