A walk to remember || Tk

「 Chapter 4 」

Just when I was feeling awful about the whole thing and imagining how I would ever be able to avoid Carey for five hours, he turned and faced me again.

He had a slight smile on his face.

"I'd love to," he finally said, "on one condition."

I steadied myself, hoping it wasn't something too awful.

"Yes?"

"You have to promise that you won't fall in love with me."

I knew he was kidding by the way he laughed, and I couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. Sometimes, I had to admit, Jungkook had a pretty good sense of humor.

I smiled and gave him my word.

As a general rule, Southern Baptists don't dance. In Beaufort, however, it wasn't a rule that was ever strictly enforced.

The minister before Dohyun--don't ask me what his name was--took sort of a lax view about school dances as long as they were chaperoned, and because of that, they'd become a tradition of sorts.

By the time Dohyun came along, it was too late to change things. Jungkook was pretty much the only one who'd never been to a school dance and frankly, I didn't know whether he even knew how to dance at all. I admit that I also had some concerns about what he would wear, though it wasn't something I would tell him.

When Jungkook went to the church socials--which were encouraged by Dohyun--he usually wore an old sweater and one of the plaid trousers we saw in school every day, but the homecoming dance was supposed to be special.

Most of the girls bought new dresses and the boys wore suits, and this year we were bringing in a photographer to take our pictures.

I knew Jungkook wasn't going to buy a new suit because he wasn't exactly well-off.

Ministering wasn't a profession where people made a lot of money, but of course ministers weren't in it for monetary gain, they were in it for the long haul, if you know what I mean. But I didn't want him to wear the same thing he wore to school every day, either.

Not so much for me--I'm not that cold-hearted--but because of what others might say. I didn't want people to make fun of him or anything.

The good news, if there was any, was that Namjoon didn't rib me too bad about the whole Jungkook situation because he was too busy thinking about his own date.

He was taking Margaret Hays, who was the head cheerleader at our school. She wasn't the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but she was nice in her own way.

By nice, of course, I'm talking about her legs.

Namjoon offered to double-date with me, but I turned him down because I didn't want to take any chances with Namjoon teasing Jungkook or anything like that.

He was a good guy, but he could be kind of heartless sometimes, especially when he had a few shots of bourbon in him.

The day of the dance was actually quite busy for me.

I spent most of the afternoon helping to decorate the gym, and I had to get to Jungkook's about a half hour early because his father wanted to talk to me, though I didn't know why.

Jungkook had sprung that one on me just the day before, and I can't say I was exactly thrilled by the prospect of it. I figured he was going to talk about temptation and the evil path it can lead us to. If he brought up fornication, though, I knew I would die right there on the spot.

I said small prayers all day long in the hope of avoiding this conversation, but I wasn't sure if God would put my prayers on the front burner, if you know what I mean, because of the way I'd behaved in the past. I was pretty nervous just thinking about it.