Saturday morning me, Bee and Gia grabbed breakfast at The Olive Badger. Then, as a surprise to no one but me, Nolan showed up. He slid into the booth next to me. We exchanged polite smiles and nothing more. He actually spoke to Bee and Gia.
Sorry, I wanted to say, I take it back. I miss you. But I continued to bit my tongue like I had been the past couple days.
"You two are going to lose today," Gia said.
Blunt. No beating around the bush. Just cold hard truth. The pit of nervousness in my stomach deepened.
"Unless," she continued. "You can fix whatever is happening between you two. I know couples have rough patches, but you gotta suck it up. Your crowns depend on it!"
Suck it up? Gia definitely didn't know the whole story. If she knew Nolan and I were broken up she wouldn't be calling it a "rough patch".
Nolan noticed that too, his brow creased as he stared at her from across the table.
"What G is trying to say," Bee cut in. "Is that, to win The Prom Wars, you two need to communicate."
She directed that last word at me. I started to regret confiding in her about the text I almost sent Nolan the other night.
"She right," Gia agreed. "A lack of communication can be a huge set back today. I've seen the list of competitions and they'll really test your strength as a couple. And with the way you two have been acting recently it's clear you're not on the same page."
Bee gave me a pointed look. She didn't have to say anything for me to she was right. The miscommunication was coming from my end. All I had to do was tell him how I felt.
The fear of making the wrong decision was paralyzing, though. When I was with Nolan everything felt right. But there was an annoyingly loud voice in the back of my mind reminding me that Mom thought things between her and Dad felt right. Then they weren't.
"Jade," Bee said, kicking me under the table.
I came back to reality, the three of them stared at me. Well, four, if you counted the waitress who came to take our orders. It was the same waitress I stole the tip from.
After breakfast we all began to file out of the restaurant. I lagged behind so I could slip an extra ten with the waitresses tip. Making that right was easy. Why couldn't everything be that simple?
"Shit," Bee exclaimed, digging through her bag. "I think I forgot my phone at home."
"Butâ" Gia started.
Bee grabbed her girlfriend's hand and dragged her to the car. "We have to go back and get it. We'll meet you at the school."
I knew she was lying. She texted me to let me know they were outside when they picked me up. And if that wasn't enough evidence, her mouthing talk to him was.
Maybe being alone with Nolan would give me some perspective. Was I dead to him or was he willing to work things out? A ten minute drive to school should tell me, right?
Wrong. He said nothing. I said nothing. Then we were at the school.
I was surprised to see how many people were already there, claiming their spots on the grass or in the bleachers. The soccer field was currently being transformed into a giant obstacle course.
There were six obstacle stations being set up hurriedly by students and faculty members. The only one I could make out was the large, colorful inflated obstacle course that had tunnels to crawl through and walls to climb.
"Sign-in is over there." Nolan said his first words to me then stalked off towards the booth.
We ducked under the tarp that shielded two faculty members from the sun. Mr. Coin passed us a clipboard to sign and Ms. O'toole handed us each a red track suit.
"The locker rooms are open for you to change," Mrs. O'toole told us.
They both wished us good luck before we headed to the locker rooms.
"You never mentioned dressing up," Nolan grumbled.
I would've laughed if I didn't think he was actual annoyed by it. "I didn't know," I said, quietly. Or I forgot. Like I forgot about the whole competition as a whole.
We passed Ethan Bowman and Jeremy Wyatt in their matching yellow tracksuits. They were laughing at something on Ethan's phone. I missed laughing with Nolan. When was the last time I've even seen him laugh?
"Hey, Chambers." Jeremy raised his hand for high five and Nolan ignored him.
I understood him not talking to me, but Jeremy did nothing to him.
"What's his problem?" Ethan asked me as Nolan went into the boys locker room.
I tried to laugh it off. "He doesn't like being up this early on a Saturday."
"It's one in the afternoon," Ethan pointed out. They weren't buying it.
"Did you two have a fight?" Jeremy questioned.
Ethan elbowed his boyfriend in the ribs and hiss his name in warning. "You'll have to excuse him, his brain to mouth filter is malfunctioning. Good luck in the competition."
"Yeah. You too," I said. Then they were off towards the field. Weird.
