Page 7 of 10 Things I Hate About Prom
“Not exactly,” he repeats. His smirk is even wider this time, like a mischievous imp.
“Stop being cryptic.” My leg hoists up to nail a kick against his shin, but he catches my ankle before I can make contact. Seriously, what is up with his reflexes today?
The mood shifts after he releases my foot, his teasing smile falling away. The color starts to build in his cheeks, as rosy as our cherry-stained tongues.
I’ve seen this expression before. It’s the same one from when he told me he had a crush on our ninth-grade homeroom teacher, Ms.Woodsen.
“Oh my God.” I lunge out of my seat. “You met someone!”
He doesn’t say a word, keeping his eyes on his remaining nuggets, but the silence speaks volumes.
For the shortest blink-and-you’ll-miss-it-moment, his lips tug into a smile. And that’s all I need to know that I’m absolutely right: Joaquin has a crush.
“I knew it!” I shout, slamming a triumphant fist on the table.
My response soothes whatever nervous energy has built up in him, his smile blossoming into a full-on grin as I shove his shoulder.
“Why didn’t you tell me?!” He bats my hands away, but it doesn’t wipe that dopey smile off his face. The boy has it bad. “Is it someone from school? That girl from the track team who’s always asking you if you like documentaries?”
“No, not her. It is someone from school, though,” he answers after a beat, going back to avoiding my eyes again.
“That could be a lot of people.” One person comes to mind, someone he might hesitate to tell me about. “You’re not getting back together with Chelsea, are you?”
Despite being a hopeless sap with a penchant for cheesy love songs, thanks to his intense baseball schedule, Joaquin’s only relationship was a month-long fling with Chelsea Sanchez sophomore year. A fling that came to a crashing halt when Chelsea dumped him in front of half the school because he was “too focused on sports to deserve her.” Which is bullshit if you ask me.
“God no, no, definitely not,” he reassures with a grimace, waving his arms to clear the air of that accusation. That doesn’t do much to settle my nerves. Other than Chelsea, who else could it be?
“It’s Tessa…Hernandez.”
Oh hell to the mother fucking no.
“Oooh.” My smile might be convincing, but the crack in myvoice ruins the façade. Everything comes together—the shyness, the lack of eye contact. This doesn’tnotmake sense. Tessa and Joaquin would be a match made in cliché heaven. With Joaquin going to the local technical school after graduation to follow his late electrician father’s footsteps and Tessa going to Rutgers, they wouldn’t even have to deal with some dramatic over-the-summer breakup due to long distance.
The only problem is Tessa is the worst.
Tessa Hernandez has been at the top of the social pyramid since elementary school. Maybe even since birth. Popular, pretty, and loaded as hell, she’s had people scrambling to be in her orbit for as long as I can remember. Being in Tessa Hernandez’s inner circle means summers at her abuelo’s villa in Punta Cana and winters skiing at their Colorado chalet. Dinners with private chefs and shopping sprees charged to an Amex with a sky-high limit. And she’s not small-town beautiful, either. She’s the real thing—thick, silky dark brown hair, legs for days, and glowing, blemish-free brown skin. The type of girl you wouldn’t be surprised to see on the cover of a magazine years after you last saw her.
While she has enough admirers to start up a fan club, thanks to her overly strict dad, she’s never truly been on the market. Sure, she’s had her down-low hookups here and there, but until her crabby older sister, Julia, starts dating, Tessa’s strictly off-limits.
Or, she was, until Julia went social-media official with herboyfriend last week—the one time anyone at Cordero cared about a college student’s dating life. And thus, the floodgates have officially opened. The race for Tessa Hernandez’s heart ison.
Watching Joaquin compete in the Tessa Hernandez Hunger Games would be bad enough. What makes it worse is our—well,my—history with her. My first, and only, relationship lasted a whopping fifteen days freshman year. In retrospect, Danny and I were never meant to be. It was awkward enough that he was Joaquin’s teammate, but besides being in the same bio class, Danny and I basically had nothing in common. Still, that didn’t make finding out that he hooked up with Tessa Hernandez at a party barely two weeks into our relationship hurt any less.
And now Joaquin has a crush on her.
“I know what you’re thinking, and I swear, I have a shot,” he says, holding his hands up in defense of my judgment. “We ran into each other and got to talking and she seemed…I dunno…sweet. She made me dinner one night, and we went roller skating on the boardwalk, and talked for hours, and on the last day we watched the sunrise together, and it was…really, really nice.”
By the time he finishes and gulps for breath, the blush on his cheeks has traveled down to his collarbone. The spark never leaves his eyes, not for a second.
“That’s uh…” I take my time, knowing I should choose my words carefully.
It’s not that I mind that he met someone. Boys like Joaquinare hard to come by. Sweet. Thoughtful. Doesn’t smell like a wet sock. Watching him and Chelsea make out every lunch period the month they were together was stomach turning, but after that mess he deserves something good. A cookie-cutter romance that doesn’t end with him getting his heart broken in front of the entire school.
But couldn’t he have pickedanyoneelse?
“Ive, I promise, she really is different. She’s not…y’know…”
“Still an asshole?”
