Serendipity, p.22
Serendipity, page 22
There’s a long pause, and I can’t quite read his expression.
“Really? I matched to Ronan? The exact person I named last night in the car?” He sounds hella suspicious, his light eyes narrowed. “Let me see.”
I slip my phone hurriedly into my back pocket. “Don’t you trust me?” I laugh as if it’s all a joke to me, even though it feels like I have a thorny burr stuck inside my rib cage. How annoying. What do I care if Easton wants to match to Ronan? Have at it, I say. “Anyway, so that’s the all-clear you wanted. You can tell her the program thinks you should be together and I’ll back you up.”
There’s a long pause, and Easton keeps studying my profile while I do my best to ignore him. Then he clears his throat.
“Okay, then … great. Thanks. I’ll Venmo you the money.” He seems unsure or unhappy or something, which makes no sense. This is what he wanted … isn’t it? Of course it is. He was the one who brought up wanting to be matched to Ronan.
But he keeps glancing at me, as if he wants to ask something and doesn’t know how. Maybe I’m the one bringing his mood down, I realize, with the way I’m acting.
I force a smile and squeeze his elbow. “Hey, I’m really happy for you. This is great. Now you can take Ronan to the prom next weekend. I don’t think she has a date; I heard she was going to go with a group of friends.”
“The prom, right.” Easton gives me a half-hearted smile. Probably nerves, now that he actually has to make his move. “I didn’t even think about that.” He pauses and then turns to me. “So you really want me to ask Ronan? To the prom?”
“Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?” Still smiling in a slightly frozen way, I turn away from my best friend and change the subject. “So, do you want to go get some gelato? I saw they have a new flavor: black char and rose.”
He’s almost mumbling to himself when he replies, “Hell yes. I need some sugar.”
* * *
I stop by my friend Charlotte’s house after gelato with Easton. She answers the door in her sweatpants, a video game controller in her hand, her lanky brown hair in a messy braid that hangs over one bony shoulder. “Hey!” Charlotte steps aside so I can walk in.
We’re at each other’s houses often enough that her brothers don’t even look up from their game when I walk in. The living room smells like Cheetos and Coke, and her parents, as usual, are off working at their family-owned hobby and crafts store. Charlotte and her brothers probably have shifts there later on.
I sit on the couch next to her youngest brother and watch the game for a moment. They’re playing Children of Morta, one of my favorites.
“Want me to get you a controller?” Charlotte asks.
“Nah. I’m good.”
She watches me for another minute and then kicks my boot with her shoe. “Okay. What’s up?”
I look up at her. “What?”
“You just slumped in here and I’ve never heard you refuse a round of COM. So what’s going on with you?”
I frown at her. “Nothing’s going on with me. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I sigh and lean my head back, staring up at the ceiling. My phone beeps and I scrabble for it, wondering if Easton’s having second thoughts about the program or Ronan or prom. But it’s just Duolingo, threatening me with bodily harm because I haven’t practiced my Spanish in four days.
I sigh again and continue my study of Charlotte’s ceiling. “Do you think there’s someone for everyone?”
“What?”
“It’s what we’re told from when we’re little, right? I mean, take my own matchmaking program, for instance. It’s predicated on the theory that there’s one perfect match for everyone, right? But what if that’s not true? What if I’m—I mean, some of us are—meant to be alone forever?”
Charlotte doesn’t answer my questions. Instead, she continues watching me in silence for another minute. “You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were acting lovesick.”
I sit up so quickly my teeth clack together. “What?” I bray laughter. “Lovesick? How do you even know what that looks like?” Charlotte, like me, is vitamin L deficient. (Vitamin L, obviously, is the love vitamin.)
She points a thumb over at her sixteen-year-old brother Leo. “This guy acted exactly like you’re acting when Jenny Bowles dumped his ass. The sighing, the staring off into space, the stumping from one place to another, the utter lack of interest in video games, the existential-type questions about love. It’s identical.”
“It’s true,” Leo says without looking over from his game. “I was a total bummer for, like, three weeks.”
