You Have a Match(90)

“And I need to get you both to camp before the head chef calls out a prelunch search party,” says Savvy, eyeing Mickey and Leo.

Mickey glances at her watch. “Oh, yeah, it’s five past We’re Definitely Getting Lectured o’clock,” she says, her eyebrows shooting into her hair. She turns to Savvy, lifting herself on her tiptoes to kiss her again. Savvy leans in, more shy than I might have expected, but Mickey ends the kiss by tugging the dangling hair tie from the remains of her ponytail and snapping it in the air.

“Thanks, babe,” she says, pulling it into her own hair and making a messy bun.

“Hey.”

Mickey arches up a little to mess up Savvy’s hair. “See you after lunch?”

“What color should I make the Gcal invite?”

“Too soon!” Mickey calls, already dragging Leo by the arm up the path. He stops long enough to kiss me, half mouth and half cheek, the gesture fast but the big sloppy smile on our faces lasting way longer than they probably should.

Savvy knocks her shoulder into mine. “So…”

I clear my throat, meeting her eye. “So.”

“I’m proud of us,” says Savvy.

“Yeah. We waited six full minutes after solving our parents’ drama to stick our tongues down Mickey’s and Leo’s throats.” Savvy doesn’t say anything right away, and there’s this twinge that sneaks its way through the bubble, a reminder of what’s beyond the thick of these trees and the morning haze. “If we solved our parents’ drama.”

Savvy slows her pace, watching Leo and Mickey and deliberately putting space between us and them. When I look over at her, there’s a lightness in her expression, a gleam in her eyes—I think of that first day we met, of Queen Quack and the brief hint of this girl I saw then that I am starting to see more of every day.

“We did a better job than you think.”

I smile back, mostly because I don’t know how to stop. “Yeah?” It’s a nice thought. One that I could spend an hour poking holes in, except I’m happy right now. Happy enough to hope. “Do you think they’ll ever … I don’t know … talk again?”

“Well, they’re going to have to talk logistics, at least,” she says matter-of-factly. Her words are all business, but her tone is light.

I peer at her. “You mean with us?”

“That,” says Savvy. “And, well—my dad called this morning.”

The grin on her face is brimming, threatening to burst. Before she even says anything I can feel it flowing through me—the feeling of knowing the magnitude of something without knowing the shape of it, of catching someone else’s joy before you even know why.

“He and my mom bought Bean Well.”

I don’t think she’s even fully finished the sentence before I let out the kind of squeal that would make Rufus howl, launching myself at her. The two of us hug each other so tightly that we almost add some broken ribs into the mix. We pull apart just as fast, just as breathlessly, like we need to look at each other to believe it. Our eyes meet and the moment stamps itself to my heart, taking up a permanent place in me before it’s over, and I hear Poppy’s voice in my head—If you learn to capture a feeling, it’ll always be louder than words.

I don’t know if I’ll ever feel one louder than this.





one year later



I’m late, but knowing Savvy, I’m early—because knowing Savvy, she told me the meeting was at half past noon when it’s at one. Sure enough, when I stumble into Magpie, the bell jangling so loudly that Ellie the barista looks up in alarm and one of the writer types who hangs out by the window nearly drops her latte, I see her and Mickey camped out in our usual spot in the back, without the other dozen people in our budding little Instagram community.

“Mickey, that’s enough emojis to make someone black out,” I can hear Savvy say, kneeling on the couch so she can look at whatever Mickey is typing into her phone over her shoulder.

“I’m not an influencer, I can afford to break a brain or two.”

“Yes, but do you need six rainbows and a knife?”

“It’s my Tuesday mood.”

Before I announce myself I wave over at Ellie, and she starts making me the hot chocolate I always order and pulling one of Leo’s legendary Nutella-stuffed, parmesan-topped ensaymadas out of the display case—one of the many creations of his that have been rotating in and out of Magpie’s seasonal offerings, whenever he’s home for a few days and wants to test something outside the confines of culinary school. I wonder who he taught to make them, since he’s not supposed to be back from his family’s trip to the Philippines for another few days.

“My stars,” says Mickey, clutching a hand to an invisible string of pearls. “Is it—can it be? In the flesh? Star photographer Abigail Day, gracing us with her esteemed presence—”

“Hey, you,” says Savvy, getting up and squeezing me into a hug. “Long time, no see.”

It really has been—well, long for us, at least. These days Savvy and I see each other a few times a week, between meetups for this Instagram community (fittingly called “Savvy About Instagram”), study sessions when she sneaks me and Connie into the University of Washington’s ridiculously beautiful undergraduate library, and the occasional times she’s babysat for my brothers. (Unlike me, they took the whole “surprise sister” thing in stride—and also unlike me, decided to blow up my parents’ spots by immediately telling their teachers, most of our neighbors, and the woman who writes “Happy Birthday” on the cakes at the grocery store, so the cat’s extremely out of the bag.)