by Lynn Painter
“They’re at Adam’s house. We’re all going to load into his minivan, and he’s driving.”
Just like that, my stomach was a ball of nerves. I didn’t know his friends, so that was stressful enough, but the thought of sitting in the back of a minivan with Michael brought out all the worries.
Because I wanted—so badly—for him to see I wasn’t Little Liz anymore.
“Everyone is super chill, so don’t worry.” It was like he read my mind, but before I could give it too much thought, he said, “Ooh—I like that song.”
“I do too.” I stopped scanning, surprised that Wes and I agreed on anything. It was “Paradise” by Bazzi, which was pretty old and pretty poppy. But it was one of those songs that just had a feel to it, like along with the notes, you also received a healthy dose of summery sunshine that kissed your shoulders as you walked downtown at dusk.
His phone buzzed at that moment, and we both glanced down at where it sat in the cupholder. The top of the little notification box said “Michael Young.”
“Looks like your boy is texting.”
“Oh my God!” I pictured Michael’s face, and my heart speed picked up.
“You look. I don’t text and drive.”
“How very responsible of you,” I said as I grabbed his iPhone. Holding it felt oddly personal, like I was holding the book of his social life in my hands. I wondered who was saved in his favorites, who he texted on a regular basis, and—God help me—what images lived on his camera roll.
“Not really. I just hate death and prison.”
“Understandable, although I must tell you, I’m utterly fascinated by someone so casual about having their phone in someone else’s hands.”
“I have no secrets,” he said, and I wondered if that were true.
“Passcode, please.” His lock-screen picture was a shot of his dog, Otis, which was pretty dang adorable. He’d had that old golden retriever for as long as I could remember.
“Zero-five-zero-four-two-one.”
“Thank you.” I opened his messages and looked at what Michael had sent.
Michael: So did you talk Liz into coming?
“Holy crap—he asked if I’m coming!” I turned down the volume on the radio and said to Wes, “Does that mean he’s hoping yes?”
“Since he’s texting me,” he muttered, giving me side-eye and a jaw flex, “I’m going to go with no.”
“He might.” I didn’t like that answer. “You don’t know.”
“Sounds like he’s just taking a head count, Liz.” He looked over at me and pointed to his phone. “Want to answer him?”
“Seriously?”
He gave a shrug. “Why not?”
I inhaled. “Um, okay. Uh…”
“You’re pathetic.” Wes turned down a wooded street. “I think a solid answer would be ‘Yep,’ don’t you?”
I said the words out loud as I texted. “Yep. We are almost there.”
Send.
I was about to set the phone in Wes’s cupholder when it buzzed in my hands.
Michael: Sweet. I’ll put in a good word for you.
Wes (me): Awesome, dude. I glanced over at Wes, then added: Btw, I love your hair. You have to tell me what product you use in it.
I bit my lip to hold in the smile.
Michael: You’re joking, right?
I glanced at Wes again before quickly adding: Dead serious. You’re my hair hero. See you in a few.
I put the phone in the cupholder and gave Wes a full smile when he pulled in front of a house and looked my way.
“This is it,” he said as he put it in park, his eyes going up to my hair before returning to my face. “Ready?”
“As a heart attack.”
“You know that’s not right, right?”
“Yeah.” Sometimes I forgot that not everyone was in my head. “I like mixed metaphors.”
The side of his mouth hitched up. “How very rebellious of you, Elizabeth.”
I just rolled my eyes and got out of his car.
We didn’t even go up to front door. I followed Wes as he walked around the house and opened the fence gate.
But he stopped short of going into the yard, causing me to run into his back.
“God, Wes.” I felt ridiculously awkward as I rammed my breasts into his back. “What’re you doing?”
He turned around and looked down at me, the tiniest hint of a smile on his lips. There was something about his smile, the way it not only showed off perfect teeth but also made his dark eyes fun and twinkly, that made it impossible not to smile back. “I just want to remind you that Michael thinks I’m trying to make ground with you. So if he doesn’t seem into you, don’t take it personally. He’s a good guy, so he’s probably going to keep his distance until he knows we’re not a thing. Cool?”
