Chapter 2 #2
“I’m not usually this awkward, I swear. You just—” He let a breath out, eyes still closed. “You’re really pretty. It’s making me nervous.”
The butterflies stirring in my stomach took flight then, and my small grin bloomed. “Now who’s straightforward?”
Logan’s eyes popped open as he tilted his head, swiveling against the headrest. His blue eyes looked so vibrant. Wow. That was… straightforward, he’d said yesterday in response to my flirting. One corner of his lips lifted.
“Was that why you were talking to yourself back there?”
“You saw that?” Logan looked mortified, but still, the other corner of his mouth tugged up. “I was rehearsing. And I still fumbled. There she is.” He gave a small tsk.
I wanted to tell him it was cute, but kept it to myself. “We’ll have fun,” I told him, echoing more words he’d used. I was mesmerized by his gaze, locked in, hardly breathing. “Yeah?”
Logan didn’t look away from me for a long moment. I wondered what he was thinking. “Yes,” he said finally, reaching for the gearshift. “We will.”
And then he put his car into reverse.
“Mini golf?”
I blinked as Logan pulled into the parking lot, slowing down as we bounced over the gravel. “You sound disappointed,” he said, but he sounded amused.
The mini golf place was just on the cusp of Brentwood, before it turned into Jefferson limits, and the parking lot was pretty busy for a Tuesday afternoon. What, was everyone stopping by Mini’s Mini Golf before going back to school? “I just—it’s for kids, isn’t it?”
“Aren’t we kids?”
“We’re teenagers. This is for… children.”
Logan laughed aloud as he eased between two cars, shifting the gearstick into park. “Says who?”
Says me. Like, literally a second ago. Out of all the date ideas in the world, he’d chosen mini golf?
We could’ve done a picnic at Lookout Ledge, or gotten dinner at Le Petit Bateau, or even gone to see a movie at the megaplex.
Something sweet and romantic and totally swoon-worthy. But Logan chose mini golf?
“When’s the last time you went mini golfing?”
Oh my gosh, it sounded so much dweebier when he turned it into a verb. “Like, when I was six.”
Logan popped his door open. “See, then you can’t truly knock it. Not til you try it.”
“Actually, I think I—”
He shut his door before I could finish. I sat still in the passenger’s seat, staring at the wooden watermill that sat at the entrance, dumbfounded.
Jade would be horrified when she found out this was where he’d taken me.
No, she’d be embarrassed, and tell me not to tell a soul so that it didn’t end up on Babble.
The girls on the squad wouldn’t be swooning over my future boyfriend; they’d be giggling at his middle schooler state of mind.
My door opened, and Logan offered a hand down to me. Gosh, why does he have to be so handsome? a small part of me wailed, while the larger part refused to move an inch from the passenger’s seat. “Don’t tell me you’re too cool to have fun, Madison.”
It wasn’t fair to put it that way. “I’m not.” Mini golf so didn’t qualify.
“Then take my hand.” He gave his fingers a wiggle.
I stared at Logan’s palm. This was not at all turning out how I’d imagined it. No romance—just putt-putt and jeans. I could see the Babble article now. First date? More like Playdate!
For a moment, I thought of what Jade would do. You can’t risk him losing interest.
She’d be right, of course. I needed him—it was either mini golf or Kyle.
Logan would still be perfect to walk down the halls holding hands with.
Everyone would still be jealous of how he looked.
Maybe I could just lie and say our first date was something else.
A picnic, a dinner, or a movie. Anything else.
So, with that thought in mind, I hesitantly put my hand in his and let him pull me from the car.
Minnie’s Mini Golf was forest themed. At least, I thought it was. There were a lot of faux tree trunks and broken logs, with a wooden bridge crossing over a small stream of water that the watermill pitifully pumped. Very corny.
Logan’s steps were confident as we walked to the main office, as if he’d come here a million times. Oh my gosh, please tell me he hasn’t come here a million times.
“The blue one is the closest to my size,” he told me as he picked one of the putters out from the big barrel they were clustered in. He reached to the next barrel over. “I think the red should work for you.”
“Cool,” I muttered, though it was anything but.
We shuffled forward through the small office, past a girl and her mother trying to figure out which putter was her size. “Pick your ball,” Logan told me as we came to a metal contraption that held various colors of golf balls.
There were no more blue ones, of course, so I picked the next best—pink. Logan picked black.
When we got in line to pay for our rentals, Logan looked at me, putting his weight onto his putter. “How about this? Loser buys ice cream.”
