Senior Year
TRIGGER
The ballroom glitters like something out of a dream or maybe a nightmare, depending on how you look at it.
String lights drape across the ceiling, casting everything in a warm, golden glow that should feel romantic but only makes the heat more oppressive.
The air is thick with perfume and anticipation, and I can feel sweat gathering under my collar.
The mask pressed against my face doesn't help.
It feels like it's suffocating me. I'm a ball of fucking nerves.
I've been watching her for the past hour and seventeen minutes.
Her lavender dress and blonde wig, meant to mask her identity, does nothing; I'd know that laugh anywhere.
It has an edge to it, like she's in on some joke the rest of us aren't. I've heard it a thousand times, usually right before she takes over a meeting or steals the lunch Mrs. Jean sets aside for me just because she can.
Asha Fairfield. My academic rival. My vice president from hell. The girl who looked at me on the first day of freshman year and decided we were going to be enemies, for reasons I still don't fully understand. Also, if I'm right—and I'm always right—my secret pen pal for the past four years.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I anxiously pull it out, believing it might be a text from her, only to remember I set a five-minute timer on my phone to ensure I wouldn't miss the exact time we said we would meet.
"Hey." Hollis lightheartedly punches me in the arm, his own mask now on top of his head, signifying he and his pen pal have already met. "Why haven't you gone to get your girl?"
"I have five minutes," I say as my lungs deflate.
"You're lucky. My partner was Rizz from the math club. He's cool and all, and I never would have talked to him were it not for this assignment, but I'd rather have some hot piece of ass on the end of my text messages to take home tonight."
"It's not like that," I'm quick to add, not just because Asha is his cousin but because it's not.
Because every word I wrote, every vulnerability I shared, every late-night conversation was all real.
It mattered. Even if Asha doesn't know it yet.
Even if she's still wandering around this ballroom with no idea that I'm the one who's been writing to her for four years.
“Sure, it's not. If you think the feelings are mutual, why not make a power play? Girls like it when a man takes control." He bumps my shoulder with his. "Show her who's boss."
My mouth can't help but quirk into the semblance of a smile.
I've thought about what he's suggesting countless times.
Dreamed about her submission, and while I think a move like that could win over even a strong-willed woman like Asha in the moment, knowing her allowance would ultimately lead to pleasure, I don't think it would win her in the long game.
I still think about the night of the charity ride, when she came to see me after I was hurt.
She let her guard down. She looked at me with something other than contempt, and I saw the real Asha beneath all the armor.
The Asha who might actually feel the same way I do.
I squeeze his shoulder. "Time to go. If I don't see you again tonight, don't come looking." I give him a wink and head toward the stage.
Tonight, I'm playing by her rules. She set the time and place we would meet, and yes, that time was 11:30 p.m. It's why I had to push her today in our last student council meeting.
I was further collecting evidence to prove that she is, in fact, who I believe she is, but more than that, I was seeing if she'd crack.
I'm tired of pretending, tired of acting like I'm not the one she's been leaning on for years.
Sharing the weight of our parents' expectations, fears of disappointment, and dreams she'd never say out loud because they're not the same as her father's.
But I've shoved it all down, every instinct that was screaming for me to snap and lay it all out there, because if she knows the truth, and she's still sharing anyway, then all of the secrecy is worth it. That’s why I followed her instructions and agreed to her new flex, buying a Flynn Rider costume to match hers.
As if setting the exact time and location to meet weren't enough, she wanted to ensure, without a doubt, I was indeed her guy, and I dutifully followed her instructions to a T.
But once our masks come off, I can't guarantee I'll bend to her will if she doesn't want the same things I do.
I'd chase her to the grave and haunt her in the afterlife just for a chance to show her how good we can be, to prove to her what I know in the depths of my soul. She is meant to be mine.
The hallway stretches before me like something out of a fever dream, too long and too quiet.
My phone screen glows in my hand, the timestamp mocking me: 11:29 p.m. One minute.
