“I’ll be good to go,” I correct myself. “But it’s Saturday. And it’s illegal to talk about homework on Saturdays.”
“Says the kid with two lawyer parents.” His smile is wry, but not enough to let me know I’m off the hook.
I blow a stray strand of hair out of my face. “I’ve got another draft ready, okay? I spent half the day on it. Now can I please go look at the sun before it swallows up the earth?”
He nods appreciatively. “We’ll take a look at it when you get home.”
I’m so relieved by my successful jailbreak that I basically tear holes into the street with my skateboard on my way to Leo’s. It’s only after I roll to a stop and shake the helmet head out of my mass of curls that I see the text from Connie, who is yet again held up at a Student Government Association meetup, and has essentially left me for dead.
“Well, shit.”
If this were a few months ago, hanging out with Leo one-on-one would have been just another Saturday afternoon. But this isn’t a few months ago. This is right the heck now, and I am standing like an idiot in his driveway, the shadow of the BEI creeping over me like an extremely humiliating, pheromone-ridden ghost.
Before I can decide what to do, Leo spots me and opens the front door.
“That’ll be the Day,” he says.
In lieu of nicknames, Leo’s greetings of choice include any and all idioms about the word Day, which happens to be my last name. I start to roll my eyes like I usually do but pause at the sight of him in the doorway—the sun is starting to set, casting warm colors on his face, honeying the brown in his eyes and gleaming in his dark hair. I’m itching to know what it might look like through my camera lens, an itch I’m not so familiar with. I almost never photograph people.
Actually, these days my parents keep me so busy I barely photograph anything at all.
Leo’s expression starts to shift, probably because I’ve been staring too long. I look away sharply and pop a wheelie on the way up to his front porch.
“Show-off,” he says.
I prop my skateboard by the door and stick my tongue out at him. It’s a relief to be on teasing terms again, but it’s immediately punctured by what he says next.
“Where’s Connie?”
He winces as soon as he asks, but I do what I do best and walk it off.
“Busy with last-minute details for tomorrow’s Keyboard Wash for the junior class fundraiser.”
“Keyboard Wash?” Leo’s a senior, along with his non-Connie-and-Abby friends, so he’s out of the loop on half of our goings-on. “Like a car wash for keyboards?”
“I’ve watched you use yours as a dinner plate, so I’ll pencil you in.”
I follow him into his house, inhaling warm butter and burnt cheese and, as always, the faint waft of cinnamon. Leo flicks on the front hall light, which exposes the precarious tower of pans, pots, and miscellaneous ingredients crammed into the small bit of counter real estate he has in his kitchen. His laptop is propped up on the table, open and exposed enough that I figure his parents and his sister, Carla, must be out.
I’m about to ask about the DNA test results displayed, but he puts a plate in front of my face first.
“Lasagna ball?”
I pull a wrapper out of my pocket and spit my gum in it. “Hell yeah.”
“Careful, they’re—hot,” Leo says with a sigh, seeing I’ve already blatantly ignored his warning by popping it into my mouth.
The roof of my mouth instantly burns, but not enough that I don’t appreciate how absurdly delicious it is—the legendary lasagna balls, one of Leo’s many workarounds to actually cook in his house. He’s become something of an oven snob and doesn’t trust his to stay at a steady temperature, so he got himself a high-end toaster oven—hence, a lot of bite-size, dollhouse recipes, so I always feel like I’m in some fancy culinary pop-up when I’m just as stuck as I always am in the depths of Seattle suburbia.
“Are you okay?” he asks, with his usual mingling of exasperation and concern.
“You could’ve come over,” I say, the ricotta legitimately steaming out of my mouth.
This is part of the reason Leo has been essentially absorbed by the Day family—our kitchen is humungous. And while we appreciate all that extra counter space for laying out several boxes of Domino’s pizza during a feeding frenzy, nobody in our family actually cooks. Leo, on the other hand, is basically the Ina Garten of our high school and needs the space to fully manifest his Food Network dreams (plus, if we’re being real, the ego boost of the Day brothers hollering about his six-cheese pizza at the top of their tiny lungs).
Not that Leo comes over much these days. We’re not so great at being alone like this anymore. And as supportive as I want to be, I can’t help the way my eyes keep skirting to the door, the way I keep waiting in the beat of silence that Connie usually fills.
“Is that Kitty?” Leo asks, looking at my camera case.
There it is again—that squeezing cycle of panic and relief. The teetering line between are we okay? and we’re okay enough.
“And all nine of her lives.”
“She’s probably down to about six by now,” says Leo. He would know—he’s the one who gave the camera her name, after she survived more than a few harrowing drops, near plunges into bodies of water, and that time I thought it’d be cool to hang upside down from a jungle gym to get the sunset through the metal bars and ended up with a mouthful of playground rubber.
“You mind?” he asks.
I tuck my chin to my chest, hiding my smile as I pull Kitty out of her carrier. Leo reaches over my head into the cabinet to grab his mom’s nice white plates, and I start arranging the lasagna balls on them. For a bit we’re so locked into the easy quiet of this old pattern that I almost forget to wish Connie were here: I take a few shots of Leo’s creations with Kitty, he uploads and posts them on his Instagram, and I promptly eat all the spoils.
He has a habit of uploading all my other photos, too. I’m not expecting him to today, though, until he surprises me by holding a hand out for Kitty. I try not to watch him as he clicks through views from the top of my mom’s office building in Seattle, a sweeping, pre-dusk skyline punctured by the Space Needle, the clouds stark and heavy in the air.
I stand on my tiptoes, peering at the screen. My head barely clears his shoulder, forcing me close enough to him that the heady smell of cinnamon is thick in the air, warm in my lungs. That’s Leo’s calling card—sneaking cinnamon into everything. Muffins, burritos, pudding, grilled cheese. Even when it’s not supposed to work, he’ll find a way to do it. Ever since we were kids he’s always smelled like he was rolling around in the display case of a Cinnabon.
He stops on an image, tilting the camera so I get a better view. Leo claims not to know jack about photography, but of the dozen or so pictures I took, he still chose my favorite—the one where the shadows are a little harsher, right as the sun was gearing up to poke out from behind a cloud.
I glance up to nod my approval, but he’s already watching me. Our eyes meet and there’s something soft in his that holds me there—and without warning, the warmth of his knuckles skims under my jaw. My breath hovers somewhere unhelpfully in my chest, suspending me in the moment, into something brewing in Leo’s eyes.