Olivia
Chapter seven
Five Years Ago
Ihad never before hoped the way I started hoping after prom. Could Gage really have feelings for me? I’d silently pined, masking my true feelings for so long that it felt reckless to act on them now.
But I saw the way he looked at me when I came down the stairs at his house before the dance. I felt how he held me while we swayed to the music. I heard us both tiptoe and hint around what we really wanted to say.
I wanted to say “I like you.” I more than liked Gage. I felt like I’d loved him for years, but I didn’t want to come on too strong and scare him away.
“I was waiting for the right girl.”
Was that me? Did he want to tell me he liked me, too? Then why didn’t he?
Now, a week after prom, Gage acted the same as ever toward me in front of Annie.
But when we were in class together or Annie stepped out of the room, Gage found ways to touch me and be close to me.
Innocent things like putting his hand on my lower back to guide me through the hall or brushing a strand of hair out of my face.
And he watched me with those soulful, gorgeous blue eyes of his, like he was begging me to understand what he wanted to say without him actually saying it. I thought I was interpreting his signals correctly, but how could I be sure?
He had me so frustrated. I didn’t know whether I wanted to kiss him or punch him.
On Saturday, two weeks before graduation, I was sitting in bed scrolling social media and watching stupid videos—mostly of monkeys reacting to humans showing them magic tricks—when my sister Nicole knocked on my open door.
Our family celebrated Nicole’s college graduation the previous week.
She lived at home while going to college locally and planned to start a master’s degree program in the fall at the same university.
Her hair, which I was pretty sure had been every color of the rainbow by this point, was dyed a navy-blue color.
“Hey,” I greeted her.
“Hey, Gage is downstairs looking for you.”
I sat up. “Gage is here? Right now?”
She chuckled. “Yeah. He’s in the living room talking to Steven.”
Ugh. Steven was Nicole’s loser boyfriend. I really didn’t understand what she saw in him.
But … why was Gage here? He didn’t text to say he was coming over.
I looked down at my outfit. I was in running shorts and an oversized T-shirt. My hair, which I needed to wash, was pulled up and wrapped in an athletic headband. I washed my face that morning but wasn’t wearing any makeup.
True, Gage had seen me like this plenty of times before, but it felt different now. If he was going to look at me as a potential girlfriend—which I hoped he was—I felt like I needed to make sure my appearance wasn’t a strike against me.
“Uh, tell him I’ll be down in a minute.”
Nicole, correctly interpreting my hesitation, smiled softly. “You look great, Liv. You always do. If he doesn’t think so, he’s an idiot.”
I appreciated my sister’s words, even agreed with them, but still …
“I’ll just be a second.”
I kept the running shorts but switched out the oversized T-shirt for something more fitted. I took out my headband and ponytail and sprayed my hair with dry shampoo, brushing until it shined.
I didn’t want to look like I was trying too hard, so for my face, I applied a layer of tinted moisturizer.
I stopped to wash my hands in the bathroom, then scurried down the stairs to the living room.
Gage stood up from the couch when he saw me. “Hey!” he said, smiling nervously. I was relieved to see him dressed casually in athletic shorts and a T-shirt.
I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Hey.”
“Sorry to show up without texting first, but I was wondering if you’re up for a drive?”
“Sure.”
When we got out to the driveway, he opened the front passenger-side door of his Jeep for me, but that was nothing new. He always tried to open doors for both me and Annie when we went places together.
As we got settled, Gage jerked a thumb toward the house. “Who was the tool?”
I groaned. “Nicole’s boyfriend, Steven.”
His mouth twisted into a grimace. “Huh. She could do better.”
“Agreed.”
Gage stuck his elbow out the open window as he steered us down the street. He cleared his throat. “Uh, anyway, I was wondering if you wanted to go out tonight.”
The corners of my mouth ticked up reflexively. “Like a date?”
Gage turned to me, smirking. “Yeah, a date.”
“Just me and you?” I teased.
Gage pulled to the side of the road near a park with a playground and walking trails. Shifting the Jeep into park, he turned in his seat to face me. His eyes were intense, the normally light blue a deeper shade than I’d ever noticed in them before.
“Yeah. Just me and you.” The meaning he injected into those words sent shivers down my back.
I smiled widely. “I would love to.”
