Page 58 of All In Good Time

Her time with Marty remained simple: watching movies and playing games and doing the same stuff they’d always done since they were kids. She loved their relationship and how simple and dedicated they were to one another. Out of everything in her life, Marty was the most consistent.

Derek though—it lacked simplicity and it became depth. It went from nothing to emotional, lovely, fun, and often scary to let someone see her the way he had. She knew it scared him too.

Marty was the surface, and Derek was everything underneath.

There was no overlap. Marty wanted nothing to do with Derek, and Derek wanted nothing to do with Marty. It wouldn’t be fair to either to force it, so she let the two different paths take their course and went with the flow.

Except when it came to parties. She didn’t like parties, but they were the one thing that Marty and Derek had in common.

She let them have those to themselves. They both loved the girls, they both loved the attention. Especially Derek. He never missed a party, and he was the life of them. People loved him. They wanted tobehim, tohavehim. If they couldn’t do that, they just wanted to be next to him.

One reason she hated parties so much was because, half the time, Marty ended up disappearing for a while with someone else, and she sat alone in a random corner until he showed up again.

Clearly, that had stalled for Marty during his dating “dry spell,” but Becca assumed that the experience would be similar with Derek—who got about twice the amount of women that Marty ever did. She preferred not to get ditched by both, so she stayed out of it all together.

Whenever she convinced one of them to not make her go, the other would come running up from behind to have their try.

She’d talked her way out of five different parties, twice each.

Until the last Friday of March.

Marty had already tried, and she’d turned him down. It worked out in the end, because he ended up having other plans, so he gave up the pestering. Derek tried, too, and she turned him down on Monday. Then again on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. By Friday, her wits were close to cracking. Derek had never asked more than twice, or pushed when she said no—he was surprisingly great at not testing her limits.

It took her until Friday to realize that this must not be just a normal party for him.

“So what is it?” She leaned against the hood of Derek’s car and crossed her arms. It was warm enough outside she only needed one layer instead of the two she’d worn all winter.

“What’s what?”

“What’s so great about this party that you want me to go so bad?”

It was a sunny day, so Derek had his sunglasses on and flicked ash off the bottom of his cigarette. All she could see was her own curious expression in the reflection over the slight upturn of the corners of his lips.

“I just want to hang out with my friend. Is that so bad?”

“We hang out all the time. Don’t you have other friends that will be there?”

“None that I care about.”

Becca sighed and shook her head. “If I say no, you’re not going to give up, are you?”

He smiled for real then, showing all his teeth. “Not a chance, sweetheart,” he said, and smoke floated from his mouth as he spoke.

She groaned and threw her head back. “Ugh, fine. But you owe me one. And you better not ditch me. I hate that.”

He shook his head, still grinning. “I’ll be by your side the whole night. I promise.”

* * *

Becca felt ridiculous. She’d curled her hair and teased it higher than she should have—even slapped on a decent amount of makeup. Maybe this was another reason she hated parties.

She hated feeling like dressing up was a necessity, but she did it anyway.

Derek was there at exactly seven o’clock, knocking at her front door, just like he said he would be. Becca cringed as she caught sight of herself in the mirror in the hallway. Maybe she should have just worn the same outfit she wore to school. At least then she wouldn’t look like she tried so hard.

Too late now.

She opened the door to Derek standing there. He wore his leather jacket, with a button-up shirt unbuttoned all the way down and hands tucked into his pockets—perfectly on-brand.

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