Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 60219 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 301(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60219 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 301(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
I wiped my forehead dramatically. “Whew,” I said. “I was worried you already had a date.”
She laughed and pressed another kiss to my lips before I turned and walked away, quite pleased with myself.
25
MALLORY
For a moment, I was seventeen again. Seventeen with braces and curly, frizzy hair that refused to be tamed, ginger and pale and absolutely invisible. I was that girl, standing in front of the popular, gorgeous athlete who was paying her attention. Not only attention but asking her to the Winter Ball.
I nearly squealed.
I was a grown-ass woman, and I nearly squealed. My women’s studies teacher in college would have had me hung.
Graham’s soulful eyes stared into mine, waiting for an answer. I must have forgotten to talk. I stepped up on my toes to press another light kiss to his lips, wondering if it was any good because my own were stretched so tight in a wide smile.
“I would love to go to the Winter Ball with you, Graham,” I said.
He made a joke about worrying I had another date and scooted off out the door, leaving me to collapse into the couch in my office and sigh like I was one of my students. After a few moments, a knock on my door woke me from my haze, and a senior named Valarie poked her head inside.
“Miss Taylor?” she asked. No matter how many times I heard someone refer to me like that, it still made me feel old. Usually, it would have bugged me for an instant the way it always did, but this time, I just smiled.
“Coming,” I said. “Is everyone ready?”
“Yup,” she said. “Derek wants to know if it’s okay if we curse?”
I sighed. “This is the theater, darling. What fucking good is it if we can’t?”
Valarie went wide-eyed at my choice of words but then we both grinned widely at each other.
The rest of the day was spent in a mood that I could only describe as giddy. I was giddy, and it was likely going to be embarrassing in a day or two if anyone brought it up, but I couldn’t help it. Everything was working out with Graham in a way that I could barely believe was real. Now we were going to go to the Winter Ball together, rectifying a fifteen-year-old resentment I had held on to up until now.
As a senior in high school, I had waited for someone, anyone, to ask me to the dance. When no one did, I simply went by myself, ostensibly coming as the third wheel to Tessa’s and Kat’s dates. I refused to feel bad about myself or my situation the whole night and told everyone I talked to that I was enjoying my night going stag.
It was a lie. I’d hated it, and I’d hated the judgmental looks from the girls who never had problems getting dates or the guys who I was sure would have eventually been desperate enough to ask me and never did. Some of them even went stag themselves.
Even as a chaperone, going with Graham would satisfy a little part of myself that always wanted to walk in with a cute boy on my arm. The fact that I was getting Graham Miller as that cute boy was, well, icing on the cake. The creamiest and most delicious kind of icing one could get.
The more time we spent together, the more it was difficult to keep from mauling him on the couch one night. He was being extremely careful, not wanting to move too quickly, and instead building up the tension between us so thick that I could barely stand it. My feelings for him were so deep that every time I opened my mouth to speak to him, I wanted to shout how much I was falling for him. Again.
Then there was the matter of how he was with Owen. Owen loved him. They had taken to each other like there had never been time they weren’t together, and I was getting the suspicion that Owen preferred Graham over me half the time. We would tuck him in almost every night now, Graham reading a bedtime story while I stroked his hair until he was fast asleep. When he woke up in the mornings, one of his first questions would inevitably be if Graham was there, only because on a couple of occasions, the two of us had fallen asleep on the couch together, and he was.
As the next few days passed, the giddy feeling didn’t lessen. In fact, it got stronger. Each day that passed was only building my excitement because we finally got to slowly build up a relationship rather than only seeing each other once every five years. I dropped by one of the small vintage shops that had popped up on Broad Street to buy a dress for the occasion. Graham and I had discovered a mutual love of old Noir detective movies, and I wanted nothing in the world more than to sweep into the ball with a big, elegant red dress and lace coming down from the hat to cover my eyes.