the captain of the water polo team, and looked exactly like what you picture when given that information: tall, muscular, and tan, his skin and his hair the same shade of gold. Blue eyes. No brain.
“He’s hot, okay?”
“So I’m told.” From the way straight girls acted around him, it was obvious Ronni was far from alone in her opinion, and that’s what made it so shocking. “Wow. Luke Bailey.”
“I know,” she said. “And for the longest time, probably into sophomore year, I kept hoping that someday, he might ask me out. And then I got tired of waiting, so I asked him out.”
“WHAT?” I shouted, then clapped a hand over my mouth. “Does Alexis know about this?”
“No, and if you tell her I’ll straight-up murder you.”
“I won’t,” I said. “What happened? When was this?”
“May twelfth, sophomore year,” sighed Ronni. “He and Kristen were on a break.”
“Oh my God, that’s right.” I remembered the girls huddling in the hallway, the cryptic Instagrams, the widespread sense that Love Was Dead. “So what did you do?”
“I slid into the DMs,” Ronni said.
“Wow,” I breathed. Ronni Davis was the bravest girl in the world. “What did he say?”
She grinned. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing,” she confirmed. “And I know he saw it, because it said ‘seen.’?”
She burst into laughter, which meant it was okay if I did too.
“What a dick,” I said.
“Eh,” she said. “He’s all right.”
“You’d still say yes, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, one hundred percent,” she said, and we cracked up again.
“How can you not hate him after that?” I asked when I’d caught my breath.
Ronni shrugged, wiping the leaked mascara from under her eyes. “He didn’t do anything wrong. He doesn’t owe it to me to like me back.”
“But he should,” I said. “You’re the best.”
“I tend to agree.” She grinned.
We sat in silence for a minute, and I thought about how unfair it all was, which I knew wasn’t the point Ronni was trying to make. But she was the best: soccer captain, smart, loyal, beautiful, generous. Shouldn’t someone like Luke be dying to be with her? And shouldn’t it be easy for the program of my dreams to pick me, the second-best forward in Southern California after Ronni (at one point, anyway)? Shouldn’t it count for something that I’d never once, in all my high school years, thought of any other school as mine?
“She likes you, you know,” said Ronni. I looked up.
“You think?”
“Yeah,” said Ronni. “It’s obvious.”
“We held hands,” I said. Ronni’s mouth fell open, and she whipped my arm with the back of her fingers. “Ow.”
“When was this?!”
“Saturday,” I said. I leaned back in self-defense. “After the game.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“It’s true. Two times, actually.”
“WHAT?” Ronni exclaimed so loud that people at the other tables looked over to see what was so shocking. For once, I didn’t care what they saw or heard. If even Ronni said Ruby liked me, it had to be true.
I texted her as soon as I got home. Since Monday, we’d texted a little every night. Not enough, in my opinion, but some.
Two things
1. I think you guys should have another show at Triple Moon
2. I think we should have a picnic at the beach
For the first time ever, she wrote back right away. Like maybe she’d been waiting all day for me to text her.
Deal.
Homecoming was now less than two weeks away, which meant people at school were starting to act insane. In the bathroom between classes I saw a junior being comforted by her friends and assumed the person she’d hoped to go with had asked someone else, but from the stall I overheard that he had asked her, just not creatively enough. It seemed he’d set a precedent the year before, filling her car up with