Paxton looked up from her phone. “What?”
Shayla grabbed her pant leg. “They’re calling out the classes by decade. You have to stand and cheer when they call the decade that you graduated.”
“Seriously?” Paxton said.
They called the 2000s.
“Come on!” Shayla grabbed her by the elbow and hauled her up.
Paxton shook the pom-pom as enthusiastically as she could muster, which wasn’t much at all.
“You really do suck at this school spirit thing,” Shayla said as they wedged back into their spots in the packed bleachers.
“Again, how long have you known me?”
Shayla rolled her eyes. “At halftime they’re going to call each year individually, so you’ll have to stand again.”
“Oh, joy,” Paxton said.
“It’s Alumni Night. The whole point is to honor alumni. The football players from each class get to walk on the field and get a little taste of those glory days. It’s fun.”
For someonewho actually had fun back in high school.But Paxton refrained from pointing that out.
She started to feel bad over her lack of enthusiasm. She knew Shayla was only trying to make her feel as if she were a part of the bigger group, just as she had in high school. The least she could do was pretend she was enjoying herself, for her friend’s sake.
Determined to abandon her stank attitude, Paxton tucked her phone away and tried her hardest to pay attention to the game. It was a stretch, but when the largest player on the Lions’ defense—who had to weigh at least three hundred pounds—recovered a fumble on the Mustangs’ fifteen-yard line and ran it in for a touchdown, even Paxton had to stand up and cheer. There was a ten-minute delay while the paramedics rolled out an oxygen tank for the player, who had winded himself so much with the fifteen-yard run that he couldn’t even make it back to the sidelines.
While the player was being tended to, her eyes roamed the rest of the field. Paxton spotted a cadre of men and women in letterman jackets congregating by the thirty-yard line. She realized it must be the alumni taking part in the halftime ceremony Shayla had mentioned, players and cheerleaders from years past.
Her eyes sought Sawyer. He wasn’t hard to pick out of the crowd. As one of the Gauthier Lions’ most decorated quarterbacks of all time, he was the very center of attention, with fellow players giving him hearty pats on the back and the cheerleaders sidling up to him with unabashed adoration in their eyes.
Paxton was hit with a wave of nostalgia that was both unsettling and, in an odd way she didn’t quite understand, comforting.
Standing on those sidelines was the Sawyer of her teenage daydreams, the tall, strapping, handsome boy who was revered by everyone who knew him. Seeing him there in his green-and-white letterman jacket, surrounded by his adoring fans, conjured up so many memories that Paxton had to remind herself to take a breath.
All too soon, that odd comfort she’d felt was overcome by a rush of dark unease. As she stared at the former cheerleaders and players encircling him, all those old insecurities that had plagued her back in high school came flooding back. Some of those people currently worshipping Sawyer right now were the same people who used to look down on her.
And despite what her best friend thought, herhang-upswere not a figment of her imagination. Hell, it wasn’t until Shayla had befriended her that anyone had even bothered to acknowledge Paxton at all.
To so many of the people in these stands, she was nothing more than Belinda Jones’s illegitimate daughter. She was the girl who had to work in Harlon’s just to help her family get by, the girl who made the same jeans last for three years because she was too proud to accept hand-me-downs. The girl who never fit in at high school games or pep rallies or homecoming dances.
The girl who didn’t belong here.
Paxton’s chest tightened to the point that she could barely take a breath.
At that moment, Sawyer looked into the stands, and their eyes locked. He smiled and gave her a little wave, but all Paxton could see was the bounty of reasons why they didn’t fit together—why they would never fit. They were both from this small town, but they were from two different worlds. And she didn’t belong in his. She never would.
She had to get out of there.
Paxton caught Shayla’s arm to get her attention and said, “I’m going to the restroom. I’ll be back.”
“Okay,” Shayla called. “Don’t take too long or you’ll miss when they call our graduating year.”
Paxton nodded, even though it would take an army to make her come back into these stands. She jogged down the stadium steps to the path below, which traveled underneath the bleachers to the stadium exit.
“Paxton! Pax, wait up!”
She turned, stunned to see Sawyer jogging up behind her.
