Page 20 of Falling Into You

She massaged her temples with her fingertips as she stared at Gwen’s, Layla’s, and Carlos’s feet. They all stood on the gym floor watching her. For the first time all day, the musty stale-sweat smell of the wrestling gym started to bother her. Maybe she’d been too hopped up on adrenaline to notice it earlier.

“Well, itishappening,” Layla replied, always ready with the hard truth. “And I think we all know what you have to do.”

“Maybe it will be fine?” Gwen added.

Rory’s shoulders slumped. This was supposed to be her year. Her first season as captain. She’d helped choose and shape the team. Their competition routine had been workshopped to perfection. She’d even convinced the school board to allocate some of the sports budget to new, blingy uniforms that were going to slay at regionals. And now, here she was, just a few weeks into the season, and everything was hanging on by a thread. Her entire season—nay, her entirecheerleading career—was in the hands of the person who had been a pain in her butt pretty much her entire life.

“Are we really talking about letting Jacob Reilly on the team?” she said, looking up at her teammates. “The guy who—just last year, might I remind you—sneaked into the locker room and replaced all our cheer shoes with tap shoes?”

Carlos laughed. “That was a good one.” The girls all stared him down. Jacob hadn’t managed to find men’s tap shoes, so he and Stuart hadn’t been victims of that particular prank. The girls, however, had been forced to cheer in the ridiculous shoes, their voices drowned out by the sound of the shoes tapping away. When Carlos finally managed to straighten his face, he cleared his throat and said, “Sorry. Right. That was very, uh. Serious.”

“Okay, but he did so good, Rory!” Gwen said, her blue eyes in full puppy-dog mode as she clutched her hands beneath her chin. “The dance moves, the smile... and he really projects his voice!”

This was not a surprise. They had all learned how bigJacob’s lungs were back in fifth grade when he’d gotten out of an oral book report by yelling “Fire!” from the hallway and forcing the entire first floor of the school to evacuate before anyone figured out it was a false alarm.

But he did have a great smile. Rory might even call it infectious.

“And hewould notgive up on the chant until everyone joined in,” Stuart said. He was sitting next to Rory on the bleachers, his leg up on a chair. “That was the most impressive thing to me.”

Rory looked at Carlos, who shrugged. “It took me two weeks to perfect a chair sit. He did it in one night.”

“Plus he has a live-in coach and cheer tutor,” Gwen said. “Did you know that Willow girl from the middle school team was his sister?”

Rory sighed. She did know. And she both credited and blamed Willow for putting her in this position.

“But he doesn’t actually care!” Rory protested, letting her arms fall. “He’s only here to make good on a bet. And because he got thrown off the soccer team. If Coach Fitz changes his mind, Jacob will ditch us faster than you can sayjackass.”

“As long as that’safterhomecoming and regionals, who cares?” Layla asked.

Rory balked. “I care! And so should you! Every performance is important. And the football team is actually good this year. They could make the playoffs!”

Her friends laughed. The football team hadn’t made the playoffs once in the past decade. But they reallyweredoing better than usual. They were two and two. Already a huge improvement over last year’s one and eight season.

“God, I really hope not. Miniskirts in December are not it,” Layla said.

“Come on, Rory, evenyou’vegotta admit, some performances are more important than others,” Carlos said. He started to pace and gesture with both hands as he talked. “We bring him in here, we teach him our routines, we get whatever we can out of him, and then if he bails, he bails. Stuart will be back before nationals in January, anyway.”

“Knock on wood when you say that!” Stuart whispered. Carlos actually walked over to the bleachers and knocked three times on the bottom bench.

“I like that plan,” Layla said, pointing at Carlos.

Rory groaned. She very much didnotlike that plan. It left her with the possibility of more upheaval at any given moment. Rory didn’t like upheaval. In fact, she actively hated upheaval. She liked her world ordered, predictable, controllable. Bringing Jacob into any situation immediately made it volatile, unpredictable, and potentially disastrous.

“Rory, come on. What choice do you have?” Stuart asked gently.

She looked around, meeting the eyes of each of her friends. They all looked back at her with the same tentatively hopeful expression. It was touching, really. She didn’t wantto be the one to take that hope out of their eyes. She was the captain of this team, damn it. It was time for her to start acting like it.

“Okay,” she said, standing. “Let’s do this. But I really hope I never have to sayI told you so.”

“Please,” Layla said, knocking Rory with her hip. “You live to sayI told you so.”

She grabbed the folded uniform off the seat next to her, lifted her chin, and sauntered across the room, shoving open the door to the lobby of the athletics wing. Jacob stood up from one of the benches by the wall, while Gordon and the two freshmen turned to face her from the center of the room. Her heart pounded. She hated disappointing people, and she was about to disappoint three of them. Publicly, too, since it seemed more than half the people who had attended the tryout were still there, waiting for the results. Malia trained her phone on Rory, so she put on her brightest smile, knowing this was likely to end up on the school’s Instagram stories later.

“Thank you all so much for trying out for us today. Each of you did a fantastic job,” she said sincerely, looking each of the hopefuls in the eye. “I’m happy to announce that our newest member of the Woodmont High varsity cheerleading squad will be... Jacob Reilly.”

Jacob whooped and grabbed his little sister, twirling her around in a circle. Willow laughed and hugged him back. It was pretty sweet, actually. Rory considered the possibilitythat hedidcare. Maybe this would somehow be all right?

As Rory made her way over to him, Jacob put Willow down and wiped his hands on the back of his shorts. She looked him up and down, then shoved the uniform toward him. He took it in both hands.