Will the Real Prince Charming Please Stand Up (18 page)

****

In retrospect, I probably should have thought through my decision to call my mom. I was rarely allowed to miss school, and the times I had, I’d always had to go to the doctor before she’d let me stay home. So Mom picked me up from school, all right, but she immediately took me to Dr. Shapiro’s office to make sure my head was fine. I should have known that she would freak out like this.

Typical Mom, but at least I was away from school. And Tim.

Michelle, the nurse practitioner at the office, saw me almost right away. She checked my blood pressure, looked at my pupils, tested my reflexes, and asked me a number of questions, like if I knew what day it was and how much three times seven was.

“Everything seems fine,” she said after examined me. “Your cognitive abilities don’t seem to be impaired.” She motioned for me to hop down from the paper-covered examination table. “But you told your mom you’re still having trouble concentrating?”

I nodded. “I haven’t really been able to focus all morning.”

She pursed her lips and studied me, a puzzled expression on her face. “Something external must be distracting you, then, because whatever’s going on isn’t related to what happened last week. Not in a physiological sense, anyway.”

I felt my cheeks burn but didn’t say anything.

Michelle smiled knowingly and scribbled something onto a pad of paper. “I understand,” she said. “It feels like it was a lifetime ago, but I was fifteen once, too, believe it or not.” She pulled off the top sheet from her pad and handed it to me. “This will excuse you for the rest of the day.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking the slip of paper.

“Oh, and Bianca?” she said as I reached for the door handle. “Hiding isn’t going to solve anything.”

Michelle assured my mom that I was fine and didn’t need an MRI or anything, but she suggested that I get some more rest. Mom interpreted that as a mandate to immediately confiscate my phone. This time, I wasn’t so upset about losing my lifeline to the outside world. I saw that I’d missed calls from Ally, Talia, and Jake while I was at the doctor’s office, and I noticed that I had thirty-eight unread text messages, but I didn’t even bother to look at them before turning off my phone and handing it over to my mom.

Nothing my friends could say would cheer me up at this point.

“Did you eat lunch, honey?” Mom asked as she drove home. I shook my head, and she offered, “We can stop and get something if you’re hungry.”

I tried not to grimace. The thought of food made my stomach churn. “No, I’m okay,” I replied.

“Does your head hurt?”

“A little,” I lied. “I’m just really tired.” I stared unseeingly out the window, wondering if there was a cure for a broken heart. And then I wondered if it was even possible to lose someone who was never mine to begin with.

My chest felt heavy, and I felt my eyes start to water, but I forced back the tears, determined not to let them loose until I was in the safety of my own room. Once there, though, I threw myself down on my bed and let myself sob until I finally cried myself to sleep.

I started to wake up a few hours later. Someone was gently stroking my hair. It felt so relaxing, I didn’t want to open my eyes, but I sighed contentedly.

“Hey, Princess,” I heard Tim say.

My eyes flew open, and I struggled to sit up. He was sitting on the edge of my bed, watching me.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded. I looked around to see if anyone else was in the room. The door was open, and I could hear my mom talking to someone — probably Brady — downstairs, but Tim and I were otherwise alone.

“I was worried about you,” he replied. “And I seem to recall someone yelling at me in the hallway this morning about not letting you know I was concerned.”

I felt my face grow warm. “Oh,” I said.

He pulled out his phone. “I didn’t realize you were the one who texted me over the weekend,” he said, looking at it. “I’m sorry. I completely forgot that you and Brady traded numbers.” He seemed to gauge my reaction before he continued. “I’ll have to say it was a little awkward to have him tell me Thanksgiving wasn’t the same without me. I know we’re best friends and all, but I didn’t think I needed to reply.”

I smiled in spite of myself. “Well, he was kind of lost without you.”

“Now, if he had said that, I would have called him right away.”

I laughed. As much as my pride may have wanted me to, I couldn’t stay mad at him for very long.

He paused before he pocketed his phone. “We didn’t get back until after midnight last night,” he said, looking down and playing with his class ring. “My dad met up with one of his old fraternity buddies, and we ended up staying in Palo Alto for dinner.”

“Oh.” I felt really sheepish.

“And as much as I wanted to check on you, I don’t think two in the morning would have been the best time to come over.”

I thought of my parents opening the door at an obscene hour so someone could visit their daughter — even if it was Tim — and my smiled broadened. “Probably not,” I replied.

“So, that’s my defense for what I think you were freaking about. Did I miss anything?”

I frowned, embarrassed at my own behavior. “I’m sorry I was mean to you,” I mumbled, not wanting to meet his eyes.

“Mean? You about ripped my head off.”

“I don’t think I was that bad.”

“And then you went and disappeared at lunch. I was looking for you. I wanted to talk about what happened this morning.”

My head jerked up. “What?”

He didn’t seem to notice my confusion. “I saw Jake coming out of the lunch line and asked where you were. He mumbled something about you and the girls hanging out in the library, but when I got there, I only saw Ally and Talia.”

“I went home. I wasn’t feeling well,” I said, wondering why he said he looked for me. I thought for sure Vicky would have kept him occupied.

