Chapter 6
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“Are you sure about this?” Sydney whispered under her breath when she stood.
Marco didn’t hesitate in answering, “Yes.” But, if he’d had any doubt, the smile that lifted on Sydney’s face would have put it to rest.
He’d told Avery he didn’t want to dance with her. Told her he wasn’t interested in her. Told her that he was catching up with Sydney. He couldn’t have been clearer, and he was not about to let her manipulate the situation and hijack his night.
This might be a high school reunion, but they weren’t in high school anymore.
As they walked toward the dance floor, people parted like the Red Sea. Out of his peripheral vision, he could see the surprised and amused faces of his classmates, but he ignored them, and he hoped that Sydney would too.
He knew that she hated being the center of attention, and he’d never want to embarrass her, but he’d wanted to get her out on this dance floor all night, and his window of opportunity was shutting.
Avery pulling the King and Queen stunt ignited an urgency in him. He was hit with the clarity that this was a now or never situation. For years he’d let moments pass him by when it came to his relationship with Sydney. It drove him crazy to think about all of the chances he’d had to tell her how he felt and he never did. Tonight, he didn’t plan on repeating past mistakes.
Determination swelled in him as he turned and pulled her into his arms. Just like their hug in the hallway, she molded against him.
“Ahh.” He heard and felt her softly sigh as she rested her head on his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his neck.
His hands spread out on her lower back and they swayed together to the music. There was a part of his mind that knew that they were in a room, surrounded by people, but there was another part that was concentrating solely on how it felt to have Sydney in his arms.
As they moved together, Marco was struck with wave after wave of contradictory emotions. This dance was very public, but it felt incredibly intimate. It gripped him with overwhelming intensity while at the same time it made him feel as relaxed as falling into bed after a forty-eight-hour shift. The connection between them was so powerful that his knees weakened.
Marco had never been as aware of someone as he was of Sydney, right now. Not in all his life had he been so in tune with every breath, every look, and every gesture of another person. His senses were in hyperdrive. Even the molecules in the air surrounding them felt supercharged.
Her head tilted back, and when she looked up at him, he knew it was ridiculous, but he had the strongest urge to tell her he loved her.
Loved her.
It was ridiculous and made him question whether or not there’d been something in his beer. Maybe someone had slipped something in his drink.
He’d only said those words to one other woman. Avery. And it wasn’t a real, adult love. It had been an adolescent-soap-opera love. He hadn’t known what those words meant when he’d said them to her. He’d said them because he’d thought that’s what he was supposed to do.
He was still reeling from his impulse when she asked, “Do you remember that night on the hospital roof? When we danced?”
“Yes.” His hands tightened around her waist. It was the last time they’d been alone. The last time they’d really talked. The last night that they’d been them.
“Why did you…did I do something…?” Her expressive eyes searched his. “What happened?”
Marco had always felt like shit about how that night ended. He’d thought he was being selfless and doing the right thing, but after tonight he knew that he’d made a big mistake.
A couple dancing next to them bumped his arm just as Richie walked by and gave him two thumbs up. This environment was not exactly conducive to the conversation that he wanted to have.
“Do you want to—”
“Yes,” she cut in as her head bobbed up and down eagerly.
The corners of his mouth lifted as he finished his question, “Go to Sunset Diner?”
“Oh…” Disappointment flashed on her features, but she recovered quickly and regained her enthusiasm. “Okay. Yes.”
His eyes narrowed. “What did you think I was going to say?”
“I thought…” A light pink stain flushed on her creamy cheeks, and his hands itched to brush his fingers over it. “I thought you were asking to…” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. The Sunset Diner sounds great.”
She quickly turned and speed walked toward the exit. Marco had to double-time it just to keep up with her.
When they made it out into the hallway, Marco reached out and wrapped his fingers around her wrist. “Hey.”
She slowed and looked over her shoulder at him, and he dropped his hand.
