Tell Me You'll Miss Me | ✓

10. total faith

Summer and I set a time and place for the doubly fake double date. David to play the role he'd been assigned was easy: the promise of paying for his food if he'd come along and pretend to be interested in Summer was all it took.

As ever, Summer was leading the charge and guiding me through the whole process – I'd barely had a moment to stop and think about the mess she was dragging me into.

And mess really felt like the right word. Summer was going on a fake date with David just so I could go on an even faker date with Nora.

That sounded insane. It was insane. But even crazier was the fact that Summer had total faith that it would work. People often said Summer had her head in the clouds, but I didn't think that was entirely fair. She was an optimist and a dreamer, for sure – but she knew what she was doing. This plan was so sneaky that the word scheme probably would've been more accurate.

Part two of her scheme, now that the actual date part of the date was taken care of, was to decide what I should wear. Summer had an embroidered dress of mine in her hands, and she was holding it up to the light to inspect it for Date Appropriateness. She'd insisted on vetting my outfit based on the fact that when she had asked me what I was planning on wearing, I'd said, oh, I don't know, maybe my yellow plaid and a cute skirt? which, apparently, was not good enough for Summer. This was a Capital D Date, and cute-casual was off the menu.

It felt like everything was spiralling out of control – like not only was I going on kind-of-a-date with Nora, but it was also going to be the kind of date I had to properly dress up for? Yikes. I was trying to hide the panic and the nerves, but Summer knew me too well. And, you know, it was written all over my face, from the knotted brows to the squirmy, tight lips as I mulled over the prospect of turning this into Actually Dating Nora, Kind Of For Real.

"Puh-lease, Jess. You're fierce. Nora's into girls. Why wouldn't she like you? I bet she's super psyched to have an excuse to take you out."

I rolled my eyes so hard I almost saw stars.

Summer was a great cheerleader and she always gave the right compliments at the right time to win me over, but... this made me feel uneasy and queasy. So much could go wrong, not least of all the fact that Nora could just completely not like me back.

"And you like boys and girls, but you're not into everyone,"  I pointed out. "You don't like me. Or David. Or your exes, anymore, or..." I trailed off, grinning because I knew I was right. For once. See, Summer had a way of talking you into thinking she was right – or at least making you pretend she was right so she'd stop talking.

She clucked her tongue and looked like she might be about to say something, but then she gave an exasperated huff and threw the dress at me.

"That's not-- Whatever. People have types, still. Duh," she said, crouching down so she could get right at the back of my wardrobe, where my hardly-worn heels lived.

"Exactly, dummy. Nora's type might be tall, tan, blondes who play a bunch of sportsball and own a Ferrari or two."

"Or it might be cute, scruffy, dark-haired, sarcastic gremlins who listen to too much classic rock and over-wing their eyeliner," she teased, tutting and drawing a wing in the air with a fingertip.

"Whatever," I said, because I was out of comebacks, and also because I wasn't used to people calling me cute. Or scruffy, or a gremlin, but I was focusing on the cute part. Maybe Nora would think I was cute, after all.

Six outfit changes later and with the promise that I could borrow Summer's new glittered clutch bag, I was set for my not-a-date date with Nora. Well, kind of.