by Ella James
“Sorry,” she hisses. “This is your first…thing.”
“It is not my first thing,” I hiss back—from behind my hand. “I’ve had other things.”
She gives me side-eye. “Girl, you won’t touch that funnel cake.”
I look down at the greasy delight in my lap.
“I know you, I know you love your funnel cake,” Dani continues. “I also know you can’t eat before piano recitals or surgery or hospital procedures.” She means procedures for Becca. “You’re okay before a test, before confession, before those jazz dance recitals that we used to do in fifth and sixth grade. But he’s not even here sitting with us, and you won’t touch your favorite food of all time.”
I give her side-eye as the “welcome to Friday night football” message starts over the loudspeaker. “That’s not true.”
I tear a piece of yellowish cake off, pop it into my mouth, and lick the confectioner’s sugar off my lips. “I’m going to eat all of this.”
Spoiler: I’m not. Naturally, Dani is right. We’ve been friends since third grade, after her parents decided to pull her out of private school and she became the new kid in Mrs. Moore’s class. So, she knows me well.
She rests her head on my shoulder, and I feel her cheek round out as she grins. “Sorry, goldfish.”
I sigh. “You are such a beta.”
Our nicknames are from sixth grade, when everyone in our friend group was fighting all the time, so I ghosted on them for a few weeks. Ree called me a goldfish in a tank of bully betas, and it stuck.
She leans around Dani now. “What am I missing? I can’t hear over all this…” She waves her hands in front of her.
Dani straightens, smiling. “This shit is what we’re here for, Ree. The game stuff.”
Game stuff. I shake my head at that. None of us knows the first thing about football. Our school has a winning team, but Dani, Ree, and I are more into arts and crafts and other geekery. We’ve been knitting booties and beanies for babies on Friday nights lately. My mom helps organize the Battery Park March of Dimes Gala, and our knitted goods are going to be auctioned there next month.
Dani’s boyfriend Ty does online gaming tournaments on Friday nights, and Ree is perpetually single like me. Although in her case, it’s because she likes “only melanated girls with round asses, small tits, big brains, good with a pan and a spatula, likes crime shows, and no one wanting to get married till we’re at least thirty.” Which, in Sheree-speak, means she’s a total closed door. Her mom died suddenly we were all in fifth grade, and I think Ree hasn’t moved past it. Very understandably.
“Ooh, look, he’s on the sidelines warming up now,” she says, leaning forward with her palms on her blanket-covered knees.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Suck air in through my nose.
“Goldie is losing it,” Dani says—and she sounds amused.
I blow air out my mouth and glare at both of them. “Can we please just pretend we’re here to watch the whole damn team?”
A man in front of us aims a glance over his shoulder at me, and I want to die. I want to explain to my girls again that it’s not like Luca Galante is my boyfriend. We had some random encounters, and then yesterday on the track.
Yes, I went home and hugged a pillow thinking of him last night. And this morning I told my driver, Mercer, that I didn’t need a ride and walked to school so I might bump into him earlier along his trek toward the building. But I didn’t. I didn’t see him at all before homeroom, which was highly disappointing. I couldn’t find him in the cafeteria at lunch time, and he wasn’t at the track, either—at least not at first.
I decided to run—since I had skipped my normal Thursday lunchtime run to talk to him. I was maybe halfway done when I heard someone on the track behind me. I didn’t turn around—in case it was him. And then he was there beside me, jogging in his work-out gear and sneakers, his dark hair damp, so I figured he’d come from the football practice field.
He laughed and I laughed, and for a while we ran side-by-side, stealing glances at each other. Then the bell rang, and his gaze pinned mine down as we slowed our pace. “Football game tonight? Six o’clock?”
I laughed again. “You’re saying you want me to go?”
His blue eyes widened. “If you want to.”
“Do I?”
He gave a raspy laugh. “I don’t know, do you?”
“I’ll go.”
His mouth curved in a small but satisfied smile. “Try to sit in the student section—so I can find you.”
