Page 58 of Our Forever Starts Tonight

“Who did you end up deciding to go to Sadie Hawkins with?” she asked. “I know a bunch of people asked you. My dad is going to get us a limo to go, and I need to know if it’s someone I’m okay with having ride with us, or if we’ll need to meet them there.”

I bit the inside of my lip to keep from lashing out. “I decided not to go.”

“What?” everyone at the table said at the exact same time.

“What do you mean?” Ceradi said. “This is our last Sadie Hawkins together. You have to go.”

“Did I miss something?” Josh asked. “I thought you were going with Hannah?”

Hannah let out a loud scoff. She’d mentioned the fact that she’d asked someone else a dozen times or more, but given that no one paid much attention to anything they weren’t legitimately interested in, people kept reiterating the concept.

“No,” Hannah replied through gritted teeth. “I invited someone from a different school. I said that already.”

“Seriously, Tris, don’t be a baby about the fact that you can’t go with Hannah. You’ve got a million invites, just pick one.”

“I don’t want to do that,” I snapped at Ceradi. “I don’t just want to go with someone for the sake of it. I’m sick of doing vapid shit just to make it look like we’re happy when we’re not. I want to go with someone because it means something to me, and because I can’t do that, I’m not going.”

Everyone looked back at me in shock, and for the first time, Hannah didn’t try to back me down. I’d finally had a moment of real honesty, and she was allowing it to happen without interference, which I appreciated.

“Is that a joke?” Ceradi said with a knowing smile.

It was code for ‘Take it back, or prepare to get reamed.’ A week or two ago, it might have scared me, but I was in a different place now. “No, it’s not. I’m serious. If I can’t go with the girl I like, then I don’t want to go.”

“Wait, youlikeHannah?” Milton asked. “I thought you two were just friends.”

“Whatever, when you turned down Colleen, she asked me instead, and she’s smoking hot,” Josh said. “So whatever the reason, I’m thankful.”

“That’s my point exactly,” I said. “And no. Not Hannah.”

Ceradi leaned forward, perching her head on her hand. “Ooh, you have a crush on someone else? Who is it?”

At the exact same time, both Capito and Hannah tipped their drinks over. It was like there had been a glitch in the matrix. Ceradi stood up, yelping, and Josh and Milton toppled over to get away from the spill as the rest of our friends at the table sprung into action spreading their napkins over the liquids. Ceradi took off far from the table, screeching about not being able to sit there because she was going to stain her expensive clothes, and eventually everyone gravitated off in her direction, leaving Capito, Hannah and I sitting there alone to clean up.

“What the hell was that?” I asked.

Hannah laughed. “Nice teamwork there, Cap.”

He nodded. “I saw you going for it and jumped in.”

“What’s going on?”

Capito reached across the table and knocked me on the top of the head. “Hasnothingwe’ve talked about sunk in?”

“Seriously,” Hannah said. “How dumb can you be?”

“What? I’m not being ashamed of Aria anymore,” I said. “I don’t care if people know how I feel.”

“That’s fine, but think of how that’s going to reflect on Aria,” Hannah said. “If Ceradi finds out you’re into her, she’s never going to let her live it down, and maybe if you two were together it’d be worth it, because you could actually help her through it, but you’re not.”

“We’ve been through this, Tris. You have to let her go, and certainly don’t go running around starting fires where you don’t need to,” Capito finished.

“I don’t want to let her go.”

Hannah put her hand on my head. “I know you don’t, honey, but remember what we said before? She’s not likely to forgive you at this point. I’m not saying this for the same reasons as I was saying it before. This time it’s totally about her. Even if you’re willing to give everything up, don’t make her life even harder than you’ve already made it.”

I slammed my head on the cafeteria table. “This sucks.”

If only I could get Aria to trust me one last time, I could show up the way she was expecting. The idea of starting over from the bottom didn’t scare me as much as losing her forever. I wished I could tell her that, but Hannah and Capito were right. If I wasn’t going to be able to be with her the way I knew we both wanted, then dragging her into Ceradi’s bullshit was only going to hurt her more, and I’d done enough damage.

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