Click to Subscribe - By L. M. Augustine Page 0,12

walks over to the next booth. When she’s gone, I turn back to Cat. “I feel like we need to use your breadsticks to look Italian again. Did you bring the hats?”

She reaches into her bag and holds up two white chef hats. “Of course. You doubt me?”

I feign a gasp. “Never!”

She smiles. “I’m glad. Now all we need is a fake Italian mustache and accent and we’ll be golden.”

“YES! And then we can stand at the door saying, ‘ze pasta es deliciosa’ with our fingers cupped together when customers come in.”

Cat takes a sip with her water and wipes her lips with her hands. “West,” she says, “you’re still terrible at this whole ‘don’t enforce stereotypes!’ thing.”

I raise my eyebrow. “I’m Italian myself, so I have an excuse. Obviously.”

“Obviously.”

Our food comes a few minutes later, and we eat in silence for a long while. I listen to the conversation of the people behind us—a long rant about something political that I don’t really follow—and eat way too much of my spaghetti and meatballs. In my defense, the food tastes like it was brought directly down to me from the heavens.

After a while, I sense Cat’s gaze on me. I look up at her, but she jerks away as soon as our gaze locks like she’s been slapped.

“What?” I say.

Her mouth is full of breadstick as she responds, “Nothing.”

“It’s not nothing,” I say, leaning over to her and putting my hand to her forehead to check her temperature. “Why do you look so weird?”

Color creeps across her cheeks, and she pushes my hand away. I stare at her, frowning some more. This is weird. Really weird.

“Nothing,” she says too sharply. “No-thing.”

“Okay,” I say. I don’t believe her, but I don’t press it, either.

We don’t talk much after that, just finish eating, get the check, and converse briefly about my nightly vigils as a superhero and all of the hot girls I attract.

After a while, Cat asks me what I’m doing tomorrow—she says she wants me to come over and study—and I’m almost tempted to tell her all about Harper and how I finally get to meet her, but instead I just shrug and say, “I’m busy.”

I swear she doesn’t believe me.

Chapter 5

School the next day goes by painfully slowly. First Calculus, then Physics, then History—it’s like they’re trying to kill me. I can’t concentrate at all during class, either. All I can think about is Harper Harper Harper and how OMG I’M MEETING HER AFTER SCHOOL and AAHHHH YESSS I NEED THIS and that’s pretty much it. It’s not like this is abnormal, though, because the classes here don’t interest me much anyway—well, except for English. I’m the complete, shameless English nerd. My mom used to make fun of me for constantly correcting her grammar and even pulling that “Knock Knock. Who’s there? To. To who? Jeez, Mom, don’t you know anything? It’s to whom!” joke on her. I read a bit too, but not as much as I would want. I’m mostly into English so I can criticize people’s grammar and “lack of eloquent word choice” whenever possible.

Anyway, worrying about Harper and how our meet-up will go keeps me well occupied throughout the entire day. I don’t think I could name one thing we did in any of the classes.

Finally, after what feels like a century, the last class ends. As soon as the teacher dismisses us, I dart out the door, grab my bag, and race down the hall toward the school entrance.

My pulse quickens. Holy shit. I finally get to meet Harper.

“Where are you going?” Cat calls after me, but I just wave my hand and say, “A meeting.” Technically it isn’t a lie, although it isn’t much by way of honesty either. But really, I’m not exactly thrilled by the idea of Cat knowing about Harper. I don’t know why, I just want to keep it, like with my vlog, separate from her.

As soon as I burst through the front doors of the school, I run down to the parking lot, hop into Dad’s car, and drive probably too fast down to the coffee shop. When I pull into the parking lot of the shop a few minutes later, all of my emotion seems to crash down on me at once. I’m really doing this, I realize, gripping the steering wheel too hard. Four months of waiting and I’m finally meeting Harper.

Again, I repeat: holy shit.

Slowly, I get out of the car and cool air blasts