Tim nodded again. “That’s what they said, only it was weird.”

“Weird? How?”

He looked away. “Normally your friends are pretty cool, but no one would look at me today. It was like I’d committed some egregious felony or something, but no one would tell me what I did.”

I lowered my gaze and studied my hands. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Um, apparently, it is.” He lifted my chin with his finger and peered into my face, his warm, chocolatey eyes seeming to bore into my soul.

“It’s none of my business, but….” I fell back onto my pillow and turned away from him. I didn’t want to see his expression when I confronted him with what I saw.

“But?”

“Vicky Irvine,” I said, frowning. That familiar weight was bearing down on my chest again, making my lungs feel more like lead with each breath I took. “I saw you with Vicky Irvine.”

“Oh,” he replied.

I turned to glare at him. “‘Oh?’ Is that all you can say? Just ‘oh?’ I mean, I know it’s, like, whatever, but—“

“It depends on what you saw,” he said, looking somewhat embarrassed. “Or maybe what you think you saw.”

“I saw enough,” I said, turning away from him again. “You gave her your jacket.”

“That one?”

I sat up to see what he was pointing at, and, sure enough, there was his varsity jacket on the chair of my vanity. “But she was wearing it! I saw her!” I insisted.

He shook his head, and it looked like he was trying not to laugh. “Vicky’s a nice girl and all, but, no.”

I was confused. “What? Then why…?”

“She spilled her drink on her sweater and was complaining about how cold it was,” he explained. “I let her wear it to get her to shut up.”

“But you were kissing her!”

Tim grimaced. “You saw that?”

“Yes, I saw it!” I screeched. “The whole school probably saw it. She was practically curled up in your lap, and you can’t tell me you were just being chivalrous.”

He raised an eyebrow inquisitively. “How much did you see?”

“Enough,” I snapped. What kind of question was that, anyway? It’s not like I wanted to watch him make out with her.

“That’s debatable.” He stretched out his legs and looked back at me. “For the record, she kissed me. I didn’t kiss her back.”

“Huh?”

“It’s possible to not kiss someone back, Bianca,” he said. I nodded once, and he continued, “So anyway, I pushed her off of me, which was kind of embarrassing, I think, for both of us, and I said a few choice things that made it very clear that I wasn’t interested in her.” He looked a little sheepish when he shrugged.

I furrowed my brow. “So she just started kissing you? Uninvited? Why? I mean, who does that?”

“Why do you girls do anything?”

I glared at him. “We don’t do anything for the fun of it,” I said. “There had to have been something she was hoping to achieve.”

“Maybe,” he said, looking skeptical, “but anyway, she’s fully aware now that I’m really into someone else.”

I nodded, though that emptiness in my chest seemed to have doubled in size. As much as my spirits had lightened when he’d said he wasn’t interested in Vicky, hearing him tell me there was someone else hurt even worse, if that was even possible.

We sat in silence for a few minutes before he stood up and shoved his hands in his pockets. “So, is everything okay?” he asked. “Between us, I mean.”

No!
my heart cried, but I shrugged. “I guess.”

“You aren’t mad at me anymore?”

You’ve completely broken my heart and don’t have the slightest clue!
I wanted to rage at him, but instead, I smiled and said, “No, we’re good.”

He grinned and bent down to kiss me on the forehead. I closed my eyes and willed myself not to cry when I felt his soft lips on my skin.

“Get some rest,” he said as he straightened. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

I watched him put on his jacket and leave my room before I fell back onto my pillow and added to the tearstains already there.

I opted for a good cry instead of having dinner, and I awoke the next day with a new sense of purpose. After my talk with him the previous day, I wanted to avoid Tim as much as I could until either he graduated or my heart healed, whichever came first. But the more I thought about it, the more I was determined to
make
Tim like me. After all, I knew him first.

I didn’t know how to do it, but I figured the first step was to spend as much time with him as possible. And I had to figure out how to ask him to the Winter Formal before he worked up the nerve to ask that girl he liked, whoever she was.

The next morning, I climbed into my brother’s car and smiled sweetly at him.

He shot me a suspicious sideways glance. “What?”

“I have a question.” I took a deep breath and steeled my nerves. “You know that girl you were telling Mom about over Thanksgiving? The one Tim likes?”

He gripped the steering wheel and grunted before he said, “Don’t worry about it.”

“But who is she? I mean, you think she’s okay, right?”

He grumbled. “You don’t need to worry about it,” he said again.

I folded my arms across my chest and pouted. My brother was acting weird, like he was keeping something from me. Or maybe he just wasn’t as forthcoming with info as I hoped he might be.

Whatever. I knew I could get help from my friends.

Ally and Talia met me near Brady’s parking spot in the senior lot, but I didn’t get a chance to tell them about my plan to make Tim like me before he pulled up with Betty. He walked with us to homeroom, and Ally wouldn’t stop talking about the Winter Formal.

“We got approval!” she said in a sing-song voice, ignoring my glare. “The favors will be buckets of candy, Tim, so now you have to go to the dance.”

“Maybe,” he said, laughing.

Talia cocked her head to the side. “Oh, come on. There isn’t a single girl at Westgate who would turn you down!”

