Twenty-Four
SENIOR YEAR
There’s a ruckus near the waterfall, and Jadie gasps. “Shit! We missed it!”
We both take off toward the noise, negotiating the rocky incline of the creek bed as fast as we can. The word “Rigged” is shouted seconds before I see Noah sauntering toward us, one arm raised above his head and a shit-eating grin on his face.
He’s holding the purple pennant.
“Rigged!” number eighty-eight shouts again. “Riiiiiigged!”
“Whatever helps you sleep tonight, you sore-ass loser,” Noah claps back, never breaking his stride. He tosses the flag into the air and snatches it in a victorious fist.
Meredith’s head pokes over the guardrail at the observation deck, and she yelps, “The purple flag has been found!” The air horn wails, followed by groans and shouts and the sound of feet rushing to reconvene from all over the park. Luckily, Jadie’s snapping away with her camera, because I forget mine even exists.
“You know what they’re thinking, right?” I say in a hushed voice when Noah reaches my side.
“Of course. That because it was my idea, I somehow cheated. The real question is, do I give a shit?” He clears the steps to the observation deck two at a time, clutching the pennant high over his head. In other words: not a single one.
When we reach the deck, Meredith positions Noah between herself and Tyrell and waits a moment for the stragglers. The more people gather, the louder the protests become when they see Noah holding the purple flag.
“Look at them,” Jadie whispers. “Five seconds into not getting their way, and they’ve all reverted to two-years-old.”
And Ken, of course, is the loudest of them all. “What the fuck, Tyrell?” he barks. “Why’d we even bother coming if the whole thing was a fix? Granger should be disqualified.”
“Hey,” Tyrell booms, raising both arms above his head to quiet the protests. “Y’all need to take a seat. The purple flag was Noah’s idea, but the only people in this park who knew where it was hidden are Meredith and me. Nothing was rigged. Nobody cheated. Are we clear?”
“He’s so hot when he’s authoritative,” Jadie says, and I swear her eyes actually turn to hearts.
“So if we’re done being sore sports,” Tyrell continues, “I suggest we give it up for the cheerleaders and Noah Granger, winners of this year’s pennant hunt.” He slams his hands together in three loud claps. The rest of the group follows his lead, though only half of them applaud with any kind of enthusiasm.
“All right, Noah,” Meredith says. “You know what this means. Your name will officially appear on the ballot for the homecoming court, and you’ll get to choose one other partner in crime.” I wince. If people think Noah cheated, that wasn’t the best choice of words. “You’ll have until Monday to decide on your nomination—”
“I don’t need until Monday,” Noah cuts in, rocking on his heels. His gaze fixes on me. “I nominate Macy Atwood.”
My jaw drops. There’s a rustle of gasps before Jadie gleefully shoves me off-balance, and then I’m trying my hardest to pretend that every eye in a ten-foot radius isn’t on me. I’ve stood in front of crowds fifty times this size and never felt as scrutinized.
“Macy!” Meredith trills. “Noah Granger has nominated you for the homecoming court. Do you accept?”
Joel told me I’d be doing myself a favor if I went to homecoming with Noah. And Ben warned me against going with Joel. What do I have to lose?
“Of course she does,” Ken says before I can respond. “Macy can’t get enough of Pirate—”
“I ACCEPT,” I say, drowning out the predictable rest of his comment. Under my breath I grumble, “Come up with some new material, Ken.”
I make my way to the center of the deck amid lackluster applause, at least from the cheerleaders. And I guess I get it, because I’m no longer part of their camp. I voluntarily hung up my pom-poms when I feared they all saw me as a traitor after the fire last year. But that doesn’t take away the sting of knowing my fears weren’t unfounded.
“Pretty sure I just saw a unicorn fly out of your ass,” Noah murmurs with a wink.
“Congratulations, Macy,” Meredith says quietly. She turns to the crowd. “Cheer girls! Assemble for a winners’ picture!”
While she’s distracted organizing the squad, Noah leans in to me. “Mace,” he whispers. “If I tell you that I wish it had been me who kissed you on the field . . . can I still be your date for homecoming?”
I look up at him. I shouldn’t feel like a block of granite dropped into my stomach—I suspected it all along.