Then he turned around and jogged back toward the practice fields.
I told my parents Dani and I were going to hear a youth choir perform before spending the night at her house. And…here I am. At Luca Galante’s game. To watch him play football. I’m sitting in the student section so he can “find me.” After the game? I’m not even sure what he meant; that’s how lame I am.
I chew the inside of my cheek and look down at the funnel cake. Finally, I get the nerve to look back up and find him as he stretches behind the player bleachers at the side of the field.
Luca. Even in the privacy of my mind, saying it feels like stepping out of the house naked. Luca.
Why do I react this way to him? Is it the way he looks? He’s definitely gorgeous.
But now I’ve experienced him up close. The way he smiles. His voice. His hand rubbing my back when I was losing it in the bathroom.
It’s the way he ran over to me on the track today and just jogged with me for a while in silence. The way his eyes widened slightly when I asked if he was inviting me to the game. How he swept Pandy away and cleaned him up for no good reason. That surprising hug the other day on the track.
He makes me feel like…like some part of me is falling open, and I can’t even help it. It’s a heavy, secret feeling—an unfurling. So it’s terrible to watch him right now while my best friends tease me.
Every time he’s on the field, I feel like I can’t breathe. Near the end of the game, one of the opposing players slams into him, and he crumples to the grass and stays there for a second. My heart nose-dives. Then he gets up, moving stiffly. A minute later, the set of plays they’re doing wraps up, and he walks off the field and jerks his helmet off.
I hold my breath as someone in a purple Polo shirt sits beside him on the metal bleachers, offering him a water bottle and draping a white towel over his nape.
“Did he get hurt?”
“I don’t think so.” Dani shakes her head and squints down at the field. “I think it’s a dramatic sport. And for real like tiring. After all these games, Teddy—” the team’s quarterback, whom Dani dated briefly last year— “told me that he just goes home and crashes. He says it’s exhausting and it makes him so sore he can barely move.”
I watch Luca as he rubs the towel over his face and drapes it over his head. Then he’s up again, standing with the rest of the team.
Not yours, I remind myself. Might not even find you after the game.
I get teased again about the funnel cake and force myself to eat more, so by the time the game is over—with a winning score for our team—I’m feeling buzzy from the loudness of the crowd combined with the fierce sugar rush.
I watch as the team huddles, shouts something in unison, and starts to trickle off the field toward the locker room.
“Why don’t we wait here for a little while?” Dani says, her voice a pitch too cheery.
“There’s no reason to wait.” I pick at the funnel cake, and Ree says, “Goldfish, we are waiting. Mama Beta is deciding for you.”
“I’m not going to just wait here for him,” I mutter.
“Go to the concession stand, then,” she orders, shooing me with her hand. “If he doesn’t see you, he’ll see us. You’ll be right back.”
I’m almost to the bottom of the cement bleachers when he moves into my frame of vision, leaning against a purple railing and peering intently in my direction. When our eyes meet, he gives me the biggest grin, and I dash over.
“Hi.” My cheeks burst into flames as I step nearer to him. He’s still wearing his football getup, including the big shoulder pads.
“Hi yourself.” His voice is low and quiet, so casual, but after meeting my eyes for half a second, he can’t stop his gaze from roving over my body as he runs a hand back through his damp hair. He shakes his head a little, snaps his blue eyes back to mine. “Sweaty.”
Yes, he’s sweaty. He looks like a big, male creature that’s been tussling with the other males. Who knew that could be sexy? I swallow. “You played great. It was really cool to watch a game.”
He gives me a teasing smile. “You’ve never been before?”
“Only one time, when I was a sophomore.”
“To see your boyfriend?” One of his brows juts up, making him look rakish.
“My friend’s boyfriend.”
His eyes flicker toward my friends, which lets me know he must have spotted us before this moment. Then he looks back at me, brows narrowed in consternation. “You guys wanna come out? My friend Jace is having a thing at his family’s…I don’t know…some kind of river house or something.”
