"Next week, y'all are gonna get engaged!" Mr. Herberg announced cheekily, arms thrown wide open at his sides with an enthusiastic wave.
It was Friday, and because Spencer was no longer my partner, I still sat where I was seated, which was next to Jonah. He didn't look the least bit happy with the fact that I was sitting there and/or with our teacher's announcement about the engagement—but that was his usual mood, so I wasn't really surprised to see the lack of excitement on his face.
"One of you need to plan out your proposal, and you have to make it as memorable for the both of you as possible," our teacher continued, and I swore Jonah almost choked on his saliva at this, which made me raise an eyebrow. "You don't just slip a random ring into your partner's finger, no. I won't have that. Surprise them and propose to them when they least expects it, and give 'em the best ring you can get. I do not allow you to buy real, expensive diamond rings, but be creative. There are a lot of fake plastic bands and you can decorate it with a little faux-diamond on it, or heck—you could even use one of those ring pops. Just do whatever you think your partner would like.
"Have someone record your proposal, because I want to watch all proposals one by one. And yes, I am going to score your proposal and the ring on your partner's finger." Mr. Herberg had a smile on his face that looked suspiciously like a mischievous smirk. "As well as the video, you have to write down why you choose to propose that way. The proposal has to make sense with both your character and your partner's character's background. I'll score you on your creativity, commitment, and overall execution. I'll collect the papers and the videos next Friday. Got it?"
He then smiled widely at us.
"I'm gonna leave you all with your own partners. I'm gonna head out to the teacher's longue and let you guys do whatever you wanna do—no one leaves the room, though. I'll definitely find out if you do!"
We all watched as he left the room—some with puzzled expression on their faces, and some with complete glee at the thought of having a basically free period.
After a moment of silence between Jonah and I, I finally turned around and sighed. "So, when are we gonna start on the story? We have to write one."
He calmly leaned into his seat and put his earphones in, completely blocking me out. With an exasperated sigh, I rolled my eyes and turned away.
This was going to be one hell of a project, wasn't it?
Well, I did bring it upon myself, so congratulations to me.
[]
I barged into the empty diner, swung my backpack across the counter (and ultimately startling Nat), and made my way toward Jonah, who was calmly leaning on his own counter, his back turned to me. I put on the grumpiest expression possible on my face, and let all the fire gather inside my chest so I could blow up properly. It was easy; I just had to think about the bra incident—my crush or not, I would never be okay with him doing that—and my lips instantly curled into a distasteful scowl and my fingers were clenched into a fist.
"Look, I know I'm annoying and I know you don't like me but this is actually an important project, and I won't have you ruin that for me," I started as I banged my palms onto the counter, leaning toward him warningly.
He raised an eyebrow and turned around without a word.
"Well, guess what, Gibbs? We're gonna get engaged! Married! You're gonna slip a big ass fake ring into my finger and we're gonna raise a crying doll together! I get that you can't stand me because I can't stand you too, but can you just tolerate me a little bit for this project? Because I'm actually willing to try to tolerate you.
"So, no. I won't have you block me the eff of with your stupid music. You're actually gonna listen to what I say, and oh, I don't know, maybe I'll try to listen to what you say too. Ya got me?"
A genuinely amused smirk started to appear on his face as he, too, put his hand down on the counter and leaned down toward my face. I pushed down a giddy smile at the fact that I could feel his breath brushing against my face, and kept my lips turned down.
Then I continued with a calmer voice, the angry expression on my face slowly vanishing, replaced with a normal I-don't-like-you look. "I'll wait until your shift ends. Right there at the table in the corner. You're gonna come sit down with two warm cups of your best latte, and we're gonna talk about our project with a civil manner as we both calmly take sips of our drinks. I'll try to be less annoying, and you'll try to be less insufferable. Do. We. Have. A. Deal?"
He kept staring into my eyes for what felt like forever long, until he seemingly had found what he had been looking for in my eyes, and then nodded. "Seven o'clock. My shift ends at seven o'clock."
I breathed out the air I was holding. "I knew that," I said, pushing myself off of the table and turning around to get to the table in the corner. As I walked away, I yelled out to Nat, "I need some food. Please!"
"On it, boss!" she yelled back, and I sat down with a sigh. Once I was sure that my back was turned to Jonah, I let a smile (or maybe smirk, or a mix of those two) appear on my face.
[]
For about an hour and a half, I did my homework to keep myself busy as I waited for Jonah's shift to end. People had come and go—and I noticed that more people had come for coffee than to actually dine in—but their voices just buzzed through in my ears, as my brain fully concentrated on the stupid questions that suspiciously had no actual answer.
