“That’s . . .” I didn’t have a word for it.
“A really great excuse to do it,” she finished for me. “He couldn’t move, so I was in control. I think that’s been my problem all along.”
“You seem happy about it,” I said. Then I laughed at the understatement. She was blushing and glowing.
“I am happy. He’s so great.” She looked into the mirror again and smiled at the sleeping hulk of him. “For not being the perfect couple, I can’t imagine it working out any more perfectly.”
She must have suddenly remembered that Sawyer and I were the Perfect Couple That Never Was, in name only. She gave me a guilty look and put her eyes back on the road.
The parking lot at the stadium where the band contest was being held was littered with cars and buses. Harper cruised until she found our school buses, with our band hanging out the windows. She parked nearby.
While she was still helping Brody maneuver his damaged body out of her back seat, I popped out of the car and thought I recognized the car next to us. “Quinn and Noah are here,” I mused, peering inside to see if it was really Quinn’s. I was looking for the interchangeable components of his black leather Goth look. What I saw instead was Sawyer’s madras button-down.
“Sawyer’s here.” Looking up, I recognized him before the words had escaped my mouth. In his mascot costume, he was bouncing along underneath the bus windows, high-fiving the marching band.
“Hey, pelican,” I heard Tia call, “your girlfriend’s looking for you.”
Sawyer turned and saw me.
And least, I thought he did. I still wasn’t sure which part of the bird head he saw from.
And then he was loping toward me with his wings open.
I crashed into him. His arms enveloped me. He squeezed me, picked me up, and twirled me in a circle. I never wanted to let him go. But the pelican was always kind to me. Sawyer was less likely to forgive.
When he finally put me down, I said, “Thank you for the necklace.” I fingered it. “Or, thanks to your dad.”
He nodded. Whereas this would have been a movement of an inch for anybody else, his beak moved up and down a foot.
“I’m sorry about last night.”
He hugged me again.
“I don’t want you to act like everything’s okay between us in costume, when you’re actually still mad.”
He shrugged.
“Well, it matters to me,” I said. “You have a hard time showing me how you feel when you’re not in the costume. I have a hard time showing you how I feel at all. I’d really like us to try again. It took me a while, and a conversation with my dad, and another long while, to figure out that I love you with all my heart.”
He put his hand over his own heart.
Then he reached up and tugged upward on his head. The thing was so big that it took a few seconds to pull off. Underneath, his hair was a riot of every shade of blond, and his eyes were bright blue. Looking deep into my eyes, he whispered, “Say that again, when I’m not in costume.”
“I love you,” I said, “with all my heart.”
He put his free feathery glove into my hair and kissed me deeply.
“Wooooooo,” the band on the bus moaned appreciatively, which made us break the kiss. Damn band.
Investigating, Ms. Nakamoto hung from the pole inside the bus and leaned down the staircase, out the doorway. “Mr. De Luca, Ms. Gordon, this is a school function.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I called.
“We’ll get back to this later tonight,” Sawyer told me knowingly. He put his head on.
Swinging hands, we waited for Brody to limp over, followed by Harper, Noah, and Quinn. As we walked toward the stadium in the orange light of late afternoon, I wondered if we’d be allowed into a band competition with Sawyer dressed as a six-foot bird.
We would find a way.