Sadie Hawkins. It’s probably as nerve-wracking for girls as prom is for guys. Honestly, it feels like there is so much pressure to ask the perfect guy. And for me, the perfect guy was my best friend. Vincent. He was musical, poetic, smart, funny, and mildly athletic. Tall, thin, and dark with absolutely beautiful eyes (I ought to know, I spend a few minutes each day just staring into the. Awkward, anyone?).

He was the one who told me there was going to be a Sadies dance. He was on student council, and he found me after a meeting. He and the senior class secretary were joking about it when he called me over.

“Ria!” he exclaimed. “Dude, I thought you went home already!” Seniors were the only people allowed to park on campus and thus could go home whenever after the school day. I had stayed late after school to meet with one of my friends who had come home from Harvard – we had gone for coffee and came back to campus so he could meet with some teachers.

“Nah,” I told him, “Rick came by, I wanted to spend some time with him.”

Vincent perked up. He loved Rick – while they weren’t friends, they both enjoyed insulting me when they got together. While I did love that my “older brother” got along my best friend and crush, I hated that they would tease me together.

“So, do you know the story of Sadies?” V asked me, a glint in his eye.

“Umm…I’m guessing a girl broke the norm and asked a guy to a dance,” I said, laughing. I mean, seriously, who cares? In my opinion, Sadies said that girls traditionally weren’t supposed to ask guys to dances, and to me that represented gender bias (I’ll tell you right now, I’m a hypocrite).

“No,” Sonya, the senior class secretary, replied. “There was this girl in the eighteenth century, Sadie Hawkins, who was apparently like, really ugly. So she was hitting thirty and her dad was like ‘NO you need to get married!’ so he called all the local bachelors and organized a race between them and Sadie. They got a head start and Sadie would chase them, and whoever she caught would like, have to marry her.”

“Ouch, that sucks for the guy,” I said, in between laughing. “Honestly, saddled with an ugly girl and the ego takes a hit that he couldn’t out run her.”

“I bet by today’s standards she’d be really hot,” V said, grinning. “Skinny and tall.”

Ouch. I’m five foot and moderate (I mean, I’m a size three, so I’m not exactly stick thin.).

“Probably,” I said smiling.

V then smiled at me. “You know, if you and I were in that race, you’d catch me,” he said.

I stared at him a moment, confused. “No,” I said, looking at his legs, “I’m pretty sure you can outrun me.”

Sonya choked and then glared at me. It was on the way home, twenty minutes later, that I realized that was a line.

--

The next few weeks flew by. V and I fought daily, as usual. He stayed after school late a few days to spend time with me, I stayed late to spend time with him. He played his guitar for me and let me fiddle around with it, he told me stories, he walked me to class…

Any girl would assume a guy was into them at that point. Okay, maybe he still called me “dude” half the time, and maybe we argued about the Wii or Smash. But still, it was an ideal relationship. I was impatiently waiting for him to ask me out, complaining to Rick that this flirting thing was fun, but sort of frustrating. At the same time, though, V was still my best friend, and we were both heading off to college the next year. He wanted to go to USC, I wanted to go to the east coast, maybe Harvard or BU Medical.

Sadies was fast approaching, and girls actually started asking guys. It was a bit annoying, really. I couldn’t go anywhere without hearing a girl ask another girl, “Who are you asking to Sadies?” or hearing guys joke about girls not asking them.

I finally came up with an idea on how to ask – okay, I found it online. I was going to stick a Post-It-Note up on his locker, with a pebble taped underneath and a rock at the foot of his locker. The note would said, “Sadies? If yes, return pebble, if no” and there would be an arrow pointing to the rock.

Monday morning, I decided I would take a risk and ask V. While I was sort of sure he was into me, I didn’t have that one hundred percent confidence. How could I? He hadn’t explicitly said, “I like you.” Unfortunately, that day, we fought.

It was a stupid fight, as all our fights general were. I went “aww” at a picture he thought was awful, and he got annoyed, and I got hurt and walked away. We didn’t really talk for the rest of the day, mainly because I was scared he was mad at me. The next day, however, we semi-made up, me explaining I really did think the picture was cute and him telling me I was mental (this also was a normal occurrence).

Tuesday night, like the typical Bay Area teenagers we were, we were IMing each other through gtalk, discussing several random things. Psychology, math, biology, and eventually Sadies. He told me he was going.

Finally, I asked him to meet me before school Friday. I wanted to ask him to Sadies via the post it notes when I wasn’t surrounded by people. If he wanted to reject me, I wanted there to be no pressure at all. Girls say yes to prom if a guy asks in front of fifty people – I assumed the same applied to guys. I wanted an honest yes, not a pity yes.

He refused to come before school on Friday! I got so annoyed – I mean, this guy was my best friend. What reason did he not have to come to school early? If he asked me to come, I’d have come!

I told him I had a secret to tell him that I didn’t want to tell him online or in front of others. I almost begged him to come to school early. Finally, he told me that we had three hours free together in the middle of the next day, and that I could tell him then. Annoyed, I said “fine,” before huffily signing off.

Wednesday morning came quickly. V (surprisingly) arrived at school early and demanded that I tell him the secret. When I refused, he got annoyed.

“What is this? You tell me everything,” he said, annoyed.

“What? No I don’t!” I insisted. “Plus, this has specific timing. You have to wait.” Then I grinned. I figured, since he made me shift my plans, I might as well get some enjoyment out of it. “But, you know, Diana, Katherine, James, and Igor all know what I have to tell you.”

“WHAT?!” he said, clearly irritated. “How could you possibly tell them anything before me.”

