Jonah finds me before I can find him. It looks like he's surprised to see me, too, but maybe also relieved? I can't really interpret the look on his face as his eyes lock on me from across the room, but I think it's a positive one.
"Hey," he says once he reaches me.
"Hi." I bite down the inside of my lower lip to contain my smile. This is embarrassing. "Didn't think I'd see you here."
He laughs a little. "Yeah. It was a late-minute decision. I was very fashionably late." Jonah then turns to Gina. "Hi, Gina."
"Good to see you, Gibbs," she greets him cheerily. She sends a look my way. I ignore it. "I'm gonna go get another drink. You kids want anything?"
We both chorus a "No, thanks" and she leaves us alone. Jonah rubs the back of his neck. I fiddle with the chain bracelet on my wrist. We stare at each other, and it's a little bit awkward... but I guess it's also not.
"I didn't think you got the invitation for this," I finally say to him.
"I almost didn't," he answers. Then smiles heart-stoppingly. "But I'm glad I did."
Then, I admit, "I'm surprised that you came here. I didn't really want to. I'm only here because Gina forced me."
"Well, thank god she did."
I begrudgingly agree with him.
"It's a bit strange," he begins, a slightly teasing tone in his voice. "Nobody talked to me in high school. But I just spent the last 15 minutes listening to old friends tell me how much they've missed me since graduation day. And that they wanted my autograph."
I giggle at that, and he smiles just a bit wider. "No, that's not right. I talked to you in high school. Very insistently, if I recall correctly. Despite the fact that you clearly found me annoying."
"Oh, you were," he nods playfully. "Maybe I wouldn't have found you annoying if you didn't bump into me in the cafeteria with an open can of soda and stained my shirt red—"
"That was an accident," I lie with a grin.
"I'm pretty sure that was on purpose," he contradicts, laughing.
Shaking my head, I bite the corner of my lip to keep myself from laughing along with him. "I don't know if you remember what happened next, but you dumped the same can of soda all over my hair and stained my hair red..."
He bows his head as if he's ashamed. "Alright, I admit that wasn't my best moment."
I roll my eyes playfully. "I might've orchestrated the whole running-into-you-accidentally scenario, but I almost had to re-evaluate my crush on you when I had to dye my hair to fix the stain, you know..."
His face does this mock-sceptic look, as he slightly narrows his eyes at me. "That was just you being dramatic. I'm sure washing your hair a few times would've fixed it just fine."
"Hm. But you liked me as a redhead."
"I like your blonde hair even more," Jonah says with a smile, and I fight the urge to touch my braid. "It's really nice to see you again, Hannah. I really wasn't sure if you'd be here."
My heart does a dangerous flip inside my ribcage, it cannot be healthy. Feeling a bit cheeky, I ask him, "Did you only come because you were hoping I'd be here?"
A faint redness blooms on his cheeks, but he tries to play it off with a casual shrug. "I can neither confirm nor deny."
I scoff out a laugh even as I feel my own cheeks warming at the implication. I gesture toward the food station behind me. "Alright. So, now that we're here. Wanna judge all the food with me, Masterchef? They have so much food tonight, Gina wouldn't want me to waste the $75 she spent for my registration fee."
The school garden doesn't look the same anymore.
Sometime after we graduated, they've expanded the land. The layout's changed a little—there's a small greenhouse now, for selected plants. More planter boxes to accommodate a bigger collection of seasonal flowers, fruits and vegetables. There are a few benches that weren't there before. They've also installed fairy lights that run the length of the tall fences, and after a few minutes of fiddling around, we find the switch and turn it on.
Someone's clearly been taking care of the garden, even though it's summer holiday. I walk along the stone pathway, amazed by all the work that the gardening club has put into the garden.
As I'm sneaking a glance into the locked greenhouse, I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn around. I raise an eyebrow at Jonah, who, without a word, holds up a small handful of tiny daisies and moves to pin a few into my side braid.
Face heating up, I chastise him, "Jonah! You can't just pick them from the garden without permission. It could be someone else's handwork."
His lip quirks up into a smile as he keeps working on decorating my hair. "Don't worry, it's just the wild ones—I found some outside the planters."
"Oh." Once he's done, I turn back around to catch my reflection on the window. "Thank you. It looks pretty."
"Mm-hm," he simply hums. His dimples show up on his face as he smiles at me, and I just stand there, mesmerized by the way his eyes glimmer even in the dim light.
The fairy lights flicker prettily around us. Even though the garden looks different now, I can still recall walking through it, for one of the assignments in the baby project back in high school. Our teacher wanted every pair to enact a fake proposal, and what Jonah did for me was: have his little sister's cat lead me through the garden until I found the handmade ring that he made for me.