I stared at her. What were my friends doing? Sure, I hadn't told them about my plan yet, but they knew I liked him. Why were they encouraging him to ask some other girl?

“We’ll see,” he said with a shrug. “I really don’t want to ask somebody just to have someone to go with. I mean, I’d rather go with someone who likes me at least as much as I like her, you know?”

I looked up at Tim, but his eyes were downcast. Ally continued talking about the Winter Formal and how they were using elements from different candy wrappers to decorate the gym for the dance, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was thinking about how Tim had echoed the exact reason I’d given Brady for why I didn’t want to go to Homecoming.

It was still early when we got to our classroom. Ally and Talia went in, and I started to follow, but Tim stopped me.

“Hey, Bianca, can I talk to you for a second?”

I adjusted my backpack and stepped to the side to talk to him. “What’s up?” I said as lightly as I could.

“I, um, wanted to ask you something yesterday,” he said, “but I didn’t know how. Or if you’d even care.”

I furrowed my brow, confused. “What?”

He cleared his throat. “What I mean to say is that I wasn’t totally honest with you. You know, when I came over and stuff.”

I froze. “You weren’t?”

“No.” Tim looked up at the ceiling. “Well, not completely. I mean, I didn’t tell you everything.”

“Okay.” I did my best to look calm, but I was panicking on the inside. “What part did you leave out?”

He took a deep breath and looked like he wasn’t sure how to say what was on his mind. “I didn’t forget that you and Brady traded phones,” he said at last, the words coming out in a rapid gush.

“Oh.” The weight of his admission hit me like a sucker punch. What had Jake said? That if he knew it was from me and still didn’t respond….

“I wanted to text you back,” Tim said, struggling to get the words out. “And I must have started at least a dozen times before I stopped myself.”

Now I was confused. “Why?”

He stared down for a few seconds before he looked at me sheepishly and replied, “Because I was afraid you’d figure out I’m in love with you.”

His words came out in a rush, and it took me a moment to process them. Even then, I still wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly.

“Did you just say—?”

“Forget it,” he said, the tops of his ears turning red. “I know I’m like a brother to you, but—”

And then I did something I’d never even imagined doing before, the same thing I mocked Vicky for doing not even a full day earlier: I grabbed Tim by the collar and pulled his mouth down onto mine. I just hoped I’d heard him right, and Tim would kiss me in return.

I didn’t have to wait long for that.

My first kiss with Dante had been awkward and clumsy, and it took me a moment to get the hang of it. Once I had, it had been fun and exciting, but I’d never felt that spark we’d read about in poetry and stuff. But when Tim pulled me close to him and matched the urgency of my kiss and added a whole other layer of intensity, this was a whole new experience. My breath caught in my throat. My legs didn’t feel like they could support me. I shivered though I was warm, and I felt this crazy, frenzied need to explore his mouth with my own. It was beautiful. It was magical.

It was perfect.

When he finally lifted his mouth from mine, I stared up at him in wonder.

“So,” he said, peering down at me, “does this mean you’ll go to the Winter Formal with me?”

“Are you asking me?”

“I guess.”

A small smile tugged at my lips. “Then, sure.”

He released me long enough to pull something from his back pocket. “Good, because I already bought tickets.”

“That was presumptuous,” I scoffed. I grabbed for them, but he held me close and kept them out of my reach. “How did you know?” I asked.

He smiled. “I took Brady’s advice and tried to ask you yesterday morning, but you kind of snapped at me, and I figured your brother didn’t know what he was talking about.”

“He rarely does.”

“But after your friends clued me in, I took a chance and bought them before asking you.”

I rolled my eyes though I smiled. “They’ve all got big mouths.”

“Especially Talia.” He lowered his forehead to mine. “Have you really had a crush on me since I was in sixth grade?”

I felt my face grow hot. “I’m never telling her anything ever again.”

He grinned. “Don’t feel bad. But it took me a couple of years before I felt the same way.”

“Really?” I squeaked.

“Really. You never noticed that forty-six has always been my jersey number? As in April 6?”

“It
is
my birthday!” I exclaimed. “I thought it was just a coincidence.”

He laughed. “No. And I was so paranoid that your brother would tell you.”

I scowled, thinking of Brady’s odd behavior when I asked about the girl Tim liked. “He really shouldn’t keep secrets from me,” I said.

The first bell rang, and I reached up to give Tim another kiss.

“No more of that, or we’ll both be late,” he said, his eyes sparkling as he kissed the tip of my nose. “I’ll see you later.”

I was so ecstatic, I practically skipped into class.

“Thanks, you guys,” I said, hugging my friends before I slid into my seat.

“Oh, I’m so glad Brooding Bianca has gone away,” Talia said. “I take it you have a date now for the Winter Formal?”

“Yes, thanks to you and your big mouth. Did you really have to tell him how long I’ve been crushing on him?”

Ally sighed wistfully. “He is so cute.”

“You think everyone is cute,” Talia retorted before adding, “but Tim’s a good guy.”

I nodded with certainty. “Of course he is. He’s the real Prince Charming.”