I didn't even realize that seven o'clock had passed until a shadow blocked the lamp light on the ceiling. I looked up to see Jonah sitting down on the chair in front of me, his maroon apron gone and a muddy brown hoodie clad around his body, and his hands carefully holding two cups. He slid one of the cups in front of me, and my lips threatened to quirk into a smile once I had taken in what he had brought me.
A cup of latte, with another art on it—this time, it wasn't a rosetta pattern, but instead a rough drawing of what looked like either a bunny's face or a cat's face. It was a little messy and it clearly showed that he wasn't too good at drawing animals on a latte yet, but it still made something inside my chest flutter, followed by a warm feeling that quickly spread to the tips of my fingers.
I didn't know what flavor it was yet, so I carefully lifted it up and took a small sip. It tasted like hazelnut and a little bit of cinnamon, and even though I had never tasted a cinnamon hazelnut latte before (with a bunny/cat lookalike on it!), I knew that I loved it.
I tried not to let any emotion show as I lifted my head to look at him. He was sipping his own drink—it looked like a simple black coffee for the simple man—but he had his eyes on me the whole time, studying my reaction as I drank the latte. I put down the cup on the table and slightly wiped my tongue across my upper lip, and then he put down his cup too.
"What now?" he asked.
I turned to my bag, exchanging the chemistry book for my binder. I felt his eyes watching me as I flipped through the pages until I found and empty page and as I uncapped my pen with my tongue. "Well, I'm a twenty six year-old English teacher with a moderate income, and I came from a divorced family, with me living only with my aging dad and little sister."
He frowned, his eyebrows furrowing and his lips curling in confusion. "What?"
I sighed and rolled my eyes lightly. "My background. I'm supposed to be a twenty-six year old teacher."
"Oh." He nodded. "I'm twenty-eight, an actor, and insanely rich and famous."
For a while I just sat in silence, letting the short information sink in, and then I burst into an uncontrollable laughter. It didn't last long as Jonah wasn't joining in with the laughter—he scowled so hard his face could've fallen to the floor—so I tried to sober up, only chuckling slightly. "An actor, of all things?"
He glowered at me. "What? What's wrong with actor?"
I smiled to myself, still amused by the slight irony. If one of us was to be an actor, it surely wouldn't have been him. "Nothing. I just don't picture you as an actor, is all."
He scowled even harder.
I let one last chuckle escape through my lips. "Okay, what else?"
He shrugged. "It said that I live alone in a big city, while parents live in my hometown. A small town."
I nodded. "Okay. The question is: how did we meet?"
A sigh left his lips as his whole face scrunched up into a look of thoughtfulness. I really wanted to tell him that he shouldn't be frowning too much, but he was so deep in thought that I was afraid to break his concentration.
"Maybe we're childhood friends?" he said, and then made a face. "Nah. Too cheesy."
I just nodded in agreement. I considered the same storyline I had used with Spencer and, but then he shook his head at me.
"I'm supposed to be an only child," he told me when I asked why.
So we sat there, sipping our warm drinks that slowly turned cold, as we both considered what seemed like hundreds of hundreds of possibilities of how the two of us met. By the time the clock hit eight, though, we were both unsurprisingly stressed out—we had argued a lot; he would say no to my brilliant ideas, and I would laugh in his face at his silly ones. It seemed like we were going nowhere with this, so I just bury my face into my hands. The diner had become crowded, too, and the noisy, now stuffy environment didn't help ease our frustration in the least bit.
And then suddenly, I heard a growling.
More specifically, a stomach growling.
And it wasn't mine.
My head snapped up, instantly catching a slightly pink-faced Jonah Gibbs in front of me. "Why didn't you tell me you're hungery?"
He wouldn't meet my eyes and I just rolled my eyes, holding my hand up to signal for a waiter.
It was Spencer who came to our table, and he gave us both warm smiles as he gave us both the menu. I didn't need it since I knew all the things served here, but I held it anyway just for formality.
"I was wondering if you two would go order something," he said easily, holding up his notepad and pen. "What can I get you, boss?"
I sighed. "Please don't call me boss. My dad is the boss. I am not. Nat and Wayne have driven me crazy already." Spencer chuckled at that. "Is Wayne still here?"
"Yep. He's in for another extra shift."
"Good." And then I turned to Jonah. "Do you feel like eating some soup?"
He eyed me weirdly, but answered anyway. "Sure."
I turned back to Spencer. "Okay, tell him to get me a bowl of his soup of the day with some garlic toast—make sure the portion is enough for two. And, uh, what do you want?" I asked Jonah.
