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“What?” he asked. The smile faltered.
“When you left early at Homecoming,” I said, unable to stop myself and deciding to just lean into it. “I was coming to talk to you, and you were gone. You had been making eyes at me all night, and then you vanished with one of your exes? Then after that, you dropped the class you had with me, and I barely saw you again.”
“Oh.” He shifted in his seat. “You think I left with Amanda?”
I paused. Something like fear stuck my heart as I realized that no one ever told me that. I just decided it. I assumed he had left with her because she was gone too.
“Yes.” My voice was just audible over the sounds of knives and forks hitting plates all around us. I could also hear my own pulse in my ears, drowning out almost everything else. Hawk’s voice came to me like it was underwater.
“I didn’t leave with Amanda,” he said. “I didn’t even know she left early too. If I had to guess, she dipped so she could go get drunk. That’s why things didn’t work out between me and her, really. She was into partying. I wasn’t.”
“But if you didn’t leave with her…” I began.
He smiled, but there was no laughter in it. His eyes fell to the table, and he turned the glass in his hand.
“I left,” he began, his voice low but not menacing. He didn’t seem angry, just sad. “I left because of my mother.”
“Your mother?”
He nodded.
“My sister—you might know her. Kimberly?” he asked.
I searched my memory. There were a couple of Kimberlys in my grade, but none that looked like Hawk. Then it hit me. There was one girl; she didn’t go by Kimberly, though. She went by Rose. Rose Blackthorne.
“Does she go by Rose?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
He nodded.
“It’s her middle name,” he said. “She called me while you were doing something I can only assume was dancing with your date. Apparently, Mom was coughing up blood. I needed to come home and take her to the hospital.”
“Oh no,” I said breathily. “I am so sorry.”
He sat back a little, waving it off.
“It’s fine,” he said. “She was just having a really bad reaction to the medication. She came home from the ER that night, actually. She’s been battling cancer for a long time. It was just another episode in a long line of them.”
“I didn’t know.” I shook my head. “I am sorry.”
“It’s okay. I dropped the class so I could go home earlier in the day. It let me get some stuff done for her that she needed. But I completely understand why you thought what you thought.”
“I had no right,” I said. “I feel so stupid.”
“Don’t.” The grin returned to his face. “You don’t need to think about that at all. Under one condition, okay?”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Tell me now what you were going to say then.”
It was like an anvil dropped on my chest. How could I put into words the thoughts I was having that night? Hell, they were the same thoughts I was having right then, and I still couldn’t put them into words.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just wanted to talk to you. To see what was going to happen.”
“To see what was going to happen?”
I nodded.
“I didn’t know if you were flirting with me or not.”
He smiled wide this time, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I felt like my cheeks were full of cotton.
“I was,” he said.
“So was I.”
I looked down, partially embarrassed at myself for saying what I said, and partially out of my mind excited at how he responded. I was biting my bottom lip so hard I was surprised I wasn’t bleeding. When I made eye contact with him again over the plates of our food being delivered, I knew what I wanted. It certainly wasn’t the salad being sat down.
“Do you want to get out of here?” I asked.
“Where would we go?” he asked.
“Anywhere.”
He nodded, and we stood, Hawk tossing a couple of bills onto the table and taking my hand. I vaguely heard Steve call his name as we made our way to the door, but neither of us acknowledged it. We were already outside a few seconds later, giggling to ourselves as we ran to his car.
Ten minutes later, I was in the back seat, watching him crawl over his seat to join me as the starry night blanketed the sky above one of the small peaks in the big mountain to the east of town. It was a secluded spot, one known to kids who wanted somewhere to get away and be alone with each other. I had never been there before.
As our lips crushed together for the first time, my body tingled, and a part of me tried to capture every second. I was living out the fantasy I’d had so many times, and as our clothes were torn off each other and crumpled on the floorboard of his back seat, I let my hands roam his body and opened myself to him. Completely.
