REALLY ✓

18: The Sadie Hawkins

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      TAYA's POV:

The next day, I had asked Hallee to meet me at the mall to discuss my situation. Clearly I had picked the wrong time and place since the mall was packed as people were doing their post-Black Friday shopping. Still, here I was, spilling the tea to Hallee about our thanksgiving dinner last night.

"So let me get this straight: first it's just practice kissing, then you guys started skipping school together, spending more time with each other. Then y'all are having thanksgiving dinner with the family. And now you're catching feelings for him? Go figure. I mean, what's next, Taya? Seventeen and pregnant?" Hallee snorted a laugh and people all around us were giving us a weird look.

"Oh my god Hallee, I'm just gonna pretend I didn't hear that," I rolled my eyes and she ignored me, walking nonchalantly into Macy's instead.

"Anyways, you're starting to have feelings for Judah, but you don't know if he feels the same way or not. Meanwhile you still have feelings for Blake, and he's trying to get back with you, but you're still not sure if he wasn't gonna be a flaky douche this time around, did I get that right?"

"Somewhat... yeah,"

"I don't wanna be the bitch that says 'I told you so', but I've told you this whole practice kissing thing was gonna end up biting you in the ass,"

"Ugh! How could I let this happen? I saw all the warning signs and I walked right into it!" I groaned to my own stupidity. 

Everyone had warned me about this, including Judah himself. I could just picture it in my head: Judah laughing smugly at my pathetic self as he said, 'ha, I told you, you girls have to attach emotions to everything', and then he would proceed to breaking my heart into a million tiny pieces.

"I'm officially a loser. Judah's gonna have one hell of a time making fun of me for this," I whined as Hallee made her way over to the sales rack.

"Are you sure about that, Tay? What if he feels the same way?" Hallee's words suddenly caught me off-guard.

The thought of Judah feeling things for me suddenly got my heart to pump faster. Could that be a possibility?

"Do you think so? I mean, how do you tell if a guy likes you or not?"

"Well, are you getting any signs?"

Signs? Well, there was that incident with the pants... and when we talked, things just flew so effortlessly. He joked around a lot, but there were these rare moments where he was serious and I might have caught a glimpse of his soul.

"Maybe there are some signs... but I'm not sure. With the nature of our arrangement, things were never really clear. And asking him point-blankly would just be too embarrassing,"

"Okay, so we need to find out if he has feelings for you... without actually asking him about it?"

"Sorta... do you have a plan?"

"Oh!" she beamed almost instantly. I could just see the light bulb turning on in her head. Of course Hallee would have a plan, this was why I came to her in the first place.

"The winter formal! We're doing Sadie Hawkins this year, you should totally ask him!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, no way, Judah's not gonna go to a school dance, that's just not his thing," I shook my head quickly, knowing full well that this was a bad idea.

"That's exactly the point! Earlier today, I heard from someone that there were three junior girls that tried to ask Judah to the dance and he just flat out rejected all of them! So you should totally ask him!"