He blinked at me a few times before looking down at the menu in his hands. After a few seconds, he cleared his throat. "Just give me some onion rings."
It was one of the cheapest meals in the menu, so I rolled my eyes exasperatedly. "No, cross that. Give him the burger with extra cheese and grilled onion," I said to Spencer. And then to Jonah, I asked, "You're not a vegan, are you? If you are, switch it with the—"
"Um, no, I'm not vegan," he cut me off, and I nodded at Spencer to note down the previous order.
Spencer wrote down the orders, a slight smile on his face. He glanced up at me and smiled slyly. "And for the lady?"
I shook my head. "I just had a meal, so that's all."
"Alright," he said with a slow nod. "Anything else?"
"What do you want to drink?" When I was met with silence and Jonah's narrowed eyes, I sighed. "Two bottles of water," I told Spencer, and he nodded at me, telling me that the soup and the drink would come in about seven minutes and the burger in about twelve. "Thanks, Spence."
The guy grinned at me, showing off his pearly white teeth. "No prob, Hannah." He then glanced at the mess of papers I'd torn off my binder on the table, and winked at me. "Good luck."
I chuckled and shook my head as he left, and then I started to clean up the papers that was filled with a bunch of crossed off sentences. I put them into my bag, leaving only the binder.
Jonah and I sat in silence for five minutes or so, with me putting the papers and the rest of my bag's contents in order and him watching me as I did so.
And then, "Why didn't you order yourself anything?"
I looked up and shrugged. "I'm not hungry. Besides I did order some soup." I changed the topic. "Okay, now that movie premieres and famous best friends are crossed off, what else—"
"Why did you order me something?" he cut me off.
I shrugged again. "Because it's on me and I won't have to pay for it?"
"Look, just because your family owns the place and that I work for you, doesn't mean you can walk all over me like that," he said, his body slightly leaning forward to give off an intimidating vibe. I had expected this kind of reaction from him, so I just relaxed back into my chair. "I get it—your large tips, your daddy, and now the stupid fucking burger. But I'm not some charity case, Taylors. I don't like you, and I don't like you paying for something I could've paid."
I stayed silence, studying all the emotions that were burning on Jonah's face. It honestly astounded me to see him with such emotions when I had grown accustomed to his indifference, and, as far as it could get, a look of annoyance and mild anger. But this—this was something I had never seen. I saw a greater level of rage, fury, humiliation, resentment—everything was burning in his eyes, and his whole face was red as if he was holding in the fire from shooting up from the top of his head. Right here, at this moment, Jonah Gibbs the mysterious lad of Northside High School was a fucking open book, and I wanted to drink it in for as long as possible.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Spencer walking toward us with the soup and garlic toast I had ordered, but I didn't let my eyes steer off of Jonah's fully pissed off face. Spencer probably noticed that there was this burning tension between me and Jonah, because he didn't say anything when he put the food down. I murmured a small thank you, my eyes still firmly on Jonah, and he left.
It was as if Jonah and I was having this stupid staring contest—neither of us wanted to be the one to turn away first. But then I shrugged, my eyes falling to the sight of the delicious soup and I took one of the toast, dipping it into the warm soup.
"Your argument is slightly invalid," I started, before taking a bite of the toast. I let my eyes close for a while, enjoying the warmth that exploded in my mouth. I finished the piece of bread, and continued,
"First, you don't work for me. You work for my dad. That's a different thing. Two, I'm not 'walking all over you'," I said, making a quotation mark with my free hand. "Third, I always give large tips, so don't think so highly of yourself. Fourth, why bring up my daddy? Fifth, the burger tastes so damn good it'll shut you up once you take a bite of it. Sixth, well, newsflash, Jonah, the feeling is still mutual."
His eyes narrowed, his jaw clamped tight and his hands fisted on the table. Classic Jonah.
But I was not done. "Seventh, I already told you, Jonah, it's on me. You don't have to pay for it, but neither do I. Because it's on me, and my family owns the place. You get a free meal, I don't have to take out my wallet either, you don't owe me anything, and you and me both are happy. Take it as my apology for getting you in trouble last Monday if you will. Or if it still bothers you so fucking much, Jonah, I can always ask my dad to take it out of your goddamn paycheck."
I calmly took another piece of bread, still eyeing the troubled expression on Jonah's face. He looked slightly less pissed off, but he still didn't look all that happy either.
I dipped the bread into the soup and then pushed the bowl toward him. "Now eat up before you pass out on me. Please."