Her eyes were closed against the sun.
“May?”
“Hmm?” She rolled her head and opened her eyes, their faces were about a foot apart. Rook’s heart banged in his chest like Godzilla’s footsteps.
“Are you all right? I mean… I know Travis is an asshole, but is there more to the story? He didn’t do anything… bad, did he?”
She eyed him for a long minute. “Nah. He just tried to take my dress off when I didn’t want him to. And then I socked him. Twice. It sucked. But in the end, it was about a minute and a half of my life. Not a big deal.”
Rook was speechless. That sounded like a very big deal to him. “Okay.” He traced his fingers over the baby blue paddle-board. “Do you… want me to do anything about it?”
A grin broke out over her face. “Are you offering to beat up Travis for me, Rook? Oh my gosh. You are, aren’t you?”
She was smiling at him in that deadly way, the full mouthed, white-teethed way that killed him, but embarrassment was pinching at the back of his neck. He shrugged.
He had been offering that, but now he felt kind of stupid about it.
“Are you cold?” she asked. “Here, you can come up here with me. This situation is too Jack and Rose anyways.”
He laughed at her Titanic reference and hoisted himself up onto the board. It sank a few more inches into the water, but they were both mostly in the sunshine now, laying on their backs, their shoulders pressed together. Rook’s heart was doing the Godzilla thing again and he wondered if she could tell. If somehow the square inch of his shoulder that was pressed up against hers was giving him away. If somehow it was transmitting his insane crush straight into her brain and now she knew all of his secrets.
They were quiet and watched puffy white clouds pass over the sun as they bobbed in the water. The sounds of people shouting and playing in the water sounded all around them, but somehow, Rook felt as if the paddle board was their own little world.
Alone together.
“It was stupid to go with Travis. I wanted to go to prom because it sounded like fun. But it was stupid.”
He fought the urge to turn to her. They were too close for him to turn. He’d be crowding into her personal space. “It’s not stupid. Don’t let him make you think it’s stupid. You were just trying something out.”
“I mean that it was stupid to agree to spend time with Travis when I don’t even like him.”
Rook cleared his throat. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I like someone else. Not Travis.”
His throat closed like someone had clamped a giant fist around his windpipe. Rook was no expert on flirting, but he was almost positive that she was talking about him. Right? She had to be talking about him. Why else would she bring it up? Unless… she had a crush on James or Matt or Eddie or Antoine. And she was hoping to bring it up to Rook so that he could be some sort of messenger?
Too much time had passed without him saying anything. It was getting weird. He had to say something.
He glanced to his side and saw that her dark eyes were directly on him, her head tipped to the side to watch his expression.
He said the first thing that came to his mind. “What color was the dress?”
She was smiling again. “Red. And beautiful. And cost me two months worth of tips. What a waste.”
She waitressed at a little breakfast joint in their neighborhood in Sheepshead Bay. Rook had seen her there a few times, but tried not to make it a regular thing, fearing that he’d make his crush on her too embarrassingly obvious.
“Well, you should wear it again,” he told her. “For something else. You don’t have to waste it on Travis and dumbass prom.”
“Huh. That’s a good idea.” She sat up suddenly and made the paddle board rock. “Oh my god. I love this idea. I’m going to wear that dress to school on Monday. Because screw Travis, that’s why. Javi, you’re a genius.”
He tried not to let the confusion show on his face. He was fairly certain that he had not been the one to come up with that idea in the least, but she was so happy right now that he didn’t want to burst her bubble. She squinted back toward shore.
“Oh, I think they’re playing beach volleyball. Wanna go?”
He nodded and she dove off the board. They hauled it in and played volleyball with the group. By the time they all packed up and headed to the train, the group was sun-dazed and hungry and exhausted. There wasn’t any more time alone with May.
She waved to the group when she got off the train at her stop, one stop before Rook’s, and he waved back.
He couldn’t help but watch her go. That night, he replayed her words in his head over and over again. Had she meant that she liked him? Was there any way to tell without asking her flat out? Was she really going to wear her prom dress to school the next day?
***
The answer to that last question was yes. Yes, she did wear her blood-red prom dress to school the next day, gold heels and all. Rook literally dropped his textbooks on the floor when he saw her. She looked utterly and completely attractive. In every sense of the word. He felt drawn to her. Like she had a magnet inside of her and so did he. He wanted to kiss the red lipstick off her lips. He wanted to trace his fingers along the shiny braid down one side of her short hair. He wanted to fiddle with the zipper on that long, strappy red dress that swirled around her ankles and hugged her waist.
Luckily, she didn’t notice his embarrassing reaction to seeing her because every single other head in the hallway was also turning to watch her walk past. There were looks of awe, some titters, and lots of whispers, but May ignored it all as she strode down the hall into her first period classroom, her head held high.
The whole thing made Rook fall even harder into this crush he had. But it also made him very nervous. Because as the day wore on, it became very clear that everyone was talking about May and not everyone had nice things to say.
