One Shot | William Beckett

There was laughter. Very loud laughter. William felt his cheeks beginning to catch fire as his friends stood in a semicircle around him. He didn't know how to feel about the girl standing before him right now.
He daren't look her in the eye. He was afraid he might glare at her, or frown, or start welling up again.
"Face it Beckett, you're never going to get a shot with me," she informed, then turned on her heel and walked off into the general direction of her next class.
The laughter continued, but one boy in the half circle wasn't laughing. He stepped forward and put his hand on William's shoulder.
"Come on Bill. Youve been shot down by Rebekah for the longest time. Either you're losing your charm, or she's just not charmable."
The spectators shouldered away and William looked at his best friend. "Adam, she infuriates me."
"Then why try so hard?" Siska asked, as the two best friends made their way to lunch. "You could ask anyone else out and they'd be all over you like that." To prove his point, Adam snapped his fingers.
"That's the thing. I'm tired of people being 'all over me like that,'" William snapped his fingers. "I want a challenge."
"Oh, so now we're some sort of GAME, is it Beckett?" a voice shot out from behind him.
The two boys turned around to find a new friend. "Jolynn, why must you be so weird?" Siska whined.
"Me? Weird? You must be talking to a mirror," she snapped. "So Beckett, how was Plan: Get-Rebekah-Day -531?"
"You keep track?"
There was silence for a moment. "Um, yeah. Somebody has to."
The three got inside the cafeteria and sat down. Adam opened his lunch box excitedly, pulling out a gigantic bag of cheetos.
"Jolynn, you're friends with Rebekah!" William suddenly exclaimed.
"Uh, yeah?"
"Wait, I don't get this: If Rebekah and Jolynn are friends, and Jolynn and William are friends, why doesn't the equation work out?" Adam interruptedly thought.
Jolynn threw her highlighter at him. "Because, Brainless, this is life, not Geometry! You can't use the Transitive Property of Congruence!"
"Jolynn, what's Rebekah doing after school today?"
"Hey, you only get one shot a day -" she began.
"Jolynn!"
"She's just going cross country practice," she gave in, before walking off to the lunch line.
"Hey Bill; you thinking what I'm thinking?" Adam whispered.
"Um, hopefully not, because half the time you don't even know what you're thinking," William answered, taking a bite of his peanut butter (no jelly) sandwich.
"That's the perfect time you can play Rebekah the song you wrote for her!"
"Dude, that is a prototype. I repeat: PROTOTYPE!"
"No no, you should definitely do it today!"
"You think so?"
"I know so -"
"Now that is a bad idea."
Adam rolled his eyes. "It's a really good song. We'll just tweak it a bit right after school and then you can play it for her! It's brilliant! Here's your shot!"
"...so I'm gonna do it?"
"Yes! You should do it!"
"I agree!" another voice interrupted.
The two looked up to see Mike Carden. "Michael, be quiet."
"Yeah Michael, be quiet," Jolynn butted in, sitting back down.
"Yeah Michael, be quiet," Mike himself mimicked.
"So, what are we doing, really?" Jolynn asked.
William sighed, and dug through his backpack. He pulled out a piece of slightly crumpled loose leaf notebook paper.
"I wrote this song for Rebekah, and I was thinking about singing it for her today after school."
Jolynn and Mike perused the paper. "Wow, this is for Rebekah? This is way good."
"You wrote a song for me?"
Immediately Jolynn and Will made a grab for the paper. Jolynn won.
"Read it, it's brilliant. Seriously, if someone else besides Beckett wrote this, I'd totally ba -"
Mike slapped his hand over Jolynn's mouth before she got carried away.
Bill, getting that feeling of heat around his neck again, stood up, mumbled something incoherently, and walked off.
Rebekah looked up. "Wow. This is good. Will, I...WILL?" She saw him walk out the door, and, with paper in hand, she ran after him.
"William! Will, wait!"
He turned around surprising fast. "Did you just call me by my first name?"
She looked down at her feet, embarrassed. "The reason I gave you such a hard time is because believe it or not I'm quite fragile and I know you have a reputation for making all the girls swoon and then dropping them like raisins and I just didn't want to get hurt, you know?"
"Dropping girls like raisins?" William asked, amused.
"Well, I didn't want to say flies: how horrible would it be if I compared girls to flies?" she asked indignantly.
"I didn't want that reputation Rebekah."
"Well, then, what did you want?" she asked nervously. Her hands began to shake, and the piece of slightly crumpled loose leaf notebook paper fell to the ground with a gentle crunch.
"To make a band and get famous and make millions of dollars and THEN gain that reputation," he said, a serious expression on his face.
rest in results
"What?"
"But since you and I both know that would never happen, how about a shot with just you?"
"Just me?"
"Just you Rebekah," he whispered, wrapping his freakishly long arms around her waist and kissing her softly.