Page 66 of 10 Things I Hate About Prom
Behind him, the party livens up as the rest of the boys from the baseball team start spilling out into the lot. Someone dumps Grey Goose into the bowl of their oversized trophy, a “chug” chant sweeping over the lot as the team take turns sipping out of their championship goblet.
“You should go,” I say, jutting my chin toward the circle that’s formed around the team. “You’re the reason everyone’s celebrating. You deserve to get in on the action.”
“I’ll skip that part, thanks,” he replies with a shudder and a scrunched-up nose. He’s never been big on drinking, and I can’t imagine he’d want to chug out of a plastic trophy his friends have been slobbering on. “And it wasn’t just me, the whole—”
I don’t let him finish that thought. “Don’t be humble. Today’s your day.” I wave my arms with a flourish. “Bask in it.”
He chuckles softly, glancing over at where one of his teammates is now dry heaving onto the concrete. “Well, if you insist…”
The way he trails off, staring back at me with a familiar warmth in his eyes, gives me pause. As if he’s waiting for me to say something to make him stay, but I quickly squash that wishful thinking. Our gazes stay locked, and even as the cheers and screams around us get louder, nothing in the world matters but him looking at me. After what feels like an eternity, he turns to his teammates. “Guess I’ll head back.”
Because I’m still weak and selfish and want this moment to last longer, I stop him.
“Quin?”
He whips around quickly, something like hope gleaming in his eyes. “Yeah?”
I pause, the ache in my chest tightening until the one thing I’d tried to tell him weeks ago comes bubbling to the surface. “I read the letter. The one inside Otis.” His lips part, but he doesn’t say anything, so I continue. “Nurse Oatmeal got to him before I could find it, so I didn’t read it until a few days ago…I’m sorry.”
After a few seconds, he laughs, a sound that makes my knees buckle. “Of course she did. I had a feeling that might happen, but I just had to go the convolutedly romantic route.”
And, suddenly, we’re laughing together. Not hard enough that we can’t breathe but harder than the joke warrants. I laugh because of the absurdity—that he hid a love letter for me inside a stuffed otter, and our dog took it for herself before I could ever read it. And with relief—that we’re able to laugh together again.
But when the laughter dies down, I struggle to find the right thing to say next.
I opt for the truth. “I wish I’d read it sooner.”
His lips press into a thin line as his gaze fixes somewhere past my shoulder. “Yeah. Me too.”
It’s not the answer I wanted, but at least it’s an answer. We’re not throwing our arms around one another and professing our love at the top of our lungs. It’s not the beginning of a new story, but the close of another.
“Quin, c’mon!” DeShawn calls out to him, waving for him to join.
Joaquin’s head swivels from his pumped-up team back to me. “Bask in it, right?”
“Right.”
When he ends up choosing his teammates and rejoins them, I’m not as disappointed as I thought I’d be. Tears burn my eyes, but it’s easy to stop them. Watching Joaquin get tackled by his teammates, everyone around him clamoring for a second with the MVP himself, I smile.
I’ve always known that he’s the most incredible person in this town. Now everyone else knows it too.
Chapter Twenty-One
It’s senior spirit week,and everyone got the memo but me.
“What the hell are you wearing?” Anna snaps when she spots me in the cafeteria, where all of the seniors gathered after final period to collect our yearbooks.
“What areyouwearing?”
Anna comes storming toward me in a neon pink and purple unicorn onesie, complete with a glitter horn. “It’s pajama day,” she says as if it’s common knowledge—which, I’m now realizing,it is.
Here I’d thought everyone had just given up on dressing presentably. Senioritis is very real and spreading faster than the freshman year mumps outbreak. With nothing but prom, finals, and one unnecessarily long graduation ceremony standing between us and freedom, the entire senior class has officially checked out. Godspeed to any teachers who are attempting to actually teach. A valiant, and quite frankly foolish, endeavor.
“This is what I wear to sleep,” I reply, trying to at least save some face. No one can blame me for being in a fog today—everyone is a zombie on Mondays—but especially not Anna. Not when we spent all of yesterday in the auditorium putting the finishing touches on our Italian countryside backdrop. Nothing like spending your Sunday inhaling paint fumes.
The process was even more exhausting, thanks to the six hours I drove to bring Isabella from DC. Fortunately, she insisted on taking Amtrak home, heading back on an off-peak train that didn’t cost her three figures. Plus, it gave her the chance to actually spend some time with Joaquin and their abuela. The lights at their place were off all weekend—the three of them probably adventuring while they can.
Needless to say, it’s been a whirlwind of a weekend, and with four hours to go until curtain forShrew,my body is officially in survival mode.
