great lengths to protect this secret. I was running away because of it.
I don’t know what I hope to accomplish by telling him because we’re completely opposite of each other.
He’s this great perfectionist who hates making mistakes and I’m anything but perfect. He has all these rules and I love breaking them. He’s a soccer superstar and up until recently, I hadn’t even played on an actual team. And even though I have this little dream of applying to the youth program for next summer, I’m still not a fit girlfriend for a celebrity athlete.
Besides, for all I know, he’s back together with Sarah and if my sister makes him happy, then so be it.
I’ll never stand in the way of his happiness.
At least it’s Friday and I’m out with the girls at Ballad of the Bards, and I don’t have to think about all these things.
Plus Miller has been particularly nasty to me all week so I really need a little break.
I’m not dressed up or anything though. I have my regular clothes on, my cargo pants and a simple t-shirt with my chunky sweater over it.
I’m not wearing any lipstick either.
There’s no use wearing it if I can’t pout my lips at him and get punished for it.
Oh and tonight I’ve chosen to not dance as well.
So I’m sitting by the bar with Wyn, who has a sketchbook out, while Poe flirts with a guy at a nearby table and Callie is off somewhere.
With Reed Jackson.
He was already here when we all came in and since his dark eyes were pinned to the door, he spotted Callie right away. And since Callie already knew he was going to be here, she flirted with her bartender friend and danced with a few guys before disappearing.
As friends, we should be more worried about the fact that she completely vanished from sight.
But as friends, we also know that there’s something between her and him. Something crazy and volatile and well, epic.
And then there are her nightly outings, which only she and I know about, but still.
So we’re not as worried as we should be.
But anyway, my no-dancing-tonight rule breaks when Callie’s bartender friend, who I’ve come to know by sitting close to him for the past hour is a great Lana Del Rey lover like me, asks me to dance while on a break.
He doesn’t even give me the time to refuse him but picks me up and spins me around to the tune of one of the most depressing songs, which I happen to love, “Pretty When You Cry” by Lana.
Surprisingly, I laugh.
It’s the first time I’ve laughed all week, I think. I can’t believe I’m doing it to the song that I’ve most cried to while pining over the guy I love.
That’s how he finds me a few minutes later.
The guy I love, I mean.
Out of nowhere he’s here and he finds me laughing and dancing, swaying in the arms of another man.
For a moment, I think I’m imagining him, which can’t be so far-fetched because while I was dancing with Will, who’s burly and bearded, I was picturing him. My Arrow.
But then I get a good look at him.
He’s wearing a suit jacket – a wrinkled thing now, something that I know he only wears during his events with the team. Plus his hair looks messy too, messier than I’ve ever seen before. All the sun-struck strands have fallen into disarray.
Not to mention, he doesn’t have his baseball cap on, the one he usually wears to public places.
He looks so different than the usual and yet so familiar at the same time that I know he’s here.
He’s back from LA and somehow, he knew to find me at the bar. Well, it’s Friday and I have a habit of sneaking out. So it’s not really far-fetched.
But still.
He’s here.
I stop dancing as soon as the knowledge sinks in and the heaviness and chill of the past week lift from my body.
I’m warm now. And happy and…
I realize something is very wrong when he begins to move toward me.
Because while my lips are stretched into a wonder-filled smile and my eyes are wide with happiness, Arrow looks the exact opposite.
He appears tight and unforgiving.
His lips are pinched and his eyes are slitted. And instead of them being pinned on me, they’re glued on Will as he marches toward us with lunging, violent steps.
Holy fuck, I understand why.
Because I was dancing with him, with another man and because Arrow told me