to my destiny 💫

015.

[jackie's point of view]

three weeks after tommy asked me to homecoming and we had started hanging out, homecoming finally arrived. i thought i would be really anxious to go with him, but i wasn't. i was actually kind of falling for him. 

even though i still cared about cole in a different way than i wanted to, it wasn't like he and courtney would be breaking up anytime soon, and even if they did, it's not like i could just break alex's heart even more by trying to be with cole. it just wouldn't work out, and it was something i was learning to accept.

tommy got to the house at 4:30 so we could take pictures together which lasted about an hour before we went out to dinner for a while before homecoming. the dance didn't start until 8:00 which was nice because we had more time, but it was a lot different than new york homecomings. instead of a fancy formal, it was a hoedown. we wore nicer "church" dresses with cowboy boots, and it was the strangest thing i've ever experienced. we line-danced for an hour before the maj pit formed itself. 

i don't think i've ever jumped up and down that much in my entire life. grace and i jumped and sang and shouted and swayed back and forth, and then i went to dance with tommy the majority of the rest of the time. at one point, i was dancing with him and i accidentally made eye contact with cole while he was dancing with courtney. i thought he would just wave or something, but instead he smiled at me and he just kept staring. 

i didn't know what to do, so i just looked away. any time i looked anywhere even near his direction, i could feel his eyes directly on me. even though it's not as nearly as bad as what i did last spring with him and i'm not official or anything with tommy, it still felt so wrong. we shouldn't not be able to look away from each other. 

after a little while, tommy and i moved from where we were previously dancing so it was all fine again... but i just felt like nothing was actually going to happen between us in the long game. so, it was essentially worthless spending time with him if i wasn't even going to probably be his official girlfriend. after a while, the dance was close to ending, and tommy and i decided to leave early so that we could get out of parking before there was a lot of traffic from everybody leaving. 

apparently cole and courtney had the same idea because we ended up walking out at the same time. tommy and i went to his car to talk before we were going to head home, and just before we were about to get in the car, he wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me against him as he rested his back against the car. "hey, jackie, i have a really important question for you." 

i raised an eyebrow. "really? what do you want to know?" he wrapped his other arm around my waist and looked directly into my eyes before leaning closer into my face. "will you be my girlfriend, officially?" i almost gasped out loud because of how taken aback i was. i stepped backwards but didn't fall because of how firmly he was holding my waist. 

"are you okay, hot girl, or do you need to sit down for this?" he asked with a weirdly crooked smirk on his face. i shook my head and squeezed my eyes shut as i took a deep breath in. "no, i don't. thanks, though." as i opened my eyes he pulled me back closer into him again. "alright, hot girl. i'm assuming that's a yes?" 

before i could answer, he leaned in and kissed me. i pushed him back off of me again and slapped his arms around from my waist, but he started getting closer with a very annoyed look on his face. "what was that for? you don't want to kiss me out of the car, huh, is that it?" tommy muttered in frustration. i took a shaky breath as i backed away with every step i could until i was getting too close to the car behind me. "no, that's-- that's not it at all."

tommy nodded with a look of satisfaction and shrugged. "well, even though you don't want to, maybe i don't want to. what do you say, we get in the car, and leave and go somewhere special, huh? just the two of us. nobody would find us there, hot girl. you don't need to worry about them seeing a thing."