"Nice to meet you all," I said loudly, still trying to combat the music.
"Sit!" Alice yelled. Hayes let go of my hand and pulled up two chairs that had been abandoned at nearby tables. The table was high and so was the chair. Hayes held out his hand and helped me up and once I was settled he kissed my temple before climbing up onto his chair. When I turned back to the table all four of his friends were looking at us like we'd grown third arms.
"So," Kristen said, her eyes darting between us. "How've you been?" She asked the question expectantly, but not unkindly.
"Good. You know, just taking everything day by day." He reached out to me, threading his fingers between mine.
"How's the teaching going? I know you were worried about having to start over." Alice stirred her pink, fancy-looking drink as she asked the question, her eyes centered on Hayes, seeming to be genuinely interested in his answer.
He shrugged. "It was a little rough at first, trying to work a new concept into my thesis, a new topic essentially, but luckily my anatomy theory can be molded to fit any shape. I just took everything I was using here and applied it to the host teacher's curriculum topic." He laughed and then ran his hand through his hair. "You guys don't want to hear about this stuff."
"You're right," David said without hesitation. "We want to know why you've shown up with a girlfriend none of us have ever heard of."
"Yes," Kristen let out on a loud exhale, while Bryan took a long drink from his beer, looking as though he didn't want to get pulled into the conversation, but was eager to know the answer. Hayes laughed again, a true, sincere laugh, as though his friend's question didn't strike him as rather abrupt like it had me. Hayes obviously thought David's question was funny.
"I've known McKenzie my whole life, but it's just never worked out before now." He looked over at me as he said the words and I was a little dumbstruck by how much love I saw reflected in his eyes, by how much affection the words held. And like he was reading my mind he leaned over to me, wrapped his free hand around the back of my neck, and pulled me into him for a kiss. It wasn't a chaste kiss by any means, but it wasn't obnoxiously inappropriate either. It was slow and soft and completely out in the open. Any person in that bar could have seen him kiss me, and the weight that lifted off me in that moment was heavier than I remembered it being as I carried it around the last month of my life.
He pulled away, smiled at me, and then tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear before turning back to his friends.
"Well, I think I speak for everyone when I say that was ridiculously cute and also it's about freaking time, Wallace." This came from Alice, who was all smiles. Looking at me she continued, "I was afraid he was going to be a bachelor forever. He never really seemed interested in anyone since freshman year."
I thought about the girl, Allison, he said he'd been with. I didn't really know how to respond, so I just smiled.
"Do you want a drink?" Hayes asked, whispering in my ear, making a shiver float down my spine.
"Water?" I wasn't brave enough to drink alcohol. Not that night. Not when it was our first together out in the open. I wanted to be in the moment, even if I was terrified down to my bones to be around his friends, in his environment. I wanted desperately to fit in, to feel as though I could slip right into his life and be a part of it. But I didn't want to drink.
"Sure, I'll be right back." He looked around the table. "Anyone else need a refill?" Both David and Bryan held up their beer bottles, but both girls shook their heads. I watched as Hayes headed toward the bar, then turned back to the group, plastering a smile on my face.
"So, how do you know Hayes?" This came from Bryan, the first words I'd heard from him that night, and they were friendly.
"His mom and my mom have been friends forever. Hayes grew up just down the street from me."
"Oh," Kristen said sadly, "so you knew Cory then? And their dad?"
I nodded. "Cory was my best friend." I didn't add any more information. For once, these people didn't know all the intricate lines drawn between Hayes and me. So I didn't share.
"We're so sorry," Alice said solemnly.
"Thank you." I gave them a small smile, but then tried to redirect the conversation. "So, you guys had classes with Hayes?"
"Well, we had some classes with Hayes, but he took them so damn fast that after sophomore year he'd already passed us. But we'd claimed him by then, and we've just never really let him make any other friends," David said with a laugh.
"No joke," Bryan added, "Hayes kicked our asses at learning." Both guys laughed and I found myself laughing too.
