All I've Never Wanted(144)
“Now, come on, Shelly, you’re embarrassing her.” My dad released me to slip an arm around my mom, who seemed to be on the verge of a breakdown. “And you—“ Here he cast a stern look at Roman, who moved closer to me now that there were no parental units in the way. “You better take care of my daughter.”
“Of course I will, you don’t need to worry about that. I’ll guard her with my life,” Roman reassured him, giving me a sly wink when my dad turned away.
I blushed. No doubt he was thinking about what we were going to do once we were settled into our hotel in Paris. He was such a pervert. Although I’ve become a bit of a pervert myself, so I couldn’t really say anything.
“Oh no,” I suddenly groaned, stepping closer to Roman when I saw who was headed our way. “Here they come.”
Roman blanched and pulled me protectively into his chest while both my parents immediately backed off.
“Well, I, uh, I think we’re going to go look at the food,” my dad blurted, grabbing my mom and dragging her away. “Boy, that ceremony sure made us hungry.”
I eyed him suspiciously. “Dad, there’s no food here.”
He turned scarlet. “Uh, yeah, well, you know. It never hurts to look. Ok bye now!” With that, he nearly ran across the lawn with my mom.
I shook my head while Roman chuckled. I swear, my parents were like kids sometimes. Luckily, in the past few months, my relationship with my father had strengthened to the point where we were almost back to the way we were. It certainly helped that he’d been spending a lot more time with my mom and I, working from home and taking us on random family trips over the weekend. Actually, I thought fishing is just about the most boring thing in existence, but it was nice to spend more time with him.
“Looks like they’ve learned faster than us,” Roman commented dryly, wincing when the hurricane finally hit.
“Mayaaa!” Venice nearly tackled me into the ground in her excitement, her eyes shining and her smile so big I was surprised her face didn’t break. “I’m so, so happy for you! You did it!”
“No, we did it,” I corrected, laughing as I tried to disentangle my limbs from hers.
She sighed happily. “I can’t believe we graduated. That’s absolutely insane. Goodbye, school! Hello, world!”
“Um, you do realize college counts as school too, right?” I raised my eyebrows while Roman rolled his eyes, but there was a small smirk on his face. He’d confessed that there were certain times when he just wanted to wring Venice’s neck because of how exuberant she was—which I found funny, considering he’s friends with Zack—but after so many months he’d gotten used to it.
“College, schmollege.” The redhead waved her hand dismissively in the air. “I don’t even want to think about that right now. We have a whole glorious summer ahead of us, and boy, I can’t wait.”
Another happy sigh.
I was finally able to stand up again, and I was sure my graduation gown now had a series of grass stains on the back, but I barely managed to straighten fully before I landed right back on my butt.
“My-My! You did so great!” Zack cried, nearly suffocating me with a bear hug. “The way you took your diploma. That was just awesome!”
I wondered what he was talking about, since I received my diploma the same way as the other two hundred or so students in my class, but I knew better than to ask. Zack did a lot of crazy things, but one thing he didn’t do was make sense.
“Thanks, Zack.” I caught sight of Roman’s disbelieving face over the blond’s shoulder and cracked up all over again.
“Dogpile!” Venice randomly shouted, ignoring the scandalized looks surrounding families cast in our direction as she dove on top of Zack.
“Oof!” I grimaced at the extra weight. Yep, there was no way I wouldn’t have grass stains. In fact, my whole back was probably green.
I shot Roman a frantic, help-me look, but he just shook his head and smirked. No doubt he enjoyed my quasi-misery. Ever since Venice and Zack officially started dating, about a week after New Year’s, they’ve been inseparable. The most worrying part about their crazy hyper relationship—other than the fact that those two had taken to randomly chasing puppies together and therefore inspiring desperate fear in almost all dog owners in Valesca, since nothing good ever came out of Venice’s canine pursuits—was that they’d become even more hyper since they'd gotten together.
Yes, it is possible. Just ask my parents. They now refuse to be within ten feet of Venice and Zack when they were together. I didn’t blame them. If they weren’t such good friends, I would’ve permanently duct-taped their mouths shut by this point.
Although a very, very tiny part of me had to admit they were quite the adorable couple.
“You smell like cotton candy,” Zack sighed, twisting his head to sniff Venice’s neck.
She beamed. “I snuck some under my robe during the ceremony,” she giggled, fluttering her eyelashes.
And then the two proceeded to make out. Did I mention they were still on top of me?
That was it. I take back everything I said about them being adorable—nauseatingly sweet is more like it—and with a superhuman strength endowed on only the truly desperate, I pushed them off of me. They didn’t even break contact, and just rolled over on the grass while they continued to kiss and giggle.