I stare at him. And then I stare at Charlotte. And then I stare at my reflection in the mirror next to the TV. The wan face, the dark circles under my eyes, the downturned mouth.
Oh my god.
They’re totally right, I realize in a whoosh.
I’m lovesick. I’m sickeningly jealous. Of Ronan Chang.
I clap a hand over my mouth and look at Charlotte. “Holy shit.”
She grins and nods knowingly. “Mm-hmm. Thought so. So. Who’s the guy?”
* * *
Two days later, Charlotte and I have dissected and redissected and overdissected every single feeling I have for Easton, our friendship, and the situation. And no matter how we come at it, I can only arrive at one logical conclusion: There is no way in hell I’m going to disrupt our friendship by telling Easton how I feel. I do not want to be the one to reduce what we’ve built over the last four years into a smoking pile of ash and rubble. No way. Nuh-uh.
Charlotte, of course, thinks I’m a total idiot. She says I should shoot my shot, tell Easton how I feel before he takes Ronan to the prom, before the train leaves the station.
But that’s what I’ve been trying to tell her. There is no station. We’re friends. We’ll always be friends. Because Easton can’t see me as anything else. He’s into Ronan; he told me so himself—and if he felt even an inkling of what I feel, wouldn’t he be, I don’t know, not into Ronan?
In these intervening two days, Easton and I haven’t really talked much, either at school or on text. If I’m being honest, I’ve kept my distance a little bit while I come to terms with the total bizarreness of my feelings. And I guess he’s kept his distance because he’s got a new girl now.
Not that I was ever his girl, of course.
I sigh and continue my aimless scrolling of Instagram. I’m sitting on a bench near the pier in the bright sunshine, waiting for Easton to show up, dressed in my usual uniform of a short skirt, Doc Martens, and a neon-colored top (fuchsia this time).
He and I meet up several times a week just to walk around or take pictures of ducks to post to Instagram or whatever. And this is one of those days. I considered canceling, but figured it’d raise too many questions. If I have to swallow my feelings until they assimilate into my digestive system and stop making me sick, that’s what I’m going to do.
I look up and catch Easton’s eye as he walks toward me in loose jeans and a Dragon Ball Z T-shirt. My heart instantly melts into a puddle of goo. A boyfriend I could watch anime with? A boyfriend I could play arcade games with? A boyfriend who already knows every single irritating and/or weird thing about me and still sticks around? How perfect would that be?
Easton waves. “Yo.”
I force the questions away from my mind. Stop it. He’s not my boyfriend. He’s never going to be my boyfriend. I stand and slip my phone in my pocket. “Yo yourself.”
Easton wraps me in a hug like he always does, except this time, I make the mistake of inhaling deeply, my nose pressed against his chest. He smells like spring—sunshine and a light dusting of flowers. Mmmm.
He laughs. “Rosie, I think you’re sucking my T-shirt up into your nostrils.”
I pull back, my cheeks flaming to the temperature of a preheated oven ready to roast potatoes. “Uh, sorry. Just … have a stuffy nose or something. Allergies. Pollen.” I sniff a few times for good measure.
Easton frowns at me in concern as we begin walking down the length of the pier, our shoes clacking on the wooden slats. “Really? Do you want to do this or do you need to go home?”
I look up at him, squinting in the sunshine. The warm air wafts around us, smelling of water and salt. “Go home? For what?”
“Do you need to rest or take allergy meds or anything?”
I laugh, softening at his troubled expression. “I’m totally fine, I promise.”
Easton relaxes beside me, both of us enjoying the sunshine and the looming end of the school year. There’s promise in the air.
For a moment, I’m completely unburdened, truly happy. School’s almost done! Summer’s almost here! But in the next second, I remember my current predicament again. The boy I like—my best friend—likes someone else.
“So.” I keep my voice casual as we stop to watch the water a few feet away from some dude who’s fishing off the pier. “Did you ask Ronan to prom yet?”
The breeze blows Easton’s blond hair into his eyes and he tosses his head in that familiar, heart-tugging way I’ve seen so many times. “Not yet, no.” His voice is subdued, an undercurrent of … something in it.
