Page 57 of Operation Prom Date
Another round of stabbing pain jabbed at my chest, because my thoughts were totally against me.
“What I’m trying to ask is…” I twisted a strand of hair around my finger, finding a tiny bit of comfort in giving my hand something to do. “Well, you know how prom is in three weeks…?”
“Yeah. It’s all the girls at this school talk about—Paris goes on and on about how they need guys to help do the actual decorating, and under duress, I finally wrote my name on her damn signup form.”
On the bright side, at least you’re not making this one hundred times harder or anything.Since sarcasm wasn’t doing me any favors right now, I shoved it away. “Will you go to prom with me?”
Mick took my hand and I waited for him to let me down easy. “Yes. I’ll go to prom with you.”
I blinked at him, probably way too many times and for absolutely way too many seconds. “I was almost sure you’d already have a date.”
“A few girls have asked, but I was hoping to go with you. I even told my friends I was planning on it. I just didn’t know if asking would seem too serious—didn’t want to scare you off.”
Aw, he actually thought about it. That’s so nice.“Not too serious. I think it’ll be fun, and you’re the person I want to share my senior prom with.”
And if I could go back in time to before I accidentally fell for Cooper Callihan, that wouldn’t be a big, fat lie.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Cooper
Jaden got the green light to train as long as he kept his wrist wrapped, so he was healed and back to having full-use of his right arm again. We’d been putting in a lot of hours on the lake this week getting back to where we used to be. Which was good, since the Spring Festival race was on Saturday, just two days away.
If only I could gather enough strength to care.
My times with Kate weren’t quite as fast, but the minutes between were so much more than rowing. A couple of ducks swam away from the boat as we neared, and I stared at them, thinking of the time Kate threatened to jump overboard to hang out with birds instead of me.
Jaden looked at the stopwatch. “The time’s good, but you’re off, man. This wouldn’t have anything to do with Kate, would it?”
I jerked my gaze from the ducks and gripped my oars until the handles dug into my palms. “Nope.”
“Liar.”
I glared at him and he held up his hands. “I wouldn’t say anything, but I saw Kate this afternoon, and she doesn’t look so good, either.”
“Funny. Every time I see her, Pecker’s all over her.” Toxic bursts of heat traveled through my veins.
“Maybe,” Jaden said. “But her eyes go to you.”
“Oh, so now you’re an expert at girls?”
“Dude, I’vealwaysbeen an expert at girls.”
I rolled my eyes, but I laughed. Probably the only time I’d laughed all week, too. Things just weren’t as funny without Kate around. I tried to keep up appearances, going through the same motions I had before she crashed into my life and left her mark.
Everything pretty much went on the same as it had pre–Operation Prom Date, with the exception that Amber had started sitting with us at lunch. A rift had formed between her and Paris’s crew. She’d gone on and on about it, and how she wasso over it, so this time she wasn’t going to apologize and try to fix it. Or something like that. Jaden and Alana had paid more attention to her occasional teary rants, because my head hadn’t been right since I kissed Kate.
Our fight only messed me up more, and then there was the tension at home. Dad worked late every night, and the few times we shared the same space, an unspoken heaviness hung in the air. I kept expecting him to push the subject of my major, or to bring up more arguments in favor of becoming a lawyer, but he didn’t bring it up. Almost as if the decision had already been made and written in stone, so there was no point in discussing it further.
Something I desperately wanted to talk to Kate about. I could really use her cheery optimism right now. I maneuvered the boat so it pointed back to shore, but Jaden dragged his oars. Since he seemed to be expecting me to open up and have a big share-fest, I gave him the shortest answer I could get away with. “She made her choice.”
“Did you even let her know she had one?”
That brought me up short.
But what good would it have done? Why pour out my heart when I already knew she’d choose Pecker? If I had to hear her say that she’d rather go with him, it’d destroy the act I put on in the school halls, where I pretended to be okay. Why make a fool of myself and add to the suckfest that losing her in every possible way had brought on?
“You’re really going to go to prom with Amber and just pretend everything’s cool?” Jaden pressed on, because he clearly didn’t know when to stop.
