I laughed, blushing because I’d been thinking the same thing, though maybe not in the same way. I’d imagined this moment so many times when I was younger: me on the soccer field, after a game, being congratulated by the coolest girl in school, who showed up just to watch me play. In the fantasy version, it was the school season, and the bleachers were full of screaming fans wearing Westville green and white. In the fantasy version, I scored the winning goal, and in the fantasy version, the girl was wearing my letter jacket draped around her shoulders. But it was, like, seventy degrees out, and watching my best friend score felt just as good as if I had. And for Ruby to come to this game, off season, that she had no school-spirited or peer-pressured motive to attend—that was better than anything I could have dreamed up.
The fantasy ended abruptly, minutes after the game did, the girl and me still standing on the field. Even the outer limits of my imagination couldn’t conjure a kiss. The girl’s face was too blurry. She was more of a concept than a person. Here in real life, the girl standing in front of me didn’t kiss me either, but she did speak, and that was better too.
“Should we go get burritos?”
Half an hour later Ruby and I were seated at a table at La Posta, where she said she’d never been. Geographically, I understood: the restaurant was nondescript and cheap-looking, sitting in a strip mall on the other end of town from Ruby’s family’s neighborhood. It was cheap, and it was also responsible for the best and biggest burrito I’d ever had: four dollars and fifty cents for a tinfoil-wrapped mound the size of a human baby, tax included. Six if you got a horchata, which I insisted we do. Twelve dollars total. Ruby started digging for her debit card but I waved her off to grab us a table, handing over the second-to-last twenty from my dad. I wondered when I’d see him again, and not just because I was almost out of spending money. (Mom gave me a little cash here and there, too, but I didn’t like to ask unless I was truly desperate.) He’d said he’d be here “soon,” but coming from him, that could have meant just about anything. Including “never.” Ruby was looking at her phone when I joined her, so I pulled mine out too and sent him a text: When do you hear back?
One of the chefs slid the tray with our food up to the serving window cut into the side of the dining room wall and shouted, “Ryan!” even though we were the only ones there. I jumped up to grab it and placed it gently in front of Ruby, who said “That looks sooo good” even though she was still looking at her phone. I unwrapped the top of my burrito and took a bite, mmm-ing loudly until she finally put it down.
“Sorry,” she said. “Band drama.” She took a sip of horchata, and her eyes widened. “Holy shit.”
“I know.”
“I’m gonna be here every day now.”
“Cool, I’ll drive.”
She grinned and took a big bite of burrito, nodding approvingly. My shoulders instantly un-tensed.
“So what’s going on with the band?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes. “Same shit as always.”
“Oh, I see.” I paused. “I don’t actually know what that means.”
“It means it’s boring,” she said. “Like, so boring I could cry.”
Naturally, her saying that only made me desperate to know everything. But Ruby evidently didn’t feel like sharing, and I figured I wouldn’t become the kind of person she wanted to confide in by begging her to confide in me. And maybe it really was exhausting having everyone be permanently interested in your life. I couldn’t imagine. In my daydreams of future soccer stardom practically all I did was give charming interview after charming interview on late-night talk shows. In some notebook somewhere I had notes for my SNL monologue already written. I should really try to find