We’d fallen to the ice. He’d kissed me. Then he said that he had been thinking about prom. I said something vague in agreement, waiting for him to go on, but his eyes had gotten wide.
“You’re saying yes?”
When I’d just looked at him in confusion, he continued. “You want to go together?”
That had confused me even more. I was starting to wonder if I’d hit my head on the ice. Was Liam actually asking me to prom? “Do you want to go with me?” I’d squeaked.
“Yeah,” he’d said, cheeks turning red. “I mean, yes. Let’s do it.”
I’d obviously missed something. We’d both been so awkward, stumbling over our words. Had I really just been so caught up in this crush that I wrote in the lines I wanted him to say? Was it my fairytale version that I remembered all these years later, instead of the truth?
I knew one thing for sure—if Liam hadn’t planned to ask me and the whole thing had just been a colossal misunderstanding on my part, his reaction would have been precisely the same. He never would have shamed me or teased me for assuming wrong. He was so friendly, so easygoing. He would have just gone along with it, made the best of it. Maybe turned the whole night into a group thing with a bunch of friends.
“Grace?” Rosa asked, and I realized I had zoned out there for a minute, lost in my memories.
“Sorry, what?” I reached for my glass of water, needing to do something to keep the grimace off my face. It was so stupid tofeel shaken up about this now. It was more than a decade ago. It was a silly teenage prom. It didn’tmatter.
“How do you misunderstand someone asking you to prom?” Peyton pressed.
I shrugged. “I was an awkward kid. I must have misread something or…” I shook my head. “Whatever. What matters is that a few weeks later his girlfriend came up to me in the library and let me know that they had been planning on going for ages and I must have misunderstood whatever Liam said about it that day.”
“He had agirlfriend?” Rosa gasped.
It had been a shock to me too. “Apparently. I could tell she was pissed but she said he felt really bad and it was all just an awkward mistake. But since Liam was so nice, he didn’t want to say anything.”
“So what’d you do?” Peyton asked.
I shrugged. “I let him off the hook. There was a debate tournament the weekend of prom and I signed up for it. He went to prom with Chloe.”
And then they got married right after college. And had a baby together.
“Damn, Grace,” Rosa said, shaking her head. “That’s like, traumatic.”
I made a scoffing noise. “Hardly.”
“No, it is.” She leaned across the table towards me, eyes wide and serious. “When crap like that happens in our teen years it sticks with us. Haven’t you seenNever Been Kissed?”
I laughed. “As much as I might like to be compared to Drew Barrymore, it was nothing like that. It was just a silly misunderstanding that I built up in my head because I had a crush.”
I didn’t tell them how I used a month’s worth of my tutoring money to buy a dress before Chloe confronted me. Or how I had felt beautiful for the first time in my life when I tried it on.
I ended up selling it on eBay and got a good chunk of my money back, so it hadn’t been a total loss.
I also didn’t tell them how Liam’s face had turned white when I told him I was going to the debate tournament. How, for just a second, he had actually looked like he might be sick. Or maybe break something.
He was probably just feeling guilty.
“So that’s my big sob story about the hockey player,” I said, pushing my plate away. My appetite had waned considerably since I started talking. “It was weird to see him the other night because we hadn’t run into each other since graduation. He stayed in Minnesota for school and Andy and I both got scholarships to Michigan. That was the end of it.” I forced a smile on my face as I turned to Rosa. “So, what’s the verdict? Was my teenage tale of woe worthy of Netflix?”
She grinned back, but I thought her eyes might be a little sad. “That was like,One Tree Hilllevels of teen angst.” Then her smile faded. “I think you should talk to him about it.”
I stared at her. “You’re joking.”
“No, I’m not. I think you guys need to clear the air. It sounds like you never heard his side of the story.”
“Rose, give me a break. I am not going to bring up our high school prom to a professional hockey player. He probably doesn’t even remember it!”
She shook her head. “The way he was looking at you the other night sure seemed like he remembered everything.” She looked to Peyton for backup. “Don’t you think?”
