Page 57 of Only Mostly Devastated

“Damn right,” Matt said. “Make her regret it.”

“He doesn’t have to make her,” Darnell said. “She’s gonna regret it the second she sees him in a tie.”

Huh. For some reason I’d always assumed Will dumped Jess, not the other way around. Did that mean he’d still loved her when they broke up? And how long agodidtheybreak up, anyway? Was it possible I’d been some sort of summer rebound for Will to get over her? A thick vine of jealousy snaked around my stomach.

“What about you, Ollie?” Matt asked, and I snapped back to attention. “Going to the dance?”

He didn’t ask if I was going with anyone. I guess he figured the answer to that was obvious. To go to this dance with a date, you had to be asked by a girl. It shouldn’t have bothered me, but my cheeks started burning up anyway. It hit me that, back home, I never had to feel like I was lesser than everyone else. My school would never have held a dance that stuck to gendered rules. I would’ve been in the same position as everyone else—wondering if someone would ask me, or maybe figuring out if I even wanted to be asked.

But the point was, at my old school, no one would’ve assumed I didn’t have a date to something because of my sexuality.

Well maybe they’d assume I didn’t have a date because I was a super-awkward introvert who spent the whole of eleventh grade with a haircut that made me look like a toddler who’d played with scissors, but that was valid. At least that was, like, equal opportunity rejection.

I was too busy blushing at the table to notice Lara lean forward at first. Then she said, “I asked him,” and I snapped straight back to the present.

Pardon? She asked me? Was I asleep at the time? Because I sure as hell didn’t remember this. Maybe she’d whispered it from outside the door while I was practicing bass in the music room or something.

I was stunned, but not so stunned I missed Matt’s face fall. “Really?”

Lara stabbed at her mac and cheese. “Really. He scrubsup better than most of the guys here, and I’m planning on bringing it. We’ll look great in the pre-dance photos, don’t you think?”

The thing about Lara’s particular brand of irony was that you could never quite tell if she was playing with you or not. The guys seemed to agree; Matt kind of smiled, then half-frowned, then smiled with his eyebrows drawn together. “Well, if you’re planning on bringing it, then I’m gonna have to make sure I drop in to check it out for myself,” he said finally.

Smooth. Safe reply.

Definitely sounded like he’d wanted Lara to ask him, though. Or maybe I was imagining that.

“You wouldn’t want to miss it, Patterson,” she said, and Matt actually bit his lower lip while he held eye contact with her. I got the strangest feeling Matt was going to picture her saying that while making out with his pillow or something later that evening.

“So, anyway,” Will said without looking at me. “That new Marvel movie’s out this weekend. Anyone down?”

“What, you wanna go to the movies?” Matt asked. “Sure you don’t wanna just go with Jess?”

Somewhere inside of me, a dark cloud of wrath, rage, and indignation started twisting my intestines into sailor knots.

“No,” Will said.

“Besides, since when do we pay for movies?” Darnell asked around a mouthful of salad.

“Exactly,” Will said. “My parents just got a new TV, it’s, like, seventy-five inches or something ridiculous. We could stream it.”

“Are we invited?” Niamh asked.

Darnell brightened. “Ye—”

“Sorry,” Will interrupted. “Guys’ night only.”

“So, Ollie’s invited?” Lara asked with a pointed gaze.

Well, from the look on Will’s face, you’d have thought she’d suggested burning the place down in a crazed satanic ritual once the movie was over.

“Seems kind of rude to bring it up in front of us if you’re not going to ask us,” Juliette said mildly.

“Like we’d want to haul ass all the way out to Napier to watch a blurry camcorder copy of another superhero movie,” Lara said. “I’m sure we can find something actually entertaining to do with our Saturday night, girls.”

I wasn’t exactly sure if I counted as a girl in this scenario, but I nodded anyway.

After lunch, I caught up with Lara and walked next to her for a few steps, trying to get up the nerve to ask her.

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