I glance up at him in interest. “Why not? I thought it’d be a done deal by now.” It was part of the reason I was avoiding him; I didn’t want to hear it, not when I’m still licking my own wounds. Maybe that makes me a shitty friend, I don’t know.
He chews on his bottom lip, brown eyes looking across the water at nothing in particular. Then, half turning to me, he says, “Do you think Ronan and I are a good match?”
Oh. I know what’s happening. He has cold feet. He’s nervous because Ronan’s cool and beautiful and has summer homes in Hong Kong and Belize and is still one of the nicest people at school.
I tuck my hair behind my ear and say what it genuinely, legitimately pains me to say. Because Easton deserves happiness more than anyone else I know. “Dude, yeah. You should just ask her. She’s totally into nerdy jocks like you. Remember when she went out with Graham in eighth grade?”
His gaze lingers on me for a long moment and then he nods. “Yeah. Cool. Okay.” There’s something he’s not saying. His tone is damp; he looks like a daffodil caught in a spring shower.
Curious, I attempt to wait him out, but he continues to stare at the sparkling water. Then he points to something in the distance. “Look. A dolphin.”
I follow his pointing finger and there is, indeed, a lone dolphin cresting the waves, its pointy gray nose reaching up toward the cloudless sky. “Cool.”
“They say dolphins are a sign of hope.”
I paste on the shiniest smile I can. “Awesome. Maybe it means good things for you and Ronan.”
Easton doesn’t respond.
* * *
Prom night arrives just a couple days later, balmy and full of the scent of freesia and hormones, but I can’t bring myself to scoff at it or proclaim loudly how glad I am to be in sweats lounging on Charlotte’s bed. That was the original plan, but now all I can think of is what Ronan Chang might be wearing and how sexy and elegant she probably looks and how Easton’s going to hold her close all night and kiss her and …
“Ugh.” I cover my face with my hands, my popcorn untouched in a bowl on my lap.
Charlotte looks over at me from her side of the bed, her mouth full of popcorn. She’s been watching How I Met Your Mother like we’d planned to. Pausing the TV, she sighs. “You’re torturing yourself, aren’t you?”
“Little bit,” I say, my voice muffled behind my hands. “I know he’s going to look so good, Char. There’s no way he and Ronan aren’t going to become a thing after tonight. He texted me pictures of his tux and asked my opinion on the shoes he should wear and everything. He didn’t say anything about Ronan specifically, but I heard he promposed at the away game on Friday and it was totally romantic and Ronan accepted on the spot.” I let my hands fall and look at Charlotte.
“How do you know that?” Charlotte frowns. “I didn’t hear that.”
“I just kept an ear out in the halls. Everything Ronan does gets broadcast. You know that.”
“It could just be a stupid rumor.”
“It’s not.” I can feel it in my marrow.
Sighing, Charlotte falls back against her headboard. “I’m sorry, dude.”
“Me too.” I have never felt more like a loser in my entire life.
What’s our friendship even going to look like now? I thought telling him we matched would be catastrophic to our friendship, but I don’t think I thought this through all that well. Will Easton want to bring Ronan everywhere we go now? Or maybe he won’t even want to hang out anymore. Which, you know, I get. But it still hurts like hell.
“You look like your appendix just burst or something.”
“Yeah, it kinda feels like that.”
Setting her popcorn bowl aside, Charlotte suddenly stands and stares at me. There’s a bit of popcorn in her hair, but I don’t say anything because she looks super intense at the moment. “You need to go.”
“What?” It’s like she embedded an ax in my skull. I don’t know how much more pain I can take. “Am I really that much of a bummer?”
She waves an impatient hand. “No! I mean you need to go to prom. Come on, I’ll drive you.”
I sit up. “What? Why? I don’t need to torture myself by watching Easton and Ronan all night. I hate to tell you this, but you’re kinda violating the best friend code right now by even suggesting it.”
