CHAPTER 47

My heart flew into my throat. Hell yes. I got to have some time alone with May freaking Stevens. The girl who can make all of my troubles go away with her smile alone. This was going to be awesome. I could barely hide my smile or control my fingers as I typed my response.

Great! :) Where would you wanna go?

how about the small hall near the caf? :) she replied. You mean the one that used to be for vending machines, but is now basically uninhabited now that they were moved? You mean in a hallway, alone together, where no one else goes? Sign me the fuck up!

***

It went off like clockwork. After second period math, I met up with May in the little vending machine hall. I didn't dare tell Carson during math, since we were in the middle of our 'competition,' and he might try to use the fact that I'm meeting alone with May against me.

"Hey!" I said as casually as I could when I turned down that hallway and saw that May was already there.

"Oh, hey." She replied, giving me a huge smile, outlining every beautiful feature in her face. Her hazel eyes dancing, her beautiful little freckles, her perfect white teeth, just everything. "Thanks for doing this."

"Are you kidding?!" I blurted out. "Thank YOU!" I sat down next to her, and we began to make small talk about our lives as we ate our lunch.

For the next twenty minutes, we talked about everything: Classes, parents, friends, drama class, my new interest in karate, how she was thinking of getting an agent so she could get a head-start on her TV acting career, etc. Eventually ,as it always does with teenagers, the conversation turned to relationships.

"So why don't you like Carson anyway? He's a pretty good guy." I figured by complimenting another guy in front of her, she might go for me in the long run. At the very least, it might disguise my motives.

She sighed. "I don't know." She said simply. "The date went well as far as dates go. It's just… I don't think I like that kind of guy. You know, all flashy and stuff. I like people who are confident, but I guess he was… too confident?" She sighed again. "I don't know if I'm making sense.

"No, you're fine." I smiled at her. "Go on."

"Well, Carson is really cool, but he seems like he's just sort of… 'that's all,' you know? I felt like I knew him from just our first date. I knew who he was, I knew what he wanted, I felt like I knew everything about him. From there on in, it just wasn't interesting."

"You feel like you know him already?" I asked. "Well, you're one up on me."

She laughed. "You two know each other well?"

I nodded. "We're friends."

She nodded, then looked down at her lunch. After a bit, she sighed again and started putting her lunch away. "I don't know. I just feel like a bad person. Like, there's nothing wrong with Carson. He's a great guy, but I want a guy who is less… cardboard. More like he can really appreciate me as a real person. Someone who is a cool guy, but at the same time, I feel like I want to get to know more, not less."

"Someone like who?" I asked her.

She shifted around in her seat, clearly nervous. "Someone like…" She started nervously, looking me straight in the eyes. "Someone like you."

Nope. No way. Absolutely no freaking way. I was midway between having one of my increasingly rare panic attacks, and having Handel's La Rejouissance playing throughout my whole body. Truth be told, I didn't even get why the only females in my life all found me attractive, but especially in this case, I sure as hell wasn't complaining!

May. May Stevens. Liked Adam Watson. The shy nobody. I still couldn't believe it. Breathlessly, I managed to choke out, "Really?"

May nodded, tracing her eyes down my arms. I think she noticed the lifting I had been doing. I guess even a month in, it was starting to show. God damn, I was just loving life. The girl of my dreams, the one who made my heart sing like never before, said she liked me.

"So you… L-like me?" I managed. May showed a small smile, and nodded again.

"Do you like me too?" She asked quietly.

Even if I wanted to use words, I couldn't find any in that moment, but something in me just told me to go for it. In one motion, I put my arms around her and pulled May, May Stevens, in for a kiss. I just had to. In that moment, it felt so incredibly right.

As soon as our lips touched, I swear there were fireworks. I had never felt so happy in my entire life. If May hadn't melted in my arms, I definitely would have melted in hers. The feeling was so intense, you could hear the air crackling. I may sound like a sap, but I could have honestly stayed there forever.

As our lips departed, our eyes slowly opened as we stared into each others' eyes. no words were said. No words were needed. May and I did it. We were finally together.

Both of us were staring into each others' eyes in a daze before a loud cough broke us out of our trance. I turned my head down the hallway to see the one person I hope I wouldn't: Megan Schneider.

Megan had always looked sweetly innocent in the past, but right now she looked pissed. Like, full-on angry. It was something I had never really seen before, and it intimidated me like hell.

The fact that she spoke calmly while donning such an angry face intimidated me even more. "May, do you know what you're doing?" She asked May calmly.

I groaned internally. This was NOT going to be good. "Excuse me?" May asked in an offended voice. "This is none of your business."

"He kissed you, didn't he?" Asked Megan, folding her arms.

May stood up and proudly stuck out her chest. "What, jealous?" May challenged her. "Yeah, he did. What are you going to do about it?"

I looked around. Of course we would happen to be in the only hallway in the school that only had one exit. The other way was pretty much a dead end, and Megan blocked my only exit. I would just have to power through this.

"Nothing!" Megan proudly, almost arrogantly, declared. "I just thought you should know who he really is."

May snuck a look back at me and surveyed my expression. "What do you mean?" She asked Megan in a less confident voice. Megan was playing her cards right – the status quo was shifting.

"Just a few weeks ago, your precious Adam was getting blown by me in the nutrition room." Well, wave good-bye to the shy Megan Schneider; I officially had no idea who I was dealing with at this point. "You can't trust him. He can't commit and he manipulates girls to get his way."

Anger boiled up from within me and erupted like Vesuvius. "That's a lie and you know it!" I yelled at Megan, taking some of her confident attitude down. "You tricked me into going into that room. You told me you were going to blow me and didn't take no for an answer, even when I initially refused. You said it was no-strings-attached, then only after got mad at me because you couldn't handle your own emotions. You manipulated me, Megan! YOU manipulated ME to get your way. Then you got mad at me and apparently, blabbed to…" I trailed off. Do I say 'my girlfriend'? Nah, that would be too presumptuous. "…May, just so you could get some sense of twisted satisfaction!"

Megan was taken aback at this point, and I was glad to see from her expression that May was, at least, somewhat back on my side. However, I could tell this was far from over when Megan regained her former confident attitude and folded her arms again.

"Oh really? Do you have the same excuse for Nicole?" She challenged me.

The color visibly drained from my face. She knew about Nicole and I? Since when?!

May turned back to look at me. Potential hurt was in her eyes. "The camera girl?" She asked me weakly. "You said you were just friends."

I challenged Megan with my eyes. She was just guessing. She had to have been. "I don't know what you're talking about." I told her stiffly.

Megan chuckled menacingly. "Oh really? What, you don't remember fooling around with her in the Student Council office, or trying to hold her hand afterwards?"