Mess To Be Made

60

Graduation was exactly how I'd always imagined it.

Turns out, watching five hundred people, one by one, walk across a makeshift stage to accept a placeholder piece of paper was pretty fucking boring.

Ezra Griffith gave a predictable Valedictorian speech. Throughout his seven-minute attempt at inspirational bullshit, I managed to make eye contact with both Cory and Gabi separately, sharing grins with each of them. Almost as if with just a single glance, we were silently reminiscing on Homecoming Week—that week the four of us shared together as celebrity outcasts.

Cory and I were the joke. Ezra and Gabi were the outliers. Yet we all grew that week in a way I don't think any of us expected, or even realized, until after it was over. We'd never spoken to each other before, yet somehow, during those five days, we became each other's closest confidants.

Cory trusted me with his deepest secret and listened to me when I didn't deserve to be heard. Gabi pulled me into her bedroom to speak privately at her own party, and described me with words I'd never heard before—caring.

And that smart, sweet, Stanford-bound nerd, standing on the stage in front us, speaking to nearly one thousand people... we got him high as fuck Homecoming Week. We got to see a side of Ezra that even he didn't know yet. Not Editor-in-Chief. Not top of our class. Just Ezra. Raw and real and not at all the somewhat nervous boy that rambled on, something about our past, present, and future.

It was the one part of the ceremony that actually made me feel something.

When it was all finally over, I worked my way through the sea of my classmates as we shoved each other down the bleachers. I already knew where Tyler was sitting, so it was easy to spot him as he swiftly navigated through the crowd toward my section. It was only until I lost him that my heart jumped into my throat. I wasn't sure if it was fear that I could no longer see him, or the excitement that he was almost within reach.

Honestly, I wasn't entirely surprised when—literally the second my heels clicked against the lacquered gym floor instead of cheap metal bleachers—I felt a familiar pair of hands slip around my waist, whisking me out of the stream of our classmates rushing towards the gym doors where all our family and friends had been pushed out to wait for us.

His lips found the sensitive skin just below my ear for a moment. To an outsider it probably looked like an innocent peck.

It was anything but.

"Do not," I warned, the burn on my neck from where he grazed his teeth beginning to spread to my chest, down my arms. "You cannot turn me on right now, Tyler."

His hands gripped my waist tighter as his lips hovered over my other ear. "Sorry. I wasn't prepared to see you in giant, scratchy, black robe."

A smile. A real, simple, happy smile slipped onto my face. My eyelids fluttered shut as I leaned back, his crisp, soapy smell embracing me as he fully wrapped his arms around my waist, easily molding our bodies against one another. "Good to know. I'll wear it instead of that red lingerie next time."

He made a sound in the back of his throat—a mixture of desire and annoyance. My smile grew and I turned to face him, flashing my infamous smirk. With narrowed brows he challenged, "Do you think this is funny?"

"Do you think this is funny?"

He asked that same question Prom night. After we'd left the venue with an unspoken urgency. His hand had gripped the top of my knee the entire ride home. By the time we pulled into his driveway, we were both itching for the privacy of his room.