—wrong.

“Parker did not have his hand up my skirt in the lobby,” I said patiently. “at makes no sense. Even ho’s do not let boys put hands up their skirts in the lobby when they have a whole dark theater at their disposal. Who told you that?”

He looked out over the parking lot, then gestured toward a group of three football players weaving among the cars. One of them stopped, put his hand over the top of the beer can he was holding, shook it up, and spewed it all over the hood of an outsized Lincoln Continental.

“Reginald Evans,” Adam said.

We both watched Reggie hightail it across the parking lot, away from the driver of the Lincoln, dodging cars like they were defensive tackles. I saw why he was the star running back on our high school team.

He was not, however, somebody I would trust for personal information about my friends. I said, “Reginald Evans can’t read. I was in Spanish with him last year.”

“Well, maybe he just can’t read Spanish.” Adam tracked Reggie’s path until he was looking at me again. “Miniskirt or what?” He did not sound appreciative as he said this. He sounded bitter.

“Or what?” I exclaimed. “In case you missed this when I explained it very carefully last night, I am pretending to be on a date with Parker, and I am dressed accordingly.”

“Oh, yeah? You never wore a miniskirt when you went out on a date with me.”

“I never went out on a date with you!”

“What do you call last Saturday night? You wore flipflops and my jean cutoffs.”

I huffed out my exasperation. “I call that hanging out all day at the festival on the lake, then spray painting our names on the bridge. Miniskirts are not appropriate attire for crawling around public structures. Somebody could look up my skirt and see my sexy panties.”

“If you tell me you are wearing sexy panties right now, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” I wasn’t challenging him. I was reminding him that his anger did not match anything he was actually going to do, and his own mouth was his biggest enemy.

He glared at me for a few seconds as my words sank in. en he sat back against the seat, let out a huge sigh, and fished in his pocket. He brought out his lighter and flicked it, watching the flame. “You didn’t even wear a miniskirt for that couple of weeks when you were pretending to date me.”

“That’s because you were taking me mud riding!” I pointed out. “Besides, I did wear a miniskirt for the first Vader party of the year.” It was even the same miniskirt I was wearing now, the only one I owned. It was my go-to outfit for intrigue.

He nodded. “You didn’t wear it to the party for my sake. You were trying to hook up with Sean.” I banged my head against the driver’s side window—on purpose, to emphasize my frustration, but a little harder than I’d intended. “Again with the Sean,” I said.

“Again with the Sean,” he agreed self-righteously.

Without raising my head from its resting place against the window, I said, “You’re not supposed to be jealous of Sean right now, Adam. You’re supposed to be jealous of Parker.”

“Oh, go ahead and make an ADHD joke,” he said. “Go ahead.”

“Adam!” I shouted. “I do not make ADHD jokes about you. Sean does that. I am your friend.” He looked out the passenger side window. “Is that what you are now?” he said to the glass.

“I don’t know what to say to you, Adam,” I told his back and his golden brown curls, which were getting longer and looked like he was grooming them about as often as he was shaving, i.e., never. “You’re determined to be mad at me no matter what.”

His shoulders rose and fell slowly with a deep breath. Still looking out the window, he said, “Tell me about your panties.” I was going to tell him the sexy panties were a joke. en it occurred to me that sexy panties were my friend. e whole thing might backfire on me if he believed I wore this mysterious lingerie for Parker. But I was hoping I’d made him feel sheepish enough about the ridiculous hand-up-the-skirt scenario. All that was left was to get Adam back in my corner. I did this by waving imaginary sexy panties at him.

“ey are red lace,” I said. “See-through. ey are those boy shorts, do you know what I mean? ey cut across my butt. ey’re kind of uncomfortable to sit on, actually.” I made this up based on my last glance into the window of the lingerie shop as I walked toward the sporting goods store. In reality I was wearing Powerpuff Girls panties I’d had since I was twelve.

