Page 76 of Heartland

Alf keeps making eye contact with Ellie, and I can’t help but find them adorable. Before long, another guy kind of sidles up next to me. He gives me a friendly smile and starts to dance.

He’s cute. Cuteish, anyway. But he’s no Dylan Shipley.

Nobody is, though. I’ve spent a lot of my time this week wishing I could rewind my life. I want to take back everything I said and did after eating pizza in my room.

No—I’d go back further. I’d undo the lie I told Dylan about Leah’s weekend availability. And maybe he’d still be dating Kaitlyn, and I’d still be mooning over him privately.

Everything is so much worse now. Even when I manage to forget about him for an hour or two, Kaitlyn usually reappears, giving me smug looks as she passes our bathroom. Or she’s leaning over to whisper to one of her friends when I pass her in the dining hall.

The first time I kissed a boy, I was beaten for it. Now I administer my own beatings. I feel achy and sad, and I don’t know how to stop.

Eventually, another guy taps my dancing partner on the arm and tells him there’s some problem with the composting toilets. He makes a face, gives me an apologetic wave, and goes off to deal with it.

It’s just as well, though, because a slow song comes on, and I don’t really want to put my arms around a stranger. So I edge toward the wall and reclaim my warm beer off the ledge. And I try to look very busy drinking it.

Ellie is slow-dancing with Alf, which she seems to enjoy. He leans in and gives her a very polite kiss. And then another one, a little less hesitantly this time.

I look away, because I don’t want to be creepy. But I keep myself planted here because I’m not willing to leave her alone with him, either.

And now I feel lonely, damn it. I wonder where Dylan is. Even if he’s hanging out with his twin sister, they’re probably at a bar full of cute girls that he could take home to bed.

I abandon my warm beer onto the ledge again, because it’s not helping.

The reason I can’t face Dylan is because I feel like I forced myself on him. He had two years to kiss me, and he never did. Not until I snuck up on him in an outdoor shower. And my clothes didn’t come off until I talked him into it.

You said she wasn’t your type.You even said she wasn’t attractive.Those words are still bouncing around in my chest, and they probably always will.

The music picks up again, and I glance up, looking around for Ellie. Cue my panic when I can’t seem to spot her. But there are more people dancing now, so she’s probably in there somewhere.

I decide to count to a hundred, and if I still can’t see her, then I’ll really go looking. I’m in the eighties when I spy her frizzy head bouncing to the beat. I take a step to the side, so I can see her clearly.

She and Alf are half-dancing, half-talking now. He leans in and says something right into her ear. She looks up at him with no small amount of surprise. After a few more beats, she rises to her toes and makes her reply.

Then, a few beats later, she gives his skinny arm a squeeze and leaves the dance floor, coming back to me. She takes her warm beer off the ledge and takes a gulp.

“A boy kissed me!” she yells, and her face is ecstatic.

“Awesome!” I say. “You checked that box.”

“Then he offered to take me upstairs to his room!” she says, her cheeks flushed. “I just turned down sex with a vegan.”

“There will be other vegans. Was he nice about it?”

“Totally!” she yells over the music. “He was really nice. But I wasn'treallyattracted to him, to be honest. And it’s not the vegan thing. It’s just…” She gets a faraway look in her eye. “There was no magic.”

I know all about magic. And I’m relieved that she didn’t abandon me here. Although I wouldn’t have blamed her, if there had been magic.

“Unfortunately, we kind of have to leave the party now because I turned him down, and now I have to avoid him.” She winces. “I’m sorry I dragged you here, and now I want to bail. We didn’t even get to try Cider Pong.”

“It’s fine!” I shout over the music. “Let’s go.”

We make our way toward the stairs, collect our coats from a pile beside the overmatched coat rack, and then head out into the night.

“My ears are ringing,” I complain.

“What?” She laughs. “Just kidding. Mine, too. Let’s not go home right away.”

“Where would we go? You already checked off a few boxes.”