“Jace Banetti?” I ask, nodding because I know exactly where that palace of a “river house” is. It’s Jace’s grandparents’ second home, I almost tell Luca.
“You know him?” he asks.
“Since we were younger.”
“Good.” He gives me a big grin. “So you want to meet me there?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Oh, wait, the address.” He squints, biting his lower lip. Then he looks at the back of his hand, where something’s scrawled in faded marker script. “It’s at Kings Point. Looks like…Nine Soundridge Lane. Banetti says it’s near Kings Point Park?”
“Yeah, I think I know where that is.”
His brows scrunch. “Wait a second. How long a drive is that?”
“Like…kind of long, I think. But I’m staying with Dani, and her parents are low key. Her driver’s the one who’s on tonight. He’s super nice. He’ll take us anywhere we want him to.”
“I’ve got another idea. Do you want to come with me? With Jace? We’re going in a helicopter.” His eyes are slightly wide, as if he’s concerned about my reaction. It makes me laugh. “Really?”
He nods. “If you’re not good with that—”
“Oh no, I’ve been in helicopters. I mean, not since I was like thirteen. But they’re fun. And at night…” I smile, thinking of it. “That would be amazing. If you’re sure there’s room for me?”
Luca nods, tugging on his jersey like he’s hot under it. “He said nine of us can go, and so far it’s just Jace, Loren, Max Romano, Franc Toliver, and me. There’s some other people chartering two other ones, but our group’s got some room. I think it’s Jace’s family’s.”
I nod. “I think his dad owns a fleet of them.”
He shakes his head, like that’s insane.
“It kind of is insane. If you really stop and think about it.”
He laughs. “So you’re in? You need a ride, or will your friend’s…uh, person take you?”
“We’ll meet you over there. Is it the Water Street heliport?”
He nods. “I think so.”
“Perfect.”
He reaches toward my shoulder like he’s going to squeeze it, but at the last minute he touches his palm to the side of my arm instead. He gives me a funny little smile.
“See you over there, Elise.”
And then he’s off again.
Chapter Four
Elise
Dad flies all the time. There’s a helipad on our building—not near our penthouse, but on the other side, on one of the lower roofs. I used to go with him, but that was years ago, I guess.
I’m trying to remember it now: how it feels to soar between the skyscrapers, the giddy rush that makes me feel a little sick as the helicopter teeters in the clouds before dipping quickly back to land.
I can’t believe I’m getting into a helicopter with Luca. I think of myself sitting in his lap and close my eyes as I exhale.
You’re going crazy, Elise.
When I open my eyes, I find Dani giving me a quizzical look. “What’s up? Are you nervous?”
Dani’s older sister, Maria, is a fashion model, and she takes Dani on her helicopter jaunts around Manhattan. Also—I forget this sometimes—Dani comes from a long line of jetsetters. Her family tree is home to senators and presidential cabinet members.
“I’m nervous,” a wide-eyed Ree offers. Her father is an elementary school principal in the Bronx, so helicopters aren’t a fixture in her day-to-day life. She grabs Dani’s arm. “Remember that time we went with Maria to that weird warehouse in Brooklyn and there was all that fog when we were landing?”
“Oh, you mean the one with that neon paint set?”
Ree nods, and I ask for more details before realizing I wasn’t there with them that time.
“It’s going to be fine, you chickens,” Dani tells us. “We’ll only be up like fifteen minutes. And it’s nighttime, so it’s going to be super pretty.” She adjusts the band around her high ponytail then flashes me a grin. “If you get scared, just jump in your football hero’s lap.”
“Or play footsie,” Ree offers. “In that one we took, weren’t the seats facing each other?”
Two rows of seats are often facing on other. I think about it eagerly, even as I roll my eyes at my friends. “You two are relentless.”
For the next few minutes, I get coached on what to do at the party—as if I’ve never been anywhere—and then Dani goes over the emergency plan.