“What did you think you were saying yes to?” He had a feeling he knew the answer, or at least he hoped he did, but he wanted to hear it from her.
She leveled him with a challenging stare that he didn’t remember her having in high school. “You first.”
“Me first?” he repeated.
“Yes. I asked you first. What happened the night on the roof?”
He looked around them and saw that where they stood was reasonably private. There were a few party goers on phones at the end of the corridor and hotel guests waiting at elevators a few yards away from them. But no one was in their general vicinity.
“Do you remember when I asked you if you still liked Caleb?” he began. “And you said you did.” He paused for a moment to try and figure out the best way to explain, but Sydney didn’t wait for him to figure that out.
“So?” Her amber gaze was filled with confusion and if he wasn’t mistaken, hurt. “You knew or thought you knew, that I’d liked Caleb since freshman year. Why did me saying that I still did make you practically run me over as you sprinted to get off the roof like I had the plague or something? One second we were dancing, under the moonlight and the next you were tripping over yourself to escape. You couldn’t get away from me fast enough. And then you barely spoke to me after that. Every time I’d see you in the halls or in class, you’d barely look at me.”
Marco opened his mouth to explain, but stopped when he realized what he was about to say might not be true. He thought he’d known the answer to what she was asking, but now, hearing Sydney describe his behavior, he wasn’t so sure. He looked down at the ground in an attempt to gather his thoughts. Staring into her eyes was like looking directly into the sun.
“Marco?” she prompted impatiently.
“I thought I knew, but now…” Raising his arms, he ran his hands through his hair as he lifted his eyes to Sydney’s and the revelation he’d been struck with sank in. “I thought I knew, but I think that…the truth is…”
Marco was rarely at a loss for words. He’d talked his way out of fights. He’d talked his way out of service fees. He’d talked his way out of tickets. But around Sydney, it was like he couldn’t access that part of his brain. She threw him off his game in the best, most frustrating way.
Taking a deep breath, he decided to start from the beginning. “When Avery broke up with me a week before prom, you offered to go with me.”
“Right,” she said cautiously.
“As friends.”
“Right,” she agreed.
“I wanted to go with you, but not as friends. I wanted more than that.”
Both perfectly shaped brows above her eyes rose. “More?”
“More. And that scared me. What I felt scared me. That’s why I ran off. Because I was scared of how not friendly my feelings were for you.”
He waited for her response, but instead of commenting, she merely stared at him in stunned silence. He understood this was probably news to her but he also knew that maybe he was not alone in his not-friendly feelings.
“At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing. I’d heard that Caleb was going to ask you to prom and that’s why I asked if you still liked him. I told myself that if you did, I had to get out of the way so you could go with him. That’s why I was looking for you at the hospital. Then, I found you, and you were wearing those princess shoes—”
“Cinderella heels,” she corrected as if that were the pivotal point in the story.
“Cinderella heels—” he parroted as an involuntary grin tugged at his lips. “And your blue Garfield scrubs that were rolled up to just below your knee and you were tottering around. It was, you were, the cutest thing I’d ever seen in my life.”
Marco could still remember when he’d walked out and found her. The second he saw her it was like he was sucker punched in the gut. His emotions hit him so hard he staggered as if it were a physical blow.
He’d heard people claim that they knew the exact moment they fell in love with someone. He had a different story. From the first day he’d met Sydney, he knew that he had strong feelings for her. So much more than the friendship that she relegated them to. But, on the roof of that hospital, that was the moment he knew that what he felt for her, what he’d always felt for her, was love.
Real love.
That was the moment he knew that he was madly, completely in love with his friend. And it scared the shit out of him.
Not sure she was ready to hear a declaration of love after all this time, he decided to skip that part and stick to the less revealing, less love-related facts of the story. “When you saw me, I asked you what you were doing. You said that you were breaking in your shoes. Then we heard that band playing, remember?”
