The bell peels from the loudspeakers at the corner of the school’s roof, and we both jump.
And that’s how it all starts.
Chapter Three
Elise
“That’s your boy right there. You see him, number thirty-two?” My friend Dani points toward the football field, where a bunch of guys in purple jerseys and tight gold pants are jogging onto the grass.
“Yeah,” I murmur, which is pointless. There’s no way Dani can hear me, as everyone in the bleachers is cheering. My friends and I follow suit. I let my gaze touch Luca; then it falls to my feet. And as we sit back down, it flits back to Dani. Her smiling brown eyes dance over the rim of her concession stand hot cocoa. She takes a swallow and lowers the paper cup, revealing a huge grin.
I roll my eyes, and she elbows me.
“Ow.” I wrap my hands around my own warm drink and try to keep my features neutral as I trace the white lines on the grass with my eyes.
Dani leans toward me. “He’s tall. I didn’t really realize.”
I nod, biting the corner of my lip as our other bestie, Sheree, leans around Dani, slapping my leg.
“Oh my God, he’s stretching!” Dani half shouts. Now it’s my turn to elbow her.
She’s still flailing around like a cracked-out Muppet when I hiss near her ear, “Dani, you are killing me. That’s his friend Leon in front of us.” I nod at the guy with dyed green dreads, sitting with a bunch of skater guys and their girls two rows below. “And look, Max and Franco are right over there.”
“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.