My mom leans in and gives me a kiss on my temple before standing up and turning toward the door.
“How’s he taking it?” she asks, and I tilt my head in confusion.
“Taking what?”
“The divorce?" My mom looks at me, and my heart sinks. But before I can ask her for clarity, her phone rings and she insists that she has to take it before she exits.
Divorce?What divorce? Zach’s parents? Why hadn’t he said anything?
I reach for my phone frantically, pulling it off the charger and immediately opening Zach’s text thread. But I don’t have time to get my shaky fingers to cooperate before a separate text comes tonight.
It’s an unknown number and I swipe on it.
Hey, Cadence. It’s Drake. From the football team. I was wondering if I can ask you something?
16
Cadence
“What do you mean he asked you to homecoming?” Ryen whispers as she leans over her desk and covers her mouth with her hand while the teacher reads from a textbook.
I roll my eyes as I stick my phone back into my pocket.
“The reason I texted you was so that we wouldn’t get caught talking,” I tell her and she just swipes her hand at me.
“Not the point. Drake asked you to the dance? When?” Her enthusiasm peeks as she turns her boldly completely to me and I shift in my own chair to get a little closer to her.
“Last night,” I keep my voice as low as possible as I look around to make sure no one can hear us. Luckily, we got seatsin the back of the class today. But after my last run-in with a teacher calling me out and how embarrassing it was to present that insanely niche paper to the class, I do decide that I do not want to go through that again.
“He texted me shortly after Zach left my house,” I add before sitting straight up when I see the teacher start to lift his head up.
Ryen and I stay utterly still until he does his routine glance around the room. When he turns back around and continues reading, a slight chatter falls over the class as people start discussing the topic and Ry and I use this opportunity to talk a bit more freely.
“I’m confused. Have you ever talked to him before?” she asks as she pulls a book out from her bag.
“No,” I shrug, trying to think of a time I would have run into him. “I don’t even think we have classes together and I don’t even know how he got my number, to be honest.” I shrug, puzzled by what prompted him to ask me to homecoming.
I mean, I don’t really mind. He did it very respectfully and now that I think about it, I’ve never been asked to a dance ever. I’ve seen him around here and there and of course he plays for the football team so that’s where I see him the most but we have never talked. Ever.
“Well, are you going to tell Zach?”
I tilt my head at her with an obvious frown, but then I realize it is a bit of a valid question.
“Should I? I mean, it doesn’t really mean much to me. I told himno, of course.”
“Okay, class,” Ryen and I jump, pulling our attention abruptly back to the front of the class as the teacher speaks. “You’ll have about fifteen minutes to finish reading the chapter on bioengineering of synthetic organs, page one-hundred-fifty-six. I will be giving a pop quiz after so please make sure youactuallyread it.” Everyone starts flipping through their books while the teacher takes a seat at his desk.
I pull out my text book and start flipping to the chapter, but then feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. I carefully pull it out and I see Ryen’s name pop up on the screen and I turn my head to look at her. She pops a bubble of gum against her lips as she flips the page of her book.
I open the text.
tell him. do you remember how you felt when you heard about Brianna?
She’s right. I didn’t take that very well. In fact, I cried; something no one but me knows. And maybe my reaction was a little excessive and I know guys handle things differently. But Ryen has a good point. I hated being blindsided like that and now that Zach and I are a little bit more serious, I think the right thing to do is to just let him know.
Not only that, but we didn’t really get a chance to talk last night after my mom walked in on us and I really want to ask him about the news she revealed to me.
I check my surroundings to make sure the teacher isn’t looking before I switch over to my text thread with Zach.