Charlotte leans forward, her palms on the bed. “Oh, for—You need to tell Easton how you feel, Rosie. Tonight. ASAP. Before it gets too serious with Ronan and you regret it for the rest of your life. Come on, let’s go.”
She heads to her closet and pulls on a pair of sneakers.
“Seriously?” My palms are instantly covered in sweat. “I—I can’t do that!”
“Oh yes, you can,” Charlotte says. “And you are. You can’t just sit around waiting to be invited to your own life. You’ve gotta make stuff happen.”
I knew I shouldn’t have gotten her that Amy Poehler memoir for her birthday.
I hop off the bed and begin to pace the tiny room in little panicked circles. “But what if he says no? What if he’s aghast?”
Done with her shoes, Charlotte comes over and takes me by the shoulders. Looking me straight in the eye, she says, “Then you’ll know. And you won’t need to keep torturing yourself wondering what if. If he says he doesn’t feel the same way, you can move on. But you can’t let your feelings just putrefy inside you, Rosie. It’ll kill you.”
I take a deep breath, my hands trembling. I press them into my thighs. “Are you right? Yeah, I think you are. Okay. You’re right. Okay.”
And we bound down the stairs and out to Charlotte’s Jeep, my heart fluttering so fast I’m practically flying.
* * *
I am SO scared. More scared than I’ve ever been in my entire life. Even more scared than that time I fell in the lake at Holt Park and this giant duck began to peck at the knot headband on my head. The duck was a freak of nature; so monstrous it blocked out the sun. I thought I was terrified then. Ha.
The prom is at the Wentworth, a really fancy five-star hotel with gold ceilings and marble floors so shiny they look like glass. I would usually never set foot in all this glamarama voluntarily, but Charlotte’s right. I need to come clean to Easton so I can lay the soul of this feeling down to rest and move on.
I walk up to the table where people are being checked in, although there are just one or two stragglers now that prom has started in earnest. I can hear the music thumping behind the heavy double doors a few feet away.
There’s a sophomore who looks vaguely familiar at the check-in table, dressed in a bow tie and a sweatervest. He’s kind of adorable, and gives me a smile that slowly fades as he takes in my sweatpants, graying sneakers, and messy bun. “Um … can I help you?”
“I don’t have a ticket. But I really need to get in there.” I point to the double doors, behind which the stragglers have now disappeared. “I’m not planning on staying or anything. There’s just something I have to do. Please.”
“What do you need to do?” He eyes my pockets suspiciously, as if I may have a wayward carton of eggs in there, or maybe some TP.
I take a deep breath. “It’s about a boy. And … my … um. Well, my feelings.” Gross. I’ve never said “my feelings” to anyone before. “I have to do this now or I’ll probably regret it for the rest of my life. You’re the only one standing between me and cold, sad, lifelong regret.” I stare at him meaningfully. “Do you want me to curse your memory thirty years from now?”
“N-no?” The poor kid looks like he’s wishing he’d stayed in and played chess against himself instead of volunteering for check-in duty.
“Exactly.” I give him a brilliant smile. “I knew you were cool. Thanks, dude.” And then, my smile fading, I stride past him and push open the wooden doors.
It’s dark inside the hall, with just a few neon strobe lights illuminating the dance floor. I look around as I make my way farther in. A couple of people turn and look me up and down, but for the most part, I’m going unnoticed. The adult chaperones are at the far end of the big space, so I’m safe for now.
I dodge around a group of seniors who are wayyyy too animated to be sober, my eyes roving the crowd, looking for Ronan’s long, shiny black hair or Easton’s tall form. But there are too many people here, and I’m too short. I’m never going to find them like this.
What if they left? What if they’ve gone off somewhere more … private?
The thoughts fly into my head unbidden and now I can’t unthink them. Oh god. What if it’s already too late? Should I just text Charlotte to come pick me up now?
No, come on. Don’t be so weak, Rosie. Give this your best shot.
I came this far. I might as well do it right.
Before I can think too much about it, I rush toward the stage at the front of the room, where the DJ is playing his music and where, later, they’ll announce the prom royalty. I climb the steps to the side and stand on my tiptoes on the stage.
