Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(90)

“Not yet, anyway,” I find myself saying.

And a strange spell must have befallen me, because now Joy is carefully kissing my face all over. “Oh yubs,” she’s saying. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Buzz-buzz. When I look, there are messages waiting for me, all from Q.

I’m back at the Consta.

Ready when you are.

Oy mate, been waiting 45 minutes now.

Where the bloody hell are you two?

“Shit,” I say. Me and Joy hurry back down the street to where we parked. Back away from all the couples, away from the lights, away, away to where the car sits all by itself beneath a single sad streetlamp lashed to a telephone pole.

“Q?” I say. “You here?”

Q emerges from behind the car.

“Were you hiding?” says Joy.

“You know cops shoot kids like me when they’re alone on streets like this,” says Q.

“Fuck,” I say. I throw an arm around him. “I’m sorry. I just lost track of time.”

Q ducks away, his face a mixture of irritation and fear and relief.

“We should go home,” says Q. “It’s late.”

So go home we do.


We drop off Joy first. Q sits shotgun, for visibility. Joy gives me a blue little wave bye.





Next is Q. He jogs away backward to wave at me before breaking into a sprint.





Last is me.





Everyone is asleep when I get into the house. I flop onto my bed and stare at the stained popcorn ceiling. I close my eyes and see Joy’s face.

There are moments in time, and this is a moment in time for sure. Joy’s face, shining with glee, with tears, with anger. Joy’s face gone dim with melancholy as she waved bye earlier.

“Tonight was pretty much a disaster,” I say to the ceiling. I take out my phone. My thumbs begin tapping away all by themselves.

Tonight was pretty much a disaster, I say. I’m sorry.

Next time we’ll have proper fun.

And the time after that, and the time after that.

We will defy the fates, me and you.

Let the summer of love begin!

My thumbs finally stop. I rest the phone on my belly, satisfied, and let the glass slab rise and fall with my breath. Minutes pass. No response from Joy. Maybe she’s asleep?

Buzz-buzz. There she is. I check my screen.

If you say so, yubs, says Joy.

Joy types some more. I watch the speech bubble do its little One Moment, Please dance to let me know she’s typing. Finally her message appears: a cartoon character of herself in pajamas, yawning. Good night.

I like this idea of If you say so. If I say so, so it shall be.

I’m talking about will.

If you have the will to do something, and you keep at it, and you don’t give up, you can do anything. And there’s no greater will than the will to love who you want.

So I say it again: Let the summer of love begin!

I watch for a moment. I yawn. Joy doesn’t respond. She’s probably asleep.

I don’t want to wake her, so I write I love you without hitting Send. I just know in my heart that somewhere in those sleeping circuits my speech bubble is there, doing its little One Moment, Please dance.





chapter 32


alpha & omega



T H A K Y O C O F E

Graduations are supposed to be celebrations. But why? Why would you celebrate the end of close friends? Why would you celebrate leaving your academic home, bless this mess, of four years? Or your parents’ home, which had its rules to be sure but also all your stuff plus free food?

Most students fake it: the smiles and hat tossing and all that.

Me and the Apeys? We’re doing it right.

Look at Amelie Shim, with her phone upheld to record a tearful Snapstory.

Or Paul Olmo, sitting with a heavy arm draped over Q’s shoulders.

And look at Q, just kind of examining his sneakers under his purple robe in a catatonic state, probably looking for some clue about why he never made a move with his mystery girl. Now it’s officially too late.

John Lim is missing, probably bickering silently with Ella Chang behind a hedge or something. John is the letter N and Ella is the letter U.

Brit Means sits alone, staring at the school buildings with her ancient and gray and eternal eyes in a never-ending farewell gaze. She turns to me for a moment. She observes me. Then she’s finished observing, and turns away again. Brit is the letter F.

Now look at me, and look at Joy. We sit on opposite ends of our aisle—that was intentional. I catch glimpses of her catching glimpses of me, but there’s no way we can risk any looks longer than that. Both my mom and her parents sit close by in the audience. I want to sneak her away for one last sad and desperate make-out session by the AC units, but as of today that’s officially no longer an option.

I’m the letter T, and Joy is a far-off E.

The only happy one of us is Naima Gupta, who long ago abandoned our aisle to dance around handing out sour gummy worms to everyone. I think Naima grew up until she was thirteen, decided that was enough, and just stayed there. I find myself envying that. Naima must’ve heard some version of Go do you and taken it to heart.

Naima is the other E.

All together our mortarboard caps were supposed to spell out the breathtakingly witty joke: T H A N K Y O U C O F F E E