Chapter 23
23
Hayden
senior year
“So, how goes the prom date search?” I ask as Natalia adjusts her safety goggles, moving her neatly knotted French braid down one shoulder to avoid it from getting in the way of our lab samples.
She groans. “Ugh, don’t ask.”
“I find it hard to believe that not a single person has asked you.”
“No, I’ve been asked. I just…” She looks at me, her shoulders dropping as if defeated in this whole search for the perfect prom date. “There’s really no one I want to go with.”
“Oh, so you have options,” I tease.
“Hayden,” she whines, silently begging me to stop.
“My offer’ s still on the table. You could save yourself from all this drama and go with the future prom king of 2014.” My brows waggle at her as her mouth scrunches into an angry pout.
“Aren’t you going with Jenny?”
“Who told you?”
“Jenny.”
I shake my head. While Jenny and I had indeed set plans to go to prom together before we broke up, I assumed I was the last person she wanted to go to prom with. Especially when her parting words after I told her things weren’t working out were: “You’re a real grade-A asshole, Hayden.”
“I didn’t know you two were friends,” I comment.
“Trust me,” she says, her eyes wide as her hand comes up between us, her palm facing me to deny what even I can’t believe, “we aren’t. She just mentioned it in passing.”
“I don’t know. We talked about going before we broke up, so I guess she just assumed we were still going.” I clear my throat, taking the pipette that’s sitting next to her and squeezing iodine into the cell sample.
“Maybe I should just skip the whole thing,” she says. “Tell my mom I got the flu at the last minute or something.”
“I don’t know why you won’t go with me,” I tease. “I may have to tweak some of my break-dancing skills, but it can’t be that bad.”
“Hayden,” she huffs, placing her own pipette down. “I’m glad that you find my drama so amusing, but I don’t need a pity date. Plus, if you’re going with Jenny, how’s that going to work out? We each take an arm?”
“That actually doesn’t sound too bad,” I joke.
She snarls in response, and I laugh. “I’m messing with you, Marquez. Come on?—”
Just then, we both look up to see Alex approach our table. Alex Spencer, known for being the rich boy on campus. Everything handed to him was done so by his daddy, like his silver BMW and expensive shoes. I honestly don’t think he’s ever heard the word “no.”
“Hey, Nat,” he calls before nodding a greeting to me. “’Sup, Marshall.”
“Hi, Alex,” she answers, pulling her gaze away with a last second warning glare in my direction.
Alex looks at me again and then back at Natalia before we both set down our equipment, giving him our attention.
“Uh, so I was wondering…” he says, his voice cracking. He coughs into his fist, causing a few heads to turn in our direction. “If you didn’t have a date for prom yet, I was thinking maybe you would want to go with me.”
I smirk as Natalia looks at me. Her eyes peer up through the scratched goggles as she purses her lips together, her brows scrunching her face into a cute scowl. Then she turns to face Alex, her mouth shifting into a fake smile before saying, “Sure.” She pauses, quickly glancing at me again before smiling even wider at Alex. “I’d love to go with you.”
Alex smiles proudly. “Great,” he says before lightly punching my arm and walking away.
“Problem solved,” I whisper, unable to hide the little bit of resentful snark seeping through my voice.
Really? Alex Spencer? She couldn’t have picked a more mismatched prom date for her if she had randomly plucked one out from the cafeteria with her eyes closed.
She ignores my comment, focusing her attention on our lab project instead.
I nudge a little closer, causing her arm to slip and accidentally squeeze out an extra drop of iodine. She finally looks at me, practically glaring.
“Great,” she deadpans. “Now I have to prepare my sample all over again.”
But I don’t apologize or make some kind of annoying joke. Instead, I keep my eyes on her.
“What?” she asks, wiping the iodine that dripped on the tabletop before grabbing a new slide. She raises her goggles and looks up at me .
I shrug. “Don’t forget to save me a dance,” I say as nonchalantly as possible. “You know, when Alex disappoints you with his embarrassing dance moves.”
Our movements synchronize, our heads lifting to look in the direction that Alex walked to. He pops the collar of his too-white polo shirt that fits a little loosely on his thin frame before rounding the corner back to his table where his own lab partner waits. He makes some quipped joke, to which his lab partner giggles with her hand covering her mouth.
I scoff, looking back at Natalia, watching her hands move across her neatly organized side of the lab table while I stand nearby, taking on the role as doting assistant. “I’m holding you to that dance.”
Her eyes glare through an eye roll. And yet her lips tell a different story, one that says, Test me, Marshall. I dare you. I see it in the way one corner of her mouth twists while the other suppresses a smile, fighting what she wants to hide but can’t.