The afternoon of graduation, my family dropped me off on the “visitor” side of Burger Stadium before parking and finding their seats.
Burger Stadium was part of a centralized athletic center in south Austin.
Because the schools in Austin didn’t each have their own football fields or basketball arenas, the sports teams from multiple high schools shared several large complexes.
Burger was the largest, and also where I played my home soccer games throughout high school.
It felt fitting to have my graduation ceremony on the same field I had spent so much of my time these last four years.
I entered the building and checked in, holding my graduation cap in my hand with my gown unzipped over my yellow ruffle dress. The PTA volunteers at the desk directed me to find my spot in the alphabetical line. I looked for Gage and Annie because the Cs wouldn’t be too far from the Ds.
I spotted Gage first, standing a head taller than most everyone around him. I skipped toward him, nervous for the day and excited to see him.
Over the last couple of weeks, Gage took me on two official dates. Fun ones, too. We went go-karting on our first date, followed by burgers and ice cream.
Then the following week, we kayaked to the Congress Avenue Bridge downtown at dusk and watched the bats that lived there emerge and fly away.
He even packed us a picnic with all my favorite foods.
When we finished eating, we rested back on the picnic blanket to see the stars.
He held my hand, and we kissed—a sweet, gentle promise of a first kiss.
We hadn’t yet defined what we were doing, and I’d been holding back on talking to Annie because I didn’t know what she’d think of all this. But I was giddy at the direction my relationship with Gage had taken.
When Gage saw me approaching them at Burger Stadium, his face lit up with a wide smile. He held eye contact as I moved toward him.
But Annie got to me first, tackling me in an animated hug. “Can you believe it! Graduation!” she squealed.
“I know!” I squeezed her back and grinned. “I thought this day would never come.”
“I looked at the list, and I think there are only, like, ten people between us in the line. If we’re lucky it could work out so that I’m sitting in the row ahead of you on the field.”
“Ooh, perfect.” Gage approached us and I smirked. “As long as this guy isn’t sitting in front of me blocking my view with his big head.”
Gage didn’t laugh or even acknowledge my teasing. He slid his hand around my wrist. “I need to talk to you,” he said, tugging me away from Annie and the rest of our class.
I shot a puzzled look at Annie, but she only shrugged and smiled as Gage dragged me away.
He pulled me into an alcove and kissed me, his movements confident and determined. When we broke apart, I was breathless.
“You’re going to get us in trouble,” I teased.
He shrugged. “What are they going to do at this point? Not let us graduate? Besides, I need to ask you something important.”
“Okay.” I analyzed his expression, the same determination from our kiss evident in the set of his jaw and glint in his eye.
I’d been waiting for him to make us official, for him to ask me to be his girlfriend. Maybe this was finally it!
Before he could continue, I felt something loosen around my ankle and peered down at my feet. I was wearing brand new leather lace-up sandals, and one of the straps had come loose.
“Oh, hold on a second,” I told Gage and then bent down to tie my shoes again.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
I frowned up at him. “No. I thought they needed to be retied, but the strap broke.” I stood up. “Let me run to the restroom real quick to fix them. Then we’ll talk, okay?”
He wet his lips. “Sure. Hurry back, okay? I really want to talk to you before the ceremony starts.”
I reached up and patted his cheek before giving him a peck on the lips. “We’ve got time. I’ll be right back.”
I shuffled to the ladies’ room to keep my sandal from falling off. The bathroom in this part of the stadium was actually a locker room, so I found a bench to sit on while I relaced the sandal straps, so they’d tie properly again.
Behind me, near the toilet stalls, an incredulous voice rang out clear as a bell. “Are they really a thing? Gage and Delaney?”
I froze. Whoever was talking obviously didn’t know I was here. I should say something to alert them of my presence, but I had a morbid desire to hear what they were going to say.
A toilet flushed as another girl laughed. “I know, right?” That sounded like Kristin Shell, one of the girls I usually ate lunch and socialized with at school. One of my “friends.”
Kristin continued, “Gage is in, like, the top five of our class, and Delaney is lucky to even be graduating.”
The other girl giggled, and the sound of running water echoed through the room. “I heard she had to go to summer school last year to repeat Spanish or else she would have failed out.” I recognized the voice now as belonging to Jasmine Miles, another of my school “friends.”