Triple Love Score by Brandi Megan Granett

shoulder.
    “Hey,” Scott said. “How’s school? I’ve been meaning to ask you all day.”
    “It’s great,” she said. She fumbled with the matches.
    “Here I’ll light them, you hand them to me, wicks up.”
    “I’m staying at the shore for the summer session.”
    “Stanton didn’t mind?”
    “Why would he?”
    “I don’t know. He just always struck me as the overprotective type.”
    Miranda laughed. “Over-protective about what?”
    “You know, parent stuff, like curfews and—”
    “And what?”
    “You know, boys. Men. That stuff,” Scott stammered.
    She punched him lightly on the arm. “There’s nothing to worry about in that area. I haven’t been out on a single date at school.”
    “Liar,” he said. “There’s no way you stay home and study on Saturday.”
    “I didn’t say I stay home. I go out with the girls from my floor.”
    “Oh. And men just don’t factor into this equation?”
    “Sometimes the girls go home with guys after. But I don’t.”
    “You don’t?” Scott looked up and caught her gaze.
    “I don’t,” she repeated.
    “Ouch,” he yelped. The match in his hand burned down to singe the top of his thumbnail.
    Avery picked that very moment to re-appear. “Ten,” she said. “You have only launched ten?”
    “We were having trouble with the matches,” Scott said.
He held up his hand as evidence.
    “Matches indeed,” Avery said. “Stanton, Stan—ton,” she called out across the pool. “I need your lighter. And don’t pretend you don’t have one in your upper left breast pocket next to the Cuban cigar I forbade you to smoke.”
    The men in the circle around Stanton chuckled at his expense. Stanton quickly produced the lighter and handed it to Avery. “Sorry, my love,” he said.
    “No sorry. Take over for these two, light one hundred. Miranda, please go put on your evening dress. Scott, please make sure Bunny has another drink.”
    By the time Miranda came back down, the caterer served dinner,and only one empty chair remained,next to Avery’s cousin Phyllis from Long Island. She had six children and a fascination with pointing out what each one would and would not eat from the evening’s menu, even though the kids stayed back in Long Island that night with her mother-in-law. Miranda watched Scott seated two tables over, surrounded by the young associates of Stanton’s law firm. Their navy dinner jackets formed a solid wall around their table. Only Scott had his off. The spotlighting Avery had designed for the party highlighted the bright white of his shirt, and his smile. Miranda let the evening slip by, not touching her food once.
    “Oh,” said Cousin Phyllis. “You’re like my youngest, Suzanne. She can never eat at a party. Too nervous.”
    The next weekend Miranda went out with Danielle and a few other girls from their apartment complex. Toward the end of the night, she met Tommy Keenan at the bar that sold only booze, hamburgers, and fried Oreos. He walked up and asked her if she was as sweet as she looked. She held up her fingers, coated in powdered sugar from the fried Oreos. “May I?” he asked pointing to her hand. “I have a thing for sugar.”
    Miranda nodded, unsure what she had just agreed to.
    He bowed his head and sucked the sugar from her fingers.
    She let him.
    The following weekend, she told him in advance where they would be. The week after that he was driving her to the beach. Despite the finger incident, or maybe because of it, Miranda made sure that every time she and Tommy went out it was with the group or in daylight. Nothing more could happen unless they were alone after dark; at least that’s what she told herself. Not that Tommy didn’t try. He certainly tried. All June he tried. But Miranda would giggle and give in to little things, each time getting as close as she could without having to go all the way, without having to say the word condom or even think about going to the student health clinic to ask for birth