I didn’t know if it was the slight breeze that was doing it or the fact that he was so close, but his masculine cologne (or deodorant—he’d never answered my question) kept finding my nose and making it really happy. I inhaled again and tucked my hair behind my ears. “Are you trying to reassure me?”
His eyes squinted like he wanted to grin, but he gave his head a shake instead. “God, no. You’re on your own, emotionally speaking. I’m just in this for the Forever Spot.”
The smile took over my lips, whether I wanted it to or not. “Okay, good.”
He tousled my hair like I was a little kid—the jag—and then started walking toward the unattached garage in the back. His sudden physicality had been jarring—familiar and strange all at once—and it took me a minute to fully recover. I could see three people standing next to the first door, and I quickly finger-combed my hair as I followed, my pulse quickening as I-don’t-know-these-people nerves slithered through me.
I took a deep breath and there was Michael, talking and leaning against a rusted silver van in jeans and a black fleece jacket that made his baby-blue eyes pop. So, so pretty.
“Don’t be nervous.” Wes said it out of the side of his mouth and nudged me with his shoulder before immediately launching into introductions. “This is Noah, Adam, and you know Michael.”
“Hey,” I said, my face burning as they all looked at me. I was terrible with names, but nicknames would help. I committed Smirky Face (Noah), Hawaiian Shirt (Adam), and Mr. Right with the Perfect Butt (Michael, of course) to memory. Everyone was friendly enough. Hawaiian Shirt said he remembered me from middle school because we’d had the same homeroom teacher, and then he and Noah started discussing how cool Ms. Brand had been in seventh-grade reading.
It was all very bland and uninteresting, so I tuned them out and tried to look everywhere but at Michael. Tried and failed. No matter what I told my brain, my eyeballs continually searched him out and took a stroll all over his handsome face.
Wes was totally onto me, and when he made eye contact, he shook his head.
Which made me stick out my tongue.
Smirky Face tilted his head—totally saw the tongue—but Wes saved me by saying, “Are we going or what?”
We all loaded into the minivan, and just as I was about to grab a seat in the middle row, Wes pushed me toward the back and muttered, “Trust me.”
He pushed around me and plopped into the left window spot, which left me the open seat right between him and Michael. I looked at Wes as I sat down, and he gave me a Go for it eyebrow raise that made my nose get warm as Adam started the van and pulled out of the alley.
Wes started talking to the guys in front, leaning forward to talk over the second row, kind of giving me and Michael a tiny bit of privacy. I cleared my throat and was hyperaware of how close his leg was to my leg. What to say? My mind was a complete and total blank, sending a solidly flat EKG line as my mouth ceased to function.
Time of death: 5:05.
In all the times I’d imagined our magical first moments, I’d never once considered that I would be awkwardly staring at my knees, totally mute, hoping whatever smelled mildewy in the car wasn’t somehow me, while
a terrible song by Florida Georgia Line twanged in the speakers behind our heads.
Michael was looking down at his phone, and I knew I was running out of time. Say something clever, Liz. I opened my mouth and almost said something about the party, but I closed it again when I realized that reminding him of the vomit incident—and conjuring the image of hurled-upon me for him—was a terrible idea.
Oh my God—say anything, you loser!
Then—“Liz.”
My eyes jumped up to his face, but looking at him made my stomach do wild things, and I lowered my eyes to his jacket zipper to steady my nerves. Even though my face was on fire and I was pretty sure there were tiny beads of sweat on the tip of my nose, I tried to act breezy and teasing by saying, “Michael.”
He smiled. “Can I tell you something?”
Oh God.
What was he going to say? What could he possibly say when he’d only been back for mere days? I braced myself for his confession that my perfume made him nauseous or that I had something disgusting sticking out of my nose. “Of course.”
His eyes went up to my hair for a tiny second before they landed back on my eyes and he said, “You really look a lot like your mom now.”
