How It Feels to Fly(69)

“Mad at us?” Katie says softly. “Why?”

“You’re so freaking lucky, and you don’t even know it.”

“Lucky?” I echo. “You want to feel the way I feel? You can have it. I’m built completely wrong to do the thing that I love most in the world, and every day”—I let out a long breath—“every day it breaks my heart.”

“At least you know what you love,” Zoe shoots back. “Hearing you talk makes me so jealous. I practice and work out so I can get better at the thing I hate. My parents are only happy with me when I do well at this thing I hate. I’m bored, and I’m exhausted, and when I go home, they’re gonna expect me to jump in like nothing’s changed, and—”

She wipes at her eyes.

“I’m not like you guys. You love what you do. You love it so much, it makes you crazy, and that’s a problem, but it’s also incredible. I want to love something that much.”

“Why do you hate tennis?” Katie asks.

“God, so many reasons. I’ve done it since I was five. I’m not saying I know everything, but . . . I kind of feel like I know everything. I want to learn something new. And I don’t know what that is yet, so I want to try lots of things. I want to find something I love doing, not just something I’m good at. And tennis takes up so much freaking time! I leave school early so I can get in extra tennis practice. I’ve missed every school dance for tennis, either for practice or because I had to get up early for a match the next day, and my parents didn’t want me to be too tired. I don’t have any friends who don’t play tennis. I have friends at school, kind of, but we don’t hang out. Everyone hangs out without me. And my parents—”

She breaks off, and I remember her face when she tried to get sent home and they’d refused to come get her. The catch in her voice: They said no.

“I hate being their little trophy winner. They make me feel like without tennis, I’m worthless.” She turns to Andrew. “But I have to be worth something more than this thing I don’t even like doing—right?”

“Of course you’re worth something,” Andrew says. “You’ll find the thing you love. If your parents truly care about you, they’ll support you on that journey.”

Zoe doesn’t look convinced. “Just because your dad eventually came around doesn’t mean my parents ever will. They genuinely think I’m going to be the next Serena Williams.”

“Remember what we talked about,” Andrew says, and they share a look I can’t decipher. I move even closer to him, feeling territorial.

“So what would you want to do, if you didn’t play tennis?” Yasmin asks.

“I don’t know. Professional poker? Astrology? Or curling—that sport where they sweep the ice with brooms?”

“You could take up pizza tossing,” Katie says.

“I could.” Zoe nods. “Or I could sing opera.”

“Can you sing?” Jenna asks.

“Nope. But why should I let that stop me?”

“Dream big,” Dominic says.

Andrew checks his watch. “I hate to break this up, but we should head back.”

And then we’re all a shuffle of movement, finding cover-ups and shoes, squeezing water out of shorts and T-shirts, bumping into one another on the narrow dock.

I don’t want the night to end. And when I look at Andrew and he smiles at me, I think maybe he doesn’t want it to end, either. The group starts walking away, and I chant Dr. Lancaster’s advice to myself: Take the leap. Take the leap. Take the leap.

I gather every bit of courage I have and touch Andrew’s arm. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself.”

“Can we hold back a second?”

He looks after the others. “Sure, Sam. What’s up?”

I wait until the last member of our group disappears down the path. I can still hear their voices, but I can’t see anyone. Which means they can’t see us.

I’m so, so nervous. Do I just . . . ask him? How? So, Andrew, do you like me as much as I like you? Should we do something about that?

“Um,” I say, stalling. The moon breaks from behind the clouds, and the light catches his face just right. I see the scar on his chin. “How’d you get that scar? Football?”

He laughs at the question. “Sledding crash.”

“Sledding?”

“Yeah. I was nine. It was the first good snowstorm we’d had my entire life—like six inches—and so me and my buddies decided to go sledding. But we didn’t have sleds. Why would we? We’d never seen real snow.”

“Never seen real snow?” I tease. “You’re from Georgia, not the Sahara.”

“I’d seen snow. Just not, you know, accumulation. You gonna let me finish?”

“Sorry. Go on.”

“We took the lids off some trash cans and went to the top of the hill at the end of my neighborhood. Got in and pushed off. Turns out trash can lids are hard to steer. Mine went sideways, out of control, and I hit a bump and flipped. Cut my chin on the curb.”

“Ow!”

“No kidding. I cried like a baby. My friends never let me live it down.” He grins. “Is that really what you wanted to ask me?”