"And you two are together?" I pointed between David and Kristen. She immediately held out her left hand and wiggled her fingers at me, one of which held a very pretty diamond engagement ring.
"We're getting married after graduation," Kristen practically squealed.
"Congratulations," I said, with genuine enthusiasm.
"So, what do you do?" Alice asked. My blood froze in my veins. Hayes and I hadn't really discussed what we were going to tell his friends about me, my age, or that I was his student. So, I decided to be vague.
"I'm in school."
"Oh, yeah? What's your major?" she asked, leaning in, truly interested in my answer.
"Uh, I'm undeclared still. I have a few years left." I wanted desperately to get the focus off me and my age. "Are you in school? What's your major?"
"I'm going for my BFA-fine arts." She shrugged like it wasn't a big deal, brushing it off like it meant nothing.
"What does that entail?"
"I'm focused on the visual arts, so painting, ceramics, photography, stuff like that."
"That's so amazing. I'm so not creative in any way." I shook my head, wishing there was something I was good at.
"She's being modest. She's amazing. Her paintings are going for a grand at a studio downtown." Kristen was obviously very proud of her friend.
"That's amazing," I replied, honestly impressed. I'd never met a painter before.
"See?" Kristen said, bumping her shoulder into Alice's. "It's amazing."
"Shut up." Alice smiled then took a sip of her drink.
"So you guys have known Hayes for a few years, then, right?" I asked.
"Pretty much since the beginning," David said.
"He left for college and I never really saw him much. There's a whole side of him I don't really even know." I found myself leaning forward toward Hayes's friends, feeling comfortable, wanting them to give me a little tiny piece of him I could tuck away, something new and special.
"I guess you could say the same thing about us. He never talks about home, and even though he only lived two hours away, he never took any of us there to meet his family," Bryan said, all this while spinning his empty beer bottle on the table. "But that never really bothered us because Hayes is pretty much the best guy we'd ever met. He's loyal, smart, fun, but he's also the one person you know you can always count on. He'd sacrifice everything for someone he cared about."
That I knew. I loved that about him. I nodded, giving them a smile that probably said, "Gosh, what a nice thing to say about my boyfriend." But I felt more like, his greatest attribute might be his downfall. He'd sacrificed so much already.
As if on cue, Hayes returned to our table with three beer bottles and my water. He handed them out, took a pull off his own, then sat down next to me, and took my hand in his again. This time it was I who leaned over and kissed him. I was the one who showed him, in front of his friends and the whole world, that I had him, finally.
A few hours later when we made it to his apartment, I was incredibly nervous. We'd spent two nights together, but I knew that night was going to be different. In the timeline of our relationship, a big fat circle would mark this night as important, and I was trying to prepare myself for that.
He held my hand as we walked through the parking lot of his apartment complex, and something about being there with him made him seem older, or me younger. I couldn't quite figure it out, but I definitely felt a shift in the dynamic between us. I was letting him lead, letting him be the one to teach me something new.
"So, you share this apartment with David?"
"Yeah. We moved here last year after a horrible apartment on the other side of town the year before. This place is cool, though. A little far from campus, but that also means there's less loud college students out here."
"And you guys aren't loud college students?" I asked, bumping my shoulder against his.
"Not really anymore. I mean, sure, freshman and sophomore year we might have been a little reckless and rowdy, but that gets old after a while. David calmed down a lot when he and Kristen got together, and I was happy to leave the party life behind." I thought immediately about how he was a whole year ahead in his schooling, how he was focused and driven, which probably left little time for cutting loose and getting loud.
He led me up a staircase to the second floor and stopped at a door toward the back of the building. He let go of my hand to unlock his door, then when it opened he motioned for me to enter first. I dropped my overnight bag inside the door and when he flipped on the light I was instantly transported into a weird alternate reality where Hayes Wallace was an actual adult, with couches and dining room tables and big-screen TVs. I'd never really tried to imagine where he lived because, in truth, I tried not to think much about him at all for self-preservation purposes, but the living space I was looking at in that moment was not how I would have pictured his apartment.