Was it possible to feel your own heart stop? Probably not, but there was a catch in my chest as I pictured my mother’s face and had the realization that Michael still remembered her face too. He could still picture her. I had to blink fast to keep it together, because in the whole of my entire life, that was the most important compliment I’d ever received. My voice was froggy and pinched as I said, “You think so?”
“I really do.” He smiled at me but looked a little unsure, doubtful in the way people always looked when they wondered if they’d made a mistake by mentioning my mom’s existence. “I’m sorry about the, um, the—”
“Thank you, Michael.” I crossed my legs, shifting so I was facing him a little more. The truth was, I liked talking about my mom. Bringing her up in casual conversation—putting words about her out into the universe—felt like keeping a piece of her here with me, even though she had been gone so long already. “She always liked you. I mean, it was probably because you were the only person who didn’t hide under her birdbath and trample her daisies during hide-and-seek, but it counts.”
His blue eyes sucked me in as he smiled and gave an incredibly pleasing deep chuckle. “I’ll take it. Is that what your tattoo is about? Your mom’s daisies?”
My heart for sure stopped then, and all I could do was nod in response as happy tears sprung up in the corners of my eyes. I turned my head away from him, blinking quickly a few times. He’d seen my tattoo, and without any explanation, he’d gotten it. He might not have known that my mother had loved the line in You’ve Got Mail about daisies being the friendliest flower, but the flowers had made him think of her. Wes looked over at me, and his eyebrows pulled together as he went to speak, but I just shook my head. For some reason, the van began slowing even though we’d only been on the road for a few minutes.
“Why are we stopping?” Wes called up to Adam.
“This is Laney’s house.”
My head whipped to the left, and just past Wes’s face I could see Laney through the window, exiting a big, white colonial-style home. She skipped down the steps in her dance outfit, a sparkly black leotard that would have illuminated my flaws but was coming up empty on hers, and I felt queasy as I watched her pull open the van’s sliding door.
So that’s why there was an open seat.
My moment with Michael and the happy memories of my mom disappeared as Laney stepped into the van and pulled the door shut behind her. Had Michael invited her? Did he want me to move so she could sit in my spot? Was she, like, his date? And I was Wes’s?
“Thank you so much for coming back for me.” She sat down in the seat in front of Michael, and her subtle perfume wafted back to where I was sitting, an olfactory reminder that she was amazing down to the smallest detail. She glanced back at us and said to me, “Oh, hey, Liz—I didn’t know you were coming. I would’ve assumed you didn’t like sports.”
I forced a smile, but it didn’t feel like my lips were fully extended as I seethed inside. Of course she was right, but why would she assume that about me? Because I didn’t wear a silly letter jacket? And I was pretty sure it was no accident that she was pointing it out in front of Michael. I tried to sound breezy for the second time that night when I said, “Yet here I am.”
And dammit—she’d made me forget to look and see what Michael’s house looked like.
She faced forward and said to the guys in front, “Well, there was no way I was going to be ready by the time Michael left, but in my defense, he didn’t have to put on stage makeup and squeeze into a costume either.”
Everyone laughed—of course—as Laney launched into a cute diatribe about what it took to get dance-ready.
“I had no idea she was coming,” Wes said, surprising me. His mouth was so close to my ear that I literally shivered. “I swear.”
Whatever Wes said about the Forever Spot, in that moment I couldn’t help but think that he was also helping me out because he was genuinely nice. Joss’s words echoed in my head. Everyone loves Wes.
I was starting to see why.
I leaned closer to him so he could hear me when I murmured, “You were right about the whole thunder-stealing thing, though. I am actually invisible now.”
He gave me a No-you’re-not look, but I wasn’t even going to try to convince myself otherwise. Laney had turned around in her seat and was giving the play-by-play directly to Michael, and a lightly sick feeling settled in my stomach. How was this fair? The girl was wearing heavy makeup, a bedazzled catsuit, and a ridiculously huge bow smack-dab on the top of her head. She should’ve looked like Queen of the Clowns.
