Hanging by a Moment [Completed]

Complicated

Dedicated to Bbygurrl for making me the cover (she's good, isn't she? :P). I know, I know, she should have gotten the first chapter, but then, I did steal these characters from TwinPeacock, pretty much, so yeah. 

“You know,” Jayden and Sarah were on their way to Physics – Peyton had decided that it wasn’t worth his time if he wasn’t going to get to build an airplane, and Sarah had just stepped into stride with her companion. “you should get yourself a date for the Valentine’s dance.”

He picked up on the fact that she was trying to lead the conversation someplace, but decided to allow her to. “And where am I meant to get one of those at the last minute?”

She paused, pretending to think. She’d hoped he’d say something like that: something that allowed her to get to the point she wanted to sooner. Doing her best to sound as though the thought had just occurred to her, “You could always ask Peyton.”

I felt like I’d been punched, or something. It was a moment of pure panic, sort of the way it is when the person you talked about comes to confront you about it, except much worse. (Well, if you were talking about that person, you’d hardly care if they got mad at you, would you?) I guess it could be described more accurately as the panic that courses through you when you think that you made your best friend cry.

Yeah, that’s more like it.

Anyway, as soon as the words were out of her mouth, I felt myself freeze from the mini heart-attack she caused. Her voice hadn’t sounded as casual as it would have been, but that was something I noted belatedly. My first reaction was to try and shut her up.

Jayden locked his gaze with hers. His attempt to sound firm, somewhat, was commendable. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not! You guys crashed the Seniors’ prom last year together, didn’t you? Pretending to be a couple so nobody could even tell you to get out, ‘cause they’d look like homophobes.”

Despite himself, he smiled. “Yeah.” That evening had been special, even though he hadn’t started to regard his best friend in that way.

“So why should Valentine’s be a big deal?”

I could hardly admit to her that I actually did have feelings for Peyton.

 “Because! It’s Valentine’s.”

Sarah was pleased. Jayden’s reactions had confirmed what she’d started to suspect only weeks ago. “Your point being…”

“We aren’t together like that,” he continued before she could say anything else, “even if we may act otherwise.”

Her next words got me.

“You want to be though.”

 The second wave of panic crashed down onto him. “What did you just say?”

“Oh, come on.” Surprisingly, she didn’t seem disturbed.  In fact, she could have been talking about TV, or the generic weather with that level of casualness. “I’ve seen the way you look at him.”

He didn’t think to deny it. “And how is that?”

“Are we really going to argue? You know it too, but answering you, yeah, you’re always looking at him with those puppy-dog eyes.”

“I am not!” His protest was hasty – too hasty for Sarah.

“Yes, you are,” she argued, adamant. “You look at him like you’ve never seen him before, or something, and when he’s laughing you practically start to glow.”