Fowl Play (Tuft Swallow)

15. Brian

CHAPTER 15

Finally, with both mugs refilled and breakfast digesting, we take seats on opposite ends of Kodi’s couch. She takes a deep breath, and then starts launching into something she’s clearly been rehearsing in her head while making the coffee.

“Okay. About yesterday. I’m sorry I–”

“Was that really your first kiss?” I blurt the thing that’s been weighing on my mind for the past twenty hours, and her apology flies out the window. She gapes at me like a fish for a moment, before exclaiming:

“What? What makes you think that was my first kiss?”

I narrow my eyes, putting a pin in the fact that her response wasn’t an outright denial. “Lily.”

There’s the briefest flash of murder in her eyes, but then she blinks, schooling her features. “Look, that’s neither here nor there. The reason I kissed you is because this town takes their cornhole league very seriously. If the Nosey Pecker figured out that your ex was Zeke Chopra of all people, you might never actually get your practice up and running. I mean, outside of cornhole season, it’s probably fine, but at the game? And the first game of the season, at that? I had to save you.”

I didn’t hear half of what she said. I’m still stuck on, “You kissed me?”

She looks at me like I’m stupid. “Yeah. At the fence?”

“Pretty sure I kissed you.”

“No!” She clears her throat. “I kissed you on the cheek, and pretended to be your girlfriend, and then you yes-anded me.”

“I what you?”

“Yes and. Like, in improv?” I stare at her blankly. She leaps at the change in subject. “You know, like when you’re improvising with someone, and they come into the scene like, ‘The sky is on fire!’ The number one rule is you don’t deny it, you play along and add something to the scene. So instead of ‘No it isn’t!’ you’d say like, ‘Oh my God, yes! And the newscaster is saying it’s because a dragon is attacking the capitol!’”

I blink at her. “You do improv?”

“I had to take a couple electives in college, okay? It was either that or badminton, and I was still recovering from surgery at the time.” She takes a frustrated sip of her coffee. I mirror her, hiding a grin as I imagine her limping around with a boot on her foot with Wayne Brady and Colin Mochrie on Who’s Line is it Anyway?

“So what you’re saying is, I yes-and-ed you by kissing you back.”

“Right! But I kissed you first.”

“On the cheek,” I point out. She rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, and?”

I can’t resist. “I thought it was ‘yes, and’?”

She scowls out me, and I’m pretty sure she’d be telling me to go fuck myself if I hadn’t carried her home last night after she threw up on my shirt. It’s hard to stay angry at a man in a frilly pink apron after he takes care of your drunk ass and makes you breakfast in the morning. It’s just a fact. One I take full advantage of as I tease her.

“I still did it first,” she mumbles. I take another sip of my coffee.

Yesterday should have been one of the worst days of my life. Going to an obnoxious cornhole match, seeing Zeke among all his attractive teammates, and getting dragged into some deceptive conspiracy in order to fool the entire town into thinking I’m dating their star athlete? It all sounds like a recipe for disaster and heartbreak.

And yet, everything about Kodi is so unexpected, I find it hard to stay focused on any of the things I should be feeling. Who is this woman? And how is it that I seem to forget all my grief when I’m around her?

I come back to the conversation we really ought to be having.

“So you’re saying that trying to get Zeke back is a bad idea. And you thought you could save me by…what, distracting me from him?”

She opens her mouth to speak, but hesitates for a second. Tapping her fingertips on her mug, she takes a breath before hedging her answer.

“I’m not trying to distract you,” she begins carefully. “And whether or not you get back together with Zeke is…your business. However, I know firsthand just how frustrating it is to get back on your feet while the whole town is invested in your story.”

She speaks slowly, measuring each word as she says it, as if she’s trying to impart only the most necessary information. I cradle my mug as I wait for her to continue.

“Why–sorry. No.” She takes a long pause, and I wonder what she stopped herself from saying. “You still love Zeke, don’t you?”

“Yes.” I don’t even hesitate. It might be naive of me, it might be hopeless, even. But what can I say? Of course I still love him. Even if his loss doesn’t seem to hurt as much this morning.

She takes a sip of her coffee and nods slowly while she thinks over what she wants to say. “Okay. Do you… Is he the type of guy to take you back, do you think?”

It takes all of my self control not to ask her what she isn’t saying. That’s the third time she’s stopped herself from asking one thing, only to turn her words around to ask something different.

I fill in the blanks. “You think that little of him, huh?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I know you didn’t ‘say’ that. But you almost did.” I hold eye contact with her, and blush rises from her slender, tan neck up to the base of her ears. My throat goes a little dry, and I take another sip of coffee. She blinks, breaking off the staring match. Then she gets up off the couch and starts to pace. When she speaks again, she doesn’t look at me.

“I don’t like him, no. He’s got a bit of a reputation around here, okay? He’s snobby and British and a cheater and whenever I’ve been around him he’s given off bad juju, okay? But I can see that your experience with him is different, so…I’m trying to account for that.”

Well, jeez, don’t hold back. “Why do I get the feeling you’re judging me right now?”

“I’m not judging you.”

