by Lynn Painter
My brain cued up “Someone Like You,” and the song started over from the beginning.
I’ve been searching a long time,
For someone exactly like you.
He was wearing khakis and a nice black shirt, the kind of outfit that showed he knew what looked good but also didn’t spend too much time on fashion. His hair was thick and blond and styled the same as his clothes—intentionally casual. I wondered what it smelled like.
His hair, not his clothes.
He must’ve sensed a stalker in his midst, because the slo-mo stopped, the birds disappeared, and he looked right at me.
“Liz?”
I was so happy that I’d taken the time to apply Retrograde Red. Clearly the cosmos had known Michael would be appearing before me that day, so it had done everything in its power to make me presentable.
“Girl, chill,” Joss said between her teeth, but I was helpless to stop the whole-face smile that broke free as I said, “Michael Young?”
I heard Joss mutter “Here we go,” but I did not care.
Michael came over and wrapped me in a hug, and I let my hands slide around his shoulders. Oh my God, oh my God! My stomach went wild as I felt his fingers on my back, and I realized that we could very well be having our meet-cute.
Oh. My. God.
I was dressed for it; he was beautiful. Could this moment be more perfect? I made eye contact with Joss, who was slowly shaking her head, but it didn’t matter.
Michael was back.
He smelled good—so, so good—and I wanted to catalogue every tiny detail of the moment. The soft, worn-in feel of his shirt under my palms, the breadth of his shoulders, the golden skin of his neck, scant centimeters away from my face as I hugged him back.
Was it wrong to close my eyes and take a deep brea—
“Oof.” Someone bumped into us, hard, destroying the hug. I was shoved into and then away from Michael, and as I turned around, I saw who it was.
“Wes!” I said, irritated that he’d ruined our moment, but so unbelievably happy still that I beamed at him anyway. I was incapable of not smiling. “You should really watch where you’re going.”
His eyebrows crinkled together. “Yeah…?”
He was watching me, probably wondering why I was smiling instead of going ballistic over the packing tape incident. He looked like someone waiting for the punch line, and his confusion kicked up my happiness to an even higher level. I giggled and said, “Yeah, you big doof. You could really hurt someone. Buddy.”
He narrowed his eyes and talked slower. “Sorry—I was talking to Carson and doing the extremely difficult backward-walking thing. But enough about me. How was your drive to school?”
I knew he wanted to hear all the details, like how long it had taken me to remove the tape or the fact that I’d broken two freshly manicured nails, but I wasn’t about to give that aggravator the satisfaction. “Really, really great—thanks for asking.”
“Wesley.” Michael did a bro handshake with Wes—when had they had time to choreograph that little touch of adorability?—and said, “You were right on about the biology teacher.”
“It’s because you sat by me. She haaaates me.” Wes grinned and started talking, but I ignored that tool and watched Michael speak and laugh and be as sweetly charming as I’d remembered.
Only now he had a slightly Southern drawl.
Michael Young had a soft accent that made me want to personally handwrite a thank-you note to the great state of Texas for making him even more appealing than he’d already been. I crossed my arms and pretty much melted into a puddle as I enjoyed the view.
Jocelyn, who I might have forgotten existed in the presence of such lovely Michaelhood, nudged me with her elbow and whispered, “Settle down. You’re drooling all over yourself.”
I rolled my eyes and ignored her.
“Hey, listen.” Wes hitched up his backpack and pointed at Michael. “Remember Ryan Clark?”
“Of course.” Michael smiled and looked like a congressional intern. “First baseman, right?”
“Exactly.” Wes lowered his voice. “Ryno’s having a party tomorrow at his dad’s—you should totally come.”
I tried to keep my expression neutral as I listened to Wes ask my Michael to come to his party. I mean, Wes did hang out with the guys that Michael used to know, but still. They were best friends all of a sudden or something?
That wouldn’t be good for me. Couldn’t be.
Because Wes Bennett got off on messing with me—he always had. In grade school, Wes was the guy who’d put a frog in my Barbie DreamHouse and a decapitated lawn gnome’s severed head in my homemade Little Free Library. In middle school, he was the guy who’d thought it was hilarious to pretend he didn’t see me when I was lying out, and then water his mom’s bushes, “accidentally” spraying the hose right over me until I screamed.
And now, in high school, he was the guy who’d made it his mission to harass me daily over The Spot. I’d grown a backbone since we were kids, so technically now I was the girl who yelled over the fence when his jock friends were over and they were so rowdy, I could hear them over my music. But still.
“Sounds good,” Michael said with a nod, and I wondered what he’d look like in a cowboy hat and flannel shirt. Maybe a pair of shitkickers, even though I didn’t technically know what differentiated a shitkicker from a regular cowboy boot.
I’d have to Google it later.
“I’ll text you the details. I gotta go—If I’m late to my next class, I’ve got detention for sure.” He turned and started jogging in the other direction with a yell of “Later, guys.”
Michael watched Wes’s disappearance before looking down at me and drawling, “He lit out of here so fast, I didn’t get to ask. Is it casual dress?”
“What? Um, the party?” Like I had any idea what they wore to their jockstrap parties. “Probably?”
