Saving His Smile

chapter: vii

A couple weeks passed after the embarrassing t-shirt incident, and Grace was more at ease around Zachary than ever. Granted it had taken approximately 23 car-rides, seven different study sessions, three casual interactions, and one massive argument concerning the overall importance of having a significant other (Zach believed it greatly enriched life, while Grace was more practical in saying that it's a totally optional thing, and anyways people usually operate better on their own), but all-in-all it was worth it.

They had fallen into a sort of routine that involved Grace making breakfast for both of them, and Zach providing the transportation needed to get just about anywhere. Their sudden and unexplained closeness piqued the interest of Melody who had consequently gone without Grace around for the entire month and a half that Zach had become the main facet in Grace's life.

"So you've been hanging around Duncan a lot..." Mel started, smiling wryly.

Grace cringed inwardly at the suggestive tone her friend's voice held and poked at the gooey cheese that was spilling off of her pizza and onto her plate. "Yeah..?"

"That's quite the three-sixty, considering you used to vehemently declare you basically hated the guy." Mel's lips twitched mischievously and her eyes narrowed. "So what happened?" Being somewhat privy to the goings on of Grace's life, Mel was aware of the t-shirt incident and chose then to bring it up. "See him shirtless and suddenly you want to get in his--"

"Melody!" Grace shrieked, face flaming as the image of Zach's naked torso flashed through her mind. "No, that is not why."

Melody chuckled and pushed her empty plate away from herself and settled back into her kitchen chair. "C'mon now, Gracie," Melody smirked, eyebrows quirked upwards. "Admit it."

"He's... He's just not half-bad. That's all." 

Glancing down at the uneaten food on Grace's plate, Mel mock-frowns and points downwards. "You had better eat that, missy; I slaved over it." 

Grace knew better than to assume that Melody had totally dropped the subject. Within the duration of her visit to Melody's household she would be interrogated once more. To push back said questioning as far as possible, Grace acquiesced to her friend's request and took a bite out of the rapidly cooling pizza slice. The cheese slithered down her throat in a completely unpleasant way and she fought the urge to gag. Pizza had never really been her favorite.

"Atta girl!" Melody crowed, grinning. "Now hurry up, we have a lot of ground to make up. Zachary has been taking up major Mel/Grace time."

After wolfing down four more bites of the objectionable cheese pizza, Grace figured that was enough and shoved the plate away from herself. "Done."

"Let's go then." 

The two girls exited the kitchen and pounded their way upstairs, earning themselves a muffled shout of disapproval from Melody's older brother. Once the two were safely tucked away in Mel's room and plopped comfortably on her queen-sized bed, the movie they had previously selected, Back to the Future, was popped into her laptop and the snacks they had stashed earlier were pulled open with zeal. 

Together, they watched Michael J. Fox accidentally throw himself back in time, find the past-self of the nutty professor, and wait impatiently for the storm to occur. 

Grace was watching with quiet attentiveness, her eyes glued to the screen. Melody, on the other hand, was formulating a plot. As soon as the Under-the-Sea dance was mentioned on-screen, she sighed dramatically. 

"I can't wait until Homecoming," she said.

"Mmhm..." Grace was still mostly in the 80's movie. 

"We should go dress shopping soon." Melody reached over and grabbed some caramel corn out of the bag near Grace's elbow. "It's only a month away."

"Definitely."

"Wouldn't it be great if Shawn Connor asked me?" She didn't have to fake the giggle that escaped her lips when she said her long-time crush's name. "Oh, that would be heaven." Mel didn't wait for a reply from Grace before launching straight into her next sentence. "You and Zach could go together too. That would be fantastic."

"Yeah, it would be."

"HA!" Melody jumped off of her bed and danced around the room, throwing her arms in the air wildly. "I knew it! I knew you were into Zachary Duncan!"

Stunned, Grace tore her gaze away from the computer screen to gawk at her lunatic friend. "What are you talking about? What?"

"You tooootally just admitted that it'd be great if Zach asked you to homecoming!" If Melody waved her arms any more frantically she may have achieved lift-off.

"I--I what?" Hitting the space bar to pause the movie, Grace rolled over so that she was no longer on her stomach but sitting with her legs tucked underneath herself. "Mel, I was distracted. You can't really take anything I say in that state seriously."

Melody waved her hand dismissively before flopping back down onto the bed so that she was facing the ceiling. "Pish-posh. It's called a Freudian slip or something. I learned about in Psych last semester."

"I really don't think that's--"

"Of course it is." Melody shot upright with enough speed to give any other--normal--person whiplash. "Where's your phone? We need to call Zachary immediately."

Grace stared at her best friend as if she had just sprouted wings, a tail, and maybe a third, fourth, or even fifth eye. "Why?"

"So that you can ask him to homecoming, of course." Mel rolled her eyes and extended her arms toward Grace. "Now gimme."

Curling into a ball seemed like the best option to protect both herself and her phone at this point, so that is exactly what Grace did. "No." She peeked out with only one eye open. "Besides, isn't it the guy that's supposed to ask the girl to the dance?"

"It's 2013, Grace. Stop living in past."

After five minutes of bickering and a short tussle, Melody didn 't manage to get her hands on the coveted cellular device, but had managed to strike a deal. She would drop the asking-him idea in favor of the drop-hints-like-there-is-no-tomorrow idea. She would be handling the hint dropping herself, of course.

Grinning like a mad woman, Melody resumed the movie. "Oh, I just can not wait until tomorrow."

///

Oh my word, it's been so long; I am so sorry! Forgive me and my awfulness, please. This semester has been awful--not in that I have a mad amount of school work, but in that I have caught the dreaded senioritis. Haha, it's kind of problematic. Anyways. I'm on Spring Break now, so I'm hoping to crank out a couple chapters to that I can still update throughout the rest of the semester even if I don't have the time [read: motivation] to write. :)