Check, Please (Book #2)

Twenty.

"Running?" Corey stared at me as if I'd told him that I kicked a puppy off the Golden Gate Bridge. "I told you to show some interest in the girl, so you asked her if she wanted to go running?"

"Lay off me, alright?" I grumbled while lacing up the frayed laces on my running shoes. I flexed my feet back and forth, noticing that a small hole had appeared in the toe of my left sneaker. I stuck my finger through the opening to poke my sock underneath. "I panicked. It was the first thing that I could think of."

"The first thing that came to your mind was running?"

I sighed. "Apparently."

"Do you think that's normal?" Corey asked, and now he sounded like he wanted to have me committed. "Instead of dinner or going for drinks--"

"I get it."

"I mean, are you trying to get with her or audition to be her personal trainer?"

"That's the whole point," I said, getting to my feet. Crossing over to the wall opposite my bed, I placed my palms against the wall and extended my left leg straight behind me, careful to keep both of my feet flat on the floor. It felt like all the muscles in my calf were waking up with a giant yawn. "I'm not trying to do anything with her at all right now. I'm just... Testing the waters, I guess."

"Gotcha." Corey hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his basketball shorts and hiked them up so that they covered his boxers. "So, uh, have you told Gemma? You know, about your date tonight?"

I straightened and turned to stare at him. "I thought you said I didn't have to."

He raised his eyebrows. "I thought you said you wanted to be honest."

"I do, but--"

"Yeah, yeah." Corey laughed. "Standard nice guy behavior."

"Anyway, it's not really a date," I pointed out before beginning to stretch my other leg. "Like you said, there's no food involved."

"But would you tell Gemma if there was?"

I thought about that for a moment. "No."

"Why not?"

"Why are you giving me such a hard time, huh?" I demanded, unable to stop myself from sounding defensive. I was beginning to feel the same anxiety as when I'd walked up to Melanie earlier in the day. Even with the image of her smiling in my head, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was doing the wrong thing. "The only reason I asked Melanie to hang out is because you said it was fine."

Corey held his hands up. "It is, and you can. I was just curious."

"Yeah, well, don't be," I muttered.

I sank into a lunge while Corey thumbed through the CD collection that I'd left scattered across my floor. I didn't know why I still bought CDs at all, especially since I didn't have a CD player in my room. Maybe it was a leftover habit from when I was in high school.

Michael had been a senior when I was a freshman and one of the conditions that came along with him being allowed to drive to school was that he had to take me there and back each day. What our parents didn't know for most of that year, and what Michael paid me not to tell them, was that he'd been dating a third year from the woman's college on the other side of town at the time. I never learned how they met, though I eventually figured out her name was Anna and she was a Russian Literature major. The beauty of it was that as much as Michael resented chauffeuring me around, he also knew that I would've been more than happy to spill the beans after I found out about his secret love life. It forced him to be at least somewhat nice to me, though I could tell it killed him to say yes whenever I asked for a ride to Parker's house.