But she looked cute.
And the worst part was that she was unbelievably charming. She somehow managed to bury her rancid soul and totally pull off that she was a genuinely delightful human being.
It was witchcraft, that.
There was no way to compete with a one-woman perfection show, so I gave up and got out my phone to read. I’d started a really good book that morning, so I picked up where I’d left off and tried getting lost in the joy of Helen Hoang.
Joss texted me a minute later.
Joss: Hey. Did you go to Ryno’s party?
Shit. My stomach sank as I typed: Wes invited me at the last minute, and it was a total nightmare. I was going to tell you about it earlier but Helena interrupted.
Joss: WTH? I always invite you to my stuff.
Me: I thought about it, but you said Ryno’s parties were immature bullshit, so I knew you wouldn’t want to go.
Joss: I just think it’s weird that you wouldn’t tell me you were going. You’re sketch all of a sudden.
I glanced up from my phone, searching for excuses, but all I got was the impression that Laney was brainwashing all of the boys into joining her cult of adorability. Nothing to save me from the fact that I was being a crappy friend.
Me: I was just trying to rescue you from a wholly terrible time.
Joss: Whatever. I gotta go to work now.
I sighed, telling myself I’d make it up to her somehow, and went back to reading. But I’d only read about three paragraphs when Wes said, “Mind if I read over your shoulder? I’m bored.”
I gave him side-eye. “You wouldn’t like this. Trust me.”
“Will you shut up so I can read?”
My mouth wanted to smile but I cleared my throat and said, “Sorry.”
I tried getting back into the book, but now I was hyperaware that he was reading every paragraph of the flirty, sexy-sweet book as well. I kept scrolling, but the words were different now, cartwheeling over each other with new tumbling context as the main characters started having a mildly sexual conversation.
I turned off my phone when they went into a bedroom together.
“Your cheeks are so red,” he said quietly, his deep voice
rich with restrained laughter. “Why’d you stop reading?”
I coughed out a laugh and faced him, his dark eyes mischievous as he gave me a knowing smirk. I said, “It’s just too bumpy to read in here.”
“Ah, yes.” He gave me a slow nod as his lips slid into a full smile. “It’s the bumpiness that made you stop reading.”
“I might get carsick and vomit on you if you aren’t careful.”
“Oh, Liz.” Laney leaned through the space between the two seats and said, “I heard about that—about Ash getting sick on you. That is so terrible. She feels soooo bad.”
My smile went away as she put a hand over her heart and gave me an empathetic pout. Was she bringing it up on purpose to make me look bad? I shrugged and said, “What’s a party if you don’t get puked on?”
I heard Michael chuckle beside me and felt like I’d won that point. Laney jumped right back into her nonstop chatter, so I put in my earbuds to let the sounds of Wicked Faces drown out her nonsense. Before I hit play, I paused to offer Wes an end. He took it, and we listened in silence until we made the turn into the school parking lot.
As Adam put the car in park, Laney finally said something that made me happy. She pulled open the sliding van door and said, “Thanks again for the ride, Adam. I’ve got to go find the team. And don’t forget—I’m riding the bus back.”
That meant I would have all of the basketball game to talk to Michael—without the distraction of dreading the ride home. No one actually watched the game at sports functions, right?
Wes handed me back my earbud, but when I tried to catch his eye to silently communicate how thrilled I was at the good news, he was too busy texting someone to notice.
* * *
As it turns out, high school basketball games are incredibly loud.
I sat between Michael and Wes, and the others sat in the row in front of us. The pep band was to our left, and they seemed to be all hopped-up on deafening enthusiasm. They blasted out a constant stream of tunes that made it impossible to converse. It looked like the hope of making Michael see the real me was going to have to wait until after the game.
I was kind of okay with that, though, because I liked the vibe of the gym. The place was teeming with energy, like every single person in that gym was about to explode with their uncontrollable excitement. The team was warming up, and it felt like something big was about to happen.