Chapter Two
“Is Elliot going to ask Madison out soon?” Chelsea asked as she chomped on a carrot stick next to Damon in the lunchroom.
Damon shrugged. “He hasn’t said.”
“Well, maybe you should ask him.”
Damon sighed. Chelsea wasn’t his girlfriend, but they’d been hooking up for the past two weeks. It was her idea to get Elliot and her best friend Madison to go to prom together since Madison was newly single. Damon thought it was a brilliant plan. He didn’t want to go to prom without Elliot.
But Elliot was dragging his feet on the asking part.
“I mean…” Damon paused to chug his carton of milk. “Elliot already said he’d go with her, and Madison already said she’d go with him. Why does he have to ask her?”
Damon opened his second carton of milk. His coach said he needed more protein, and since his mom refused to buy the protein mixes all the other guys had, he had to get his protein from “whole foods.”
Chelsea rubbed her eyes. “Because Damon, Madison agreed to this on the condition that Elliot would ask her in a very public manner to make Jason jealous.”
Damon narrowed his eyes and put down his milk. “Wait. You did not tell me that.”
“Yes, I did.”
“No, pretty sure you didn’t.”
“I did,” Chelsea said. “Remember when you were on the phone with Elliot the day I came over to your house? I reminded you to remind him about Madison.”
“Yeah. Which I did.”
“And I told you to tell him to make it a public asking out to make Jason jealous.”
Damon’s jaw worked. He definitely didn’t remember her telling him this…
Or if she did, he wasn’t paying attention.
If Damon was on the phone with Elliot when Chelsea said this, then yeah, he probably wasn’t paying attention.
Elliot didn’t call Damon much. He preferred texting and hated being on camera, which meant when Damon saw the incoming video call brighten his phone—with a shitty picture he’d taken of Elliot when he fell asleep and Damon put his long hair into pigtails—it’d felt sacred. Damon’s stomach had flipped.
Because, you know, it was probably an emergency if he was calling.
It hadn’t been an emergency. Or, at least, not something that Damon would classify as an emergency. Elliot, however, probably did think it was.
Elliot couldn’t find his house keys, and one of his parents didn’t put the spare key back under the frog statue after the last time they used it.
And what do you know? Somehow, his keys were in Damon’s backpack.
He told Elliot he had no idea how they got there.
But, of course, Elliot could come over to get them.
Damon spent the next fifteen minutes trying to come up with a plan to get Chelsea to leave without pissing her off because if Elliot was coming over, Damon could probably convince him to play a game of Wizard Combat Zone 2.
And one game would turn into two, then Damon’s mom would call them for dinner, and Elliot would have been tricked into hanging out with Damon even though he’d told him that he had to “study.”
So yeah. Damon was distracted when Chelsea was explaining the details, thinking about his tricking Elliot into hanging out plan.
“Chelsea,” Damon said. “There is no way Elliot is going to go for this. He’s too…you know.”
Chelsea pursed her lips. “I know. It probably wouldn’t even work. Jason isn’t going to be jealous of a gay guy asking Madison out, but I thought since Elliot hasn’t officially come out that we could probably spread a rumor that he was bi and—”
“What?!” Damon put his carton of milk down too hard, and it splashed all over his tray.
Chelsea threw her hands up. “Don’t worry! We were going to ask Elliot first about spreading the rumor. I’d never do it without his permission. Madison was going to ask after he asked her out, but he hasn’t, so…”
“Elliot isn’t gay.”
Chelsea furrowed her brows. “So he is bi? That’s even better! It’s not a rumor.”
Damon shook his head and stood up. He didn’t know where he was going. “Elliot isn’t…he isn’t…” His palms were sweating. He sat back down, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Who told you he was gay?”
Chelsea’s head jutted back. “Well…I…”
“Who was it? Who the fuck was it?” Damon didn’t usually get angry, but his blood was burning. The asshole who’d spread this rumor was about to get his lights knocked out.
She shrugged. “I don’t know who told me. I didn’t think it was, like, a secret. I mean, no one talks about it or anything, but it’s…I mean, you even said it.”
Damon’s face scrunched up. He finally understood the expression of seeing red. “What are you talking about?” he bit out.
She threw her hand out. “You said that Elliot won’t ask Madison out publicly because he’s you know.”
“Shy, Chelsea,” Damon said. “He’s shy. That’s what I was getting at.”
“Oh.” She looked down at her tray. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was going to upset you.”
“I don’t like that you and the rest of the school are talking behind his back.”
“I don’t think anyone is, like, talking behind his back. It’s just, like, one of those things. The sky is blue. The meatball subs in the cafeteria are not real meat. Elliot is gay.” She shrugged. “I’ve never heard anyone make fun of him if that makes it better.”
Damon put his tongue into his upper lip. He searched the cafeteria for the familiar sight of Elliot’s floppy golden hair even though Damon knew Elliot didn’t have lunch this period, and in fact, he was in calculus right now.
Elliot had history next, which meant they wouldn’t cross paths because Damon’s class was in the opposite direction. If he hurried, he could get there as class let out and—
“Damon?” Chelsea asked, her voice tiny.
“What?”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No,” he said, but his tone didn’t match his answer. “I just—I have to go.” He got up and took his tray with him, tossing the rest of his lunch.
“Damon! Don’t forget to remind Elliot to do the thing!” Chelsea yelled before he pushed the double doors and practically sprinted down the hall.