Chapter 20 I SAID YES
"Jake."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Do you also...." He started.
"No, of course not." I said with a scoff.
"I did not finish."
"You were going to ask if I have feelings for her," I said. "And the answer is no."
Jake looked at me for a long time. I kept my eyes on the pool and sighed, trying to calm down.
"Okay," he said finally.
"Okay," I said.
"Because I would not...." He paused. "If you did. I would not pursue it. You know that right? You are my best friend. I would not...."
"There is nothing to pursue, Jake." I said. "She is helping me with something. That is all."
"Helping you with what?"
I had said too much.
"Studying human stuff," I said.
Jake looked at me strangely.
"Study stuff," he repeated.
"Yes," I said.
He looked at the pool.
"Okay. Cool," he said.
We sat in silence. The last of the team climbed out of the pool and headed for the changing rooms.
Their voices faded. The pool went still.
Now, it was just us.
"I am going to ask her out properly," Jake said. "Not the cheek kissing and the hand holding but a proper date."
The pressure in my chest got worse.
"Exactly as it should be. That's really good," I said.
"You think?"
"It is what she would love," I said. "A proper date."
It was what she had told me she wanted. It was the plan. It was everything we had been working toward for weeks. Every lunch and car ride and practice session. Every moment I had spent watching Jake look at her and looking away before he could catch me watching.
This was the plan working. This was success and this was exactly what was supposed to happen.
"She is going to say yes right?" Jake said.
I looked at him. My best friend. He was sitting beside me with wet hair and an open expression and genuine uncertainty on his face because Lily Danvers made even Jake Sinclair uncertain.
"Yes," I said. "She will say yes for sure."
He exhaled. "Good."
"Jake," I said.
"Yeah."
I looked at the pool.
"Be good to her," I said quietly.
He looked at me.
Something moved across his face. A brief flicker of something I could not fully read.
"Of course," he said. "Come on, I'm not that bad."
"Just be good to her please," I said again.
He nodded slowly.
"I will," he said.
We sat for another minute in the silence of the empty pool.
Then he stood and stretched and said something about food and headed for the changing rooms and I listened to his footsteps echo and fade and then I was alone.
Just me and the still water. I looked at it for a long time. Then I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.
She would say yes.
Jake would ask and she would say yes and the plan would work and the bond would break and Lily Danvers would get everything she had wanted since before any of this started.
That was good. That was the right outcome. That was what I had promised to help her achieve.
I dropped my hands and looked at the water.
In my heart, this did not feel like success.
It felt like standing at the edge of something and watching it close like a door slowly swinging shut.
"Fuck it! No hard feelings, Lex." I told myself.
I stood up and walked to join Jake in the changing rooms.
Lily's POV:
I was in the library when my phone buzzed. I looked at it from under the table the way we were not supposed to.
A message from Jake.
"It's Jake. Are you free on Saturday?"
I stared at it.
My heart jumped.
This was it. This was the moment I had been working toward.
Jake Sinclair was asking me out! OH MY GOD!!!
I looked up from my phone.
The library was very quiet.
I thought about Saturday. I thought about Jake's easy smile and his warm hands and the way he had called me pretty.
I thought about the sofa, the music and that moment seventeen minutes past midnight. Then I waved everything off.
This is what I needed and nothing was ever going to change that.
I looked back at my phone and I typed the three greatest letters I had ever written.
YES.
Then I sent it before I could think about anything else. I put my phone face down on the table, opened my book and stared at the page, read the same sentence four times. I was trying to breathe properly.
But I could not absorb a single word of it for my heart was beating.
After that, Jake had never brought up the proposal. Even when we met, ate and drove.
Today, there was finally a fall match and personally, I had never liked away matches.
Home matches were still better.
Nightfang Academy's grounds were familiar. I knew which seats had broken armrests. I knew which corner of the stands caught the least attention. I knew the faces around me even if most of them did not particularly want me there.
But away matches were different.
Away matches meant a different school. Different grounds with a different crowd with different vampires who had not spent two years getting used to the fact that Alexander Hollander and Jake Sinclair occasionally allowed a human girl to exist in their circle.
Jake had held me to where I could sit and publicly planted a quick kiss on my head. That one, I chose not to be in the picture because I was already feeling overwhelmed.
Infact, I was glad that Jake had kissed me. That was enough to take half of the prying eyes away from me.
I sat in the visitor stands with my scarf pulled up and my sleeves pulled down and told myself I was being paranoid.
The match had not even started yet.
Around me the Nightfang students settled into their seats.
Caitlyn was three rows down with her friends, red lipped and unbothered looking, wearing a Nightfang scarf like she had been born in it. She had not looked at me once since we arrived.
That made me more nervous than if she had.
On the field below, the two teams were warming up.
I found Jake again and watched his fine blond hair and his confident movement. He was laughing at something the player beside him had said.
I found Alexander two seconds later. He was not laughing. He was just smiling and scanning the stands.
When his eyes found me he looked away like I was just another boring student sitting among the others.
It was like he had been checking if I was there and having confirmed it wanted me to know he did not care that I was there.
Well, the match started badly for Nightfang and got worse.
The rival school, Ashford's Vampire Academy was old money, older vampires. It was a gothic academy that had portraits of its founders in the hallways and were expected to win at everything as a matter of course.
Nightfang Academy scored twice in the first fifteen minutes.
The visitor stands were unhappy.
The Ashford players kept looking at the stands where I was sitting.
They were not looking at the crowd generally. They were looking at me.
I told myself I was imagining it.
Then a corner kick brought three Ashford players close to the visitor side and one of them, tall, pale, and dark eyed in the particular way of very old vampire bloodlines, looked directly at me and inhaled slowly.