Page 16 of The Consequence of Loving Me

Four Years Ago

The gymnasium walls of East Point High School reverberate from the sounds of the speakers. Homecoming has the gym packed with sweaty adolescents. I try to maneuver my way around a group of senior girls dancing to Usher and singing horribly off-key at the top of their lungs.

“Veronica! Wait up,” my friend Daisy yells from a few yards away.

I feel my eyes roll in my head. I just wanted a moment of peace away from my meat-head date—and Daisy isn’t exactly my definition of peace.

Her nasally voice falls in line right next to me. “Where’s Jeff?” She looks around the gym to try to spot my date.

Daisy has always had a thing for Jeff, and she didn’t talk to me for a week when he asked me to the dance instead of her.

“Probably in a circle jerk with his football friends,” I retort, laughing at the mental picture.

Jeff is a nice guy—kind of. When he stops talking about himself for more than two seconds, that is. I can’t blame him really. I’m not sure there’s very much room left in his brain for intelligence judging by how huge his ego is.

Daisy raises her perfectly plucked eyebrows, her eyes going wide at the same mental picture. “Gross.”

I reach a quiet corner of the gym after that, finally able to take a deep breath that doesn’t smell like bodily odor or cheap perfume. “Go dance with him, Daisy,” I say, not bothering to hide my annoyance with her.

“W-what?” she stutters out.

She fumbles with the rose of her corsage—a yellow one that goes with her sleek black dress.

“I said you can go dance with him,” I repeat, getting more frustrated by the second.

“But he asked you?” Daisy looks at me with a face filled with confusion.

I can’t help but think that maybe she and Jeff would be perfect together. Their conversations definitely wouldn’t be of the deep matter, that’s for sure. “Yes, he asked me, but you like him. So, go dance with him. I’m not into him anyway.”

Daisy’s pretty face breaks out into a huge grin that showcases her almost-perfectly-straight teeth. Her thin arms wrap around me in an embrace before she begins to shout in my ear. “You’re the best, Veronica!” And then her brown hair bounces with her hasty steps back to the dance floor.

I take a long inhale in, finally happy in solace for the first time tonight. It’s not that I’m not into school dances or anything. I’m a sixteen-year-old girl; dances are what we live for. But after grinding against Jeff’s very noticeable hard-on for the last hour, I needed a break. It became way too tiresome to direct his sweaty hands away from going up my skirt.

“You’re the best, Veronica!” a high-pitched—and very sarcastic—voice says behind me.

I turn around to see a guy leaning up against the bleachers. It’s dark where he stands, and I can’t quite make out his features to determine who he is. “Excuse me?” I ask, taking a step closer to the darkness.

“I find it so funny that you’re so worshiped by your pretty little group of airheads that one seriously thanks you for allowing her to dance with a guy she’s so obviously been obsessed with since freshman year,” he explains.

The DJ switches to a cheesy slow song, making the gymnasium not quite as loud as before. I step closer to the voice and come face-to-face with the rude asshole who’s apparently hell bent on insulting me tonight.

I wish I recognized him. East Point is a fairly large high school, and I admit I don’t quite take my time remembering every face that attends here.

“She was being polite. He was my date after all,” I snarkily respond, trying hard not to notice that no matter how big of an asshole this guy is, he’s kind of cute.

He’s wearing a pair of black dress pants—like every other guy in the gym—but instead of the cookie-cutter white button-up shirt and tie, he has on a pastel-printed argyle shirt with a pink bowtie. And he’s pulling it off nicely.

He throws his head back in a laugh, exposing his strong throat and Adam’s apple. “Oh my god,” he says. “You really thought you were doing the whole world a favor by letting her dance with him, didn’t you?” His hands run down his face with his laughter, pulling at his cheeks and making them appear larger.

I pull my face into a scowl. I really don’t know what he’s trying to hint at here. Jeff is my date. Of course Daisy should have asked before she went and grinded her ass against his Netherland.

“And who are you again?” I ask him, my hand finding my hip as I glare at him.

When he finally answers, he says, “Of course you don’t know who I am. Why would East Point’s princess know anybody that isn’t in her royal posse?”

My jaw falls open. I don’t know what I’ve ever done to this guy to warrant the third degree he’s currently giving me. My heart beats faster in my chest as adrenaline pumps through my veins. If I didn’t fear the unnecessary attention from others—the bad kind of attention—I probably would have slapped this guy already.

Normally I don’t stop to care what people think of me, but for some reason it irks me that this stranger has such a low opinion of me.

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