“The most attractive,” Maggie says. “My god, such dazzling scoop work.”
“Were you, like, immediately into me?”
“I... I was. Yes.” Maggie shifts in her chair. “But can we come back to this topic? Another time? I just feel sort of put on the spot. Or something.”
“Oh,” I say. “For sure. I wasn’t trying to... Sorry.”
“It’s totally fine.” Maggie squeezes my knee under the table, which only slightly eases the curdling sense that I’ve messed up somehow. “Will you dance with me?” she asks, standing up and extending her hand.
“Here?”
“Yes, here! Beachy Bill needs us.” She points at the fiftysomethingwhite men with instruments, who have just started playing a buoyant and aggressive rendition of “Brown-Eyed Girl.”
“Yeah, okay.” I reluctantly rise. Maggie lifts my arm and spins herself underneath it, which makes me laugh.
I spin Maggie close and wrap my arms around her waist.
She puts her arms around my neck.
“I like you so much,” she says, as we sway back and forth to some of the most unsubtlesha-la-las I’ve ever heard in my life.
“I likeyouso much,” I say.
“Okay, good,” she says, her breath tickling my ear. “Glad we’re agreed.”
We dance beneath the twinkle lights until our food arrives.
It’s one of my favorite nights of all time.
And we emerge from it closer than ever. Over the next couple weeks—other than when Maggie goes away for the weekend with her family for her sister’s commencement—we hang out almost every day.
Never at school, sometimes in my car, but mostly at my house.
And it’s not just making out!
We also watch classic nineties movies and playSuper Smash Bros.on Nintendo Switch (Maggie, despite never having played before, is exceptionally good at it) and sing along to throwback playlists of hits from ten years ago (so that I have a shot at knowing the lyrics).
But okay, yeah, it’s a lot of making out. In my bed. With the door shut tight.
“Hey,” I say now, my free hand moving up and under Maggie’s T-shirt as my lips descend from her mouth to her chin to her neck. “I have a question.”
It’s something I’ve been wanting to ask for a while, but since she shut down all lines of inquiry at our non-prom, I’ve had a hard time finding the right moment. It feels more urgent every day, though.
“Uh-huh,” Maggie whispers.
“Did we ever, you know... do it?”
“You mean have sex?” she asks. “Almost. But no. Not yet.”
“Maybe we should,” I say, my lips still grazing her neck. “One day. At some point in the next six and a half months. Not that I’m keeping track of time or anything.”
I’m expecting Maggie to laugh at this, but she just says, “Yeah. I would like that.”
OH HELL YEAH.
“Okay. Cool,” I say. I shift upward, so I can look into her eyes, but she pulls away and propels herself from the bed.
“Hold on, sorry. I keep hearing my phone buzz.” Maggie digs around in her bag on the floor, then crouches staring at her phone with an increasingly disturbed look on her face.