Travis had shown up with two black eyes and was apparently doing his best to spread rumors about May. That she was a jealous psycho who’d clocked him when he’d flirted with another girl. He was trying to make her sound crazy and unhinged.
As soon as Rook heard this, he had to restrain himself from going to find Travis and beating the ever-loving stuffing out of him. It was a sick world where a guy could try to take advantage of a girl and then spread rumors about her afterwards.
But it was the girl-rumors that were spreading that really chilled Rook’s blood. “She’s so pathetic,” he heard two girls whispering to one another. “Travis dumped her at prom and she shows up at school looking like that? What a freak. Is she trying to nab a boyfriend that badly? As if anyone would want her now.”
How could anyone in their right mind think that May wasn’t wanted? He felt like most of his existence on this earth was spent wanting May. As the smack-talk started to get more vicious, an idea occurred to Rook. It made him sweat just to think about it.
If it backfired, the social ramifications could be humiliating. And even worse, it could lead to rejection from May.
Because what if she’d been talking about someone else yesterday on the paddle board? What if it wasn’t him that she liked and he ended up looking like an idiot of the first degree?
Then, the idea of May eating lunch in the cafeteria popped into his head, with all those words and vicious rumors swirling around her. And all of his questions and anxieties just sort of quieted.
She was wearing that dress today as a statement to herself. She wasn’t going to let Travis’s assholery ruin her self-worth. She had her head held high, as always. And he was going to try to make her feel supported while she did it.
That was all there was to it.
So, with grasshoppers in his stomach, Rook cut third period and walked home. His mom was out, probably doing errands, so he luckily didn’t have to answer any questions about why he was home in the middle of the day.
He dug through his closet and found what he was looking for. He took care to iron out a few
things and was very glad that his father had insisted he learn how to tie a tie a few years before.
He slung his backpack over his shoulder and walked back to school, stopping just long enough to grab something from his mother’s garden. He endured some stares and whispers as he walked to fourth period and was one of the first people in the classroom.
Grasshopper stomach, Godzilla heart, he tossed his bag onto the floor and stood beside his seat, his eyes on the door.
“Dude, why the hell are you wearing a suit?” James asked, his face screwed up in skeptical confusion.
“Don’t sit there today,” Rook said, nodding at the empty seat. “Pretty sure May’s gonna sit there.”
“Ah.” Understanding cleared in James’s eyes and he stepped away, made himself scarce.
Half a second later, May walked through the classroom door and just a few seconds after that, her eyes landed on Rook. She stopped in her tracks as her eyes traveled him all the way down and all the way up.
The suit fit him pretty well. He’d had to wear it to his aunt’s wedding just a few months earlier and he knew he looked pretty good. He wasn’t as polished as the type of guy she usually went for, but yeah, hopefully he’d do.
A grin broke out over May’s face and his heart started beating again.
She strode through the classroom and shocked the shit out of him when she took him by the lapels of his suit coat and tugged him down toward her. She kissed him on the cheek and then smoothed his coat out under her palms.
“Hi,” she said, that smile still 10,000 watts.
“Hi,” he said back in a gruff voice. “Thought you could use some company.”
She just smiled and shook her head at him. “I didn’t even realize I wanted company until I saw you standing there, looking so handsome.”
Handsome? Him? It was a novel idea, and one that he definitely wasn’t going to argue with. “This is for you. I know it’s supposed to be one of those things that you wear on your wrist, but yeah. Short notice.” He handed over the bright purple tulip he’d picked from his mother’s garden.
She couldn’t have looked happier.
His chest swelled with pride as she heartily sniffed the tulip and slid into her seat, arranging it on the corner of her desk so that she could look at it all through the class.
He barely heard a word that the teacher said. He was on the highest high he might have ever been on.
When the class was over, his face hurt from smiling. She stood and so did he. Lunch was next on the schedule, but the two of them just sort of stood there while the rest of the class filed out.
“If you’re taking me to fake-prom,” she said suddenly. “Then I think we better go find some dancing. And some food.”
Dancing? Oh lord. “You’re probably right,” he replied. Because really, she was asking him on a date, and yeah, no amount of dancing was going to make him say no to that. He cleared his throat and cocked an elbow to her. “Shall we?’
Still grinning, she took his arm and the two of them walked out of school.
CHAPTER TWO
Present Day
“Dad? Did you hear me? I asked you what you and mom did on your first date.”
Rook shook himself out of his memory of fake-prom with May. He turned to his fifteen-year-old daughter sitting in the passenger seat of his SUV. It was hard to believe that Ricky was only one year younger than he and May had been when they’d first fallen in love. That would mean that Ricky could potentially only be a year or so away from fogging up car windows and sneaking into some guy’s room at night to make out. Like mother like daughter. He shivered away from the abhorrent thought of his daughter dating and tried to focus on what she’d been asking him.
“You already know that story,” he told her. He wasn’t trying to be withholding from Ricky, but sometimes he found it difficult to talk about his and May’s past, considering their present was so dismal.
“I know. I mean, I’ve heard about you wearing the suit to school and fake-prom a million times. But neither of you ever actually told me what you did.”
