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1
I LEFT CALCULUS A MINUTE before the bell so I’d be the first to arrive at the student council meeting. Our advisor, Ms. Yates, would sit at the back of the classroom, observing, and I wanted her vacated desk at the front of the room. At our last meeting, Aidan had taken her desk in a show of presidential authority. But as vice president, I was the one who needed room for paperwork. A better boyfriend than Aidan would have let me sit at the desk.
A better girlfriend than me would have let him have it.
And that pretty much summed up our three years of dating.
The bell rang just as I reached the room. I stood outside the door, waiting for Ms. Yates to make her coffee run to the teachers’ lounge and for her freshman science class to flood past me. A few of them glanced at me, their eyes widening as if I were a celebrity. I remembered this feeling from when I was an underclassman, looking up to my brother and his friends. It was strange to be on the receiving end.
As the last of the ninth graders escaped down the hall, I stepped into the room, which should have been empty.
Instead, Sawyer De Luca sat behind Ms. Yates’s desk. He must have left his last class two minutes before the bell to beat me here.
Sensing my presence, he turned in the chair, flashing deep blue eyes at me, the color of the September sky out the window behind him. When Sawyer’s hair was combed—which I’d seen happen once or twice in the couple of years I’d known him—it looked platinum blond. Today, as usual, it was a mess, with the nearly white, sun-streaked layers sticking up on top, and the dark blond layers peeking out underneath. He had on his favorite shirt, which he wore at least two times a week, the madras short-sleeved button-down with blue stripes that made his eyes stand out even more. His khaki shorts were rumpled. I couldn’t see his feet beneath the desk, but I knew he wore his beat-up flip-flops. In short, if you’d never met Sawyer before, you’d assume he was a hot but harmless teenage beach bum.
I knew better.
I closed the door behind me so nobody would witness the argument we were about to have. I wanted that desk. I suspected he understood this, which was why he’d sat there. But long experience with Sawyer told me flouncing in and complaining wouldn’t do me any good. That’s what he expected me to do.
So I walked in with a bigger grin on my face than I’d ever given Sawyer. “Hi!”
He smiled serenely back at me. “Hello, Kaye. You look beautiful in yellow.”
His sweet remark shot me through the heart. My friend Harper had just altered this dress to fit me. I didn’t need her beautifully homemade hand-me-downs, but I was glad to take them—especially this sixties A-line throwback as vivid as the Florida sunshine. After a rocky couple of weeks for romance with Aidan, I’d dressed carefully this morning, craving praise from him. He hadn’t said a word.
Leave it to Sawyer to catch me off guard. He’d done the same thing last Saturday night. After two years of teasing and taunting me, out of the blue he’d told me he loved my new hairstyle. I always had a ready response for his insults, but these compliments threw me off.
“Thanks,” I managed, setting my books down on the edge of the desk, along with my tablet and my loose-leaf binder for student council projects. Then I said brightly, “So, Mr. Parliamentarian, what’s modus operandi for letting the vice president have the desk? I need to spread out.”
“I need to spread out.” He patted the stack of library books in front of him: an ancient tome that explained procedure for meetings, called Robert’s Rules of Order, plus a couple of modern discussions of how the rules worked. For once Sawyer had done his homework.
“Taking the parliamentarian job seriously, are we?” This was my fourth year in student council. We’d always elected a parliamentarian without fully understanding what the title meant. Ms. Yates said the parliamentarian was the rule police, but we’d never needed policing with a charismatic president at the helm and Ms. Yates lurking in the back. Nobody ran for parliamentarian during officer elections in the spring. Ms. Yates waited until school started in the fall, then pointed out that “student council parliamentarian” would look great on college applications. One study hall representative volunteered, got approved, and never lifted a finger during meetings.
Until now. “I have to be able to see everything and look stuff up quickly.” Sawyer swept his hand across his books and a legal pad inscribed with tiny cryptic notes. “Last meeting, Aidan didn’t follow parliamentary procedure at all. But I’ll share the desk with you.” He stood and headed for the back of the room, where a cart was stacked with extra folding chairs for the meeting.
Normally I would have told him not to bother retrieving a chair for me. His suggestion that we share a desk was the best way to make me drop the subject and sit down elsewhere. He knew I wouldn’t want Aidan to think we were flirting.
But this week wasn’t normal. Aidan had hurt my feelings last Saturday by dissing my hair. We’d made up by Sunday—at least, I’d told him I forgave him—but I wasn’t quite over the insult. The idea of him walking into the room and seeing Sawyer and me at Ms. Yates’s desk together was incredibly appealing.
Sawyer held the folding chair high above his head as he made his way toward me. He unfolded the chair behind the desk. I started to sit down in it.
“No, that’s for me. I meant for you to have the comfy chair.” He rolled Ms. Yates’s chair over, waited for me to sit, and pushed me a few inches toward the desk, like my dad seating my mother in a restaurant. He plopped down in the folding chair. “Will you marry me?”
