Sweet Like Revenge

42 - The Makings of a King

"I..." My usually sharp tongue faltered under Nate's hopeful stare, my brain a mess of plans and lists and (ugh) feelings. "I don't know what to say."

Nate stepped towards me, his thumb grazing my exposed arm ever-so-slightly. "Say yes."

Was his featherlight touch supposed to have cleared my frazzled head? It just clouded it more.

Nate pierced me with his rich blue eyes for only a moment longer. Quickly, he ducked his head, his gaze moving sheepishly about the crowded cafeteria around us.

And that's when I realized that mine and Nate's private exchange wasn't private at all. In fact, we had a very large, very fixated audience of captivated peers. Every student in the lunch line stared directly at us, making little effort to muffle their pointed whispering. As a student who'd been at the center of schoolyard gossip many a time before, I was accustomed to having eyes on me while vicious rumors floated over my head.

But that time was different. That time, my peers weren't judging me or laughing at something they thought I'd done. Their expressions weren't derisive, their whispering wasn't venomous. I could see in the pools of their eyes an emotion that had once inhabited mine. Jealousy.

And there it was. A taste of what I yearned for. Standing in the middle of the cafeteria, conversing flirtatiously with the king of school, I realized that I was no longer just a member of Sienna's clique. I wasn't just a nameless, faceless Elite. I was somebody to my peers, somebody in my very own right. There, with Nate, I saw a glimpse of the person I could be if I said yes to his offer. In a matter of seconds, I could be the new Sienna. Isn't that what I'd always wanted?

Isn't Nate what I'd always wanted?

"No."

Instantly, his pleading grin fell to a frown.

Lingering in front of me, digesting an answer that even I hadn't foreseen, I couldn't help but think that Nate didn't look like a king. The boy from my memories was glittering and golden, a force amongst his peers — confident and assured. But now that I had him, now that he looked at me in the way I'd always dreamed that he would, he didn't quite sparkle the same way.

It was cause to wonder: had I ever liked Nate? Nate in his simple human form, without Sienna on his arm or the football team behind him? Or was it merely the idea of his power that I'd craved all along?

I shook my head, reclaiming my arm from his hold. I turned my back on our audience out of respect. "I can't go with you, Nate." I clarified softly. Then, "I don't want to."

The words were strange to say, stranger for my ears to hear. But what struck me the most was that they were true.

Nate frowned harder, his dashing crystal eyes swimming with knowing. "Is this about Sienna?"

A strange heat rose inside of me. Why was everything with him always about Sienna?

I maintained my composure. "You tell me."

Nate shook his head fervently. "N-no! I just thought, you know, we're both single. We get along..." He shuffled on the spot, his eyes flicking back and forth from me to that cafeteria line before he brought his head closer. "And, okay, maybe the bonus is that it would be a good way for me to get closer to Sienna again."

And there it was.

He groaned, instantly realizing how the words sounded to my ears. "No, I don't mean—"

"Yes, you do."

He looked up at me through his perfect mane of hair, the smell of his musky cologne tickling my nose. How rich and powerful the honeyed scent had seemed when we were alone in his cabin on camp, so magical it awakened parts of me that I didn't even know existed. But cologne wasn't magical. Its power was artificial, a generic formula mass-produced in a lab. Anyone could possess it.