Even Ruby was shocked by the fact that she couldn’t have sounded more like her mother if she’d tried. And as much as she loved her mom, she really didn’t want to be a mother figure to Drew. At all. She shook herself to try to get the real Ruby back.
“Whoa,” Drew said, holding up both hands. “What’s got into you?”
“Nothing.” She pulled out her own notebook and flipped to an empty page. “Just ignore my inner geriatric.” She laughed nervously, and before she could contain it, the laugh turned into one of her embarrassing snorts. She clapped her hands over her mouth, mortified—until she glanced across at Drew and noticed he was actually smiling, which softened his whole face and went right up to his eyes.
In an attempt to get herself under control, she drew in a breath and released it slowly. Except then her laughter morphed into a loud hiccup. She kept her hand over her mouth as another one followed. She held her breath for a count of ten. Which seemed to make things worse, as other hiccups followed in quick succession.
“Sorry,” she said, through her fingers. She didn’t need to look around to realize that she was drawing a lot of embarrassing attention from everyone in the café. But Drew didn’t look like he minded—in fact, he seemed to be enjoying himself. And she was enjoying herself so much that part of her didn’t really care.
“Don’t be.” Drew laughed.
“Why not? Everyone is looking at us. And I know how much you love being the center of attention.” The thought of why he didn’t was enough to stop her laughter. She stifled a milder hiccup and her shoulders shook from the effort.
“It’s the first time I’ve properly laughed since…” The fire. The words hung in the air between them, even though he didn’t finish his sentence. But even though they’d both grown more serious, his face still looked more relaxed than Ruby had seen since his return to school.
She hated the thought of him not having laughed at all in nearly a year. She had read somewhere that most people laughed at least twelve times a day. That was a lot of laughing he’d missed.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
“Stop saying you’re sorry,” Drew said, though there was no anger in his voice. “It’s not your fault.”
“Okay, I won’t apologize again. As long as you promise to laugh more.” She hitched in a breath, waiting for his reply.
“I’ll try.” The corners of his mouth turned up in a ghost of a smile. Without thinking, she reached out and placed her hand on his arm, just to show that she appreciated the fact that he would try to pull himself into the light, at least some of the time.
“Okay,” she said, sitting upright and drawing her hand back from Drew’s arm. “Let’s get this sucker started, or we’ll have to suffer the wrath of Brad. Which isn’t scary, but it would be loud and annoying. And I, for one, don’t wish to sit through another speech about letting down the group.”
The smile was back. He was devastating when he smiled. “Definitely,” Drew said. “Don’t worry. We won’t be letting anyone down. I think I still remember how to be a functional student.” He rubbed his chin. “How many volunteers do we need?” he asked.
She leaned back, feeling a bit ridiculous for not having thought of that question before. “Ten, maybe? Twenty? A hundred?”
“Definitely not a hundred. It would take forever to analyze the results,” Drew said.
“Oh yeah. I didn’t think of that.” Maybe it was a good thing she hadn’t had a ready answer. Letting Drew take over this bit would get him more involved than he had been before, which could only be a good thing in terms of pulling him into the present so he couldn’t dwell on the past.
“We need two groups,” Drew said, sketching out some plans in his notebook. “The real group and the placebo group. So twenty would be a good number. Ten in each.”
“Perfect. And where should we get the volunteers?” she asked.
“Depends if we’re dividing them by gender or level of activity. Or both.” Drew frowned.
“I should have read the project guidelines more closely,” she confessed, pleasantly surprised that Drew had given the project this much thought. “Thanks for making me step back and think about this.”
He hitched up a shoulder in a half shrug, though he looked like he didn’t hate the fact that she’d complimented him.
“So,” she continued. “Since we’re measuring athletic performance, we should group them by both. Any ideas?”
He sat forward in his chair, and she loved seeing him so engaged instead of slouching in his chair looking like he’d rather shrink into his hoodie and disappear than contribute. “I think we should just do athletes and divide them into male and female. So that means we will have five in each group.”
“How about approaching the school field hockey and golf teams? Ten girls and ten guys. Boom.” Knowing most of the athletes on the teams, she figured they’d all be up for the experiment, since if they proved caffeine improved their performance, they could just down a few Cokes to gain an edge at game time. “I’ll ask the girls and you ask the boys.”
“Can you—? You’ll have to ask the hockey teams.” Drew’s voice flattened, and he slouched back in his chair again.
“Why?” Ruby frowned, wondering what had caused his abrupt behavior shift. Then it hit her: Blake played field hockey. The boys’ team wouldn’t agree to anything if Drew asked them, and the girls might say no in solidarity, too. “Sure. Not a problem.” She brought her pen to her mouth and chewed on the cap, a slightly gross habit she’d had since junior high. “We could always find volunteers from another school,” she suggested as an alternative.
“No. It would make it much harder to coordinate,” Drew replied.
“Okay, I’ll do all the asking. You can do the spreadsheets,” she reassured him. The tension in his shoulders seemed to lessen, at least a little, at the thought of not having to interact with other humans. “How do we decide who’s going to be in which group?”
“Once we have the names, we’ll divide them up by gender. Five male hockey players, five female hockey players, five male golfers, five female golfers. We’ll assign them a number so the results will remain anonymous. And only the two of us should know the number for each person.”
Ruby felt mesmerized watching Drew talk. It was like the more he got involved in what he was saying the less conscious he seemed of his body and the more relaxed he seemed. His sweatshirt hood had fallen away from his neck, and he didn’t even seem to notice.
“Why does that matter? What about Brad, Ricky, and Jess?” She knew the answer, really. She was just enjoying watching him.
“To stop anyone finding out whether they are on caffeine or not.”
“Aren’t you the scientific one?” Ruby teased.
“Yeah, this is real hard-core science.” Drew laughed.
“You’re good at it,” she added, winking at him. It hit her that he wasn’t the only one loosening up. She wasn’t freaking out constantly over the thought of saying the wrong thing. She couldn’t have wished for it to be any better.
“Hmmm. If you say so.” Drew ducked his head and grew overly absorbed in his notes, but she noticed he was smiling.
“Looks like we have it sorted out,” she said. “Now what? There’s no point in going back to school yet. Why don’t we go for a walk in the park and then get some food somewhere?” Oh God. It almost seemed like a date.
“Let’s go back to my place,” he suggested. Which felt even more date-like. “My parents won’t be there, so we’ll have it to ourselves. We’ll stop at the supermarket on the way and get something to eat.”
Not a date. Of course he would feel much better not being outside where people could see him, she realized. Even though she knew there were a hundred reasons for them not to be alone together, she went along with it. “As long as you don’t expect me to cook anything. Making a sandwich is still my limit.” Drew probably didn’t remember how Blake used to tease her about being hopeless in the kitchen. Unlike him. Blake loved cooking, and he was always making meals and baking cakes. Ruby knew that with college looming, she should really learn to make something other than sandwiches and ramen noodles, just so she could look after herself when she no longer had her brother and her mother to rely on. But her mom had never minded that she didn’t cook—just said that Ruby would get the hang of it when she had to. And, of course, she made sure that Ruby always did her share of cleaning up after.