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“Deb,” I repeated. “We broke up and got back together so many times between my senior year of high school and the end of my freshman year of college I couldn’t keep track. One day I called her to ask if we were broken up or not because I honestly couldn’t remember.”
“That’s not a great sign,” she laughed.
“No, it wasn’t. It should have been the big glaring one that it wasn’t going to work out, but she was tenacious,” I said. “She would break up with me and read me the riot act over the phone and say she was going to go out with some guy. Then the next day, she would call and apologize and say she just went to sleep that night. I never knew if I believed her.
“To be honest, I don’t know if I cared enough to want to find out if it was true. Our whole relationship seemed to happen in her head with little to no involvement from me. I just kind of went along with it because it was what I felt like I was supposed to do.”
“I can understand that,” Mallory said, her eyes on her glass again and her voice low. I wondered if talking about that hurt her. I decided that, on the off chance it did, I should tell her what had been on my mind for a long time anyway.
“It didn’t matter to me,” I said, “because I never really felt anything for her. You, on the other hand…”
There was a pause as she sipped her drink and waited for a moment to process what I’d said. Slowly, her head turned toward me and cocked sideways again. She looked so cute like that. And her lips… they were so red, so full. So kissable.
“Me on the other hand, what, exactly?” she asked.
I pulled my glass to my lips and took another long sip. I wanted to put the whole thing away just to give myself the extra bit of liquid courage. A decade’s worth of a secret was about to come out.
“Mallory,” I said, turning fully toward her. “I have had a crush on you since high school.”
11
MALLORY
Ilaughed.
I probably shouldn’t have. I knew I shouldn’t have. But I couldn’t help it.
Here was Graham Miller, famous baseball star, gorgeous millionaire, object of all of my high school fantasies and desires, telling me he’d had a crush onmesince high school. Me. The awkward girl with the frizzy hair and the regrettable choice in alt-punk fashion wear. Me, the girl who followed him around like a puppy dog, but at a distance so he could never, ever know.
It was frankly hilarious.
It had to be some kind of line. It didn’t seem like the Graham I remembered to have a pickup line, and there was no reason someone as famous and wealthy as he was to need to schlep to the depths that he was currently sinking to, talking to an old high school acquaintance at a bar. But there was no way he was serious. Was there?
“Yeah, right,” I muttered, but my voice sounded far away. My focus was intensely zeroed in on my drink, which I was twirling in circles between my fingers. It was nearly empty. I was going to either need to have this be the only one or take down the entire bottom shelf in one go to get through this. I could probably get through the whiskies before I needed to take a nap.
“I did,” Graham said, smiling wide. “It’s one hundred percent true.”
“Uh huh,” I said, taking a big gulp of my drink and hoping the alcohol hit immediately.
“Seriously, I thought you were cute. I didn’t know a whole lot about you, but I thought you were super cute,” he said. “I liked how different you were. You were artsy and nerdy and … punkish.”
“Thanks,” I said, not sure if that was a compliment or an insult.
“I mean that in the best way, I promise,” Graham said. “You were so different from everyone else I knew. You weren’t stuck up and judgmental. You cared about art, like really cared. You got me reading famous playwrights.”
“I was such a nerd,” I said, fighting against the blushing cheeks that I was sure were giving away how flattered I was. Yet, no matter how real all this felt, there was a nagging voice in the back of my head. A voice that said that not only was this not real, but that this was aCarriesituation. At any point now, a bunch of people are going to start laughing and Graham was going to say, ‘I got her’ and point and laugh. Debbie would probably be one of them.
I could imagine how easy it would be to dupe me. I was the one who came to the game, just like I had in high school. I had the sign and tried to get his attention. It would have been easy to figure out a way to set me up.
I tried to shake it off. I wasn’t that girl anymore. I was an adult, a confident one. I knew who I was, and I knew I could stop this if I wanted. I could just get up and walk away.
But this was Graham Miller. I should see this through. If he was playing me, I wanted to be able to tell him off.
And if he wasn’t…
“You might have been,” Graham said, nodding, “but I thought you were adorable. And I wished I knew you better back then.”
I stared at him for a moment, waiting for his face to screw up in laughter or for him to reveal he had been recording me secretly or something. Instead, all I saw was honesty in his eyes. Maybe a trace of real regret. Was this really happening?
