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All I can do is stand here and be cordial while holding a mint green box of cupcakes. I kind of wish this half-built house would collapse on me right about now.
We follow him out into the dirt of the future driveway and Ash heads back toward their mobile home. “See ya’ll in a bit,” he says, waving over his shoulder.
“Hurry up, we’re starving!” Shelby calls after him.
We stand here in silence until he’s far enough away and then I turn on my heel and level a glare at my best friend. She smiles in return. “This will be fun.”
I shake my head and shove the cupcake box into her hands. “I’m not going.”
“What?” A breeze blows her golden hair over her eyes and she swipes it away. “Yes you are. We’ll go to Magic Mark’s, they take forever to make pizza anyway, and we’ll be hungry again by the time it’s ready, I promise.”
“How could you do this to me?” I whisper-yell, my hands clenching into nervous fists at my sides. “You just told me to move on and to go date Lincoln and blah blah blah. Now you’re forcing me to be in the same room with your brother?” I kick at the dirt. “I can’t go, Shelby. I just can’t. It hurts too much being around him.”
Shelby draws in a deep breath, choosing her words before she speaks. “Hey,” she says, nudging me until I look up at her. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. But the second he saw you I knew I needed to do something to make you two to spend time together.”
“Why? Are you suddenly an evil sociopath?”
She rolls her eyes. “No, Hana. It is totally obvious by the way he looked at you that he is so not over you.”
The lump in my throat swells to epic proportions. “Are you serious?”
She points to her eyes. “Ash and I have that freaky twin connection thing, remember? Do you even have to ask if I’m serious?”
A warmth spreads across my heart, rolling outward until my fingers tingle. I can’t find a way to process the words she’s saying or the way it makes me feel. “I just—I—” I let out my breath quickly and try again. “The breakup just felt really final.”
She glances toward their house where Ash has already disappeared inside. “I would never do anything that would hurt you or my brother, Hana. I have a hunch here, so let’s just have a friendly dinner and see what happens. If Ash is really over you, then I’ll eat my words and spend the rest of my life making it up you.”
I hold up my pinky. “Swear it?”
She hooks her pinky finger to mine. “On this box of cupcakes, which I love more than I love myself, I swear it to you.”
Chapter 9
Eight months ago - Halloween
“Knock, knock.” Ash said the words in addition to tapping on my bedroom door. I froze, eyes wide as I stood in front of the mirror inside of my closet.
“What?” Shelby said, looking at me as if I’d grown another head.
“He can’t see me like this,” I whispered. “I’m not ready!”
“You are so weird.” Shelby capped her mascara and left my closet, pulling the door closed behind her. I could hear the bedroom door open and Shelby said, “You have to wait in here because your princess of a girlfriend isn’t ready yet.”
“You two have been in there over an hour,” Ash said. “What more could you possibly have to do?”
Shelby opened my closet door just wide enough to slip her body in, and she stuck her head outside. “We’re getting pretty, so you’ll just have to wait as long as it takes.”
“Uh, you’re zombies,” Ash said with a laugh. “I don’t expect either one of you to be pretty.”
That was kind of the point of tonight. For the first part of the night, we were attending a Halloween party at the track that was mostly for little kids. Ash, Shelby, and I would hand out candy with Molly
and then head off to a real Halloween party later in the night. I’d only lived in Mixon since the summer, and all of my friends were motocross people. But some local guy and his friends, none of whom raced at the track, were throwing this party so we decided to check it out.
I’d never been to a Halloween party, or any party really, but I’d seen enough movies to know that girls dress as sexy as possible for stuff like this. Shelby had no intentions of following in this tradition, and I was too nervous that I wouldn’t be able to pull it off, so we went with the zombie idea. I wore ripped up cutoff jean shorts smeared with fake blood and a white tank top also covered in blood. A fake slimy intestine I’d bought at the Halloween store hung out of my back pocket for extra grossness. Shelby and I took turns leaving blood handprints on our legs and arms, and after an hour of makeup and messy-hair styling, we looked like we’d not only been taken down quickly in the apocalypse, but that we’d been zombies for some time.
I helped Shelby pin a severed ear into her hair and then we packed up the makeup and fake blood. All of our work was done and we were ready to go, but I hesitated. I wanted to see Ash because I was crazy about him, but I was also nervous that he’d take one look at me and decide he’d rather have the sexy Halloween pin-up girl instead. I was always second-guessing myself around him.
Ash was the best. He was kind and considerate and of course, gorgeous. He’d forgiven me for royally screwing up things with Ryan last summer, and he never said a word about it or held it over my head. I should have been happy, and I was most of the time. Yet even with all of the romantic dates between his racing schedule and the stolen kisses in the driveway, I was still absolutely petrified that he’d get bored with me and want someone else. Someone better.
