You Have a Match(47)

Somehow getting covered in mop water was less of a shock than this.

“Oh.”

My voice sounds mangled, and to be fair, I feel kind of mangled. There’s this swell of—I don’t even know what to call it. Something sneaky, something joyful, the giddy idea that Leo liked me maybe even before it occurred to me to like him, too.

But if anything, that only makes Connie’s lie worse. Because it doesn’t matter, does it? Leo had a crush on me. Leo had a crush on me, past tense. And if the little scene in the cafeteria before I went to stupid Make Out Rock is any indication, it’s probably too late.

“And you like him.”

I don’t bother denying it. “It’s just … Connie lied to me about him. And it kind of complicates everything, because the three of us—well, we’re each other’s best friends. Always have been.” I blow a stray hair out of my face. “I don’t want to mess that up, especially not if Leo doesn’t feel that way anymore.”

I don’t know why I’m expecting a lecture. Maybe it’s the whole junior counselor power trip, or that she narrates her Instagram stories with the authority of someone twenty years older than she is. But instead she leans against the same disgusting sink and lets out a sigh.

“Well, I don’t know if that’s true,” she says. “But either way, that really sucks.”

It feels good to hear someone say this objective truth, even if it’s not particularly helpful. It makes me feel like I didn’t blow up the problem in my head.

“If you want any advice…”

When I look over at her there’s nothing smug in her expression. In fact, she almost looks nervous, like I might get offended by the offer. I nod, giving a small smile.

“I have some mildly useful experience in potentially disrupting a friend group dynamic with feelings,” she says wryly.

I search her face. “I thought you met Jo through your parents.”

“Yeah, but before Jo … there was an almost-thing with Mickey.” Savvy rolls her eyes, like she’s exasperated at her younger self, and explains, “I dunno, we were thirteen, and I had this big crush. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to mess up our little group. Me and Mickey and Finn and Leo, I mean.”

She looks reflective for a moment, far from the mucked-up tiles.

“So what happened?” I prompt her.

She blinks, coming back to herself. “What happened is I didn’t say anything, and Mickey got a girlfriend.”

“Oh.”

I’m trying to figure out how, exactly, to roll this into meaningful advice, when Savvy leans in. “And I know I’m with Jo now, and it’s all water under the toilet stalls,” she says, gesturing to our mess, “but I regretted not saying anything for, like, years. Because who knows what would have happened if I had? I guess what I’m trying to say is, this thing with Leo—you might be mad at yourself for a while if you don’t at least ask him about it. If you don’t at least try.”

It’s strange, how little I can know about Savvy’s past and still feel her ache like it’s my own.

“Anyway, let me know how it goes,” she says. “Given the state of the camp bathrooms it looks like we’ll have plenty of time to chat.”

“Yeah. Yikes.”

She hoists herself off the ledge of the sinks, grabbing the mop and holding it there. “And if you want to use some of that time to figure out what happened with our parents…”

I’ve spent the last week compartmentalizing it so effectively that I could almost convince myself it doesn’t matter. But it will matter. In a few weeks when we reach the end of camp, the unanswered questions won’t be something I can stuff into a box in my brain, but instead two living, breathing human beings who I talk to every day.

But it’s more than that. I want to know about our parents, but I’d like to get to know Savvy, too. I can feel myself digging a little closer to the Savvy who Leo and the others must know, the one with the braces and the big smiles and wacky suntan lines.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’d like that.”

We don’t call a truce this time, because something’s been settled deeper than that. Like we don’t have to put an official end to the fight, because we trust it to simmer out on its own. The whole thing is almost … Well. It’s almost sisterly.





eighteen




It’s unusually chilly the next morning, when I’m lining up by the shore in my swimsuit with the two dozen other campers who were harebrained enough to sign up for the camp’s weekly Polar Bear Swim. My teeth are chattering, but maybe it’s not the cold—maybe it’s just the expected brand of mortal terror that comes with deciding today is the day you’re going to tell your best friend you have feelings for him, and alter the flow of the resulting space-time-friendship continuum for the rest of your lives.

I cut a glance at Leo, his eyes bright even with his hair still rumpled from sleep, and feel a cinch in my heart—something gleeful and terrifying, something that chased my dreams all night and woke me with a jolt this morning.

It’s going to be today. It has to be. I just don’t know when.

Before I can think about it too much, the whistle goes off, and I take off like a rocket with the first wave.