Foolish Summer | ✔

08 • S T E P H E N • 💕

Dev talked a mile a minute as he tried to explain to me why going to Green Light, and eighteen and under club, would be the defining moment of the summer.

What he didn't seem to comprehend was that if I even stuck my big toe out the door my mom would be on my ass. I was on lock down until further notice.

"Your mom's gonna be too busy with wedding shit," he countered. "You act like you haven't gotten around a punishment before."

In all honesty, if I really wanted to sneak I could've. I just didn't want to. Going to a crowded club where I'd be expected to leave with a girl on my arm...my head wasn't in it.

What happened yesterday had my head messed up. I got caught up in my own lies. For a moment I had actually believed I was the kind of guy a girl like Waverly could like.

But the look on her face when my mom said that stuff about me getting into trouble with other girls...I knew I blew it. I couldn't even look at her as we left.

She had taken up a permanent residence in my brain while she probably hadn't given me a second thought.

"Steph, you gotta come out," Dev continued.

I heard voices coming from the backyard and thought Devon literally meant for me to come out. When I stepped out onto the balcony I saw that the voices weren't Dev and some of our other friends trying to break me out.

My mom was down there with a light skinned woman with her hair straightened and another girl in pink Converse. Mom and the first woman continued walking ahead, Mom using grand gestures as she told the woman where she wanted the wedding buffet.

The second girl hung back, taken in the landscaping. My mom plus Pinterest meant everything about our house looked like it was pulled straight from a magazine.

The girl did a one-eighty and...was it really her? Her glasses, like her shoes, were pink that day and her curls were just as wild as they were yesterday.

"Stephen!" I jumped at the reminder that I was supposed to be holding a phone conversation with Devon.

"I'll call you back," I said, already ending the call.

Should I say something to her?

Would she even want to talk to me?

I was doing it again. Over thinking my next move. All I had to do was talk to her like I talked to any other girl.

She was just a girl and I had no problem approaching them.

Before I could call out her name someone else did. Her mom, I assumed.

"Waverly, can you go to the car and get the-"

I didn't hear the rest because I was on my way down the stairs to intercept. I tried to look natural, like I wasn't waiting around the foyer for her, but I didn't have a lot of options. Why was I standing around down there? To admire the family photo on the side table by the door of us at the beach-my dad craftily cropped out.

My reflection in one of the long mirrors that flanked the front door reminded me I was wearing what I had on yesterday. Slept in, wrinkled and sporting a hot sauce stain from lunch earlier. She couldn't see me like that.

Too late.

I caught her surprised reflection in the mirror. It quickly turned to annoyance as she continued to the door.

I blocked her path. "Hi, I'm Stephen," I said, sticking out my hand. "But I'll also accept Lying Asshole."

She crossed her arms, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Her stare burned me even from behind the glasses.