To win meant I had to take it seriously, though.
Logan clearly wanted to, with the perpetual tilt he had to his lips.
If I was being honest, it was the only thing saving him, because…
it was cute. The whole thing should’ve icked me out from him, but there was something infectious about his smile that made me want to respond to it.
Knock his socks off, Jade had said. So, even though I felt like a dweeb, I mumbled, “You’re on.”
The little girl behind us suddenly started crying, a shrill sound that caused me to jump. “Just pick another color, sweetie,” her mom tried to coax. “Red is really close to pink!”
“I’m glad you were free today,” Logan said, drawing my attention back to him. “I’m actually busy the rest of the week.”
I turned my pink golf ball over in my palm. “Any fun plans?”
“Working.” He shrugged his shoulders a little. “I picked up a few shifts for a friend.”
My eyes traced the little blonde girl, the distress on her face making her cheeks go blotchy. “Where do you work?”
He hesitated for a second, as if debating on telling me. “You’ve heard of Expresso’s over in Jefferson? The coffeehouse? I work there.”
The little girl definitely didn’t want the red ball her mother tried to persuade her with, tears rolling out of the corners of her squinched shut eyes.
“One sec,” I told Logan, and then stepped away from him toward the little girl.
I crouched down in front of her, offering my palm out. “Here,” I said. “You can have mine.”
She was hesitant to take it from my palm, but at least her wailing dissolved into sniffles.
I reached out to swipe one of her big tears off her small chin. “I think I want the red one, anyway. Your mom’s right—it’s super close to pink.”
Her small, chubby fingers wrapped around the golf ball as best as they could manage, and her mom shot me a look of weary gratitude.
“Sorry, I was listening, I swear,” I told Logan when I straightened, gripping my putter. Guilt and a bit of panic sank in—hopefully he didn’t think I was ignoring him. “You picked up shifts for a friend. That was really nice of you.”
Logan was looking at me, but there was something strange about his expression. Almost… unnerved. “Yeah,” he said, and then the cashier called us up to pay.
Logan paid for our rentals, and just like that, we were sent off to the first hole. It was just a simple one, a plain patch of green with a white plastic cup at the end. No obstacles, no hills. “The first one is always the easiest,” Logan told me as he waved his hand. “Ladies first.”
The urge to groan rose up within me again as I awkwardly placed my red ball on the green. Don’t think about it, I told myself, lining up my putter. Don’t think about how ridiculous you look right now. And in a dress, too. This is so humiliating.
I tapped the ball, and it sailed forward—straight into the easiest hole known to man.
Logan clapped for my basic win. “Giving me a run for my money, I see.” He dropped his black ball onto the green, lining up his swing. He hit his ball too hard, and it knocked against the back before rolling to a stop three feet from the hole. “Dang.”
As lame as I felt, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the dejected curve to his shoulders. “You don’t have to pretend to be bad for my sake.”
“I’m flattered you think I’m pretending.” Logan tapped the ball, and it rolled the three feet into the hole. Logan threw me a teasing look. “Just don’t know how to rein in my strength, I’m afraid.”
I chuckled again, louder this time. “Okay, Hercules. I’m winning, technically.”
“Technically.” Logan scribbled down our numbers on the scorecard he’d gotten from the office. “But we’ll see how long that lasts.”
“Pretty confident for a guy who missed the easiest hole.”
Logan shot me a sidelong smirk. “Pretty confident for a girl who hasn’t played since she was in pull-ups.”
I gasped. “I was not in pull-ups at six!”
Logan just laughed.
The second hole was a bit more complex, with a few faux logs set into the green. They were angled, creating an almost chevron path to the hole on the other side. There was an easy, straight shot, but if you were off even slightly, the ball would catch the edge of the logs and bounce to the side.
I lined my ball up, even going as far as to do a practice swing before putting. My ball went straight—until it clipped a hidden raised patch of green, ricocheting off. It bounced off the green completely, launching into the bushes. My jaw dropped. “I didn’t even hit it that hard!”
“There’s a science to mini golf.” Logan’s voice was wise as he bent down to retrieve my rogue ball—wise, and almost smug. “Trajectories and probabilities. Harder than it looks, huh?” He tried and failed to fight his smile as he placed my ball back in front of me.
I narrowed my eyes at the green, feeling my cheeks grow pink. “As if,” I scoffed, lining my putt up again. This was the first real hole. I could not suck.