My dad is usually quiet and doesn't say much and he especially doesn't try to intimidate anyone.
"You better make sure my baby girl has fun tonight." If my dad's green eyes had laser vision he'd burn Cam alive. Adding to my terror my mom nods next to my dad.
"Can you both chill? He's not proposing. He's just taking me to a dance." I take Cam's hand and he tightens his hold on me.
"Wait." My mom turns to grab her phone from the coffee table, pulling it up in front of her, "I want a picture of you going to your first school dance."
Cam easily wraps his arm around my waist making me lean into him. My dad grunts his disapproval, but lets mom take her picture. After she takes it, Cam extends his hand out to shake hands with my dad and he takes it grumpily.
"It was nice meeting you, Mr. Romano."
"You too, kid." He lets go of his hand and his cheeks turn a little pink. I think he's barely realized he's been rude to him since I let him in the house.
"It was nice meeting you too, Mrs. Romano." He shakes my mom's hand and she smiles sweetly at him as if she wasn't just part of the be-rude-to-Cam party.
We step out of the house and I feel like I can finally breathe. I didn't think my parents were going to be that hard on him especially after mom knowing there's a boy that can potentially be my boyfriend!
Cam walks me to a tall charcoal Jeep Wrangler and opens the passenger door for me. I wait for him to settle himself in and start to drive to apologize.
"Sorry about my parents." I run my finger along the edges of my phone.
Chuckling softly he glances at me before looking back at the road, "They're cool. They just want their baby girl to have fun."
"My mom knows a little about you so I thought they'd go easy on you and my dad isn't usually like that." I look out the window, I don't want him to see how badly I wanted them to like him.
"You told your mom about me?" I hear the smirk in his voice.
Watching the houses go by as we drive through town I answer, "I didn't tell her we were dating. Or at least fake dating. I just said there's a boy I like."
"So I'm likable?"
I turn to look at him and he has a small smile playing on his lips. I really wish this would've been real. I'd really love to feel those soft-looking lips on mine.
"Yeah." I'm surprised by my honesty because I know if I admit to him that I actually like him, he'll never really be mine. He's Zoey's.
He clears his throat, "Your dad just wants what's best for you, and today that's for a boy taking you to a dance know he better not be stupid enough to try something other than to make sure his daughter has fun at her first school dance."
The corners of my lips pull up. If I had any doubt of my growing affection for him, there isn't any now. My dad would like him too if he heard him tell me this.
"You look nice," I tell him as I notice he actually did try to dress nice. I didn't think he would.
He's wearing a dark gray suit with a black button-down shirt underneath, paired with white and black checkered Vans. His hair on the other hand seems untamed. Looks like he tried to get dress nice, but didn't care much for his hair which makes me smile. I like that he still seems himself underneath his suit.
His cheeks turn pink a little and I'm shocked that I got him to blush!
"Thanks, you do too." He mumbles as he shifts in his seat and I figure I should just leave him alone now. He's obviously uncomfortable with me complimenting him. He probably just feels weird because I should know he only has eyes for Zoey and I'm sitting here next to him shooting my shot.
He must feel the awkwardness filling the car because he turns the music on and we stay quiet for the remainder of the car ride. I'm an idiot, I'm not good at coming out of my shell. I'm better at staying quiet. I should probably do that for the rest of the night.
When we get to the school and into the gym, it's already full of a bunch of other students. Cam gets a lot of attention with everyone stopping to talk to him a little and the girls tend to take a little longer as they also throw little glares at me. At one point when we were at the snack table, a girl bumped me to get closer to Cam, but he noticed and just pulled me under his arm while I stacked our plate with a bunch of snacks.
"Get hella chocolate chip cookies. They're my favorite." He points at the cookies with his chin.
I get hella cookies and place them on the plate, surprised that they don't fall over from our tower of snacks.
When we go to find a table I see Penelope waving at us to get our attention while she sits next to Austin who's nodding at something Natalie said. If I wasn't the one who helped dye her hair, I would've missed her. It's a soft lavender and under the dim lighting in here, it almost seems silver. Cam and I make our way to the table and sit around the round table.
Austin chuckles as he places his arm behind Penelope's chair, "Are you guys going to share?"
I nod, but Cam reaches for a cookie and says, "Hell no. We struggled to get these. Get your own."
Technically, I struggled. He just shielded me from mean girls.
A boy I recognize from the football team comes up to the table to ask Natalie to dance and her eyes sparkle in the dim light and nods. She's taken away while Cam and I eat half of our plate before he gets up to get us some drinks.
Penelope leans over, "We're gonna go get our own snacks."
I nod waving them off and I'm left to keep munching on these cookies. It's probably going to be the highlight of my night.
The chair next to me scrapes and I look up to meet Thomas's brown eyes, his blonde hair perfectly styled. "Hey."
I look around to find Cam, but his back is turned to us as he's fixing us our drinks.
I meet Thomas's eyes again, "Hey."
"Don't worry he's not looking." His eyes cast down to my blue dress, "You look pretty."
"Thanks." I start to feel my hands get clammy. I don't want there to be a fight. Especially not on a night like this. I really hate conflict, my heart starts to speed up with him still sitting here.