“I’ll ask Wesley.”
“Cool.” I worked to give him my top-shelf smile, even though I was dying over the fact that Wes had screwed up my meet-cute.
“I’ve gotta run too,” he said, but added, “I can’t wait to catch up, though.”
Then take me with you to the party! I yelled internally.
“Joss?” Michael looked past me, and his mouth dropped open. “Is that you?”
She rolled her eyes. “Took you long enough.”
Jocelyn had always been closer to the neighborhood boys, playing football with Wes and Michael while I did awful cartwheels around the park and made up songs. Since then, she’d turned into this tall and freakishly good-looking human. Today her braids were all pulled back into a ponytail, but instead of looking messy like when I wore a ponytail, it showed off her cheekbones.
The warning bell rang, and he pointed up at the speaker. “That’s me. See y’all later.”
Y’all.
He went the other way, and Jocelyn and I started walking. I said, “I can’t believe Wes didn’t invite us to the party.”
She gave me side-eye. “Do you even know who Ryno is?”
“No, but that’s beside the point. He invited Michael right in front of us. It’s common courtesy that he should invite us, too.”
“But you hate Wes.”
“So?”
“So why would you want him to invite you anywhere?”
I sighed. “His rudeness just pisses me off.”
“Well I, for one, am glad he didn’t, because I don’t want to go to any party that those guys are having. I’ve been to Ryno’s, and it’s all about beer bongs, Fireball, and that never-have-I-ever kind of immature stuff.”
Joss used to hang out with the popular kids before she quit volleyball, so she’d “partied” a little before we became friends. “But—”
“Listen.” Jocelyn stopped walking and grabbed my arm to stop me from walking too. “That’s what I was going to tell you. Kate said he lives next door to Laney and they’ve been talking for a couple weeks now.”
“Laney? Lan
ey Morgan?” Nooo. It couldn’t be true. No-no-no-no, please, God, no. “But he just got here—”
“Apparently he moved back a month ago but was finishing classes online at his other school. Rumor has it that he and Laney are almost official.”
Not Laney. My stomach clenched as I pictured her perfect little nose. I knew it was irrational, but the idea of Laney and Michael was almost too much for me to bear. That girl always got everything I wanted. She couldn’t have him, dammit.
The thought of them, together, made my throat tight. It made my heart hurt.
It would crush me.
Because not only was he everything I daydreamed about, but he and I had history. The wonderful, important kind of history that involved drinking from garden hoses and catching lightning bugs. I thought back to the last time I’d seen Michael. It’d been at his house. His family had had a cookout to say goodbye to all the neighbors, and I’d walked over with my parents. My mom had made her famous cheesecake bars, and Michael had met us at the door and offered us drinks like he was a grown-up.
My mom had called it the most adorable thing she’d ever seen.
All the neighborhood kids played kickball in the street for hours that night, and the adults even joined us for a game. At one point, my mother was high-fiving Michael after stealing home base in her floral sundress and wedge sandals. That moment was pressed in my memories like a yellowed photograph in an antique album.
I don’t think Michael ever had a clue as to how madly in love with him I’d been. They moved a month before my mom died, breaking the tip of my soon-to-be shattered heart.
Jocelyn looked at me like she knew exactly what I was thinking. “Michael Young is not your racing-to-the-train-station dude. Got it?”
But he could be. “Well, technically they aren’t official yet, so…”
We started walking again, dodging bodies as we headed for her locker. We were probably going to be late because of our impromptu hallway meet-up with Michael, but it would totally be worth it.
“Seriously. Don’t be that girl.” She gave me her motherly scowl. “That there with Michael was not your meet-cute.”
“But.” I didn’t even want to say it because I didn’t want her to shoot it down. Still, I almost squealed when I said, “What if it was?”
“Oh my god. I knew, the second I heard he was back, that you were going to lose it.” Her eyebrows went down, and so did the corners of her lips as she stopped in front of the locker and turned the lock. “You don’t even know the guy anymore, Liz.”
I could still hear his deep voice saying y’all, and my stomach dipped. “I know everything I need to know.”
She sighed and pulled out her backpack. “Is there anything I can say to yank you back from this?”
I tilted my head. “Um… he hates cats, maybe?”
She held up a finger. “That’s right—I forgot. He hates cats.”
“He does not.” I grinned and sighed, thinking back. “He used to have these two snarky cats that he adored. You should’ve seen the way he treated those babies.”
“Ew.”
“Whatever, hater of felines.” I felt alive, buzzing with the thrill of romantic possibilities as I leaned against the closed locker next door. “Michael Young is fair game until I hear an official proclamation.”
“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”
“Happy? Excited? Hopeful?” I wanted to skip down the hall yell-singing “Paper Rings.”
“Delusional.” Jocelyn looked at her phone for a minute, then back at me. “Hey, my mom said she can take us dress shopping tomorrow night if you want.”
My mind went blank. I had to say something. “I think I have to work.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Every time I bring it up, you have to work. Don’t you want to get a dress?”
“Sure. Yeah.” I forced up the corners of my mouth. “Of course.”
