“Exactly what I just said.” Reaching down, I grab my book bag by its strap and sling it across my body. Sidestepping Kelsey and her crew, I leave the locker bay behind.
Noah is standing next to his car, waiting for me. When he sees me, he runs his hand across the hair on the top of his head, where it’s the thickest. Today it’s unruly, sticking up all over the place, but in a way that looks like he meant for it to happen.
“I thought maybe you’d ditched me,” he says when I reach him. His arms encircle me, and he plants a long kiss on my lips. “I missed you,” he says when he comes up for air.
“You’ve been texting me all day,” I remind him, but I understand what he means. We haven’t seen each other since this morning.
We climb into his car, and he turns it on. “Where to?” We usually have until four-thirty, when soccer practice starts. We get something to eat, a smoothie or a frozen yogurt, and make-out in his car in the parking lot of my apartment, milking the clock until he has to race to make it to practice on time.
I groan at his question. It reminds me where I’m supposed to be headed. “I have to work. Gruff left me a voicemail, asking me to come in early. Edna doesn’t feel well. Something about her hip being sore.” Edna is the retired nurse who had to come out of retirement. She lectures me endlessly about saving money, so I don’t end up like her.
Noah looks disappointed, but he grabs my hand and brings it to his lips. He kisses all my knuckles. “We have this weekend to look forward to,” he murmurs against them.
“About that—”
“No way.”
“Noah.” I’m trying to sound stern.
“Ember.” He’s doing it too. He starts driving, and I’d bet the money I put in my mom’s envelopes last weekend that he’s hoping I’ll drop it. No can do. Once this experience passes by, it’s gone. There won’t be a second chance.
“It’s senior prom. Not that I care about that, but you do.” I shift in my seat as I try to reason with him. “You’re nominated, remember?” The announcement was made in homeroom two days ago. People stared at me when his name was called, because the girls’ names were called first, and I was obviously missing from the list. They were probably waiting for me to burst into tears or run from the room. “Isn’t it a requirement that you be there?”
He coughs. “I have malaria.”
“You do not, and I don’t think malaria makes you cough.”
“Typhoid fever.”
“Noah, be serious.”
“Scurvy.”
I laugh at the last one. I can’t help it.
“Ember, I’m serious. I’m not going to prom. It’s not important to me. They can crown the squirrels who live in my backyard for all I care.”
“You’re crazy,” I say through my laughter.
“Yes, I am. And this weekend, it’s just going to be us.”
We’re almost to my work, and I wish we weren’t. I don’t want to be apart from him.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
“Are you going to tell me what ‘shmily’ means?”
“No.”
“Then, no.” He draws pinched fingers across his lips, zipping them.
I throw up my hands. I want to know where we’re going. How am I supposed to know what to take?
Noah answers the question I haven’t asked. “Just bring couple changes of clothes, a bathing suit, maybe a sweatshirt, and whatever girly stuff you need.” His eyebrows draw together, and he motions at my hair and face, as if I’m a life-form he knows nothing of.
He parks as close to the entrance of my work as he can, undoes his seatbelt, and leans toward me, resting his forehead against mine. “See you at nine?”
“Like always,” I say. I work four nights a week, and each night, Noah insists on picking me up. He doesn’t want me riding my bike at night, despite the fact that I did it for two years before meeting him.
