You Have a Match(35)

But this weirdness between me and Leo—I’m not avoiding it for my sake. I’m avoiding it for his. Because he’s right, the way he was right to say it just after the BEI. We are best friends. And being someone’s best friend comes with a responsibility, a lifetime of secrets and promises and shared moments, that were made with a certain understanding. A contract of sorts. This is the person you are to me; these are the things I feel safe to tell you because of it.

There are too many of them now, all scored into my heart. All these fragile, precious things shared between the three of us, years that have built themselves into something more concrete than time, but so precarious that it could all get knocked to the ground in the time it takes me to look over at Leo and tell him, I think I’m in love with you.

The thought is so loud that I flinch like someone screamed it in my ear. Leo watches it happen, and my heart’s in my throat again, irrationally scared that he heard it. That it’s as plain on my face as it is in my head.

“Abby…”

He’s doing it again. Fighting my battles for me. Giving me an opening to say whatever needs to be said.

I take a breath. My chest feels swollen with the things this air might change if I use it to tell the truth. Because there are two possibilities here: Either Leo doesn’t like me, and I’ll humiliate myself. Or Leo does like me, which means Connie lied.

Either way, I lose. The only way to keep everything from falling to pieces is not to say anything at all.

I let the breath go.

Then the sky erupts, a flash of lightning streaking across the water, branched and forked in so many pieces that it looks like the earth shattered. It’s far from us, and the rumble follows after a few long seconds, hungry in the ground, but deep and resonant, crackling in our bones.

“Holy shit,” Leo marvels.

I let out a low hum of agreement. I can count on one hand the number of times I remember it thunderstorming in Seattle. Another streak of lightning makes the sky pink, divides it into infinite pieces, and I know I could live another hundred years and never witness something as breathtaking as this.

We both settle back into the bench, my heart still thudding like a drum, as if it’s connected to the rumble in the ground beneath us. Leo moves closer to me, and I wait for him to start another one of his information dumps—something about storms and pressurization, or why Seattle gets them so rarely—but instead he wraps a steady arm around me, pulling me in. I relax into the warmth of him before I can second-guess myself, sinking into this stolen moment, into this strange, otherworldly sensation that makes the rest of them feel like they don’t count.

“You should get your camera,” he says lowly, into my hair.

I shake my head into his shoulder. We sit together, watching the lights pierce the dark and travel across the water, the two of us safe and dry in this twilight while the storm is far beyond us. I breathe in the sticky warmth of the air, the pine and the electricity and the ache of something deeper than I can name, knowing that no view I can capture will ever compare to this feeling—seeing it through my eyes while seeing it through his, letting us both bleed into a world where those two things can be the same.





thirteen




The next day I’m awake before dawn and tiptoeing out of Phoenix Cabin to get a shot of the sunrise, Poppy’s old camera in hand. I end up picking the trail closest to our cabin, a short, steep one with a brutal five-minute uphill climb that leads to a minicliff looking out over the water. I’m so enamored with the hatched pattern of the endless clouds that it takes me a beat to realize I’m very much not alone.

“What are you doing here?” Savvy blurts.

I take a step back. “What are you doing here?”

Her whole face goes crimson, and only then do I see the tripod and a camera that must be set up on a self-timer. In fact, she looks way more put-together than anyone has any business being at an hour this unholy and was probably in the middle of posing in some Instagrammy way when I interrupted.

Another rustle comes up from behind me, and there’s Rufus, wheezing excitedly with someone’s badminton racket crushed in his jaw. He wags his tail and rubs his head all over my knees in hello.

“I … was taking a picture for Instagram,” Savvy mutters to the grass.

I assess the situation, staring from the tripod to the skyline and back to where she won’t quite meet my eye. We’ve got maybe thirty seconds before the sun starts to peek out. I may hate her a little bit, but I hate the idea of a missed photo op even more.

“Yoga pose?” I ask.

She cuts a wary glance at me and doesn’t answer, which is to say Yes.

I walk over to her camera. I recognize the model—a pricey DSLR, but not nearly as expensive as the one she and Mickey were using out on Green Lake. I don’t have a ton of experience with this one, but I remember reading on some woman’s travel photography blog that the image stabilization goes to shit once it’s on a tripod.

“I don’t mind taking it.”

Savvy narrows her eyes. “I don’t think the gears will work if they’re clogged with your gum.”

I wince. Somehow in all my spinning post-thunderstorm thoughts about Leo, I’d forgotten about my antics with Finn entirely.

“Temporary truce?” I ask.

At first I think she’ll blow me off, but something gives way in her body, some stiffness in her bones.