12 Weeks, 12 Dates

Chapter 5: She's a Knockout!

And I present to you Chapter 5! Thank you to all those who read this and don't be afraid to comment :)

**************************************************************************************************************************

Chapter 5: She's a Knockout!

“He’s your…COUSIN?!” Naomi shouted the next day. Danny was too busy laughing his heart out to do or say anything about the subject of me having gone a date with my cousin Blake.

“That…that’s…so…GROSS!” Danny blared out, leaning on Naomi for support. “You went on a date with your cousin!”

Well, I guess he could manage to get that out along with pointing a finger at me. Yep, that’s all I needed to make me feel better, finger-pointing and laughing.

“Shut up!” I covered his mouth with my palm. “It’s all your guys’ fault. If you hadn’t forced me to go on the date—”

“But Piper,” now Naomi was having trouble keeping her laughter subdued, “we didn’t force you to take the bet. You could’ve ignored us every time we brought up the dating subject, but no. You took the bet knowing its consequences.”

I swear if looks could kill, she would have dropped dead after the glare I gave her. “But you didn’t tell me you would be setting me up with a blood relative!”

Danny straightened up and put an arm around Nay’s shoulders. “Come on Piper, you know we meant no harm.” They both proceeded with tilting in their heads and batting their eyelashes.

“I’m out of here.”

Naomi grabbed onto my arm and stopped me. “Wait Piper, I’m sorry. I had no idea Blake was your cousin. I thought you would have noticed that if it did happen, which I never intended to do anyway ‘cause that’s just plain gross. The point is: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

I crossed my arms, still not satisfied. She didn’t have to go through the hell of having your family members from all over the place know that you dated your cousin.

“I have another thing I want to add,” Danny said. He took a deep breath, “You guys didn’t kiss, right? ‘Cause if you did, that would be so wrong!”

“Shut up!” I screamed.

He just fell right back into his laughing fit while Nay tried to apologize. I ignored them and continued down the hall. Why did I have to take the bet? Like Naomi said, I could have just overlooked their annoying statements about my love life (if you could really call it that). Then, I wouldn’t have to bear the scar of having dated my own cousin.

I went to the bathroom to console myself, even though I was raising my pathetic factor by one thousand percent. I waited in there until a few minutes after the final warning bell rang. I took a deep, calming breath in and let it out, just like all those yoga instructors say to do when you’re stressed, and ventured out into the jungle that was known as high school.

When I stepped out, no one was in the hallways. Strange, there’s usually at some people out there. I rounded the corner for my next class when I saw Missy Sullivan, a really smart/popular/chatty girl who thought she was all that and then some. She would have been cool in my perspective if she wasn’t such a bitch.

She was standing on a ladder, painting on a banner (you can get out of class for that?) an advertisement for some charity thing our school was doing for the homeless. If I could just get by her quickly, I wouldn’t have to listen to her constant bitchy gibbering. I took a few steps back, getting ready to charge by.