You Have a Match(18)

But we hardly spoke for the half hour left waiting in line, or the drive home. And when I finally called Connie and confessed what almost happened and how bad I felt about it, I found out why.

“So I actually asked Leo a few weeks ago if he thought of you that way, since everyone was asking about it,” she told me. She said it matter-of-factly, the way she had just finished telling me about her cousin clogging the drain with potato skins a few minutes before. “Don’t worry. He doesn’t.”

Don’t worry. I should have asked why “everyone” was talking about us. Should have asked what exactly Leo said, or why Connie brought it up. Anything to give me a point of reference other than Don’t worry, which is all I’ve done since.

“And thank God. Can you even imagine how weird the group text would get?” Connie laughed. And I was grateful, but too gutted to say anything myself, and so stunned to even be gutted that it felt like I was unearthing all these hidden parts of myself, little faults in the crust of me slipping and knocking into each other all at once.

“So weird,” I eventually managed to say.

If that was baseline bad, it was about to get worse. After hearing that I just pretended the almost-kiss never happened, for everyone’s sake. And I shoved as much crap as I could into the cracks of those faults, enough so when Leo asked when we got back to school if I wanted to talk that I was able to say, “What about?” without missing a beat.

Leo nodded. Opened his mouth to say something—apologize, maybe, even though there was nothing for him to be sorry about—and said instead, “I don’t want what happened to change anything.”

I’d never tried to fake a smile before, but I could only guess from the look on Leo’s face that I was pretty bad at it. “’Course not.”

“Friends?”

The word seemed cheap, with or without the BEI. It was never going to fully describe what we were to each other. But that wasn’t what the word was doing right then. It wasn’t a definition; it was a boundary. One I needed to accept.

“Friends.”

It’s been months. Months. And I’ve basically spent every waking moment actively beating my feelings for Leo out of my brain. He must know that. There’s no way he doesn’t.

So why is he one glitter toss away from giddy that I’m here, when really, if it is what he thinks it is, he should be more than a little wigged out?

“I’m going to be in the kitchens most of the day, so we can’t really hang out a ton,” says Leo apologetically. “But the head chef said Mickey and I have full run of the place at night, if you want to come hang.”

“Mickey Reyes?” I blurt, without thinking. I only know her last name because she very enthusiastically friended me on all social media since Savvy and I were holding off so our parents wouldn’t spot it and ask questions. It’s been a week of endless pictures of Rufus with his tongue lolling out and massive saucepans full of food, which seems to be Mickey’s Instagram MO.

“You know Mickey?” asks Leo, bewilderment dimming some of the wattage in his grin.

I’d better mention her now, before we get there and Leo ends up confused as hell when Savvy and I link up. “Yeah—through, uh, Savannah.”

“You know Savvy?”

At that, every thought racing in my head stops at once, stumbling into one another like a car crash: Leo’s been going to this camp his whole life, and Savvy’s been going to this camp her whole life, which means Leo has known my secret sister for their whole lives.

“Not well,” I say. “We—uh—I met her…”

“At those photography meetups, right?” says Leo, finally noticing Kitty in my hands. “She told me she was thinking about starting something in the area.”

It all comes rushing into my brain at once, like there was a bubble where Camp Leo lived separately from Regular Leo and someone just took a knife to it. He’s mentioned a Savvy before. A Mickey, too. I try to reconcile them—these blurry faces he’s been having camp adventures with versus the two girls I met in the park—but it’s all so scrambled that I can’t pull it apart.

“Well…”

I want to tell him. I’m going to tell him. But it’s so rare that I get quality time with him like this that some selfish part of me wants it for the rest of the ferry ride, one last hit of Leo before he realizes I did not, in fact, come here for him, but for my own selfish and incredibly bizarre agenda.

He puts his phone in my face, a picture on the screen. I’ve seen it before. It’s Leo with a cluster of his camp friends, all of them beaming and soaking wet from the pool, an oversize towel wrapped around four pairs of shoulders. Mickey, whose mouth is wide open in a laugh, her arms bare of her signature temporary tattoos and her shoes missing. Some boy with big, wet curls that I don’t know, his cheeks ballooned out as he makes a face, leaning so far into Mickey that she looks precariously close to tipping over. A skinnier, ninth-grade version of Leo, who’s not even looking at the camera, grinning broadly and clearly anticipating the fall. And on his other side is Savvy, or some younger, less composed version of her. Her damp hair is frizzy and curled like mine, and she’s wearing a one-piece with little cartoon fish on it, sticking her tongue out so far it gives Rufus a run for his money.

She looks so genuinely happy that I almost don’t recognize her.