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“Oh,” I yip. “We’re ready.”
“Yes,” Owen says. “We are.” He pulls my chair out, and when I just stand there giving Freddie two more nods, he stands in front of me. Owen cups my cheeks and I blink, looking up into his big ocean eyes. “Time to sit,” he says, slipping both hands into mine.
And then I plop hard into the chair. He hasn’t even poured the wine yet, and I’m already tipsy, despite Freddie belting his rock anthem.
Owen moves to sit across from me just as Freddie betrays me. His rocking song has ended, and now he’s singingLove of My Life.
Stupid Freddie.
I peer down at my plate, and my heart thumps. Everything isso beautiful, and the food smells divine. My mouth started watering the second I walked into this kitchen. So much time. So much effort. And he’s done all this for me.
“Are you ready for my three meaningful questions and one personal fact?”
My fork hovers with the perfect bite of chicken, noodle, and sauce. My mouth simultaneously drops and pulls up in a grin. “You can’t use the meaningful questions and personal fact on me.”
“Of course I can. That’s what we’re doing here. Following your advice.” He smirks. “Remember?”
“But O, I know everything about you, and you know everything about me.”
“You think?”
“I know,” I say.
“Challenge accepted.” He winks at me. Owenwinks. Atme. I force down my one bite and attempt to not choke.
“Fine,” I say, trying so hard for cool—but I do not feel cool right now. “Go for it.”
Owen cuts into his meat, swirling his fork until there are noodles twirled around the teeth of the utensil. “In tenth grade,” he begins, and I squirm a tiny bit in my seat, suddenly not as confident as I was ten seconds ago. “I got an anonymous note from a girl.”
“That isn’t a question,” I mumble and shove a King-Kong-sized bite of chicken into my mouth.
Owen chuckles. Still, he hasn’t taken a bite yet. “I know. I’m getting there.” Another wink. I may have to jab a fork in his beautiful blue eyeball tonight if he doesn’t stop doing that. “Do you know who wrote it?”
“Tha—coul—ha—been—” I say through my chipmunk cheek mouth full. I swallow down the bite making me speak like a toddler and summon my confidence. “Anyone.” I shake my head and shrug my shoulders all at the same time. Because I don’tknow—maybe lots of girls put notes in Owen’s locker that year, not just me. “Besides, why would I remember some random note that was shoved into your locker almost a decade ago?” I say each word speedy as if I’m an auctioneer.
“I never said it was shoved into my locker.”
I scoop another bite into my mouth and say, through food and teeth and chewing, “I assumed—”
“Wow, you’re good Annie. You assumed right.”
Of course I assumed right. Tenth grade is the year that I thought I had a thing for my bestie. I quickly sobered up—something I keep waiting for Owen to do. But before I came to my senses, I wrote that kid the sappiest love letter known to man—apoem—folded it up, and shimmied it through the vent of his locker.
It’s only by the grace of all things good in this world that I have blocked out the majority of the words of that rhyming catastrophe.
“I could grab it. I thought I recognized the handwriting all those years ago, so I held onto it—”
“You did not!” I roar. I don’t bark. I don’t yip. I don’t growl. I scream the words as if there is an intruder with a gun about to force me into performingSweating to the Oldieswith Richard Simmons. I shiver. My grammy made me work out to that video with her once, and I have never been the same.
Owen shifts to the left, and I leap. My knees smack into the table, and our drinks jostle, sloshing water and wine onto Owen’s crisp white tablecloth, but I catch his hand—his left with my right.
He’s not going anywhere.
“Annie,” he says, his fingers turning my palm upward. “Honest and true, right?” His thumb traces over the black lines of my bow-and-arrow tattoo. My eyes lock on his heart–where I know that inked bullseye hides. And my whole body floods with warmth.
Curse that thing.
I narrow my gaze on him. “Fine. I wrote the letter.”