“I’ve got my Nokia in my purse.” She pats the giant leather bag hanging from her shoulder, her palm covering the Hermes label. “If we get lost or separated, call me on yours.”
“I don’t have mine,” Ree says.
“Me either.”
“The house will have phones. Or you can borrow someone’s mobile. Or you can find a payphone.”
Then the car stops. It feels so abrupt that I glance out the window to confirm we’re at the right place, and we are. Turns out, the ride just passed by quickly. Dani leans up to talk to Fil, letting him know we’d like to be picked up at the Banetti house in about four hours.
“I’ll drive over now and wait,” he says.
“If my mom calls, don’t tell her?” Dani requests.
Fil looks reproachful, which makes me smile.
Dani rolls her eyes. “Whatever, then. It’s not like Eileen will care.”
All too soon, we’re spilling out the car and onto a walkway. The heliport is all lit up and cool from a breeze that’s blowing from the East River. We sign consents inside a small green booth, and then we’re waved onto the spacious landing pad, where five large choppers await. One lifts off as we follow our escort toward the bird in slot five.
As we near, its long blades start to spin, tossing my hair into my face. Ree runs her hand over her tight braids and winks. I stick my tongue out at her. She gives me a goofy grin, then leans down to look under the chopper’s belly. “I see your boy!”
The boys are sort of behind the helicopter, so I don’t see him at first—not until we get closer and he starts waving.
Luca walks around the helicopter’s tail, hands in his pockets till we’re closer to him. Then he pulls them out and holds a hand out toward me, waving us around, where we greet Jace, Loren, Max, and Franco.
Everyone knows each other well, so there’s lots of hugging and greeting while Luca and I stand awkwardly near each other but not overly close.
Someone opens the helicopter’s door, and he takes my hand. We’re the last two to climb in. I notice that the two remaining seats are beside one another. Luca motions for me to sit first, so I do. I sit by Max and across from Dani; Luca sits on the end, beside me and across from Ree.
As the chopper’s blades thump faster, there’s an upswell in the volume of our voices—and an uptick in my heart rate. My eyes bounce around the small space, clinging to
the scenery outside the windows for a second before they snap like magnets onto Luca’s face.
His smile is crooked, and I laugh, because he looks a little miserable. “Are you nervous?”
“Me? Nah.” He laughs, and it’s nervous laughter. I hold my hand out. He takes it. I can’t breathe as he laces his fingers through mine. Something heavy settles in my body, like the feeling of exhaling. “Have you ever been in one?” I hear myself ask.
He’s wince-smiling as he shakes his head.
“I’ve only done it twice,” Ree tells him. “But never in one this big.”
“Two virgins,” Lorenzo chortles.
“How’s it going, Elise?”
I turn to Max with warm cheeks; I’m still holding Luca’s hand in full view of our friends.
“It’s okay. What about you, Max?”
He gives me a dimpled smile, shaking his head. He pulls off his ball cap, rubbing a hand through his dark hair. “Just being tired. I’m gonna throw a sleepover for one in Jace’s grandma’s big ass bed.”
“I don’t think so, Max. Can’t have your sweaty ass on Gran’s good blankets.”
Max snorts. “Better than what fucked up shit you’d do if you got on it.”
I turn back to Luca as the thumping sound intensifies and the pilot’s voice crackles over the speakers, letting us know we’re about to depart.
His wide eyes meet mine, and I squeeze his hand. He squeezes back.
“You ready?” I ask.
He laughs. “What about you?”
I cover my face with my free hand, breathing through my gritted teeth. “It makes me feel a little sick at first.”
The helicopter lurches off the landing pad, and Luca mutters, “Fuck.”
We tighten our grip on each other, and he closes his eyes. I see his jaw tic when I look up at him. My stomach clenches as I shut my eyes again, as if I swallowed a pool ball and it’s tugging me downward. Another roller coaster sensation and we’re steadier. A little steadier.