Free Save the Date by Tamara Summers

paid,” Leo says.“Mom’s giving me twenty bucks an hour to be here—and I think waking you up is probably the least boring way to earn it.”
    “Maybe you could pay me to get up,” I say, trying to unobtrusively comb my hair with my fingers without sitting up. “But I’ll warn you, I cost a lot more than twenty bucks.” I look at him. “Um, that came out wrong.”
    “How about I take you out to dinner instead?” he says. He puts his hand down on the mattress on the other side of me and leans on it. Yes. His arms are practically around me, and I’m lying down, and now I am having really inappropriate thoughts about his arms and his biceps and his shoulders, and oh my God, is he leaning toward me?
    “We should go help Victoria,” I say, putting my hand on his chest to stop him getting any closer. Except now my hand is on his chest, and it’s really well-muscled and…distracting.
    “How about Wednesday?” he says, smiling. I have to think for a minute before I remember he’s talking about the dinner invitation.
    “I can’t—I have work,” I say.
    “Okay…Thursday?”
    “Um, I think we have wedding things to do.”
    “Like what?”
    “We always have wedding things to do,” I say. “I mean, so I’ll probably always be busy. You know. Two weddings. Busy.” My hand is still on his chest, by the way, if you’re wondering what happened to the part of my brain that normally is in charge of full sentences.
    Now he looks confused, and he moves his hand back, so I do too, regretfully.
    “Okay,” he says. “I understand.” He stands up and starts working his way back to the door. I scramble out of bed.
    “But you’ll be here next Sunday, right?” I say quickly. Why am I doing this? To be nice. Not to encourage him. No.
    He stops in the doorway. “Sunday?”
    “For Paris’s sort-of engagement party,” I say, grabbing a hooded sweatshirt and pulling it on. “She said family plus Carolina, so I think that means you could come, too. Shewants us to meet Jiro.”
    He looks down at his shoes. “Yeah, okay, I could do that.” He flashes me the smile again. “Thanks for inviting me.”
    And then he vanishes out the door before I can clarify that I didn’t invite him; he was invited. Whoops. I hope I didn’t send the wrong message there.
    I take a few minutes to straighten my hair and pull it back, but I figure the damage is done on the pajama front, so I don’t bother to change before joining the others in the living room. The good news: Carolina and Leo brought doughnuts again. The surprising news: Sydney is here to help, actually acting like a real bridesmaid for once. The bad news (depending on how you look at it): The only spot left is on the floor next to Leo.
    I sit down beside him, and he kind of looks at me sideways, still with a puzzled expression on his face.
    “All right,” Victoria says, clapping her hands together. “We’re doing this assembly-line-style,people. I’m all for free expression in my classroom, but in this situation we’re going for my expression.”
    “And Kevin’s,” I add helpfully.
    “Yes, yes, whatever,” she says, “so the best way to do that is to make sure each one is the same. Jack, do you really think you should be having a doughnut right now? Aren’t you worried you’ll get sugar all over the place cards?”
    “Nope,” I say, choosing a Boston creme.
    “Chocolate, maybe.”
    “That’s not funny,” Victoria says.
    “Sorry,” I say meekly. “I’ll be careful.”
    “Tell us what you want us to do, Victoria,” Carolina says smoothly.
    Victoria launches into an explanation of her complicated favor idea. First, she will fold the origami paper into a rose. Then Sydney will attach the paper rose to a dark green chopstick with a glittery mini hair clip. Then Mom will carefully place the chopstick inside an ornate little glass vase and fill the vase with enough translucent glass pebbles to keep the chopstickupright. Meanwhile, I will write out