But the truth was that I so did not.
The thrill of the dress was its ability to inspire romance, to make one’s date speechless. If that factor wasn’t in play, the prom dress was just an overpriced waste of fabric.
Adding to that, there was the screaming fact that shopping with Jocelyn’s mom for dresses was just a huge reminder that my mom wasn’t there to join us, which made it a wildly unappealing outing. My mother wouldn’t be there to take pictures and get teary as her baby attended the final dance of her childhood, and nothing made that hit home quite like seeing Joss’s mom do those things for her.
To be honest, I hadn’t been emotionally prepared for the emptiness that seemed to accompany my senior year, the many reminders of my mom’s absence. Senior pictures, homecoming, college applications, prom, graduation; as everyone I knew got excited about those high school benchmarks, I got stress headaches because nothing felt the way I’d planned for it to feel.
Everything felt… lonely.
Because even though the senior activities were fun, without my mom they were void of sentimentality. My dad tried to be involved, he really did, but he wasn’t an emotional guy, so it always just felt like he was the official photographer as I traversed the highlights alone.
Meanwhile, Joss didn’t understand why I didn’t want to make a big deal out of every single senior milestone like she did. She’d been pissed at me for three days when I’d blown off the spring break trip to the beach, but it had felt more like an exam I was dreading than an actual good time, and I just couldn’t.
However. Finding a rom-com happy ending that my mother would have loved—that could change all the bad feels to good, couldn’t it?
I smiled at Jocelyn. “I’ll text you after I check my schedule.”
CHAPTER TWO
“A woman friend. This is amazing. You may be the first attractive woman I have not wanted to sleep with in my entire life.”
—When Harry Met Sally
Michael was back.
I propped my feet up on the kitchen table and dug my spoon into the container of Americone Dream, still beside myself with giddiness. In my wildest dreams, I wouldn’t have imagined the return of Michael Young.
I didn’t think I’d ever see him again.
After he moved, I daydreamed for years about him coming back. I used to imagine I was out taking a walk on one of those gloriously cold autumn days that whispered of winter, the air smelling like snow. I’d be wearing my favorite outfit—which changed with each imagining, of course, because this fantasy started back in grade school—and when I’d turn the corner at the end of the block, there he’d be, walking toward me. I think there was even romantic running involved. I mean, why wouldn’t there be?
There were also no less than a hundred brokenhearted entries in my childhood diaries about his exit from my life. I’d found them a few years ago when we were cleaning out the garage, and the entries were surprisingly dark for a little kid.
Probably because his absence in my life was timed so closely with my mother’s death.
Eventually I’d accepted that neither of them were coming back.
But now he’d returned.
And it felt like getting a little piece of happiness back.
I didn’t have any classes with him, so fate couldn’t intervene by throwing us together, which sucked so badly. I mean, what were the odds that we’d have zero occasions for forced interaction? Joss had a class with him, and clearly Wes did as well. Why not me? How was I supposed to show him we were meant to go to prom and fall in love and live happily ever after when I didn’t ever see him? I hummed along to Anna of the North in my headphones—the sexy hot tub song from To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before—and stared out the window at the rain.
The one thing in my favor was that I was kind of a love expert.
I didn’t have a degree and I hadn’t taken any classes, but I’d watched thousands of hours of romantic comedies in my life. And I hadn’t just watched. I’d analyzed them with the observational acuity of a clinical psychologist.
Not only that, but love wa
s in my genes. My mother had been a screenwriter who’d churned out a lot of great small-screen romantic comedies. My dad was 100 percent certain that she would’ve been the next Nora Ephron if she’d just had a little more time.
So even though I had zero practical experience, between my inherited knowledge and my extensive research, I knew a lot about love. And everything I knew made me certain that in order for Michael and me to happen, I would need to be at Ryno’s party.
Which wasn’t going to be easy, because not only did I have no idea who Ryno even was but I had zero interest in attending a party filled with the jocks’ sweaty armpits and the populars’ stinky beer breath.
But I needed to get reacquainted with Michael before some awful blonde who shall remain nameless beat me to him, so I’d have to find a way to make it work.
Lightning shot across the sky and illuminated Wes’s big car, all snuggled up against the curb in front of my house, rain bouncing hard off of its hood. That assbag had been right behind me all the way home from school, and when I’d pulled forward to properly parallel park, he’d slid right into The Spot.
What kind of monster parked nose-first in a street spot?
As I honked and yelled at him through the torrential downpour, he waved to me and ran inside his house. I ended up having to park around the corner, in front of Mrs. Scarapelli’s duplex, and my hair and dress had been drenched by the time I burst through my front door.
Don’t even ask about the new shoes.
I licked off the spoon and wished Michael lived next door instead of Wes.
Then it hit me.
“Holy God.”
Wes was my in. Wes, who had invited Michael to the party in the first place, would obviously be attending. What if he could get me in?
Although… he didn’t do things to help me. Like, ever. Wes’s joy was derived from torture, not generosity. So how could I convince him? What could I give him? I needed to come up with something—some tangible thing—that would get him to help me out and keep his mouth shut at the same time.