“Oh.” He cleared his throat and let the memory wash over him again. Leaving school with May on his arm and feeling like ten million bucks. Walking a few avenues over and finding a shitty dive bar that didn’t card them. Playing music on the jukebox and holding her close while they swayed. “We found a place with a jukebox and danced for a while and then I bought her dinner at Giacomo’s.”
“You’re kidding.” Ricky eyed him skeptically.
“Hey! Giacomo’s was a lot nicer back then. Besides, I was a sixteen-year-old kid. It’s not like I could afford a five-star gourmet experience.”
“I guess that’s romantic.”
Rook scoffed. “You guess?! Ricks, that story is like the most romantic story of all time.”
“Meh,” she shrugged, grinning at him. He smiled along with her, but sometimes it shocked him to see just how much she looked like her mother. Oval face, round, proud features, tons of black hair. “It’s all right, I guess.”
He pulled up in front of their house and parked the car. He winced. Strike that. This wasn’t their house anymore. This was May and Ricky’s house. His house was ten blocks over and a hell of a lot smaller. And lonelier.
Damn. He was throwing himself a hell of a pity party today. But it was to be expected. It was exactly what he did every other Sunday night, when he had to drop his daughter off at May’s house and he wouldn’t see Ricky until Wednesday.
“I’ll get your stuff from the back,” he told his daughter, and she scampered up the steps of the familiar brownstone and through the front door.
Rook frowned as he hefted Ricky’s overnight bag and then the new sporting equipment they’d picked out together yesterday. If Ricky had been able to burst through the front door like that, then it meant that May hadn’t locked it and that she hadn’t enabled the security system he’d installed last year.
He trod up the steps, laden down with packages and was just shouldering his way through the front door when his stomach pulled tight.
May’s laughter stopped him in his tracks, the way it always did. Always had. She and Ricky, joyous to see one another at the end of the weekend, were tangled up on the couch, laughing about something that Ricky was showing May on the phone.
“Hello,” he called, carefully setting down Ricky’s things on the entryway floor.
“Hi there,” May called easily, barely looking up from the video that Ricky was showing her.
Rook locked the door behind him and set the security system, perhaps simply to make a point. But also because the two people he loved the most on the planet were in this house and he wanted them to be safe at all costs.
He let May’s easy greeting wash over him. It was as painful as it was welcome. In the years after their divorce, he’d diligently waited for the days that being around one another wouldn’t be quite so fraught and uncomfortable. But now that those days were here, he couldn’t help but regret them. She greeted him so easily because her feelings for him were now surface and easy. She was no longer heartbroken over him. Which was good. But it also meant that she no longer wanted him. Which was bad.
Because Rook still desperately wanted her.
Welcome to his life. Where he’d been in love with the same woman for seventeen years.
“How was the weekend?” May asked him. The same question she asked him every other Sunday night. Impersonally polite.
“It was great,” Rook said, flopping down in one of May’s new, and supremely uncomfortable, armchairs. “We picked up what she’ll need for field hockey camp.”
May stiffened. “You went to the used sporting goods store, right?”
“Um.”
“Rook!” Her eyes flashed with temper but she glanced at her daughter and banked it. “I thought we’d talked about trying to save a little money on the equipment because camp was so expensive.”
Rook paid more than his fair share in child support and May owned their house f
ree and clear, but she’d just started her own business two years ago, a dance studio in Prospect Heights, and money was still tight for her.
It drove Rook insane, because money was not an issue for him and he would have gladly paid for every little thing to take some pressure off May. But yeah, apparently taking pressure off of May wasn’t exactly his job anymore.
“Dad had a coupon, Mom. It wasn’t that expensive. Really.”
May eyed him skeptically. Rook was sure that she’d correctly guessed that the coupon had been fabricated just to placate her.
“Dad told me about your first date,” Ricky jumped in again.
Rook colored. “She was asking about it.”
May looked down at Ricky. “Why were you asking about it? You’ve heard that story a million times.”
May shrugged. “Yeah, but I never knew the details. I didn’t know that you went someplace with a jukebox and danced.”
May gave a sad smile. “Then we had dinner at Giacomo’s.”
And then…
May looked up and her gaze clashed with Rook’s.
Neither of them needed to say anything out loud. She knew him well enough to know that he was re-living the and then just the same as she was. He was remembering leaving the Italian restaurant. He was remembering just as she was…
***
He walked her home after their Italian dinner and May was beside herself with happiness. She barely recognized the feeling. Joy? She’d chased that enough to know it when she found it. Exhilaration? Her old friend. Worry? Pride? Determination? Grit? These were all emotions she was quite familiar with.
But happiness? It was so new to her that it almost hurt. It almost hurt to walk beside this beautiful boy who’d put on a suit to make sure she wasn’t alone and foolish. Plenty of boys at school watched her, were obviously attracted to her. And Javier Rook was no exception. But he was always so… polite about it. He obviously went out of his way to make sure that she wasn’t uncomfortable.
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