She nodded. “There was a wedding or something on the pier.”
The hospital was only a block away from the pier. The pier was a popular location for weddings and banquets. From May through August there was a steady stream of events.
Marco still remembered the song that had drifted up to the roof. “They were playing that Eric Clapton song ‘Wonderful Tonight’ and I said that the best way to break in your shoes was to dance. So I asked you to dance. When we started dancing, I got…excited.”
“Excited?”
“Hard,” he clarified.
Her eyes widened. “You did?”
“Oh yeah, so hard I couldn’t see straight. I’m surprised I didn’t bruise your hip.”
“I had no idea. I didn’t feel anything.” The second the statement left her mouth, her eyes grew even larger, and she stammered, “I mean…I didn’t mean…I’m sure you’re…” Her hand waved toward his nether region.
He was not one of those guys that was insecure about the size of his manhood so he felt no need to defend it and he loved seeing her flustered. It was one of his favorite things in the world. “You’re sure I’m what?”
The smile that lifted on her face spread through his chest like a shot of whiskey, warming him from the inside out.
There was a knowing glint in her gorgeous eyes as she ignored his teasing and returned to the original question. “So that’s why you ran off? Because you got excited?”
“Sort of. It sure as hell made me get to the point a lot faster than I probably would have. I blurted out my question about Caleb. When you said yes, I told myself the right thing to do was to step aside so that you could go to prom with him.”
“And that’s why you got back together with Avery and went to prom with her?” The corners of her eyes pinched as she tried to make sense of what he was telling her. “So that I would go to the prom with Caleb?”
“Yep. At least that’s what I told myself then. But now, now I think that I was scared to go with you. I was scared of what I felt for you. I was scared that something would happen if we went. I was scared I would lose you. But at the time, I thought I was the bigger person.”
Her face softened in understanding. “Because you thought that I liked Caleb.”
“Yes. I didn’t find out you turned him down until he showed up with Gabby Reece.”
“I thought about saying yes, just so I could wear my shoes.” Her face lit up at the mere mention of her shoes. “But I couldn’t do that to Devon. Plus, I’d bought them to go with you.”
Talking to Sydney, clearing the air about why he’d done what he had was freeing. A weight that Marco hadn’t been aware that he was carrying lifted off his shoulders.
Several people filed out of the double doors and Marco realized that the reunion must be winding down, which meant that more people would be coming out and chances were, at least some would be headed to the Sunset Diner.
Wanting as much uninterrupted time as he could get with Sydney, he prompted, “Your turn.”
“My turn?”
“I told you what happened, now what did you think you were agreeing to?”
“Oh, I thought you were…” Her eyes dropped to the ground and she shifted her weight from her left foot to her right. When her head lifted again, her eyes were filled with resolve. “I thought you were asking me to go upstairs.”
“Upstairs?” He repeated, not because he hadn’t heard her, but because he couldn’t believe what she was saying.
“I thought you were asking me to go upstairs.” She licked her lips nervously, and he sensed the shift in energy between them. Her doe eyes stared up at him with a raw vulnerability that wrapped around his heart and squeezed it like a vice. “You know. Upstairs.”
“That’s what you said yes to?” His voice was raw with desire.
She nodded.
“Wait here,” he commanded roughly.
He started to walk toward the front desk, but she grasped his arm and stopped him. “Where are you going?”
“To get a room.” He’d planned on staying with his mom, but those plans just changed.
She shook her head as she chuckled and her fingers tightened on his forearm. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes. I do.”
The chance to be alone with Sydney, even if nothing happened, was one he was not about to pass up. He didn’t care if all they did was turn on the TV and watch Sex in the City reruns. If she were willing to spend the night with him, he would move heaven and earth to make that happen.
“No,” she stepped closer and lowered her voice. “I mean you don’t have to get a room. I have one.”
Another wave of people came out of the doors beside them, and he grabbed her hand. “Let’s go.”