I simply smiled and did my homework. He mumbled curses at me before settling down to his work as well.

--

We hung out together during break and the first half of lunch, as always. I suppose it’s a best friend thing. We spend most of our time at school together. Throughout all of it, though, he kept insisting that I tell him the secret. I laughingly refused, thinking to myself that I had to find time to set up the post it notes and find an enormous rock and pebble.

Eventually, I told him I had to go and ask where James was. Teasingly, he asked me if I was going to ask James to Sadies.

“Are you joking?” I said, laughing. “I barely talk to the guy. The two of us aren’t like the two of you.” With that, I walked away.

James was actually helping me set up my plan. He helped me pick up a rock and a pebble, and promised he’d show V the post it notes and tell him they were from me. I didn’t want to be there when V saw them, again, because of the pressure thing. Towards the end of lunch, he helped me set up the notes and got V. I, meanwhile, went and hid.

Twenty minutes into free period, V still hadn’t texted or called me. Finally, depressed and sure he that he was avoiding me as a way to say no, I went to sit in the library. Five minutes later, I looked up and saw V was leaving.

--

Suffice it to say free period that day was painful. He wouldn’t talk to or look at me. Even after school, he looked straight through me. Depressed, I went home, skipping swim practice. I slept the rest of the day away, trying not to cry. Not only had I just been rejected by my crush, I had ruined my relationship with my best friend.

Finally, Diana, my closest girl friend, called and snapped me out of my funk. After asking if I was okay, she told me to do my homework and not let a guy get to me. She went on to cuss V out till I was laughing quite hard. I got on my computer and did my work – noting V was on. I was only slightly disappointed when he didn’t IM me.

The next day, I, again, got to school early. And, surprisingly, so did V. And, for the first time in the past four months, he didn’t walk me to class. After first period, when I asked if we could talk, he almost ran away to his car, and during lunch he asked if we could talk during free. Upset, I nodded yes and focused on other people the rest of the lunch period.

He didn’t show up for the first half of free period. Finally, I called him, using someone else’s cell phone (while mine was genuinely dead, I figured he wouldn’t pick up if I called from mine anyway). He told me he was heading over to the building I was in.

When he showed up, he again didn’t talk to me, instead opting to talk to Sonya. Disappointed, I tried to focus on my math homework. A few minutes later, I realized everything was really quiet. Looking up, I saw V was staring at me and Sonya had disappeared.

I started babbling. “I was just asking you as friends. It’s not like I’m madly in love with your or anything I just thought it would be fun and it seemed like a cute way to ask and-”

He pulled the pebble out of his pocket.

“Are you wearing the same jeans that you were wearing yesterday or something?” I asked him, wondering why the hell he had the pebble with him still, and why he hadn’t trashed it.

He continued holding the pebble out to me.

“Um, the trash is right there,” I said, pointing behind him. “It’s not like it has any sentimental meaning to me, you can just get rid of it.” I really didn’t want a reminder of our ruined friendship.

He raised his eyebrows before opening my hand and putting the pebble in it.

I stared at him.

He started rocking back and forth on his heels. “So….” he said, nodding at the pebble. Suddenly, it sunk in.

“Oh! Is that a yes?” I asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.

“Yeah…” he said, “your note did say return the pebble.”

I was stunned. “You JERK!” I half-shrieked. “I thought I had ruined our friendship.”

“Woah, you can’t be mad at me,” he said, sitting down beside me. “You made me wait a week!”

“God,” I muttered. “You did know I was going to ask, right? I tried to make it obvious,” I said, staring at the pebble.

“Yeah,” he laughed. “The idea was cool. It made me laugh.”

“Good, it was supposed to,” I replied, looking at his (beautiful) eyes. “God, you really, really had me scared.”

He rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t running away from you after first. I actually had stuff to do,” he explained, “and I didn’t want to give the pebble back in front of everyone. I had a huge calc test today, too, and I was studying for it through the second half of lunch and free period, and I figured if I talked to you then I wouldn’t be able to focus.”

Annoyed, I glared at him. “Do you have any idea what you put me through when you didn’t get back to me at all?”

He raised his eyebrow yet again. “The same stuff you put me through when you turned me down twice and missed every single hint I gave you that I wanted you to ask me?”

“Hey, I never claimed to actually get lines,” I said, disgruntled. “It’s you and me, I take things at face value normally.”

“Idiot,” he said affectionately, before looking at my math homework. “Can I help?”

“Nah, it’s a take home test,” I said, realizing he was dropping the subject before we had another full blown fight. Still, I felt I should tell him, “By the way, everyone thinks you said no. They asked me what you said yesterday and I said you weren’t talking to me.”

“That explains a lot,” he said, shaking his head. “Diana isn’t talking to me and Kris glared at me earlier.” (Just then, Diana walked by and said hi to me but ignored him completely. I started laughing.)

“I’ll go fix that,” I said sheepishly, and went after Diana to tell her he said yes – belatedly, yes, but still.

When I came back, he and I both quietly worked on math homework.

--

While it’s only been three days since he said yes, I can safely say our relationship changed, but only for the better. Now I think he’s getting teased about liking me – or maybe I’m just noticing it for the first time. Unfortunately, he still hasn’t told me whether or not he feels anything for me. Still…

It’s only a few days till Valentine’s Day. Maybe he’ll ask me out then. Till then, I still have my best friend.

--

A/N: I didn’t realize it had been so long. I guess college apps and 6 APs finally got to me. I have no spare time between that, cross country, swimming, and, as you can see above, “Vincent.”

I promise I’ll start updating Mischance again, maybe over summer. I miss Ella and Chris! Till then, I’ll just be spitting out one-shots here and there.