It was nearly a decade ago, and it's silly to think about the project now. But without it, I wouldn't have had the chance to get to know Jonah. And as terrible as the breakup was for me, I'm still glad that I once had him. I'm glad to have him as my first love.
"Ten out of ten, the garden proposal was so much better than whatever the hell I did at your brother's wedding," Jonah reckons from behind me, making me choke on an inhale.
But I catch the grin on his face from the reflection on the window, and I turn to him with a half-suppressed laugh. "Oh, so you wanna joke about that now, huh?"
The grin turns a little self-deprecating. "I know I deserve it. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about how much of an idiot I was."
I knit my brows in disagreement. He reaches forward to touch my hair—maybe to fix a loose daisy in my braid. But his fingers move, running down the length of my thin braid.
Jonah continues, "I mean, what was I thinking? Making a scene at your brother's wedding. I never got to apologize to Tony for that."
I shake my head. "It's okay. You didn't make a scene at all. Even I left the wedding and he didn't mind." I lean into his touch, my cheek pressed into his palm. I tell him, "I didn't mean to leave you there hanging. I still feel like an asshole about it."
He frowns.
"I'm sorry," I apologize for that night. I really need to explain this properly. "You really stumped me with that proposal. I wasn't going to say no—"
I grip his free hand and he squeezes back.
"But I just—I reacted terribly, and—" I cut off with a sigh. "I was gonna find you after I sent my friend home. But he needed me. And I didn't think we could talk about what happened over the phone, so I thought to call you and ask if I could see you, but then—"
"But then I was already in LA, and you couldn't reach my phone anymore," he finishes, an understanding smile on his face.
"It was just all so... fucked up. I'm sorry, Jonah."
He doesn't tell me if he forgives me. But he looks deep in thought before he asks, "You weren't going to say no?"
"Well, I wasn't going to say yes either," I answer honestly. "But, like I told you, I would've said yes, if the timing was right."
"But it wasn't."
I shrug helplessly. "It's all been just terrible timing."
"Really fucking terrible," he agrees. Then, unexpectedly, he presses his lips to mine, lightly holding the side of my face as he does so. And as an automatic response, I press back into him. As if my body had any other choice but to melt into a puddle whenever he touches me.
His lips taste sweet, like the blueberry doughnut he grabbed before we snuck out of the gymnasium. I wonder if he can taste the apple juice I've been drinking all night.
"You wanna get out of here?" he proposes. "Or... do you still want to come back inside and mingle?"
"Don't be stupid." I kiss him again, drowning out his chuckles as I start to drag him toward the parking lot.
"Are you sure I'm allowed to be here?" Jonah asks for the fifth time. "I mean... it's your parents' house. I feel like I'm seventeen all over again, sneaking into your bedroom while they were sleeping."
"Mmm... I don't think you've ever snuck into my room before," I refute as I unlock the front door. "We've always been proper, and you were always such a polite boy. You'd knock on this door and ask for my dad's permission before seeing me."
"Yeah, right," he laughs.
"And it's fine. My whole family's on a trip. They'll be back in the morning." I lead him inside the house. "Hold on a minute. I need to go to the bathroom."
"Okay."
I go for a quick refresher, checking myself in the mirror and making sure nothing's out of place—except for a few loose daisies in my hair. The sight of the small flowers brings another smile to my face.
I reply to Gina's last text with: Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry. Love you. Less than five seconds later, she gives me an eyeroll emoji followed with a winking one... and then a few rather inappropriate ones. She was wondering where I was and I had to tell her I fled the reunion with my ex-boyfriend, and profusely apologized to her. Everything's good.
When I walk out, Jonah's no longer in the living room. "Jonah?"
"In the kitchen!" he yells back.
I walk toward the direction of his voice and groan out loud. "Don't tell me you're cooking for me. This is what you always did. I leave you alone for two minutes..."
"I'm not!" he exclaims, and to his credit, he really isn't. "I'm just... snooping around your house."
I cross my arms in front of my chest and raise my eyebrows at him.
"I went to get water and," he holds up a book, and continues smugly, "look what I found on the shelf."
It's one of his cookbooks. I roll my eyes at him playfully. "Everybody's grandma has one of your books in their kitchen. Nothing special."
"Uh-huh." He's still grinning a little. "You want me to sign this for you?" he teases.
"Oh, stop it." I walk over to snatch the book from him. It's the first cookbook he ever published—focusing on easy but elevated family dinners. The cover doesn't actually feature his face, but you can find him on the last page, standing in a fancy kitchen set. "On second thought, maybe I can resell your signed book for a pretty penny."
He takes the book, plants a kiss on my lips, and carefully slides the book back into my mom's collection on the shelf. Then, I grab his collar and bring him close toward me so I can kiss him even deeper.