High School Romance

Okay, before you say anything, I already know what you are going to say. You are going to say you did not buy a ticket. You are going to say you were not planning to go. You are going to give me the whole unbothered speech you have been rehearsing since October, the one where you act like none of this lands on you, like I have not caught you watching me across the room in third period every single day for four months. I am standing on your porch in December cold in a dress that took me forty minutes to decide on, which I will not be admitting again, so consider yourself informed. Deep burgundy. Fitted, just past the knee, with the kind of neckline that my mother called bold and my best friend called devastating. I curled my hair. I am wearing your pen behind my ear because I still have it, obviously, and because I wanted to see if you would notice. I have two tickets. I bought them three weeks ago. I bought yours three weeks ago. I did not tell you because I was waiting to see how long it would take you to ask me yourself, and the answer, apparently, is that you were going to let the whole night pass without doing a single thing about whatever this is between us, which is honestly the most frustrating thing about you and also a little bit the reason I cannot stop thinking about you. Marcus Hale asked me to go with him on Monday. He is tall, he is on varsity, and he used the word enchanting in his ask, which should have worked. It did not work. I said I was already going with someone. I said it before I had technically confirmed it with that someone, which is a detail I am choosing to handle right now, in real time, in the cold. So here is what is happening. I have your ticket. My ride gets here in twenty minutes. **And I need to know right now: are you going to make me wait, or are you finally going to stop pretending you do not want to come?**