Her jaw clenches and for a second I think she’s going to argue with some bullshit about how we were good together or how I’m making a mistake. But then something else flickers across her face that looks almost like hurt.
Good. Let it fucking hurt. Perhaps it will teach her not to run her mouth about my girl.
“We had fun,” she says quietly. “You can’t tell me you don’t remember that.”
“I remember,” I say, letting the words hang there for a second before I drive the knife in deeper. “I also remember not giving a fuck about you the second it was over. That’s all you ever were Nicole. A fuck. That’s it. You were never anything more than that, and you’re sure as hell not anything now.”
The words are harsh. Cruel, even. But they’re true. And I need her to understand that whatever we did before is over. Dead and buried six feet under.
“You’ve changed,” she says, and there’s real bitterness in her voice. “You used to be fun. Now you’re just... sad.”
I laugh. “If being sad means I actually give a shit about someone for once in my life, then yeah, I’m fucking sad. And I don’t care who knows it.”
I take a step back, creating space between us, because I can’t stand to be near her a moment longer.
“Stay the fuck away from Lola,” I tell her, my voice dropping lower. “Stop looking at her like she stole something from you because she didn’t. There was nothing to steal. And if I hear you’ve said one more fucking word, we’re going to have a serious problem. Got it?”
Nicole doesn’t respond. She just glares at me with those cold blue eyes, her arms still crossed and her face tight with barely concealed rage.
I don’t wait for a response.
The hallway is crowded, with people standing around their lockers in groups that block the flow of traffic. That’s when I notice the prom signs.
They’re everywhere.
A guy near the water fountain holds a poster board covered in glitter that says “I’d be LUCKY if you went to PROM with me,” with several paper four-leaf clovers taped to it. The cardboard is bent at the edges, likely from being shoved in his car, and glitter is falling off in a trail on the floor.
His girlfriend is squealing, jumping up and down, her hands covering her mouth as if he told her she won the lottery instead of asking her to a crappy high school dance.
It’s sappy as shit.
But I watch the girl’s face when she sees it. Her eyes go wide, and her smile spreads across her face.
Near the gym doors, some jerk from the basketball team is down on one knee holding a bouquet of roses. Red ones—the expensive kind from the florist downtown. He’s asking hisgirlfriend to prom as if he’s proposing marriage, his voice loud enough for half the hallway to hear.
She’s actually crying, tears streaming down her face as she nods repeatedly and says yes, her voice breaking on the words. Her friends are squealing and bouncing around her, phones out, recording the whole thing for Instagram or TikTok.
I shake my head and continue walking, weaving through the crowd.
Chicks go for that shit. They eat it up. The grand gestures. The public declarations. The proof that someone cared enough to plan something, to make an effort, to stand in front of everyone and say “this person matters to me.”
There’s no fucking way I could ever do that shit out in the open.
First of all, I don’t have the money to pull something like that off. Flowers and posters cost money I don’t have. Money that goes toward making sure I can pay Bells’ dad back someday for letting me crash at his house, even though he told me not to worry about it.
I might be able to scrape together enough for a sad bouquet from the grocery store, the kind wrapped in plastic and looking half-dead already. But roses from the florist? Yeah, that shit is definitely not happening.
But more than that, everyone here would see me as pussy-whipped if I carried on in the middle of the hallway with some glittery sign, getting down on one knee as if I’m some lovesick puppy who’s forgotten who the fuck he is.
Jace Cooper doesn’t fucking do that.
Except... Bells would probably love it.
Not the big public spectacle. She’d hate that, actually. She’d turn red and tell me I’m embarrassing her and probably punch me in the arm for making a scene. But the gesture. The effort. The fact that I cared enough to ask her properly instead of justassuming she’d go with me because we’re together and that’s what couples do. And prom is important to her. I know it is.
She hasn’t said anything about us going, but I’ve heard her talking to Aubrey and Sam about their dresses, photos, dinner reservations, and all the other stuff girls care about when it comes to prom. I’ve also overheard Noah and Reece discussing the limo, dinner at a fancy Italian place downtown.
And I haven’t asked her yet.
