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He smiled. Gosh, I loved his smiles the most.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked, trying to shift the conversation to make my butterflies disappear.
“Skipping school today.”
I snickered. “Yeah, right.”
“With you,” he added.
I looked at him, confused. For a second, I thought I imagined the softness in his eyes, the somberness to his stare, the honesty in his words. Yet when it stayed longer, I swallowed hard, noting that the butterflies affecting me only grew in intensity.
“You want to skip school today?” I echoed his question.
“Yes.”
“With me?”
“Uh-huh.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Did you kill someone or something? Do you need an alibi?”
He laughed. “No. I just want to go on a date with you.”
“I just don’t see why—” Wait. Pause. Did he say date? Like D-A-T-E? Like date-date? With me? With me-me? “What did you just say?”
“I want to take you on a date.”
I blinked at him so repeatedly that I was shocked that my eyelashes didn’t fall off. “Like, a friend-date?”
“Yeah, sure. Or… more? A more-date.”
Oh my gosh, I was in a deep coma.
“But, if you wanted to go on a more-date with me, that would mean you like me more than a friend-date.”
“Yeah.”
Why was he acting so calm, cool, and collected about this? Why weren’t his eyes bugged out like mine from this reveal? How long had he been sitting on these feelings?!
“Why would you want to go on a date with me?!” I barked. My nose flared with irritation. I didn’t even know why I said it so aggressively. It was as if my emotions didn’t even know how to act anymore. I was malfunctioning in the worst of ways right in front of Aiden. My mind, body, spirit, soul—all those things that made me who I’d been were under major attack. Every inch of me was starting to sweat. Was my tongue sweating?
No, Hailee, that’s your saliva, idiot.
“Because.” He shrugged. “You’re the person I think about when I’m not thinking at all. You’re also the person I think about when I’m thinking too much. You kind of just live in my thoughts when they are calm and wild. Like, some people have thoughts, and I have Hailee. So I want to go on a date with you.”
“Is it opposite day?” I asked.
“It’s not opposite day.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.”
“Tom,” I breathed out.
“Yes, Jerry?”
I didn’t know what to say or do. I felt frozen in my spot because he was saying the things I’d wanted him to say, but for some reason, that scared me.
