9
6 months later
Ashleigh
Me:I need you to do something for me.
Marc:No.
I growled at the phone.
Me:Have you forgotten you’ve actually been nice to me for months?
Marc:Define nice.
Me:Returning my texts, being civil when you talk to me, being happy for me when I got accepted to Princeton…nice.
Marc:Yes, but you’re forgetting I went to a buddy’s house for Thanksgiving. I worked over Christmas break, and I refused to come home for George’s birthday party, which you only threw because you wanted to guilt me into showing up.
I frowned at that. It had been months and months since I’d seen him.
Me:It was a big birthday.
Marc:He turned 58.
Me:Fine, you can make up for all of that by doing me a favor.
Marc:Please know I’m wearing my mean face right now when I ask this question, What do you need?
Marc’s version of his mean face was pretty much the face I fell in love with, so it’s not like it intimidated me.
Me:I want you to take me to the prom.
Marc:Ha! That isnotgoing to happen.
I rolled my eyes. That was simply my opening salvo. This was going to be a long, drawn-out campaign. Prom was two months from now, so I had time.
Me:No one else will go with me. Every guy at school thinks we’re a thing so they won’t even look at me.
Marc:Hey, I have an idea. Stop telling people we’re a thing. And stop telling me to threaten any guy who looks at you wrong.
He was missing the obvious here. He lived to threaten guys who looked at me wrong. I considered telling him about Evan.
He’d come for dinner a few times since that first night. Like he’d been the first night, he was always polite. Charming actually. Always interested in my achievements and never once had he done something obviously out of bounds. There was no leering. No innuendo. No romantic interest at all, which of course, would have been weird if there had been, since he was years older than I was.
There was only my gut.
I couldn’t put Marc in a potential situation with a hedge fund manager who could have influence over Marc’s professional future, because of an instinct.
Me:You and I both know you’re going to cave.
Marc:1000% percent I’m not. I’m a sophomore at Princeton. I’m not going to a high school dance.
Me:Fine. We’ll skip the prom, get a hotel room, and you can take my precious virginity like you’ve been thinking about for months.
No answer. I’d been pushing his buttons for months now by bringing up the subject of sex, and invariably whenever I did, he went quiet. Because it was true? I wasn’t entirely sure. Marc and Iwerea thing. That would never change. But sometimes I wondered if we were aromanticthing. I liked to believe it would happen someday. But I was going to be eighteen soon and we’d never even kissed.
What if we did and it was weird?
