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“Yeah, it’s a good choice.”
She eyes me suspiciously and I blink.
“Why? I’m being serious.”
She shrugged, looking almost embarrassed. “You just… you looked so bored. I thought maybe you weren’t a fan of the color.”
I blinked, realizing that she must have taken my usual expression for disapproval. “Oh. No, it’s not that. I just… I’m not great with showing emotions, I guess. But you’re great with this kind of stuff, Auden. Design, colors, making things look good. I’ve always known you were good at it.”
She looked up at me then, her eyes widening in surprise. “You have?”
“Yeah,” I say, wondering if I’ve said too much.
Too late to take it back now.
“I remember all of your outfits back in high school and the way that you decorated the gym for the dances.”
“You didn’t go to the dances,” she points out and I blink.
“I went to one… for a minute.”
She looks like she wants to ask me more, but her phone starts to ring and she heads out front to answer it.
Thank God.
There’s no way that I can tell her that the one and only dance that I went to was for her. I had walked in, spotted her hanging out with her friends and having fun and chickened out. I turned around and left almost immediately. I kicked myself the whole way home. I had saved up for weeks to afford the ticket and a nice outfit, and then didn’t have the guts to go ask her to dance.
Auden comes back into the room a few minutes later and goes back to her paint samples. We work in companionable silence for a while, each of us focused on our tasks, but the more time we spend together, the more I find myself wanting to know about the woman she’s become since we graduated.
The girl I remember from high school had always been kind, smart, driven, but this Auden, she was all of those things and more. She was confident, capable, and there was a quiet strength in her that I couldn’t help but admire.
I find myself stealing glances at her all morning, watching the way she moves through the building, the way she seems to be totally in her element, and I can’t help but wonder what she remembers about me. If she had any idea that the guy standing next to her, helping her restore this old house, was the same guy who’d spent most of high school pining after her from afar.
Around noon, my stomach starts to growl, and I realize I haven’t eaten anything since earlier that morning. I’m about to suggest that we take a break when Auden beats me to it.
“Hungry?” she asks, looking up at me with a grin.
“Starving,” I admit, rubbing the back of my neck as I feel a blush heat my cheeks.
“How about I buy you a burger? There’s a great little place just down the street,” she says, shocking me.
I blink, trying to wrap my head around the fact that Auden just kind of asked me out to lunch. In all of my plans for today, that was never a possibility. I’d been planning on asking her to lunch, trying to make a move, and here she was, turning the tables on me.
“Sure. Sounds good to me,” I said, trying to keep the excitement and nerves out of my voice.
We pack up our things and she locks up the place, and then we’re headed down the street to Sandbags Burgers. It was the kind of place that felt like stepping back in time the moment that you walked in, with its red vinyl booths, checkered floors, and the smell of sizzling burgers in the air.
We slide into a booth by the window, and a waitress appeared almost instantly, taking our orders with a smile.
“Just a water for me,” Auden orders.
“Me too.”
The waitress nods and heads off, leaving us to look over the menu.
“I love this place,” Auden says with a grin. “I missed so much when I went to college.”
“Really? You’d think that there would be a greasy burger place nearby.”
