Page 105
She chuckled at his insistence. At him finally being selfish and taking what he wanted. “I love you.”
He brushed his nose against hers again, his eyes closed. “I don’t think I’ll ever get over you saying that.”
She smirked. “You probably will. I’ll be too much of a—what did you call me? A menace?”
He grinned, his hands drawing circles at her hips, using all of his muscle to pin her against the door. “But you’re my menace.”
“So if I decide to scream about vaginas with Melanie and Blake in the hallway at the top of my lungs, you’ll still love me?”
He chuckled. “Yes.”
“How about if I eat all of your beignets? Or I force you to watch hours of Disney movies with me on the couch?”
“Even then,” he said, dropping a kiss on her forehead.
“And when I show up to a game without my green bandana because I, um…kind of threw it out?”
He held her steady as he carried her back over to the bright red bag. “You didn’t finish opening your present.”
Her mouth fell open. “You nut job.”
Tyler held her tightly to him with one arm, the other reaching in and pulling out a new bandana. But this one was even better; instead of a simple green cloth, it was crocheted, with white and pink flowers knitted in.
“Oh my god,” she said, snatching it from him and tying it behind her ears. “It’s perfect.”
Tyler simply looked at her, his eyes sparkling, his face glowing. Like she was the light he’d always needed. “You’re perfect.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Rory walked up to Penelope and Vanessa sitting at a table in the cafeteria, ready for the lunch crowd. She smiled at the stack of yearbooks piled next to them to hand out to students.
Penelope looked at her clipboard. “Name?”
Rory frowned. “Seriously, Penelope?”
“We have to be sure we’re not handing out yearbooks to people who didn’t order them,” Penelope replied. “Because if we run out, we’ll be screwed.”
“Oh, stop that,” Vanessa said, reaching into her backpack. “You of all people know that Rory ordered one.”
Penelope smirked, eyes still on her clipboard as Vanessa pulled out a yearbook and handed it to Rory.
She brushed a hand over the cover. It looked the same as any other Haverport yearbook on the outside—navy leather with white stripes and Class of 2024 in bold letters across the center. It was the only request the school had for the staff—keep the outside the same. But the pages on the inside were their domain, and according to the murmurs she heard in the hallway as students retrieved their yearbooks, people were impressed at how unique this yearbook was. Like it was a yearbook just for them—a generation looking toward a bright future, instead of staying stuck in the ways of the past.
She flipped open the cover and grinned, realizing why Vanessa held her copy in her backpack. The first page on the inside of her yearbook was already covered in signatures and messages, all from the yearbook staff.
“We seriously couldn’t have pulled this off without you,” Penelope admitted. “Principal Barnes said this is the best-looking yearbook he’s seen in his twelve years working here.”
“It was a team effort,” Rory said as she brushed away the tear in her eye.
“Yeah, but your vision brought it to life,” Vanessa said, grabbing Rory’s free hand from across the table and squeezing it tight. “You’re going to absolutely kill it at Baybrook.”
Rory smiled, looking down at her T-shirt. It was tan with thin white lettering. Baybrook School of Fine Arts. It was always a tradition on the last day of school for students to wear any apparel they had from the school they planned on attending, or part of a uniform if they planned on going out into the workforce. It was a fun way for the seniors to find out if anyone else was going to their same school; Rory already connected with two other art students wearing the same shirt as her.
“Thanks, guys,” she replied, slipping her yearbook into her tote bag. “Got your speech ready, Penelope?”
She scoffed, brushing her sleek red hair behind her shoulder so no one missed the name on her shirt. Princeton. “Rory, who do you think I am? I’ve had this thing ready for two months.”
Vanessa shook her head, her own UCONN shirt tucked into one of her signature neon skirts. “Valedictorian, Class President. What’s next?”
