“Me? Complaining?” She gasps, lips twitching into a smile.
The conversation drifts off while I pick at my dried mango slices. I’m half listening to Wesley stumble through complimenting Lindsay on her hair when Agatha nudges her bare knee against mine.
“Check your phone.”
I pull it out of my back pocket, no questions asked. I’ve got a new text from her.
wanna make a bet?
I raise my brows. We haven’t made a bet in months. The last one was at Lindsay’s eighteenth birthday party back in November, when I bet Ags three bucks that Wesley would be the first one to arrive and be immensely overdressed for the occasion. Agatha had faith he’d know not to show up to a house party in slacks and a tie, but she was horribly mistaken. Had Wesley ever tried to befriend me past casual smiles and obligatory greetings at lunch in the year since Lindsay pulled him into our group of friends, maybe I would’ve warned him to go with a graphic tee and jeans instead.
Suffice to say, I’d begun to worry we’d outgrown our betting. With Agatha trading in NorCal for SoCal when she leaves for fashion school in LA in the fall, part of me has taken every fragment of change in our relationship as a sign that she’s going to forget all about me the second she’s surrounded by avant-garde fashionistas whose wardrobes extend past floral print and canvas shoes. But maybe this means she isn’t ready to let go either.
what are we betting? I reply.
five dollars says lindsay picks wesley before graduation
I give her a pointed look. “Really?”
She shushes me and motions to my phone, eyes flickering to our oblivious friends.
doesn’t seem like our business, I reply
we’ve watched this shit show love triangle bullshit go on for months. i think it’s our business now
She’s got a point. I love a good love triangle as much as the next romance fanatic, but if I have to suffer through one more movie night where Sammie and Wesley crowd Lindsay on one side of the room and ignore Agatha and me the entire night, I might spontaneously combust.
fine. but if she picks sammie you better pay up, I type back, and she smiles brightly, her matte magenta lipstick starting to crack.
“Shake on it?” she asks. It’s then that I realize our other friends have gone silent.
“Are you two making a bet?” Sammie asks with narrowed eyes.
“We would never!” Agatha clutches her hand to her chest. “You know we gave up that immature practice decades ago, dear Samuel.”
“You’re so full of shit.” He shakes his head at her, then turns to me. “You promised I could be in on the next bet.”
“I didn’t think there would be one,” I admit, and shrug, slightly annoyed that the first time I successfully lied to Sammie in all our years of friendship came back to bite me in the butt.
“Hey, you’ve never promised me I could get in on a bet,” Lindsay says to Agatha. Ironic, given how often she accuses us of being immature for betting chump change on meaningless things—like the time I bet Ags a quarter that more girls would wear purple to homecoming than red, or when Agatha bet me a dollar that she could go a whole day without cursing and lost before we even made it to third period.
“Sorry.” Ags snorts. “I’ll up the amount of empty promises I throw your way.”
“Come on, we want in.” Sammie rubs his hands together.
Wesley musters up the courage to agree. “Yeah, me too.”
I glance at Agatha, both of us trying to keep a straight face, though it’s harder for me than for her. “I think you guys might want to sit this one out, trust me,” I reply.
“Wait.” Lindsay’s face softens. “Is this about you two still trying to find prom dates? I told you I don’t mind asking the guys on the track team if any of them would take you. It’s really no big deal.” She looks at me. “What about Trevor Yoon? You were practically drooling over him at my last meet.”
“I was not!”
“You were,” Sammie says. “It was gross. But doesn’t Trevor have a girlfriend?”
Agatha shakes her head while chewing. “They broke up last week.” She swallows. “He got into NYU and she’s staying local, so they called it quits early. She was a mess in ceramics.”
“She’s going with Mark Vega now,” I say, remembering the few weeks Mark and I spent as partners in freshman biology. He almost caught me doodling Ophelia Vega in the margins of my notebook more times than I’m willing to admit. “He asked her during English, I think?” I look to Ags for confirmation.
“Algebra,” she corrects with a mouth full of spaghetti. “Big poster, bouquet of daisies, lots of glitter for Mr. Semenya to clean up.”
Sammie scoffs. “How the hell do you guys even know this shit?”
Ags and I shrug in unison.
“Okay, so Trevor is on the market,” Linds recaps, biting her lip before adding, “I hear Lucas is still looking for a date. You should talk to him.”
“Snooze-cus?” Sammie laughs. “You practically threw O a party when he dumped her last year, and now you want them to go to prom together?” His laughter is cut short when Agatha shoots daggers his way.
Lucas is a sore subject for me. We dated for six months junior year, which feels like forever when you’re sixteen and have never had even one of your dozens of crushes like you back, let alone kiss you.
I thought we’d at least make it to senior prom, followed by a tearful breakup-farewell at graduation, but two weeks before junior year ended, he dumped me with little to no warning after losing his championship soccer game. Agatha reassured me he was just pissed about the loss and would come around, but he avoided me until the end of the school year, and we haven’t spoken a word to each other since.
I guess in retrospect, his only wanting to make out in my garden (surprisingly, not a euphemism) and sit in his basement playing video games he’d never give me a turn at should’ve been red flags. But, as many of us have been before, I was fooled by a blond soccer player with chocolate-brown eyes.
“I think I speak for both Ophelia and myself when I say we’re good, Linds,” Agatha replies, the tightness of her jaw betraying her calm tone. Lindsay’s been offering to help find us dates for weeks now without once realizing that forcing one of her many suitors to take us to prom isn’t exactly fairy godmother–level kindness. Yeah, it would be nice to not attend another—and my final—high school dance dateless, but a pity date isn’t a much better alternative. I want the pretty poster, the bouquet of flowers, the silly social media post with a punny caption about saying yes to the promposal. I don’t want some guy taking me just because I’m the next best thing to getting in Lindsay’s pants.