Love You More(9)

Later that night, my friends and I crowded into Erin’s kitchen to celebrate. Boxes of pizza were stacked on the counter, the smell of melted cheese and pepperoni mingling with the rich chocolate of Joan’s homemade brownies.

Eliot leaned back in his chair, looking at Erin. “You were fantastic.” He smirked. “But let’s be honest, you were sort of playing yourself.”

Erin punched his arm, then laughed her infectious laugh.

“He’s not wrong,” Joan said, raising one eyebrow.

“Careful, Mom,” Erin shot back. “I’ll sock you, too.”

“Seriously,” I said, linking my arm through hers. “You looked like a star.”

“Constructive criticism?” she asked.

Anna shook her head. “Zero notes. You were perfect.”

“You really were. Best fake southern accent I’ve ever heard,” Sam said, then mimicked her: “Girl, you are playin’ with fire.”

Lucy nodded, then said, “Just don’t let it go to your head—you’re already our full-time job.”

We all laughed, and as I looked around the bright kitchen, I tried to savor the moment, wishing we could always have nights like these.



* * *



— Suddenly, exam week was upon us. My stomach churned every time I opened a notebook, the pressure tightening my chest. These grades mattered a lot. They were one-eighth of my high school transcript, the first piece colleges would see.

When my math exam landed on my desk, numbers and symbols swam in front of me, my heartbeat loud in my ears. Beside me, Mick leaned back in his chair, twirling his pencil like it was any other day.



* * *



—

I called Mick as soon as our results came in, confiding that I’d only scored an eighty-eight.

“That’s good,” he said.

“Not exactly top-college material.” I hesitated. “How’d you do?”

“I did okay.”

Something in his voice gave him away. “Oh my gosh. You aced it, didn’t you?”

“No.”

“So what’d you get?” I pressed.

“Umm…A ninety-seven.”

“What?! Mick—that’s amazing! You know what this means, don’t you?”

He laughed. “This’ll be good—”

“It means you have to go to college.”

“One math test means I have to go to college?”

“The fact that you are brilliant means you have to go to college.”

He laughed again. “Okay. Look. I’ll make a deal with you. If you go to Madison, and I get in, we’ll go together.”

Together.

The word glowed inside me, warming me like a promise, as if we’d just agreed on more than test scores and college plans.

“Deal,” I said, grinning.





Chapter 5


Freshman year raced by, and the summer came and went even faster.

Before I knew it, we were sophomores, one notch higher in the pecking order. Our weeks were packed with studying and extracurriculars—math team, chemistry club, and peer tutoring. Erin kept winning parts in plays and musicals, and although she never convinced me to audition, I found my own place behind the scenes doing stagecraft, my hands speckled with paint, the air sharp with sawdust as I shifted furniture and touched up backdrops.

Friday nights belonged to football games under the lights. Weekends were a mix of lazy afternoons with my friends and sleepovers at Erin’s, where we whispered until we lost our voices, dissecting every fragment of high school drama.

Through it all, my crush on Mick held firm. Our friendship was solid and soothing: evenings bent over math problems, the scrape of his pencil beside mine; late-night phone calls, his voice low and drowsy in my ear. Still, we stayed in our separate lanes—Mick at the epicenter of the popular crowd, me tucked into the world of Erin, Lucy, Anna, Sam, and Eliot.



* * *



— The summer before our junior year, something shifted. Mick started showing up—not just in phone calls, but in my real life. He’d ride his bike over to my house, linger in the kitchen, talking to my parents, or toss the football with my brother in the backyard. Occasionally, he’d even blow off his friends to hang out with my friends and me.

“You’re making progress with Mick,” Erin said one night as we lay side by side on Gus’s trampoline, staring up at the stars. “I can feel it.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked, rolling over to face her, the springs creaking beneath us.

“Because he’s always here. He spends more time with our friends than his own.”

“Can you blame him? The girls in his crowd are pure drama. The other night Kristy Keller got wasted and spent two hours crying on his shoulder.”

“See? That’s proof. The hottest girl in the grade is all over him, and instead of trying to hook up with her, he tells you how annoyed he was.”

“Yeah. Maybe,” I said, not wanting to jinx it.

Still, as the canvas turned cool beneath my back, the grass sweet and damp around us, the wish sparked through me like static, sharp and impossible to ignore.



* * *