Page 27 of The Pucking Kiss

“Sounds good to me.”

“Now come on, let’s eat lunch together. I need to tell you all the gossip in school.”

As I followed Elizabeth to the cafeteria, I had a spring in my step. I was a part of the ‘It’ crowd now, and no feeling got even close to being this good.

Elizabeth and I laughed and talked for the entirety of the lunch break. From the corner of my eye, I could see Kathy fuming in the background. But right now, there was nothing she could do.

The people at the school had decided that they liked me. It was my moment, and she was not going to take it away from me.

When I finished classes for the day, I realized that I hadn’t heard from Bryan all day. At first, I had assumed that he was just busy with his classes, but when he didn’t show up for Biology, which we had together, I began to grow worried.

“It’s not that he hates you,” I told myself, deciding to walk home to clear my head. “He’s probably caught up.”

Looking down at my phone, there were no messages from him. Shouldn’t he be asking me something by now? Maybe my notes from class or some help with homework.

By the time I had reached home, my paranoid thoughts had gone into overdrive. I began thinking of all the bad things that could have happened.

Maybe he didn’t want to do this with me anymore after sleeping with me.

Maybe Kathy had brainwashed him to be against me.

Maybe he had found someone he actually liked and wanted to stop pretending with me.

The possibilities felt endless, and each one made my anxiety worse than the next. I was sitting at the dinner table, chewing on nails and not paying any attention to the food in front of me, when my grandma nudged me back to reality.

“You’re awfully quiet today.”

“Sorry,” I muttered, feeling bad. “I just have a lot on my mind.”

“I can see that,” she raised her razor-thin eyebrows at me. “Is it about a boy?”

At this point, I knew that my grandmother could practically read my mind.

“Am I that obvious?”

“It’s just that I recognize that forlorn expression from my own youth,” she smiled kindly, “These things have been going on ever since there’s been life on earth.”

“You’re telling me cavewomen used to get worried when the guy they liked didn’t contact them all day either?” I asked, trying to make light of the situation.

“Oh, I am sure. But during those times, there were no phone calls, so the fighting must have been over cave drawings.”

Her comment elicited a laugh out of me. “Oh, grandma. I don’t know if I’m overthinking things or not.”

“Were you expecting to hear from his young man today?”

I struggled to answer her for a moment. Officially? No, cause he didn’t have any obligations to me. But I had hoped that he thought of me throughout the day.

Besides, we had a math tutoring session later today. He had to show up for that, right? I had texted him earlier to remind him, but he had not bothered to reply.

“Kind of,” I finally replied. It was hard to tell my grandmother the full story without divulging too many details.

“Hmm,” she replied, a look of contemplation overcoming her features. “Maybe you’ll hear from him soon.”

“I don’t know,” I sighed, feeling dejected. My anxiety had really taken a toll on me, and my good mood from earlier had now all but dissipated.

“Will I get to meet this gentleman soon?” she asked me, observing me intently.

A look of horror overcame my features. “Oh, I don’t know about that…”

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