“Ugh! You said you’d stop, dude!” Elliot said.
“Sorry,” Damon said and resumed sitting beside him. “I just hate seeing you all upset. Need to snap you out of it.”
Elliot picked up the game controller. “I’m not upset.”
Yes, he was.
Damon was going to prom with Chelsea, who was undeniably the prettiest girl in school, and since it took Elliot by surprise, he’d been unable to muster the proper level of fake enthusiasm for his best friend.
Damon’s ex-girlfriend Rochelle broke up with him a few weeks ago, so Elliot assumed neither he nor Damon were going to senior prom. He assumed that he wouldn’t have to fake his smilewhile some girl danced with Damon, touched him, pressed up on him all night.
But when Damon asked Elliot why he was upset, Elliot couldn’t very well tell him the truth, so he made a grumbling remark about how it was hard to be friends with someone who was at least three levels hotter than him.
Which prompted Damon’s demand for Elliot to admit he was just as attractive as him and the only reason Elliot didn’t get attention from girls was simply because he was shy.
It was true. Hewasshy.
And with his acne scars on pasty-white skin, too-long hair, and clothes that were always somehow too big or too short for his gangly limbs, it was also true that he was most definitely three or more levels below Damon in the looks department. What with Damon’s perfect brown skin, twice-a-month barbershop appointments, and body that filled out his baseball uniform in ways that made Elliot’s mouth go dry.
But despite the shyness and his unremarkable appearance, Elliot knew his lack of female attention probably had more to do with the fact that he was extremely gay.
Elliot was pretty sure the rest of the school knew, or at least sensed, he wasn’t into girls, but since Elliot couldn’t deny Damon anything, he agreed to ask out Damon’s prom date’s best friend just because Damon wanted them all to go to prom together as a group.
“Yeah, you’re totally upset,” Damon said. “I know you, Elliot. It’s okay to be shy, but you gotta take a risk every once in a while.” He grabbed the other controller and sat close enough to Elliot that their shoulders pressed together.
It wasn’t because Damon wanted to touch him. He just had no boundaries. None whatsoever. That was never more obvious than after the thing that happened on spring break.
The thing Elliot tried really hard toneverthink about.
They were just best friends. They’d been like this since the day Damon broke his arm jumping off the swing and Elliot accidentally healed it, thereby cementing their friendship for eternity.
“Yeah, I guess I’m a little jealous,” Elliot said. “But I’ll get over it.”
Jealous ofChelseafor getting to go to prom withyou.
Damon snorted and proceeded to obliterate Elliot’s character on the screen. Just like he obliterated Elliot’s heart.
Every. Single. Day.
Chapter Two
“Is Elliot going to ask Madison out soon?” Chelsea asked as she chomped on a carrot stick next to Damon in the lunchroom.
Damon shrugged. “He hasn’t said.”
“Well, maybe you should ask him.”
Damon sighed. Chelsea wasn’t his girlfriend, but they’d been hooking up for the past two weeks. It was her idea to get Elliot and her best friend Madison to go to prom together since Madison was newly single. Damon thought it was a brilliant plan. He didn’t want to go to prom without Elliot.
But Elliot was dragging his feet on the asking part.
“I mean…” Damon paused to chug his carton of milk. “Elliot already said he’d go with her, and Madison already said she’d go with him. Why does he have to ask her?”
Damon opened his second carton of milk. His coach said he needed more protein, and since his mom refused to buy theprotein mixes all the other guys had, he had to get his protein from “whole foods.”
Chelsea rubbed her eyes. “BecauseDamon, Madison agreed to this on the condition that Elliot would ask her in a very public manner to make Jason jealous.”
Damon narrowed his eyes and put down his milk. “Wait. You did not tell me that.”
