Part 17 (1/2)
”You haven't seen him since we moved, right?” Reece asks. Rhiannon shakes her head. ”Well, what did he say when you told him you weren't coming anymore?”
”Not much.” Rhiannon shrugs. ”I asked if I could call him to talk, but he said it was a bad time. It feels like lately, it's always a bad time.”
”So, what else?” Reilly asks when the silence fills the room for too long, no one knowing what to tell Rhiannon. ”Because I have no idea what's going on with any of you anymore. So spill.” When no one speaks, she continues instead. ”Fine. I'll go. Because my life is actually super boring right now, and there is basically nothing to tell. I like some of the people I've met here, but it's not the same. Mostly, I just miss my friends from home.”
”Is it possible that your new friends don't know you, because you aren't telling them about a huge part of yourself?” Reece asks. I guess she and Reilly had a similar conversation to the one we had on the bleachers.
”Do you feel like your straightness is a huge part of you?” Reilly responds, sounding uncharacteristically sa.s.sy.
”No comment. But mostly, yes. Thank you very much. And no pressure from me one way or the other, you know that. Just discussing the possibilities.”
”Noted.”
I doubt any of us planned it this way, but things continue to unravel from there in the best possible way. It turns out, we all had things to say to one another that we'd been keeping inside since the move to Fairview, for some reason or another.
Rhiannon even admits that she didn't hate absolutely everything about Fairview. And she thought that coming from a small town background could be more of an a.s.set to her then coming from a city for college applications if she can find a way to work herself into this town somehow. But the real shocking confession of the night, at least for me came from Reece.
She took a big breath. ”Okay, here's mine. I have friends here already, and all that. But I'm a little bit jealous of how well Reagan has done here. I mean, her life in Fairview is better than what it was back home. She took what she had already and built on it. That is kind of awesome.”
Reilly and Rhiannon both nod in what I can only interpret as agreement, causing me to become even more confused than I was a minute before. Jealous of me? It's not like I'd done anything special while here in Fairview. Yeah I had friends, and possibly even a guy who liked me. Okay, almost definitely a guy who likes me. But these were all things that Reece had had a million times before. When I point this out to her, it doesn't seem to sway her in the slightest.
”Those things are easy for me though. And they aren't for you. You're taking a drama cla.s.s, for G.o.d's sake. You're doing all of these things, and you have this big life I never would've guessed you would've had if things had stayed the same back home.”
I stop and think about that one, because in a lot of ways she's right. My life has changed a lot from what it had been a year ago, and not just because I'm living in a different state. And, at this point my sisters don't even have all the information on just how well I am doing. So I cave and tell them everything about Kent, right up to the almost date I might've had tonight. Everyone is excited and shocked all at once. And while they are pumped that I might've had a date, they all seem to think it is so typically me that I was tricked into going on it rather than getting there on my own. And I can't exactly argue.
”Not that it matters anymore. I'm here with you dorks, instead of it with him.”
”It's eleven at night. You'd be stuck here with us anyway.” Rhiannon points out like that will make this less her fault.
”You get what I mean. I could have had my first kiss tonight. But no. I mean, not holding it against you.” Yeah, right. ”Okay, I sort of hold it against you.” I stick out my tongue and hope that Rhiannon is already in a place where we can joke about tonight's events. She doesn't make a face back, but she doesn't snap at me either. So I'll take it.
I'm not sure how, because I'm not particularly comfortable, but somehow all four of us manage to find spots on the bed that work well enough for us to fall asleep. Reece spreads out over the course of the night, taking up more than her fair share of the bed, but I've always been comfortable sleeping curled up in a tiny ball near my pillow. And when I wake up the next morning, I feel better than I did the night before.
To my surprise, I'm the first one awake. Even Rhiannon is still fast asleep, snoring softly with one of her arms flopped over Reilly's head.
A quick look at my phone shows me it's only six o'clock in the morning, and way too early for me to be getting out of bed on a Sat.u.r.day, even if I'm already feeling like I had a good night's sleep. Adding to a good morning's sleep can only make this better, right? I drift back off eventually and don't stir again until everyone else wakes at the sound of our parents banging around in the kitchen downstairs.
We all get up without saying much of anything, but I feel more connected to all of my sisters than I have in a while. We needed this. Not Rhiannon running away, but some time together, just us.
The magic is broken a little once were all seated in various parts of the kitchen, eating breakfast and back to our phones. But Reece keeps looking up at me every couple of minutes. And I get the impression that my sisters are texting each other but not me, leaving me to wonder what they could be plotting. Because with the three of them, the options are pretty much endless.
It's only at lunch time that the three of them finally corner me and let me know what's been going on, despite the fact that they've been denying anything and everything all day.
”You might want to hop in the shower,” Reece says. ”That'll give your hair time to dry, and maybe Reilly can do something with it.”
”Why would I want to do anything with my hair?” I stand up and move away from my computer, mostly because I'm feeling like a cornered animal being watched by three hungry dogs. ”What's wrong with my hair?”
”Your hair is fine. But we thought you might want to do something a little fancier for Kent tonight.”
Um, what? I repeat the thought aloud.
”You're going on a date tonight,” Reilly announces, clapping her hands together.
”We felt bad about last night.” Rhiannon s.h.i.+fts uncomfortably. ”Okay, I felt bad about last night. But we all came up with the idea of making it up to you.”
”So you decided to trick me into my second date in as many days?”
”This was a little more on the up and up.” Reilly shrugged. ”At least this time you both already know it's a date.”
I glare at all three of them until I realize what they did. ”Wait, you talked to Kent? How did you get his number?”
”Rosie. We take art together, remember? We've been talking a little,” Reilly says with a twinkle in her eye. ”So I got in touch, and she was on board with this idea. She reached out to Kent, and now the two of you are meeting up for dinner tonight.”
My heart flutters as I accept that this might be happening. ”And Kent is okay with this?”
”Have you not checked your phone recently?” Reece asks.
I practically dive back at my computer desk and grab my phone. There's a text message waiting from more than fifteen minutes ago. From Kent.
Kent: Rosie just filled me in. Are you okay with this? Because if you are, I am completely on board.
I don't respond, I'm grinning too hard to think of any cohesive words to respond with. Instead, I flip my phone over and make my sisters read what he said.
Reilly is practically giggling with me equally. ”Respond to him!”
Well, I already know he's in for this insanity. So writing back seems like a pretty safe bet.
Reagan: It's a date.
As one, the four of us squeal together, and I'm even jumping up and down a little right along with Reece. I've got a date tonight. With a guy who actually knows he's going on a date with me.
Oh boy, I am so not ready for this.
Chapter 26.
Dinner at Lizzie's probably isn't the most elegant first date that's ever happened, but as far as I'm concerned, it's perfect. Kent and I sat at a small table in the back of the restaurant that had been set up with a couple of candles. We did our best to ignore that Lizzie was probably texting updates to Rosie the whole time we were there. But it was a really nice time and the two of us talked about almost everything, with very few breaks in the conversation.
Unfortunately, my guess that Fairview doesn't have many places to go, even on a Sat.u.r.day night, was dead on. The weather is a lot milder than yesterday, but wandering around still feels a little pointless when there is no destination in mind.
”Maybe we should have just gone back to the movies,” Kent says apologetically. ”At least we would have something to do.”
And while originally I was disappointed we weren't going to be doing the movie theatre thing again, because it meant I have to be on and functioning like a dateable person for an entire night, I'm glad we did this instead.