I feel a small, challenging fire light through me, suddenly unable to wait to hit the dance floor just to prove to her that I would have been the better date to prom over Alex.
“I’ll take that as a ‘Yes, Hayden. Please save me from Alex when he embarrasses me and steps on my toes until they’re bloody,’” I mock in a high-pitched tone meant to imitate hers. My voice rings a little loudly, and I know people are looking, including Alex. She pinches my side, causing my body to bow. “Ah!” I flinch.
“You’re going to get us into trouble!” she hisses, her face turning a shade of crimson, the tips of her ears redder than the rest of her face. She turns to face the table again, adjusting her goggles so they sit squarely on her face. But even from her feigned annoyance to her stern scolding, I can see that twist of a smile around the apples of her cheeks as she shakes her head.
present
“So what did you do after that?” Natalia asks, engrossed in Dexter’s story.
Dexter shrugs. “I asked her for her number,” he says nonchalantly as if there’s no other option besides asking the woman you publicly humiliate on a date.
“After you explained to me the dangers of going for a run in the park in broad daylight,” Molly, Dexter’s date, adds to Dexter’s recount of their meet-cute while rolling her eyes.
I shake my head, remembering the day when I joined Dexter and a group of his friends in the park for a friendly game of touch football. Dexter overthrew the ball only to hit Molly square on the head, knocking her off her feet.
“But he made it up to me,” Molly says softly while placing a hand on Dexter’s forearm. “After he picked me up off the ground, he bought me ice cream.”
“That’s hardly a fair trade,” I comment.
“Well,” Dexter says, smirking in Molly’s direction, “we did other stuff too.”
Molly slaps Dexter’s arm as his smile widens. Natalia looks at me with a face using every expressive muscle. From her scrunched-up nose and pressed lips suppressing a laugh, to the wrinkles in her forehead lifting her brows and widening her eyes, she looks so damn cute.
My hand moves to Natalia’s back, pressing lightly to the bare space between her shoulder blades. When she feels me touch her, she smiles wider. She smiles in a way that doesn’t feel forced or synthetic. It’s the exact same smile I remember too deeply from what seems like an entirely different life. And that pang I felt when I realized I could never risk whatever this is that we have, whatever small thread of friendship and nostalgia we’ve been clinging to, returns. It reminds me of how it felt like when I lost her the first time and how I can’t go through that again.
I’m about to lean toward her to pointedly ask what “other stuff” she thinks Dexter is referring to when her eyes lock on something behind me. Or rather, someone.
“Hayden?”
I look over my shoulder to find Jacky dressed in a navy-blue dress, matching the other members of the wedding party, with her hair piled on top of her head. I don’t mean to, but I can’t help but compare her to Natalia. Bright and beaming in her light green dress, looking like she stepped out of a fairy tale in contrast to Jacky’s dull bridesmaid attire. The looks of every other male dressed in a suit similar to mine lingering on Natalia long enough for them to realize that she didn’t come alone don’t go unnoticed either.
Jacky smiles expectantly at me, her hands clasped in front of her as she waits for me to greet her.
“Hi,” she says when I stay quiet. “It’s good to see you.”
I stand, the legs of the chair scraping against the wood as the back of my legs push it out from beneath me.
“Hi, Jacky,” I finally say.
My voice sounds strained. Too formal and awkward. I hear Dexter snicker from the table. When I turn to look back at Natalia, she smiles politely, her eyes moving from me to Jacky and then back to me.
“This is Natalia,” I say a little too loudly and abruptly .
“Hi,” Jacky says, her face barely turning enough to get a quick glimpse of Natalia. “So listen,” she continues, sidling herself up to me and grazing her hand along the inside of my arm. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you since the Fourth of July.”
“Uh…um…” I stutter. “Yeah. Sorry about that. I’ve just been really busy.”
“Well,” she continues, oblivious to my hesitance, “when you get back to the city, give me a call. We can catch up.”
She stares up at me, playing this one-sided game of seduction as if unaware that we’re in front of an audience and that I didn’t come alone.
“We were just about to have a dance,” I announce, reaching for Natalia’s hand and pulling her to stand next to me as her heels lightly clack against the wood floor. Natalia’s brow furrows, showing her confusion from the sudden shift in our conversation.
“Oh,” Jacky says, taking a small step back. Her eyes narrow, her gaze moving to Natalia in the small space between us that seems to be growing smaller and smaller by the second.
“It was nice seeing you,” I say quickly. I practically drag Natalia to the dance floor, with her hurried steps following behind me. Once we stop on the glossy wood floor full of wedding guests moving to the music, I pull Natalia closer to me.