I refresh our chat thread for the hundredth time, re-reading her last message even though I've memorized every word, every carefully chosen punctuation mark. Tower corridor. 11:30 p.m.
As I wait, my mind can’t help but circle back to this morning.
To her standing at my door with homemade cookies, protein-packed, specifically formulated for my diet, and an apology she didn't have to give.
The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that she knows.
She had to have figured out it was me on the other end of those messages, and the cookies were her insurance policy.
Her way of making sure that when everything came out tonight, I'd remember she tried to make things right first. I've analyzed it from every angle, replayed her nervous energy, and I keep landing on the same conclusion: those cookies weren't just about guilt. They were about us. They have to be.
I stop at the alcove where the tower stairs meet the main corridor.
This is it. The exact spot. I check my phone one last time: 11:30.
Then I hear it. The sharp, rhythmic click of heels on tile echoing down the hallway behind me, each step driving a spike of adrenaline straight through my chest. I know that walk.
It's confident and purposeful, the kind of stride that parts crowds and makes boys out of men. My throat goes dry, and I turn.
The Rapunzel mask still frames her face, that golden braid draped over one shoulder, but it’s the way she moves through a room like she belongs there more than anyone else that I can’t get enough of.
The dim hallway lighting catches on the shimmer of her dress, and suddenly, I can't remember how to make my lungs work properly.
My heart kicks into overdrive, hammering against my ribs so loud I'm sure she can hear it from twenty feet away.
She doesn't slow down. Doesn’t hesitate. Just keeps walking toward me with those devastating eyes locked on mine through the mask, and I'm rooted to the spot like she's cast some kind of spell. I lick my lips, trying to summon words—her name, a greeting, anything.
"Don't." Her voice cuts through the space between us, low and urgent and tinged with something that sounds dangerously close to desperation. She's closer now, close enough that I can see her chest rising and falling too quickly, like she's as terrified as I am. "Don't speak."
She stops directly in front of me, so close I can smell her perfume.
My palms ache, and I flex my fingers at my sides to fight the urge to reach for her and close this impossible final distance, but I'm paralyzed by the weight of this moment, by the terrifying knowledge that once we cross this line, there's no going back.
"Don't ruin this." Her hand rises, fingertips ghosting along my jaw, her touch searing through me. Her thumb traces my lower lip, and I forget my own name. "Not yet."
Then she kisses me, and the world ends and begins in the same breath.
Her mouth is soft and fierce and perfect, and she tastes like mint and something reckless, and I'm drowning in it, in her.
My hands finally remember how to function, and I'm pulling her closer, one palm sliding to the small of her back while the other tangles in that golden braid, and she makes this small sound against my lips that destroys me completely.
Every argument we've ever had, every sharp word and sharper glance, every moment I've pretended to hate her while wanting exactly this…
it all combusts into this kiss, into the way she's gripping my shirt like I might disappear, into the way I can feel her heartbeat racing against my chest, matching the frantic rhythm of my own. The kiss shifts and deepens.
What started as desperate and searching transforms into something raw, something that's been building between us for years of anonymous messages and charged glances across crowded rooms. Her fingers fist in my shirt, nails scraping against my chest through the thin fabric, and a groan tears from my throat before I can stop it.
She responds by pressing closer, eliminating every breath of space between us, and suddenly, gentle isn't enough.
Careful isn't enough. The restraint I've been clinging to for years through every argument, every heated debate where I wanted to grab her face and kiss her silent, every night I've lain awake thinking about her… it all snaps like a frayed wire.
I walk her backward. Three steps. Four. Until her back hits the wall with a soft thud that makes her gasp against my mouth, and God, that sound.
That perfect, breathless sound that I want to swallow, to taste, to hear again and again until it's branded into my memory.
My hands are everywhere. One sliding up her ribcage, my thumb brushing the underside of her breast through her dress, the other gripping her hip hard enough to leave marks.
She arches into me, all soft curves and yielding heat, and when she hooks one leg around my waist, I nearly lose my mind entirely.