"I just wanted to tell you that I hope you have fun tonight." He gives me a friendly smile before standing up and walking away. Maybe I read him all wrong before? That's all he wanted to say?
I look over to Cam and see him glaring at the back of Thomas's head as he's making his way back. He sets the cup in front of me and I take it greedily, not wanting to have this conversation.
Cam takes my hand, "Dance with me, Livy."
I can totally do this better than to talk about Thomas. I take his hand as he leads me to the dance floor. My hand tingles from the feel of his bigger hand holding mine. I like holding his hand or when he holds me under his arm.
Okay. I just like having him really close. I'm such a fangirl over him.
In the middle of the dance floor, his hands go to my hips as I place mine on his shoulders. My fingers really itch to play with his dark hair as those blue pools of his look at me.
Smiling softly he slowly rubs his hands up against my ribcage as we sway to the song. The motion of his hands has me very aware of other parts of my body that I'm nowhere near ready to explore. He moves his hands to wrap around my back, causing my body to be pressed against him.
He leans down to kiss my shoulder, which almost has me tripping on his feet, "Your dress is as soft as your skin." His voice comes out deeper next to my ear. "It feels really nice. You look really nice. Beautiful."
He pulls back a little and smiles as he holds me at arm's length and makes me twirl before wrapping me up in his arms again. I don't know what to say as I feel the heat rush up to my cheeks.
The feel of my cheeks is a reminder of my last year being a goal to break out of my shell. Screw keeping quiet tonight. This is my night. We agreed to this.
"Thank you." I brave myself enough to lift my hands to only scratch the back of his neck softly. I'm not brave enough to run my fingers to the top of his head where the strands of his hair are longer. "It reminds me of you."
"Me?" His eyes twinkle under the dimmed lights and his body seems to soften as I keep scratching softly.
"Your eyes." A small smile tugs at my lips as I feel his deep blue eyes looking deeply into mine. "They're the first thing I noticed when I first saw you."
He places his forehead on mine as we keep swaying to the music, "Would you freak out if I tell you that I think about your green eyes as well?"
That makes a chuckle burst out of me causing him to pull away and smile, "No. It would not freak me out. It would make me feel a little better for obsessing over your eyes."
His smile grows into a grin as he leans his forehead against mine again, "If coming to school events with you is like this every time then this is probably better than the parties that I go to."
"Why?" I find myself asking before I get to think if I want to know the answer or not.
"We just snacked on a bunch of junk and I get to have a sweet girl in my arms all night."
"I'm really enjoying myself too, but I'd figure you'd be bored by now."
He pulls back and his tongue darts out licking his bottom lip while his brows turn into a V, frowning at me curiously.
"You're anything, but boring Livy. Even the topics I don't find remotely interesting, you seem to get my attention because I like your voice, or I like when you don't know what to talk about so you talk about wanting to be a teacher when you're done with school."
Is he actually admitting, he could like me? My heart feels like it's vibrating with want for that to be true.
He pulls my lip I didn't realize I was biting and blush as I say with a much lower voice, "You remember that?"
Sometimes I feel like he doesn't listen because half the time he's on his phone and I always think it's because he doesn't care to hang out with me in school and only does it for show. This changes my fantasy into a happier one.
"I do."
I stare at his blue eyes not knowing what to say because I don't feel brave enough to tell him that it makes me happy that he listens to me. I've already said too much to him, even though the words are there on the tip of my tongue, I can't.
His hand on my hip presses me tighter against him as the other cups my cheek, and I see the blue in his eyes swirling crazily with want. I know what he wants to do as he's leaning down. I have time to stop it, but a part of me doesn't want him to as his eyes cast down to my lips.
Before I even get to decide if this is right or not, his soft plump lips meet mine and it's nothing like what I felt when Thomas kissed me. Cam's feel extremely soft and gentle and patient. His tongue softly brushes my bottom lip and he hums when I gasp and he softly nibbles on my bottom lip before pressing another soft kiss onto my lips.
My heart is hammering hard against my chest and I feel it all over my body, but although this is all wrong I can't help but feel really good. This is the best kiss ever. The timing of it sucks. I put a hand on his chest to pull away and look up at him as he looks calm and satisfied with himself.
"We can't do that again."
His soft expression drops as he frowns down at me, "Why not?"
"I want kisses to be special. I'm not good at them, but they still mean a lot to me and what we're doing is fake, Cam."
I can almost start to feel upset because he knows kisses are special to me. He knows I want to feel special.
He leans back a little, standing a little straighter while looking at the crowd for a couple of seconds before meeting my eyes again, "I'm sorry." And as if he read my mind, "I didn't forget about you wanting to feel special, Livy. I'm sorry I didn't make you feel special."
He kisses my forehead before wrapping me in his arms swaying to the song. I want to tell him that he did make me feel special, but after my little outburst, I'm just going to embarrass myself. He doesn't need to know I'm actually growing feelings for him and his kiss felt more than special. I'll just have to bite my tongue tonight and enjoy having him close. I'm lucky he's even wanted to do this for me.