But the words I voiced out were: ‘You don’t want to celebrate with your teammates?’
He shook his head. ‘There’s only one person I want to celebrate with,’ he said, his gaze locked on mine. ‘So, hang out with me tonight?’
A beaming smile spread across my face when I answered, ‘I’d like that.’
‘Colton, you ready to go?’ I heard Miles shout from behind me.
‘You guys have fun without me,’ Colton announced, just as I turned around to look at Miles. I was greeted by the sight of him having his arm swung around Nina, both of them wearing the same smug look on their faces.
‘I thought so,’ Miles said.
Nina gently pulled away from Miles and gave me a hug. ‘I’ll text you when I get back. He’s a good one, Clara. Don’t let him slip away.’
I gave her a squeeze in return before letting her go.
‘Call me if you need a ride home,’ Colton said to Miles.
‘You got it.’ He gave a mocking salute and joined the other baseball players.
I was so stuck in my little bubble with Colton that I didn’t even realize Claudia and Lily were already back.
Just as I was about to make my apology, Claudia interrupted me. ‘I guess I’ll see you when I see you then,’ she said with a knowing smile on her face.
‘I guess so.’ I gave a light laugh, internally grateful that they weren’t mad I was ditching them. ‘You girls have fun tonight.’
‘Oh, we definitely will,’ Lily said.
We hugged each other goodbye, before they joined the rest of the baseball players.
‘Where do you want to go?’ Colton asked me once the rest of the team had left.
‘Honestly, I just want to grab some dinner and head back home,’ I told him. ‘We can hang out in my apartment if that’s okay with you?’
Giving me a small smile, he answered, ‘That sounds perfect to me.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Colton and I decided on getting pizza as we made our way to his parked car. I wanted to just have it delivered to my apartment, but Colton suggested that we could just get it ourselves, saying that we might get our dinner faster that way. It was a Saturday night, after all; the pizza place might be busy with more deliveries than usual.
‘But we can have it delivered if you want don’t to,’ Colton told me as he started the engine of his car.
A song instantly started playing on his radio and the very familiar chorus of ‘Mamma Mia’ greeted my ears, reminding me of the first time he ever drove me home—the night that led me to the decision of letting this boy into my life.
‘Getting it ourselves sounds better,’ I started. ‘But only if you let me pick which ABBA album we’ll be listening to.’
He let out a chuckle. ‘By all means.’ He was reversing the car out of the parking space when he said, ‘the rest of the albums are in the glove compartment.’
Opening it, I took out all five albums he had. When I found the one I was looking for, I ejected the CD from the music system.I placed it back into its respective case before inserting the one that I chose.
I could see the moment Colton’s face lit up, as the intro to ‘Waterloo’ blared out from the car speakers. He immediately started singing along to the song, taking the same parts as he did the last time we sang together on that fateful night a few Saturdays ago at his aunt and uncle’s bar.
The night I realized something had shifted between us.
Up until then, I had always thought of Colton’s presence in my life with the romantic notion of him breaking down the walls around my heart through its little cracks that I needed to patch up. But, as I looked at the boy sitting next to me, happily singing along to a Napoleon metaphor song about surrendering to love, I realized that wasn’t it at all.
Colton wasn’t trying to take it down.
He just kept waiting at the gate, persistently making his presence known and patiently waiting to be granted entry.
