Page 47 of 10 Things I Hate About Prom
He shrugs sheepishly. “Guess she forgot. I didn’t really mention it either, since she’s been busy with…y’know. College stuff. Hanging out with her friends down there.” He peeks up at me from beneath his miles-long lashes. “Promise you won’t forget me when you have all your cool Sarah Lawrence friends?”
He tries to keep his tone light, but the hurt in his voice is sostrong it cuts right through me. There’s no world where I ever forget him, no lifetime where he’s not at the center of mine.
“I could never forget you.”
I’m not sure about much of anything when it comes to the future, but I can be sure about that.
His smile is warm but fleeting, and I fight back the urge to hold his hand. As he turns away from me, I realize Isabella staying in DC means no one from his family’ll be at the championship game. Doña Carmen would go if she could, obviously, but she’s at an age where she can’t handle sitting on those rock-hard bleachers for an entire game. How can the star that led the team to the championship look out into the crowd and not see any of his family there? Some last hurrah.
“Is that why we’re here?” I ask before I can stop myself, breaking macaw rule number one—no questions asked.
Joaquin doesn’t answer immediately, shaking his head before replying. “No.” I wait for him to elaborate, and when he doesn’t, I shift onto my back, ashamed for asking.
“I thought you could use it,” he says several seconds later.
For what feels like the hundredth time tonight, I turn to him in shock. “What?”
He shrugs. “After the whole thing with your mom, I thought you could use a night out. If you weren’t grounded for life.”
The sweetness of the gesture flies over my head, my pea brain only able to focus on the sanctity of this silly tradition we came up with when we thought bird sounds were the height of comedy. This is who Joaquin is. He’ll give up anything if it makes someone else’s life easier. If it makes someone else happy. “But you only get one—you can’t waste it on me!”
“I didn’t waste it, Ive.” He leans in, eyes on mine, and tucks a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “I got to spend tonight withyou.”
His hand lingers on the nape of my neck for a moment. Before I can speak, he reaches for the blue raspberry slushie and leaves me breathless and shivering. His face contorts for a second time, his tongue now stained blue.
“Nope. Still tastes like battery acid.”
While he dumps the rest of the slushie onto the ground—carefully out of the cashier’s line of view—I’m left with the enormity of what just unlocked inside of me.
That I don’t care if what I’m feeling could ruin anything. That all I want is to take his hand and hold him close and lose myself in his eyes. That I love him in a new way.
And I think I’m ready to tell him.
Chapter Fifteen
I could’ve told himthen. Ishould’vetold him. If there’s anything that’s ever screamed “Joaquin and Ivelisse’s perfect moment,” it’s us sitting on the hood of his car in a parking lot critiquing slushies. It could’ve been a fantastic metaphor for our entire friendship: how Elmwood is as dull as dirt, but having Joaquin here makes it worthwhile. That, when we’re together, watching cars head somewhere more interesting can feel exciting. Like the best kind of adventure.
But I didn’t.
I thought I was ready, the words locked and loaded, but I couldn’t find the strength for that final push. The doubts that’ve been swimming through my head since that afternoon at Marco’s came back full force. Thoughts about how Joaquin doesn’t feel the same, or how we’d never work out as more than friends, or how the Joaquins of the world never wind up with the Ivelisses. How, even if we might work out, we’re doomed for disaster onceI’m two hours away. I already have one failed relationship with an uber-popular guy under my belt—do I really want to lose the most important person in my life for a chance at a second, probably short-lived romance?
It took the rest of the week and a mental slap in the face to get out of my head. I can’t keep acting like a baby, running away from my emotions. If I’m brave enough to uproot my entire life for a gut feeling and a chance to start over with a clean slate, I can be brave enough to do this. Start taking chances now, instead of just in the fall.
Clearly these feelings aren’t just fading away like I was hoping they would, and unless I want to spend my last few months with Joaquin feeling like I’m on the brink of exploding, I have to be honest with him.
And now I have approximately twenty minutes to either get my shit together and tell him how I feel or watch him prompose to Tessa in front of the entire senior class and every patron of Dino World.
I leap from my seat on the bench across from the employee area when Jonathan finally appears, decked out in his Diana the Diva Dino costume, sans the head. It’d be an unsettling image if I wasn’t on a mission.
“Hey!” I call out to him, not getting his attention until I’m blocking his path.
“Oh.” He glances up from his bag of Takis. “Hey. I’m going to meet that Tessa chick, like you said.”
“Great. There’s been a change of plans, though. Joaquin needs you to bring her here instead.” I pull a map of Dino World outof my pocket, opening it and pointing to the bright red circle I marked on the far-right edge. “Tell her to go through the whole thing, and he’ll be waiting on the other side.”
“Uh. Okay.”
While my gut doesn’t totally trust Jonathan not to screw this up, I don’t have time to hold his hand and make sure he gets Tessa to the Haunted Hadrosaurus, all the way on the opposite side of the park from where Joaquin’ll be waiting. Even if she speed-walks through the warehouse outfitted to look like a prehistoric nightmare, it’ll buy me at least an extra half hour.
