Cute wasn't exactly what I was going for. Invisible would be preferable to cute, but I guess if I had to do the double date thing again, I’d rather be cute than the myriad of names Nathan had called me in high school.Cutewould certainly be an improvement overChunk.
"You're really quiet," she said after we'd driven for a few minutes.
I shrugged. I didn’t have anything to say.
McKenzie pouted a little, her bottom lip jutting out as she frowned. Keeping her eyes on the road, she asked, "What's wrong?"
I hesitated, not wanting to cause an issue, but I knew the longer I resisted, the more irritated she would become. "We weren't friends in high school. Nathan and I, I mean.”
"Well, I figured that much, but why is that a bad thing? Now could be your time to connect. You need to give him a chance," she said as she slowed to a stop at a red light.
I huffed in annoyance. "Our junior year, I had English with him," I started to explain as we were stopped at the traffic light.
She briefly took her attention off the road to turn to me and listen to my story.
"He drove me absolutely nuts asking for help on every single assignment. He constantly flirted with this girl who sat next to him, and the two of them were always so obnoxious together, yammering on behind me about all kinds of random crap."
"That's all? He was a little annoying? It's been years, Elizabeth. He's changed a lot since then!" she replied. The light changed to green, and she turned her attention back to the road and her GPS's directions. We were about five minutes away from the restaurant.
"I'm not finished," I continued. "Well, one time, I wasn't able to help him because we were taking an exam. I guess for some reason, he thought it would be a great idea to try to cheat off my answers and our teacher caught him for it almost immediately. He was humiliated. He failed the test and probably would have been kicked out of the class too, if it weren't for how insanely charismatic he was and how much the teacher liked him. He begged and begged her for another chance."
"Oh, wow. I didn't know it was like that," she said sheepishly. "What did the teacher say?" she asked.
"You are approaching your destination,"the GPS mounted on the dashboard chirped.
"Well, he got another chance to prove himself, but his friends were total jerks to me after that...for no reason! Like, it wasmyfault he failed the test. They would laugh at me any time I would answer questions in class. His best friend tripped me once when I was carrying my books to my seat. All of Nate’s friends spread rumors about me and basically made the high school experience miserable. And Nate didn't do anything to discourage them. It was awful." I kept the really bad stuff to myself. I couldn’t bring myself to relive the more painful things Nathan had been a part of that had made my high school experience miserable
McKenzie looked genuinely regretful as she pulled into a parking space in front of the restaurant. She stared down at her lap and bit her lip. "Elizabeth, I’m so, so sorry. We can bail if you want," she said. "I mean, I think he’s changed and matured a lot, but you don't have to go through with this if you really don't want to."
I shrugged and opened the passenger side door. "No, it's okay. It's your date, too. I want you to have fun with Tanner. He really seems to like you." And maybe in the process, Nathan could prove that he really had changed. Or get a dose of much needed humility from the new me.
"Are you sure?" she asked, hesitantly, climbing out of the car and pressing the lock button on her key fob. "Gosh, Elizabeth, I really didn't know." Had she been even remotely aware of what was going on around her on date number one, she would be keenly aware of my animosity toward Nathan, but I wouldn’t begrudge her being preoccupied with Tanner. Somehow, I’d deal with Nathan, even if it killed me.
"It's fine, seriously. We're already here, and we might as well go through with it, right?"
"Well...if you say so," Her trademark smile returned to her face. "If you start feeling uncomfortable, just...I don't know, signal that to me somehow, and we'll get out of here, okay?"
I smiled back at her as we entered the restaurant. "It's all good. And anyway, it’s just a few hours. How bad could it be?"
As I followed behind McKenzie, I hoped that my last words hadn’t jinxed the whole damn night.
3
Elizabeth
For the secondtime in two weeks, I found myself between Nathan and a wall.
Agreeing to do this again for McKenzie either made me a saint or a glutton for punishment.
"So, Nate was telling me that you guys knew each other in high school," Tanner said. I nodded my head slowly and drank my Sprite. "Has he changed much since then?"
I stared into Tanner's gentle eyes, not wanting to look at Nathan, but having no choice. Turning to face the man beside me, I sized him up and prayed that I could come up with something nice to say. "Well," I said, "He's taller, and his hair is different. He had a swoopy, young Justin Bieber thing going on back then, not this refined faux-hawk sort of style."
Tanner snorted out a laugh, "Bieber, huh?"
"It wasn't because of Bieber, it's because the girls liked my hair. They said that it framed my face well." Nathan shrugged a broad shoulder and picked up the menu.
"What else?" Tanner asked, amused.
