Winging It by Cate Cameron

right?”
    “What?”
    “Jesus, do you need to go drink some coffee or something? Have you not had your juice yet? Wake up, Cooper! You like Natalie, you don’t want her plan to work, but you’re playing into Scott’s hands. I’m doing what I can to help you out, but I can’t do everything .”
    I wanted to pull the phone away from my head and bang it on the desk like it was defective, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t the phone’s fault I was getting such a garbled message. “Okay, one of us is drunk, and I don’t think it’s me. What the hell are you talking about?”
    “I’m being awesome. Like, I don’t even know if there’s a word for how awesome I’m being. Setting my ex up with the girl of his dreams? I’m a damn humanitarian, and you need to start appreciating that.”
    “Could you please stop talking for a second?” I almost whispered.
    And the cool thing about Dawn? She did stop talking. She let me sit there for a couple seconds, my body still while my brain raced, trying to catch up to whatever she was saying.
    Nat. Dawn thought I liked Nat. Wanted Nat. Dawn thought I could use the fake dating and find a way to turn it into real dating. It wasn’t like the idea hadn’t crossed my mind, especially the night before in the arena parking lot. It would have been so easy, would have felt so right, if I’d been able to just lean over and kiss her… But I wasn’t going to set myself up for that sort of rejection, wasn’t going to let Scott actually win instead of fake winning. Besides, the night before had probably just been my reaction to having a fine female body pressed against mine while we’d been play fighting. It was a fluke. So I said, “Nat and I have been friends for a long time. I like her. But that’s a long way from her being the girl of my dreams.”
    “Really? Because someone you like hanging out with, someone who loves the same sport you love, someone who’s really pretty and probably has a hot body buried under all those clothes and who your family likes and who’s strong enough to keep you in line without trying to steamroll you all the time…that’s not a good match for you?”
    I didn’t need to hear all the reasons Nat was perfect for me, not under those circumstances. “Did you miss the part where she’s madly in love with my asshole cousin?”
    “Okay, she’s got some appalling taste in men, I’ll give you that, but I don’t think you should disqualify her just for that one flaw.”
    “Disqualify—” I was practically sputtering, now. “Dawn, here on planet Earth in the twenty-first century, it’s not really enough for me to like her . She has to like me back or this whole conversation is pointless.”
    “But you’re at least admitting that you do like her?”
    Was I admitting that? I wasn’t sure. I mean, I’d more or less admitted it to myself, but that wasn’t the same as being ready to say it out loud. Especially not to Dawn. And there was still the possibility that the attraction was just an instinctive response to physical stimuli, not anything deeper. I needed some time to sort this out, preferably without Dawn’s help. “Is this not weird for you? I mean, awesomeness aside, is it not weird for you to be trying to set me up with somebody? I don’t think I’d want to set you up with anybody.”
    “Well, luckily for you, I’m not asking you to.”
    “I don’t think I asked you to, either. I mean…” I gave myself a second to think about it. “Yeah, this is over the line. You can’t just decide who I’m going to be interested in, or who I’m going to date, or whatever. It’s not your call.”
    “So you don’t want my help? I should call Natalie back and tell her I was talking out of my ass and she should ignore what I said? I should tell her to go ahead and stage a big breakup with you tonight at the hockey party? That’s what you want?”
    Dawn had been right when she’d suggested I should get some coffee before having this