Page 6 of Keep Me Never
“Oh yeah.”
“What makes you say that?”
I narrow my eyes playfully. “Did you really not notice she wore an Avix football shirt the last two classes?”
There’s a slight flare in his gaze, one that I think tells me he knows what I’m teasing at, and he might just like that I even caught on to a girl spotting him at all.
He plays along: “Maybe she has a boyfriend on the team?”
This is his way of saying he wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t drawn attention to her, right?
I bite back a smile. “Or maybe wearing the football hoodie has nothing to do with you and she wants that middle seat because she has OCD and sitting two to the right makes her eye twitch.”
He leans down. “Maybe she was born with that twitch.”
I gasp and Chase laughs, his hand landing on the small of my back.
“I’m playing. I still have no idea who you’re talking about.”
“Lies!”
“Like you, I’ve been a little too distracted to notice things.”
“Okay, that’s fair.” I step up to the counter, but then his words register, and my attention yanks his way. “Wait, what haveImissed?”
“What can I get for you?” the barista asks, and I have no choice but to order.
“Can I get a small, iced chai latte with whipped cream and…” I look to Chase expectantly. “Please?”
He clears his throat. “A small chocolate protein shake.”
He tries to pull his wallet out anyway, but I use the tap feature on my watch to pay before he can and move toward the pickup counter.
“Thanks, Paige. You didn’t have to do that.”
“It’s just a drink. No big deal, I promise.”
“Right.” He nods, tension creeping back into his expression. “I’m going to use the restroom really fast.”
I nod, watching him go, and then turn back to watch the baristas at work.
It’s so crazy to think that this is finally my last year here. It feels like I’ve been here forever, and I mean, I guess I kind of have. Longer than high school, technically. Even if I did miss an entire year after my dad passed.
While I love it here, it will be nice to put this place behind me. To start the next phase of life and bring all the dreams my dad supported to life.
The claws of regret wrap around my lungs the moment I think that, and my heart starts to hurt for so many reasons. But the one I focus on is the dream that was on its way to becoming a reality, only for fate to step in and deal me the joker card yet again.
A storm, the kind we don’t see in Oceanside, the one that’s almost a myth to coastal California. It wasn’t a hurricane, nothing that big, but a freak weather system that rolled in unexpectedly, dumping more rain in one night than we’d see in a year there. The kind of storm that no one could predict, but when it hit, it flooded everything in its path. The water came first, and the damage was brutal.
What should have been an unfortunate inconvenience, though, turned into a complete disaster, and now the studio that was supposed to be my safe haven, the future home of Paige’s Playground, the youth dance and recreation center I’d wanted to open since as long as I can remember, is unrecognizable. If Mother Nature could have waited until graduation, then I would have been able to afford to add the “just in case” insurance for my building.
Unfortunately for me, I had none and the place looks worse each time I visit.
The floors are destroyed, as are most of the walls. The mirrors split from the pressure of the water, and tubs containing a decade’s worth of saved materials for costumes were reduced to a pile of garbage. Even the bathrooms need to be gutted. The water rot and mold are getting worse by the day because apparently I needed to remove the boards and plug in some fans to try to save the wood—my dad would have known that if he were here. But also plug in fans? To what and where?
The best I could have done even if I had known was hang them from the damn ceiling, which is not even possible. Sadly, I’m well aware that, the longer it sits, the more likely it will be that the entire infrastructure will need to come down.
I can’t even bring myself to look in my back room again after learning that was the space the roof caved in over, where my brand-new,still had the plastic protector on it, four-thousand-dollar sewing machine and heat press—which wasn’t too far off in price either—were. My official splurges for myself so I could save hours on costume making.
