Page 56 of The Attack Zone
Mitch: I’d be honored.
Mitch: You know what this means though ...
Ugh. He’s right. We can’t just show up to Caleb and Cassie’s wedding together without telling them.
Stacey: Yeah. I’ll tell Cassie tonight. She’s drunk enough right now she’ll either not care or make a huge scene. I’ll keep you updated.
Mitch sends a laughing emoji followed by a thumbs up.
Mitch: I’ll tell Caleb too so they know at the same time. He’s been texting her nonstop this whole trip no matter what we say.
Sounds like us,I think.
I finally check back into the booth and try to figure out how to tell Cassie that Mitch is my wedding date. How am Isupposed to explain this? She’s in the corner talking to Sarah. Meanwhile, Hazel is just staring at me.
“Who are you texting?” she whispers.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “Hey Cassie?”
She turns to me, a dopey smile on her face. She’s definitely been texting Caleb.
“Quick wedding thing ...” I start. “It’s about the seating arrangements,” I continue.
Come on, Stacey. Just tell her.
“You know I don’t care where people sit,” she says.
“So you won’t mind if Mitch and I sit together then?” I ask, trying to be as nonchalant as possible. But next to me, Hazel coughs up her wine and can’t seem to get control of herself while Cassie stares at me blankly.
“Why would you want to ...” Her eyes go wide. “Oh ... Oh!” She slams her drink down on the table. “Are you serious?!”
“Yes,” I say. I don’t elaborate because I don’t know how to explain how this happened. I barely know what this is yet.
“I can’t believe it worked,” Cassie says, seemingly to herself.
“What worked?” I ask.
“Caleb got this crazy idea that if we forced you guys to work together on the wedding you’d snap and finally go for it,” she says.
“I’d ... snap?” I ask.
“Well, isn’t that what happened?” Hazel says.
I think back to the night of Caleb’s gala. How something just fell over me and I couldn’t take it anymore. The tension was too much. At the time I’d thought that we’d get it out of our systems and that we’d be able to go back to whatever weird frenemies situation we had before. But now here I am, telling Cassie I’m bringing Mitch as my date to her wedding. I guess I did snap.
“I guess so, yeah,” I say. “But listen, this is weird and new and I don’t want anyone making a big thing out of it.”
“You know I won’t if you don’t want me to,” Cassie says. “My fiancé on the other hand ... I have no guarantees.”
She’s right, Caleb is such a romantic, he’s definitely going to make a thing out of this. I pull out my phone to text Mitch.
Stacey: Told Cassie. As expected she’s totally fine. How’d it go with Caleb?
Mitch: He’s ... fine? I mean he drunkenly did a whole monologue about love being beautiful just now but he’s not mad?
I ignore the wordlovein Mitch’s text as I type out my reply.
Stacey: Caleb’s drunk? Don’t let him do anything stupid, please.