“Yeah?” Jace grinned. “Jess is gonna love that. You know she loves being the center of attention.”
“That I do. And she’ll be happy to be dressed up all fancy and to be able to announce it to everybody fast and efficiently. I expect she’ll be the belle of the metaphoric ball, showing off the ring the rest of the night. Zach and Lexi are gonna shoot the whole thing.”
Zach shifted in his seat. “Actually, it will just be me. Lexi isn’t coming.”
Eli went brows up, setting his beer back down. “Oh, will she be back in Texas by then? She’s been around so much the last few weeks, I kinda forgot she was le
aving.”
“Is that why you’ve been such a broody son of a bitch since you got here?” Leo asked.
“I am not a broody son of a bitch.” Well, okay, maybe he’d been in a little bit of a funk, but he was just worried about Lexi. Worried, too, that he’d irrevocably screwed things up between them by trying to kiss her at the wedding and then forcing the issue this afternoon. How many times would she run away from him before she just stayed gone? “And no, she won’t be back in Texas then.” God, he hoped not. The idea that she’d leave again before he could fix this left him feeling cold and clammy. “But she’s dead serious about not going to the reunion. Like seriously upset at the idea, and I don’t understand why. I mean, I know she hates dances, but this seems way outside that.” Her whole response to the idea seemed entirely out of line with the situation.
“Does she actually hate dances?” Jace asked.
“She never wanted to go back in high school. Didn’t like all the dressing up and fuss.”
Eli sliced into his carnitas and forked up a chunk of fragrant pork. “Did she even go to prom? I don’t remember that far back.”
“No, she didn’t.” It was one of the few high school memories she hadn’t featured prominently in for Zach.
“Not even with a gaggle of girls?” Eli asked.
“What gaggle of girls? She didn’t have that many girlfriends and those she did have all had dates,” Zach pointed out. “Remember, she was mostly one of the guys.”
“But she went to some of the other dances during high school. I remember her being part of the pack for homecoming and stuff,” Reed said.
“Yeah. I don’t know. Prom was different somehow. Was there some kind of thing that happened around all that that I missed?” At the time, Zach would have laid money on the fact that he knew everything there was to know about Lexi Morales. But thinking back, that was when she’d begun pulling away. He’d attributed it to excitement about the future and going off to college, but maybe there’d been more to it.
“Did anybody even ask her to the dance?” Leo asked.
Zach thought back, trying to remember. “I don’t think so. Or nobody she wanted to go with. You remember how she didn’t believe in things like dances. She liked to go off on all those feminist rants.”
“I always kinda thought the lady protested too much about that stuff,” Reed admitted.
Zach frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…maybe she made a big deal about not believing in all that because the person she wanted to go with didn’t ask.”
“Who did she want to ask her?” Leo asked.
Zach realized he had no idea. They’d talked about everything, he’d thought. But never much about who she was interested in. “She never told me who she really wanted to go with. She asked me as a joke, and we both had a good laugh over it.”
Four pairs of eyes pinned him in place against the booth.
“What?”
Leo leaned closer. “Lexi asked you to prom?”
“Yeah, just joking around.”
His friends exchanged a look that clearly said, You’re a dumbass.
“Dude, are you sure she was joking?” Reed asked.
“Of course I am. She flat out said she was.”
Leo braced his elbows on the table. “Did she say that before or after you assumed it was a joke?”