Adam totally bought my story, though. He turned toward me with his eyes wide, but little frown lines remained between his brows. He flicked his lighter and held his thumb on the button so the flame burned steadily. He dipped his head to examine my thighs sticking out of my miniskirt. He was imagining the phantom panties. His gaze traveled up to my Slinky Cleavage-Revealing Top. Finally his eyes met mine. ey did not look friendly, exactly. I would not have asked him to borrow twenty dollars just then. They looked… lustful?

Yes, this was a lustful look, I was pretty sure, judging from the way my body answered. is look lit fuses in my heart and left trails of gunpowder down my limbs for the fire to burn along.

I wiggled on the seat, emphasizing that my imaginary lace boy shorts were cutting into my butt cheeks.

Adam’s mouth dropped open.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. I jumped, sure that my heart knocking against my chest in response to Adam’s lustful thoughts was going to kill me.

But it was only McGillicuddy, still sitting on the truck, knocking on the hood. en he twirled his finger in the air: Wrap it up. He was sweet to signal us without looking at us, so he could still tell Dad truthfully (sort of ) that he hadn’t seen us together. I would have felt overwhelmed with sisterly love for him at that moment if he hadn’t been disobeying my direct order to help me change Dad’s mind. He was guarding my fake date like a prisoner of war.

“Are you still mad at me?” I asked Adam.

He worked his jaw, still staring a hole through me, but he didn’t say a word. He flicked his lighter again.

“Fine.” I opened the driver’s door and slid out of the cab very, very slowly, letting my skirt ride up waaaaaaay too high to escape the notice of the parking lot. I calculated the precise height at which it would reveal the super-sexiness of Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup and stopped there, so that my phantom sex panties remained forever my secret.

“Lori—,” Adam growled.

I jumped down from the cab and slammed the door. Ha! Try that teen soap-opera business on me, would he? I was way ahead of him. I had stepped up my MTV intake for precisely this reason.

As I passed McGillicuddy, I called, “You and I are going to have a talk when we get home, young man.” He glared at me. “Are you sure you want to ride home with Parker after what he did?”

“He didn’t do anything, as Adam will tell you. Both of you were taken in by a running back who can’t tell la casa from qué pasa.” I flounced around the back of the Beamer—Adam had parked so close to it that there was no room to slip a piece of paper between the bumpers, much less me—and slid into the driver’s side, trailing my long sexy legs behind me for Adam’s benefit (and accidentally kicking over an RC Cola bottle standing upright in the parking space, which somewhat ruined the effect, what with the fizz. Note to self: Sexy exits do not include fizz).

“Parker, I am so sorry,” I gushed as soon as I’d closed us safely inside the car and locked the doors. “I know you’ve met them both before at some point, but in case you’ve forgotten, that’s my boyfriend, Adam, whom we’re trying to get me back together with, and that’s my brother. ey know about the plan, but their friend told them that you—” I took a deep breath. I’d just been boasting about my panties to Adam, but I couldn’t even bring myself to tell Parker what the ruckus was about. It was so embarrassing, not to mention far-fetched.

Or was it? According to the rumors, the old hand-up-the-skirt ploy wouldn’t have been new to Parker. However, it definitely didn’t go with the vibe I’d gotten from him since I picked him up for this date. He’d put his arm around me when I’d asked him to in the theater, yes, but he hadn’t tried to go down my shirt, which was standard eighth grade fare in the back row of the movie theater (or so I gathered—not that I knew this from personal experience), and which I wouldn’t have put past him. I’d been willing to take the risk in the name of getting Adam back.

Parker said in a small voice, “Could you get me out of here?”

I looked over at him, his dark hair gelled just so, his shoulders broad in a preppy pink shirt that no male in town would have been caught dead in but that somehow worked on the Birmingham boy. A lot of girls said he had a mesmerizing stare that made them want to take their bras off, but to me it had always looked a lot like bug eyes, and right now he was staring bug-eyed at Adam and McGillicuddy way up in the cab of the truck. They glared right back down at him.

“Sure. Do you want to go back to my house?”

“Will they be there?” he asked, bug eyes never leaving the horrifying threat in front of him.

