“You want to ask Ginny to be your girlfriend?” Adam asks.
Yeah, this would be a lot less awkward if I weren’t having this conversation with her brother. He hated the idea before I made her cry, so I doubt he’s pumped now.
I tread carefully. “To be honest, I thought she already was, but I guess that’s a thing people talk about first?”
Adam’s face slowly transforms from a stony wall of indifference to amusement and he laughs. “Have you ever had a girlfriend, Payne?”
I clear my throat and wipe a hand over my brow. Jesus, it’s hot in here. “Clearly not.”
He studies me and lets out another one of his new broody sighs. “Ginny doesn’t need a big gesture, just tell her how you feel. Well, no, actually first, you need to convince her to speak to you again.”
“Yeah, thanks a lot. Good talk.”
Mav walks through the door. “Honey, I’m home.” He plops down and reads the room. “What’s going on?”
“Heath is gonna ask Ginny to go steady.” Rauthruss smirks.
“Fuck off,” I tell him but smile. Dammit, I should have known better than to ask him. Nothing is ever taken seriously around here.
“I take it talking didn’t go over so well?” Mav asks with a knowing smirk.
I flip him off. “Are you guys going to help me or what?”
Maverick claps his hands together. “Let’s brainstorm on the whiteboard.”
“We don’t have a whiteboard,” Adam points out.
Maverick shakes his head, smiling. “Real oversight, minion. Task one, find something to write down ideas.”
Surprisingly, Adam does get up and appears to search for something to write on. Maverick goes to the fridge and grabs four beers and then hands them out.
Adam comes back with a scrap of paper and a pen. “All right, ideas to ask a girl out. I feel like I’m back in middle school.”
“I would have guessed you started more pre-K age,” Rauthruss says and twists the cap on his beer.
Adam flips him off and then looks to me, poised to write down our ideas.
“You’re on board with this?” I ask him.
He shrugs. “If it’s what she wants. Besides, it’s going to be fun as hell to watch you try to pull this off.”
Maverick takes the lead and I let him. For as much shit as he talks about his dad, I can see the family resemblance. When he sets his mind to it, he’s a good leader.
An hour later, we’ve got a handful of ideas and they’re all pretty awful. Rauthruss is the straightforward one—take her to dinner, buy her roses. Maverick is elaborate and has so many suggestions only about half are being written down. They range from renting out a movie theater to hiring a Mariachi band and everything else you can imagine in between. Adam has some good insight since he knows Ginny the best, but none of his suggestions feel right either.
I’m probably overthinking it. I don’t know anything about love or being a good boyfriend, but I know Ginny and I know that I’m better when I’m with her.
“Well?” Rauthruss asks once we’re out of new suggestions and beer.
“Maybe dinner?” It isn’t the most creative, but a lot easier than renting out a movie theater. I have no idea how to pull off the latter and I feel like that kind of thing might take days or weeks, and I don’t want to wait that long.
“Dinner?” Maverick’s face twists up in clear disappointment. “Dinner is so… dinner. Unless…” He sits forward, elbows on knees. “You buy out the restaurant so it’s just the two of you and then—”
I cut him off. “Let me stop you right there, buddy. `Preciate your dedication, but I don’t want it to feel like I’m being someone else for the night.”
Some of my favorite memories with Ginny over the past semester have been hanging out with our friends or chilling just the two of us. None of that was elaborate or over the top, but maybe this is different? Maybe big and bold is what I need.
I scrub a hand down my face and then look to Adam. “Does anyone know her favorite song?”
“You’re going with that one?” Rauthruss’s eyebrows shoot up. “This I gotta see.”
Maverick fist pumps. “Yeah, I love that one.”
“Of course, you do. It was your idea.”
39
Ginny
Dakota and Reagan sit on one end of my bed, their concerned faces staring back at me. Ava’s gone for the weekend visiting Trent, and when I’d told my friends I was going back to my dorm alone after the game, they insisted on coming with me.
My phone pings on my desk and Dakota reaches to get it for me.
“Read it for me.”
“It’s Adam. He says he didn’t see you at the game and wants to know if you’re in your dorm watching Notting Hill?”
She looks up to me for an explanation.
“When I was in like seventh grade, my first boyfriend broke up with me and I was so devastated I watched Notting Hill on repeat for an entire weekend. Something like twenty times. It became my go-to breakup movie.” I could so go for watching that movie on repeat about now.
“I love that movie,” Reagan says. “Julia Roberts is a goddess.”
Dakota sets my phone on the bed. “Guess they didn’t see us. That’s good.”
“Yeah,” I agree. I mean, I think it’s good. I’m not sure what difference it would have made, but there was no way I could sit in my usual seat so close to the bench where he could read the sadness on my face. The game was brutal enough as it was.
Instead, the girls and I sat at the top of the student section blending in with the sea of blue and yellow. It was hard to watch them lose, but it fit my depressing mood nicely.
My phone pings again, and this time I reach for it.
Adam: Are you okay? Just