In my head, I always knew the kiss might’ve been a fluke. A tasteless joke. Someone taking advantage of being in the right place at the right time.
In my heart, I wanted to believe it was so, so much more than that.
And until two seconds ago, there was at least someone who wanted to take credit for being part of it. Now all I have is a memory that obviously meant nothing to the person I shared it with.
“Did you know Joel works at the Mill Club?” I demand. “Was that why you brought me here to ask me to homecoming?”
Guilt floods Noah’s eyes. “It—might have had something to do with it.”
I turn away with a disgusted sound and put a step of distance between us. Less than honorable Pff. What a jerk.
Noah hangs his head. “So I guess that’s a no?”
The disappointment in his voice is the first blow to my resistance. The second is the fact that I asked him to be straight with me, and now I feel like I’m punishing him for it. But the third, as much as I hate myself for it, is the realization that I might have to go to homecoming alone again this year.
Been there, done that.
“I get it, Mace,” Noah says solemnly. “I hope you find whoever kissed you.”
I sigh. If we’re really going to wipe the slate clean, then I need to check my wounded ego at the door. “Do you really want to go with me to homecoming? Because whoever he was, he doesn’t. So—”
The side of Noah’s hand brushes against mine. “It’s a date. As friends?”
I hook my fingers around his and give them a quick squeeze. “Friends.”
Jadie’s camera clicks as Noah hugs me to his side. I wonder if my guilt will show in the pictures. Because I’m thinking of Joel, and the haunted look in his eyes the last time we talked. And even though he’s sent me signals more mixed than a salad and I have every reason to believe that he’s chosen to walk away from me yet again, I feel like I might’ve made this decision a little hastily.
But as I scoot closer to Noah and stare into Jadie’s lens, I have to believe that a hasty decision isn’t necessarily the wrong one.
* * *
The hunt lasted only an hour, and the post-hunt swim about another. But I feel like I pulled an all-nighter. My head is pressed against the glass of Jadie’s passenger side window, and I’m only half listening as she and Noah joke about their homecoming outfits. He’s teasing that he’s going to make me wear a tux while he wears a dress as a show of support for Renata and Criselle.
“Watch what you say, Pirate Booty,” Jadie says, her finger pointing backward at Noah’s face. “She’ll totally hold you to it.” When I don’t answer right away, she pokes my side. “Back me up here, Macy.”
I sit up straight. “Noah can wear a dress if he wants, but I only got to wear mine for all of five minutes last year. I have lost time to make up for.”
I hope he doesn’t call me on the half-assed smile I flash. Drama aside, going to the dance with Noah will be a great time, and that’s all that should matter. Whatever my problem is, it’s not his fault.
We pull into the Arbor Creek entrance, and I’m kind of wishing I’d had Jadie bring me straight home instead of agreeing to stop at her house and powwow about the next RF spotlight and the homecoming bulletin board after we drop off Noah. It shouldn’t take long, but it seemed like a better idea when we came up with it yesterday.
Especially when we pull up to Noah’s house, and I see his car still sitting in the driveway.
“What the hell?” he says under his breath. “My dad was supposed to call the tow truck.”
If I’d never fallen down the rabbit hole of looking at my photos from last year, the University of Georgia Bulldogs decal that I’d never noticed on Noah’s rear window wouldn’t mean a thing to me. Except that it had also appeared in the background of at least four of those pictures. On a car the same shade of electric blue.
The jerk in the blue car.
All I can hear is Joel’s voice in my head.
My parents almost took out a restraining order against him.
Noah’s father appears at the front door, waving his son into the house. I have to get out of the car to free him from the back, and while he’s fiddling with the lever to release the seat, I swipe through my phone to take another look at the pictures I sent myself. A quick zoom of one of my and Joel’s drunken selfies confirms it. Not only is the car the same, but that’s definitely Noah, a year younger and with much shorter hair, leaning against the rear fender.
Glaring at us.
I click out of the screen as Noah emerges from the car and hide the phone behind my back. He tells me he’ll call me later and leans in to hug me.
His eyebrows knit together at my stiff response. “You sure you’re all right?”
I nod. I’m also sure that Noah is the jerk in the blue car.
And that there’s way more to his rivalry with Joel than either of them is telling me.