“What the hell was that?” she finally asks, her left hand resting on my bicep.
“What?”
Her face deadpans.
I sigh. “Someone I hooked up with over the summer.”
“And why are we running away from her?”
“I’ve been kind of avoiding her,” I confess. “Not returning her calls and stuff like that.”
“Why?”
I shrug as my hand on Natalia’s lower back pushes us closer together to avoid stepping on an overactive flower girl twirling with her small wicker basket worn over her head like a hat. “It was just a one-time thing. I wasn’t looking for anything serious. I thought she wasn’t either.”
She makes this little tsk sound that’s meant to be scolding but comes off as playful instead. “Is that why you brought me? To avoid her?”
Instead of answering, I smile sheepishly.
“Hayden,” she scolds.
“I know!” I finally cave, the strain of guilt and apology spreading across my face. “I know. It was a shitty thing to do. But it just kind of happened. I mean, we were all just drinking and having a good night. And one thing led to another.”
Her right hand releases my left, gripping my shoulders as she gives me a small shake and a firm squeeze. My free hand moves to her waist as we both continue to dance, the music moving us rather than our own feet.
“So…” Her voice trails. “It wasn’t serious?”
Her question doesn’t hold the expected deride I thought it would, her finding humor in the fact that my active single lifestyle finally caught up to me. Instead, it carries the hint of caution and something familiar. Like the light pang of tenderness that seeps through her aloofness when she brings up my random dates with the women I meet on Cupid’s Bet.
“No,” I answer earnestly. “It wasn’t. And it’s been a couple of months since I actually spoke to her.”
She nods. “It sounds like that roster of yours is growing in length, Marshall,” she says, a lightness lifting her voice to make it sound playful. “Those Cupid’s Bet girls have some competition. Maybe you should petition for your own season of The Bachelor .”
“Cupid’s Bet girls?” I ask, a single brow curved upward in amusement. I try to suppress the smile I can’t help when I see the small flush of pink rise from her collarbone, like a horizon of cherry sorbet brushing across her delicate skin.
She lightly shrugs, her flush disappearing almost instantly. “I gave up keeping track of all your conquests. I’ve decided to call your groupies ‘Cupid’s Bet girls’ from here on out. It’s just easier.”
“And you’re not one of those groupies?”
She gnaws on her lower lip, the deep color on her lips contrasting against her white teeth. Her mouth twitches with a smile that forces its way through before she says, “You haven’t wooed me yet, Marshall.”
“I guess I need to improve my efforts,” I whisper, lowering my head so my cheek grazes against her temple. I don’t mean for my voice to grow low, the need to pull her as close to me as possible seeping through the disguised want in my voice, but it does.
With her cheek turned toward my shoulder and her body shaking in a playful giggle, I chuckle. My hand spreads the length of her flank as my thumb grazes the sensitive spot along her ribcage. My face turns so our foreheads are almost touching, and Natalia looks up at me with her hands hooked around my neck and my arms cinching around her waist. Our bodies continue to move to their own accord, swaying to the music as we develop a rhythm that’s ours.
As the groom, Ashton had a couple of conditions to his wedding. Such as a red velvet-flavored cake, an open bar, and a wedding singer with a live band to play popular covers in place of a tacky DJ. That last one was one Carly couldn’t even disagree with. And right now, as the wedding singer’s smooth, velvety voice sings Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” while strumming along to a guitar hanging around her neck and a low violin playing alongside by a member of her band, I understand the appeal. A DJ wouldn’t have provided this cloistered bubble expanding large enough to fit only me and Natalia. It wouldn’t have sliced off this moment in time where I feel as if everything around us has vanished, leaving only us two swaying in the middle of the dance floor. And my heart wouldn’t have this single moment where it hopes, just for a second, for more.
“Natalia,” I whisper into the small space between us. It’s only inches from my lips to hers. That nagging thought, the musing that keeps popping in my head, making me wonder if our kiss was just a fluke or if every kiss with Natalia would leave me practically ethereal, causes me to lower my head an inch closer.
I feel Natalia’s hand grip me tighter, and it causes my heart to stutter. It actually feels like it skips a beat as I remember a moment from our past that’s been brought to us, front and center. It’s as if someone took a knife and cut out the edges of that specific memory, only to prove to us not to venture down this path. And just as quickly, the urge to kiss her disappears as I realize I’m not ready to risk losing her again.
“Thank you,” I finish as her round brown eyes look up at me. “Thanks for coming tonight.” I thank her instead of saying what I really want to say: I’m falling for you all over again .