“Er, no. My brother has a date with his girlfriend. I don’t know what he’s doing here, come to think of it. And Adam wouldn’t dare set foot in my house.” I wasn’t sure this was true. The longer I knew Adam, the more I realized there wasn’t much he wouldn’t dare do, even in the face of my extremely angry father.

Hey, great idea! “Yeah, let’s go to my house.” With Parker quickly losing his enthusiasm for this fake date, I needed to squeeze all the juice out of him while I could.

at meant introducing him to my dad. Over the next few days my dad would ask around town about Parker and find out about the many horrors, ideally including the time Parker and his prep school friends filled the famous fountain in the center of Birmingham’s Southside with cheese grits.

Sticking my tongue out at Adam—he just turned away—I cranked the engine of the Beamer, looked carefully behind me for football players and monster trucks and RC

Colas, and backed out of the space. I half expected Adam to follow right behind me. Half hoped he would. Because that would have given me another chance to argue with him. Arguing with him seemed to be allowed by McGillicuddy and, bad as it was, it was miles better than no contact with Adam at all.

But an entire drive of watching the rearview mirror assured me I’d shamed Adam and my brother sufficiently to shake them off my tail, damn it. As I parked the car in my driveway, I turned my attention back to Parker, who was curled into a ball in the passenger seat, shaking. “Oh God, I’m so sorry about the air-conditioner. Why didn’t you say something?” I’d cranked the cold air all the way up, and Parker was paying the price in frostbite. Not everybody got all hot and bothered when Adam stared at them, apparently.

Parker didn’t uncurl from his ball.

“Hey.” I reached over and rubbed his knee in a friendly warming-your-skin way, not a way that would earn me the hickey from Parker that had been claimed by several sophomore girls whose stories I didn’t entirely trust anymore. “Let’s go in and meet my dad.” I thought he might regain some of his bravado by the time we got inside. But as I opened the door in the garage and crossed from the kitchen into the den, he continued to trail after me like a kitten with PTSD from being shot with way too many Nerf darts. ere was a reason the Vaders’ cat did not often venture out of the master bedroom. Parker would never scare my dad while he acted like this.

I would have to rely on Parker’s reputation getting back to my dad. en my dad would say, “My goodness, that timid boy is actually a man-slut? By analogy, Adam Vader, who seems to have a death wish, probably has his shit together after all!” Of course, this was the best-case scenario, or perhaps the in-my-dreams scenario. In retrospect, this was one of the reasons my plans had a tendency to backfire.

I walked into the den and stopped so fast that Parker plowed right into me. Dad was sitting on the couch all right, and Frances was curled up next to him.

In a miniskirt!

Well, maybe not a miniskirt. It might have been mid–calf length, and I got the first impression that it was a miniskirt because she usually favored floor-length hippie garb. She’d kicked off her Birkenstocks to reveal freshly painted red toenails. In short, for Frances, she looked adorable. I was sure this was an accident.

“Hi!” I exclaimed as if I’d totally expected my ex–au pair. But I truly hadn’t bargained on Frances being there. is threw a monkey wrench in my plans, though I wasn’t sure yet whether it was a big sucker like a pipe wrench or something that would be easier for me to manage like a little Allen wrench. We all exchanged greetings and I introduced Frances and my dad to Parker.

“Parker Buchanan.” My dad stood and gave him the firm handshake and the full grin he used with clients. “Nice to see you again.”

“Yes, sir.” Parker sounded as if he might faint.

“All right then!” I announced. “Parker and I are going up to my bedroom.” I figured if this date with Parker had any thrust left with my dad, it was the fact that we were going to hang out in a room with a bed in it. I did not add that when we got to said bedroom, we were not going to make out. We were going to have a long talk about how my dad already knew Parker and why it was nice to see him again.

We started up the stairs, Parker ahead of me, when my dad called, “Lori, can I have a word with you alone?” Parker paused and turned his traumatized kitten bug eyes on me. I nodded for him to go on into my room. As I bounced back down the stairs by myself, I resisted the urge to rub my hands together with glee. My dad wanted to give me a Talking-To about Parker! Hooray!