Page 9 of Reckless Roses
I spin in my desk chair, looking up at my best friend. His dark brown curls flop against his forehead, as per usual. Brows are furrowed beneath his black-rimmed glasses, and he scratches his chin, the faintest stubble scratching against his fingertips.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Elena. You’ll look beautiful in anything.”
“Lies. You’re a dirty little liar.”
His deep-green eyes flick from the computer to my face, crinkling with amusement. “Okay, I can’t picture you in tulle, glitter, or the color orange, but anything else would be perfect.”
Idespisethe color orange.
“I think I want to wear red.” I click through the seventeen tabs on my computer screen again, each one featuring a different style of prom dress. I’m losing my mind.
“You hate red.”
“It’s Zach’s favorite color.” I swallow, refusing to make eye contact. “And he asked me, so…you know…”
Zach is so damn wishy-washy with me. Around my brothers and at school, he pretends I’m no more than the sister of his best friends. Then, he calls me late at night and we talk into the early hours of the morning about everything in life. He tells me I’m his favorite person. Some weekends, he sneaks into my bedroom in the middle of the night, and we cuddle. We’ve kissed often behind closed doors and under the veil of darkness. He tells me I’m beautiful. He tells me he has fallen for me.
But when light shines, it’s like I’ve made it all up.
I see him flirt with girls at school—ones he insists are just friends. I hear rumors of him hooking up with people at parties, and he tells me they’re all lies. I ask him why he doesn’t want to call me his girlfriend, why he won’t kiss me or hold my hand out in the open; he insists it’s because it would make things weird with my brothers, that he doesn’t want to affect the dynamic of our friendships. He doesn’t want tocomplicatethings.
I convince myself he’s embarrassed to be with me, but he tells me that’s not true, that I’m overreacting. The wheel spins round and round, the way it has the past few years.
But last week, he finally asked me to be his prom date. The rest of us are too young to attend, since prom is reserved for the junior and senior classes only—unless you’re invited as the date of an upperclassman. Everett was asked to prom by some twelfth-grade girl he’s sleeping with, and I was invited by Zach. Leo and August don’t get to go, but they don’t seem to care either way.
It feels like a coming out of sorts for Zach and me. He can’t pretend there’s nothing between us if he’s taking me to prom. He can’t hide it from my brother either. There is no excuse to continue keeping us in the dark, and I’m hopeful by the end of this weekend, I’ll officially have the coveted label of Zach Hayes’ Girlfriend.
“Just because he asked you to prom doesn’t mean you need to conform to what he wants. You should wear a dress—and a color—you feel best in.”
“I mean,” I shrug, “Zach thinks I look good in red. He said that every time I wore Everett’s football jersey to a game last fall.” Our school colors are red, black, and silver. More than a few fights had broken out between my brother’s variousflings, so he told all the girls he’d been seeing at the time that I had asked to wear his jersey to every game that season.
I didn’t give a fuck about what I wore to a high school football game or who had my twin’s number on their back, but he did agree to do my laundry for the entire first semester of the school year, so it was worth it.
“He’s not wrong,” August relents, crossing my room and flopping down onto my bed. He pulls his sketchbook out of his backpack and starts shading the piece he’s been working on for a while. He won’t show me what it is until it’s finished, though.
“We weren’t done,” I grumble. “I need to choose which dress.”
“The silky, strapless, formfitting one,” he says without looking up. I quickly click through my laundry list of options until I find the one I’m sure he’s referring to. “Your boobs will look great in that.”
“Augustus!” I spin to face him, my cheeks warming.
He glances up at me, utmost seriousness on his face, with zero embarrassment. “What? You wanted me to be honest—that’s me being honest.”
I snort, rolling my eyes as I throw a pencil across my room and hit him in the chest. He only smiles, placing it between his teeth as he looks back down at whatever he’s drawing.
“I don’t knowwhat you want me to tell you, Elena.”
“I want you to tell me that I didn’t buy a brand-new dress and spend hours on my hair and makeup only for you to bail on me the day of!” My voice cracks on the last word, hot, angry tears streaming down my face.
“Please tell me you're not crying.” He doesn’t say it like he cares. No, he says it like he’sannoyed. “You’re being overdramatic. You have two more years to attend prom. You can just wear the dress then.”
“It’s not about that!” My words tremble. “Youpromisedme. You asked me to beyourdate.” I suck in a sharp breath, shaking with emotion and feeling like I’m overreacting but unable to stop it. “You got my hopes up, Zach.”
That shuts him up, silence on the other end of my phone. Finally, he sighs. “I’m sorry, baby. You know I’d never mean to hurt you.”
I don’t know that, actually. He seems to not think much before he acts, and his actions have hurt me more than a few times.
“Kelsey’s boyfriend broke up with her yesterday. She was going to skip prom entirely, and it’s her last year to attend. She’s just a friend, but…I hated the idea of her losing out on this experience because she decided to date a douchebag.”
