Effortless

Fifty-two

His head tilted slightly to the side and his eyes softened. I had a tight, endearing grip on both of his arms.

My voice softened. "I get to say that my boyfriend beat me fair and square and got the title that he definitely deserves."

Javier was at a loss for words for a moment, but then looked at me with endearment. "Thank you, baby."

"I get to stand on stage in front of a huge crowd of people, right next to my boyfriend. My boyfriend is valedictorian, and I am salutatorian."

"You're abusing the hell out of the words 'my boyfriend.'" He joked.

I scoffed. "As long as I had to wait to be able to say it, I think I have the right to do that."

With a satisfied smile, he cupped my chin and pulled me into a soft kiss. I returned this kiss eagerly, knowing that we needed to get back to class before the principal caught us lingering outside of her office. Kissing Javi took away all my worries. I couldn't be bothered to care about anything else but how our lips moved together. What was the harm in a couple of seconds?

Pulling back from the kiss we both had smiles on our faces. My eyes moved to the camera on the ceiling.

"You think they'll do something?" I asked.

Javier shrugged. "What are they going to do, give their top two students detention for a small kiss in the empty hallway? If so, oh well."

The next two weeks were spent with the both of us working on our speeches. At first we worked on them together; that was until Javi made a joke about his being better than mine, so I told him we should make it into a competition. We stopped helping each other with each other's speeches and worked on them separately. We would get to hear our speeches at the same time that everyone else did, at graduation.

I turned to Ricky for feedback on my speech. I needed someone to bounce ideas off of and to help determine if it sounded decent or not. He was willing to help even though he didn't know the first thing about speeches.

"'...and high school has been a journey for us that has been filled with lots of ups and downs. We went through many changes and they have shaped us into who we are right now.'" I looked up from the paper. "How's that part?"

Ricky was twirling a pencil with his fingers. "Sounds good."

"Should I change the words 'ups and downs' to something else? Does it sound weird?"

He shook his head lightly. "It sounds good."

I set the paper down on the desk with a groan. I sat down in the chair and looked at him dully. "Ricky, you've said that every time I've asked about the speech. It can't all be good."

"But it is." Ricky started to chew on the pencil as he sat with one foot in the chair. "It all sounds well written, I don't know what else to say."

I sighed and rested my head in my hand with frustration. "I was hoping for a little more than what you're giving me."

Ricky took a beat before setting the chewed pencil down. "You're thinking way too hard about this. I get that you want to beat your boyfriend, but don't stress yourself out."

I picked my head up to look at him emphatically. "This is not just because I want to beat Javier. Yes, we made it into a challenge, but I'm not stressed because I want to win."

Ricky was surprised. "Then what's the reason?"

My teeth ground against each other and I rested my head on my hand. "I am giving the opening speech to a huge crowd of people, it's scary. Also, not sure if you're aware, but most of our classmates don't really like me. I know they aren't going to boo me off of the stage or anything like that, but knowing that they don't care for me doesn't help me feel better about having to give a speech."