When I stepped into the locker room I headed towards my assigned locker and the voices I assumed belonged to the other girls in the Top Six. They went silent when they saw me.
"Hey, Jade," Rainesha greeted, placing her hands into the pockets of her green track suit jacket.
Tiffany Ha was sitting on a bench between the two rows of lockers lacing up her shoes, already changed into her blue track suit. "Hi," she muttered not looking up.
And leaning against the lockers in front of her was Ana Lyons in a purple tracksuit, scrolling through her phone like she hadn't noticed me.
"Hi," I said, setting my stuff on the bench and dialing my combination into the lock.
"You here with Nolan?" Tiffany asked.
"Yeah?" I said, raising a brow as I stepped out of my shoes. "He's kind of my boyfriend."
"Kind of?" She repeated, glancing up at Ana with a smirk. "Interesting choice of words."
My gaze shifted between the three of them.
"I'm going to go find Ivan," Rainesha said, heading for the exit. She clearly didn't want to be a part of this.
"What is that supposed to mean?" I asked Tiffany.
She shrugged, standing from the bench. "Just something I overheard."
"Which was?"
"Your kinda boyfriend telling Beverly Hoover he was single right before he started making out with her last Saturday."
That had to be a lie. Nolan wouldn't cheat on me. To be fair, though, he wouldn't have been cheating. He was technically single.
"Is this some attempt to get in my head and throw off me off my game?" I accused, wanting so badly for it to be some made up gossip.
"I, and probably everyone else at the party, saw it happen," she said, looking way too pleased to be delivering the news. "He didn't even try to be discreet about it."
No. It couldn't be true. If that many people saw it then someone would've said something. Right? Or did they all decide that now was the time to start minding their own business?
"If you ask me, you two should be disqualified." Tiffany, continued, standing while putting her long black hair into a ponytail.
What she said barely even registered with me. The only thing on my mind was Nolan with another girl. Was it just kissing? Was it more? I felt sick.
"Karma really is a bitch," Ana said.
That got through to me. "I didn't cheat on Deshaun!"
Ana shook her head like she was disappointed in me. For what? Telling the truth unlike her cowardly boyfriend? The two of them left without another word.
I tried to hold myself together as I changed into my tracksuit. My mind wouldn't shut up, though. If it were true, if Nolan was kissing another girl, did that mean he gave up? Was it really over and he was just trying to move on? Was I too late to fix it? The ache in my chest grew more painful with every question.
Fully changed, I left the locker room just as Sam Larson came out of the boys locker room.
"Is Nolan still in there?" I asked him.
"Yeah," he said, rolling up the sleeves on his orange track suit. "He was on his way out, though."
"Samuel!" His girlfriend, Skye Khan, called out to him. He jogged over to her and they both headed to field.
I paced outside the boys locker room, probably looking like a stalker. A moment later Nolan walked out. He started for the field, but I blocked him.
"What happened last Saturday?"
He looked at me, really looked at me, then glanced away. "Sounds like you already know."
My heart stop. A lump formed in my throat. It was true. He hooked up with some random girl at a party.
A swallowed hard, trying to keep myself from shattering. "Let me guess, you were drunk."
"I wasn't." There was no regret in his voice.
Another knife to my chest. Tears prickled at my eyes. Was he trying to hurt me on purpose? I wanted to ask why. Why would he do that to me? But he did nothing to me but respect my wishes.
So I deflected. "People saw you, Nolan. Are you trying to get us disqualified?"
He turned to me, golden eyes ablaze, like he couldn't believe that I' say that of all things. "You honestly think I still give a shit about any of that?"
The last time I heard him that angry was right in that very spot, when he was talking to his ex. I never thought I'd be on the receiving end.
"I stopped caring about prom a long time ago, Jade." The previous anger in his tone subsided. "The moment I started falling for you, to be exact."
"Then why are you here? Why are we still doing this?"
He hands were in his hair like they always were when he was stressed. "I don't know. Obviously, I like to torture myself. Because that's what being around you is for me. Torture."
Now, I told myself, tell him now.
"Nolan, Iâ"
"Can we not do this right now?" he interrupted. "Let's just get to the field and make all of this worth something."
He didn't want to hear what I had to say. Had he really moved on? I watched him walking away, shoulders sagging, head hung low. Maybe he was ready to give, but I wasn't. Not without a fight.