She says it quickly, like a reflex. I raise my eyebrows. She huffs out a breath and sits back down beside me. “How well do you know Zeke?”

“I mean, we dated for a year.”

I brush off the question. She slowly nods, but doesn’t respond. Which of course, gives me a second to overanalyze the situation.

When I start to think about it a little bit more, I remember my surprise at the way he acted around his teammates, how I was blindsided by his reaction to my moving here.

I down the rest of my coffee, then jolt back up to get a refill. “Besides, that’s not what we’re talking about here. What I want to know is what your little plan was yesterday when you decided to recruit me as your improv buddy.”

She rises to follow me. “I was trying to protect you.”

Clunk. I lose my grip on the coffee pot while taking it off the burner. Thankfully, it doesn’t spill, just rattles on the stand before clicking back into place. “From Zeke?”

“From the Tit Peepers!”

“Oh please, I think I can handle a couple of old Tits.” I roll my eyes, succeeding this time at topping off my mug. “What are they going to do, gossip me to death?”

“Or turn the whole town against you!” She fiddles with her hands as she stands across the island from me, looking strangely nervous instead of angry. What is her end game here? Every time I think I have Kodi Gander figured out, she goes and throws me a curveball.

“And how does kissing me at the local high school remedy that?”

“The only thing that those old fogies like better than a scandal is a sex scandal. They’re gonna talk about anything and everything they can get their claws on; they always have. But their absolute favorite kind of rumors are the ones that end in wedding bells. They did it with Chief Woodcock and his wife Delilah. They did it with Tina and Nick, too! Actually, come to think of it, this year they’ve been playing matchmaker with just about every new person who’s come to town…”

“So you want them to play matchmaker with us? You and me?” I gape at her. “Why?”

She puts her face in her hands and rubs her eyes, this conversation clearly exhausting her. When she finally does speak up again, her face is red from holding back her frustration. “What I’m saying is, they’re gonna talk about something regardless. So let’s give them something to talk about. While you get your business up and running, and while we wrap up cornhole season. Once we beat Spitz Hollow in the playoffs and you’ve got a regular clientele, once you’re accepted by the town for who you actually are, then we can stop pretending and you can get your boyfriend back.”

A full minute passes before I realize my jaw is still on the ground. I shake myself back to reality, only to find myself gaping at her a second time. Then finally, I utter, “What?”

“Plus, it’ll make Zeke jealous!” She slams her hands on the island, and I jump. Leaning into me conspiratorially, she whispers, “did you see the way he was looking at you during that first round? After you smooched me senseless?”

Her face is inches from mine. I can feel the wispy hairs that have sprung out of her ponytail tickling my forehead. I swallow. “Um…”

Why can’t I remember how Zeke was looking at me during the first half of the match? What had I been paying attention to then?

Kodi blinks and leans back to her side of the island, grabbing her mug to refill. She clears her throat. “All I’m saying is, if he did still have feelings for you, he was ignoring them. Until we showed him that you were unavailable. Then he couldn’t take his eyes off you.”

Is that true? I stand for a moment in silence while she makes her way around the kitchen to the coffee pot. For some reason my brain is fuzzy. Not only can’t I remember how Zeke was looking at me during the game, I’m finding that the only memories I can cling to are the ones that involved Kodi.

But then I remember the very end, in the team huddle, when Zeke and I caught eyes. That wink he gave me. The one that he knows gives me butterflies…

“Oh my God, you’re right,” I breathe.

“Yeah, I fucking know.” Kodi’s washing up the dishes from breakfast and placing them on the drying rack. Her tone is very matter-of-fact. “I’m probably the smartest woman you’ve ever dated.”

I snort. “Seeing as I haven’t dated a girl since high school, you’re probably right about that.”

A plate clunks extra loudly into the drying rack, and I look over at the scheming blonde. She blushes, adjusting the dishes before grabbing another dirty one with soapy hands.

“Well, you didn’t seem rusty to me.”

Once again, she throws me for a loop with the unexpected compliment.

But something still isn’t adding up. I can see what I gain from pretending to date the captain of Tuft Swallow’s Cornhole League. I evade the Tit Peepers from finding out about and broadcasting my actual personal life, make nice with the neighbors as the new boyfriend of a hometown hero, and make my ex realize he’s made a mistake. Three birds with one stone.

But what about her?

I cross my arms, waiting for her to finish up the dishes. When she dries off her hands and turns around to face me, I tilt my head. “Why are you doing this?”

“The sink will smell if I don’t take care of the dishes right away.”

“No, I mean, why would you agree to help me like this? What are you getting out of it? You don’t need a boyfriend to distract you from cornhole season. You also apparently hate Zeke, so you don’t have any interest in making him happy. You’ve offered to help me with my booking and billing software, and now you want to help me win him back. Why? What are you getting out of it?”

She fills a cup of water and opens the cabinet to grab a couple of ibuprofen, then gestures for me to follow her to the couch. She takes a seat, then swallows her pills, biding her time. I sit across from her, waiting, seeing the cogs turn inside her skull.

When she looks up at me, her eyes are fierce.

“You’re my secret weapon, of course.”