Page 1 of The Last Dance

Part One

Nearly Two Years Ago

1

Tickets For Two

Ambri

I glance over the line of people behind the counter in front of me when the door dings open. Henry smiles, displaying the tickets with a goofy grin. He got them. Just last week he swore he couldn’t get any because the show was completely sold out and had been for weeks. I don’t know how he does it, but he’s always been able to somehow pull off the impossible.

‘Are you sure you two aren’t into each other?’ Jenna, my co-worker, asks with a coy smile.

I roll my eyes. ‘We’rejustfriends.’ I watch him take a position at the back of the line, making small talk with the elderly woman in front of him.

Henry and I are friends.Justfriends. Like I keep telling her over and over. We’ve been best friends since the day we met during my freshman year of high school. It was about as anti-romantic as things could get right from the start.

It was the third day of school and I was a little on the mouthy side that day because I had gotten my very first period. Ah… PMS. I was on the late bloomer side of life, still am, actually. I had just walked through the front doors when I saw it.

*

‘Come on, shy girl, you’re cute, I’m cuter, and I think you’d fit perfectly in the back seat of my car.’ Jasen, a guy whose name is the only thing I know about him, is harassing a fellow freshman classmate.

‘I don’t think so,’ she says quietly, obviously uncomfortable but clearly trying not to make a scene. Jasen’s leaning into her, his hand resting on the wall behind her, above her head.

‘You don’t want to be known as the prude girl, do ya?’

I can’t even believe what I’m hearing, and that people are actually walking around this douchebag as he does it.

‘Hey, asshole Romeo!’ I yell at him. He turns towards me, somehow knowing I was addressing him. ‘She said no, that’s your cue to walk away.’ When he takes a step towards me she speeds away from him, never even looking back.

‘Oh yeah, shorty?’ He walks towards me, a perverted grin on his face. ‘How about you and me, then? I like them feisty – they’re better in bed that way.’

‘Ughh…’ I act like I’m going to vomit, rolling my eyes so hard it hurts. ‘Yuk. How about never ever in a million years? I don’t date dickheads.’ I haven’t dated anyone up to this point so that statement is sadly far too true.

I see him walk up out of the corner of my eye. Henry Decker. I know who he is just like I know who Jasen is; they are in the popular crowd. Everyone knows who they are. Of course, Jasen is popular for being a dick and Henry is pretty much the exact opposite of that. They are both a couple years older than me, and our crowds don’t exactly intermingle. Not that I am even a part of a crowd. I’m more of the ‘leave me alone’ kind of girl than the cliquish kind.

Anyway, Henry stops to my right as the word ‘dickheads’ leaves my lips.

‘I think you heard her,’ he says to Jasen. ‘Now would be your time to leave.’ Henry shoves him away from me, Jasen not arguing even a little bit. Henry turns to me once Jasen is well on his way to wherever he should have been going in the first place. ‘I think asshole Romeo is a great nickname for him.’

I nod, completely in agreement. ‘I know it’s what I’m gonna call him from here on out.’ I shrug. ‘If you ask me, the best nicknames are the ones people don’t know they have.’ I turn to walk away, Henry quickly following and walking alongside of me.

‘Do you have a nickname for me I don’t know about?’

I stop, turning towards him shaking my head. ‘Not yet, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something.’

He laughs. ‘I look forward to that. Until then, what should I call you?’

‘Just Ambri,’ I say, turning to walk away from him, heading for my first class.

‘OK, then, JustAmbri. I’ll be waiting on that nickname so don’t be a stranger!’ he calls after me. When I glance back he’s still watching me, standing in the middle of the hall, a goofy smile on his face and a finger pointed in my direction as the halls bleed with people making their way around him to their first class.

*

Looking back on it, I can’t believe he even spoke to me, a bitchy, cursing, PMSing fourteen-year-old girl, already tired of most of humanity at such a young age. But somehow, that was that. We were friends from that moment on.

‘I wish I had a friend that would go out of his way to findmetickets to a sold-out show,’ Jenna says as she hands a woman her coffee.

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