#wamgd

What A Man Gotta Do - Jonas Brothers

Aelin was thankful that her free period was before lunch. It gave her ample time to be in the cafeteria before everything went absolutely insane thanks to Jax’s elaborate flash-mob style Promposal for Livi. Aelin herself was in charge of starting the music once students stopped filtering into the cafeteria, once Jax gave her the okay. 

Livi had no idea what was about to happen. Somehow everyone had managed to keep it a complete and total secret despite half the student body and all the teachers knowing about it. To keep it casual, Aelin was standing by the doors that lead outside and scrolling mindlessly on her phone as students began to trickle into the room. 

Fifteen minutes later, she was hitting play and music was drifting through the room. A few students glanced around in confusion, Livi included, but by the end of the first line over half the room was on their feet and dancing a rushed version of choreography Aelin had helped them put together two weeks back. From the door, Jax was lip-syncing the words dramatically, dancing his way through the room to Livi. When he was a few feet away, he slid on his knees and essentially begged at her feet. 

“What a man gotta do to be totally locked up by you?” Livi’s head fell back in laughter as she nodded her head, an answer to Jax’s silent question - will you go to prom with me? Through the room, students kept dancing, branching off from the rehearsed choreo and doing their own little jives. 

It was then that she noticed Coach Whitethorn across the room who looked like he’d been trying to catch her eye, because when she did his face lit up as he, too, started dancing and mouthing the words to the song more dramatically than Jax. Aelin couldn’t help laughing. Rowan was typically serious, only ever really showing this side of himself around Aelin in the moments they hung out during free periods or talked after school. His current behavior was drawing attention, a couple kids high fiving their goob of a coach. 

“Sign me up for the full-time, I'm yours, all yours,” he mouthed, arms spread wide until the last four words when he was pointing at Aelin. Aelin smiled and shook her head, started to make her way across the cafeteria to where he was. Something was fluttering in her chest, a storm of butterflies trying to break free the closer she got to him. Suddenly, there was hard realization that she really, really liked the complete and total goober that stood before her.

It had been building for awhile, the tension between them. Some days while they sat in her classroom or when she visited him down in his office at the end of the day it was nearly palpable. The thing was, she hadn’t been sure when the attraction had started. He hadn’t liked her at first because of how hard she was on her students. Her class was hard, too many of his football players got close to failing sometimes and he’d come up a few times to try to chew her out about it. Something had changed though because she’d always stood her ground, and one day he’d stopped by just to say hello. That led to him eating lunch with her, led to so many inside jokes. It had even resulted in their students asking if they were into each other. A few of the girls were still trying to orchestrate them going on a date. 

Rowan didn’t stop, not even when she was right in front of him. As the song started over again, Aelin danced along with him, shimmying her way around him while they both laughed. The kids in the cafeteria were losing it, absolutely giddy and high off the energy in the air. 

“What a man gotta do?” Rowan said in her ear, and her stomach flipped so hard she thought something might be medically wrong for a minute. She was positive that she could feel the tension popping around them like they were being zapped. Aelin pulled back to look at his handsome face briefly before his lips were still close to her ear again when he asked, “Go out with me after we chaperone the dance.” 

Rowan’s fingers brushed against her forearm, her elbow, traced a straight line down to her wrist and over her palm. Goosebumps erupted all over her body as she looked up at him, lips pressing together to try to hide her smile but she failed as soon as she started to nod. 

On beat with the song, Aelin grinned and said, “I’m yours.”