Wait, what? I don’t beg.
“Why? So, you can pick on me or call me names like when we were kids?” she sighs and I stay silent. “Sorry, I don’t mean to snap at you.” She tightens her ponytail then runs her hands along her sides, smoothing down her tank, drawing my attention to her chest. Luckily, she’s looking at the ground and doesn’t see me leering. “Do you really need help, or are you just trying to tease me some more?”
“If I was teasing you, you’d enjoy it.” The comment slips out before I can stop it. My natural flirty banter can’t be bottled.
She rolls her eyes. “Typical, Gage. Let me know when you get serious about… anything.” She turns up the speed and power walks past me. Shaking my head and grinning, I turn back to my team thinking to myself, this is going to be harder than I thought.
Chapter 7
Francesca
Walking into the meeting room of the rec center, I find my mom with all her binders and laptop opened to Pinterest searching out Christmas decorations.
“Hey, mom!” I say, sliding into the seat next to her.
“Hey, honey! Oh, I’m glad you’re here. Check this out! I think we should do a ‘Falling in love in Winterland’ theme this year.We’ll still have the cutesy Christmas scenes for the kids, but the adults will love the romantic side of Christmas. What do you think?”
Mom takes this festival seriously every year. And every year she steps up her game, changing the themes and getting more extravagant with each new item.
“I want the theme to be ‘Fall in love with Christmas’. The twinkling lights, fireplaces, cookie making... we can have a scene set at each station for couples to fall in love with. It should be a huge draw and keep people coming back to visit for years to come,” she continues.It sounds great, but then I picture our Grand Marshall making everyone fall in love with him and I want to run screaming from this room.
Full disclosure? I still have feelings for Jackson. I don’t think you ever get over your first love, right? Even though I was twelve and didn’t know what love was, he stuck with me. His compassionate nature, even though he joked around with me and called me names, and his authoritativemanner, which I understand now was him being protective of me.
There were two sides to Jackson Gage. The fun party boy, who everyone loved. The girls all wanted him and the boys all wanted to be him. He was the typical high school jock. But he hid behind his popularity to avoid getting deep and personal with anyone. If you’re a friend to all, you didn’t have time to get close to anyone. And only the select few were lucky to see that second side of him. The sweet, sensitive, give his shirt off his back if you needed it, guy. I knew the real Jackson, the one he hid to avoid being asked about his family. The questions wondering why his dad never came to games, or why he was always at our house for breakfast and dinner. Why my mom packed him lunch every day.
“Chess? Think it’s a good idea?” Mom pulls me from my thoughts.
“Yeah. I think it’s sweet. So where do we start?”
Mom flips through her Christmas catalog of years past when the door to the meeting room opens and in struts Jackson. “What’d I miss?” he bellows with a devastating smile. He’s still dressed in his sport shorts with a Comets High School tee pulled tight across his chest. He looks relaxed, he looks good. He looks like every girl’s fantasy.
My fantasy because being with him could never be real.
“Jackson! I’m so glad you’re here,” Mom says. “Come here, sweetheart. Francesca and I were just going over the themes. What do you think of a romantic winter wonderland?” My mom swoons at the idea, those heart emoji eyes replacing her own.
“I think it sounds perfect,” he replies, all the while staring at me.“Does the Grand Marshall get a Winter Queen to ride with?”
My mom gasps. “Oh, my goodness, that would be so magical! Maybe we could involve the town, have them choose a winter king and queen. Obviously, you’d already be the king, but you need a queen! The town will go crazy for this!” I can see my mom’s brain churning over all kinds of new ideas, and dread settles in my stomach.
I’m staring at him with wide eyes. I can’t believe he’s doing this right now. Totally falling into line with my mom, so if I was to denounce any of her ideas, I’d be the bad guy.
“Actually, maybe I should pick the queen. I am the king after all, Ishould get to choose my royal highness,” he winks at me and continues flipping pages with my mom pointing at different decorating ideas.
She pats his hand. “You’re right honey, it should absolutely be your choice.”
“What do you think, Noches? Who should be my queen?”
“From the stories I’ve heard, it seems you’d have your pick of just about any female in a twenty-five-mile radius.” My snappy retort, as my defense mechanism, doesn’t seem to faze him.
He chuckles, “So, while those stories are always entertaining, and make me out to be really hot, more than I already am,” he winks as he leans in, “you and I both know they’re exaggerated.”
“Are they? Because I’ve read a lot of tabloids in my time and underneath every story is always some truth. Pictures don’t lie, you know.”
“This is true, but unfortunately, the pictures don’t do the stories justice either. And they cause more harm than good. Which is actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”
I raise an eyebrow, then narrow my eyes as my mom continues flipping through pages.
Jackson continues. “I have a proposal for you, a work thing if you will.” When I’m silent, he continues. “As you’ve noticed, the public has not portrayed me elegantly.”
