The Boy I Could Never Stand

Harper Bennett heard the crowd before she saw the field, that specific Friday-night roar that meant somebody had just done something stupid and heroic at the same time.

Westbrook took football the way other towns took church. Face paint, air horns, and a marching band that treated the fight song like a personal vendetta. Harper had been coming to these games since she was nine and had never once cared who won.

She cared about exactly one player. Not in a good way.

The scoreboard clicked over.

WESTBROOK 27 RIDGEVIEW 24

"Ten seconds!" The announcer's voice cracked with static and enthusiasm. "One final play, Westbrook! "

Everybody stood up like it was one body. Harper stayed put on the sideline, backpack digging into her shoulder, thinking about the fact that she'd volunteered for Student Council cleanup duty specifically so she wouldn't be here for this part. She'd miscalculated badly.

Luca took the snap. Slipped one tackle, then a second, and when the third defender came in low, he just... wasn't low anymore, gone sideways like the rules of physics were a suggestion he'd decided to ignore. He crossed the goal line standing up, barely out of breath, and the sky over the stadium cracked open with fireworks somebody's parents had definitely paid too much for, and it was a TOUCHDOWN. The announcer's voice echoed as the crowd cheered.

"LUCA! LUCA! LUCA!"

Harper's eye-rolling had range to it. Genuine distance.

"Of course," she said, to nobody.

The field flooded in about four seconds flat. Girls with water bottles, girls with towels, and one girl holding what looked like an entire tray of protein bars like she'd prepared for this specific moment her whole life.

"That was literally insane; you're insane."

"Can I get a picture, just one?"

"My parents own the new café on Fifth; you should come by. We'll do you anything—"

Harper gripped the envelope she'd been carrying around all evening like it might try to escape and shoved her way toward the middle of it. She had somewhere to be. She'd had somewhere to be for the last twenty minutes.

"Move," she said. Nothing.

"Excuse me." Nothing.

She finally got a shoulder between two cheerleaders and popped out the other side directly in front of him, still sweating, still grinning like the whole night existed for his benefit.

"There you are," he said, like he'd been keeping time.

"What?"

"I was wondering how long it'd take my favourite stalker to show up."

"You've got about three seconds to take that back."

"There it is."

"There's what."

"That face. The one where you're doing the math on whether murder's worth twenty-five to life."

"My night was fine until I saw you."

"Devastating. I felt that one."

"You don't feel things."

"Correction, I feel one thing, and it's currently very hurtful."

A freshman jogged up, clutching three different sports drinks against her chest like a small, colourful bouquet.

"Luca, which flavour?"

"Doesn't matter."

"I'll bring all three!" She was already gone.

Harper watched the space where the girl had been. "Do people not have homework anymore?"

"They're being nice."

"They're being a fire hazard."

"Sounds like jealousy."

"Sounds like I'm worried about the collective GPA of this school."

He laughed at that, the real one, the one she'd been hearing at every family dinner since she was old enough to have opinions about him. Their mothers had met in college and never really stopped being roommates in spirit, which meant Harper had grown up trapped inside the same joke on a loop: you two are going to end up married, mark my words. Seventeen years old, and she'd spent most of them proving that particular prophecy wrong out of pure spite. She and Luca had competed over everything that could be competed over — spelling bees, science fair ribbons, who could clear their plate first back when they were both missing front teeth. Neither of them could point to the exact moment it had started. Neither one had figured out how to make it stop.

His eyes landed on the envelope.

"What's that?"

She moved it behind her back on instinct. "Nothing."

"You've never once successfully lied to me in your life."

"I'm not lying."

"You blinked twice just now."

"I have eyelids. It happens."

"Not like that, though."

"You spend a genuinely concerning amount of time watching my face."

"Somebody has to keep track of you. You're a liability."

"Excuse me?"

"You challenged the principal to table tennis last month."

"He accepted."

"You lost."

"He cheated. There's no way he's actually that good."

She laughed before she could stop herself, a short, surprised bark of a sound, and Luca looked immediately, unbearably pleased with himself.

"There it is."

"That was a cough."

"You don't cough like that. Nobody coughs like that."

"I take back every kind thought I've never had about you."

He reached for the envelope, and she pulled it out of range without even really thinking about it, some old reflex from years of him grabbing things that weren't his.

"Hands to yourself."

"Oh, we have got a love letter?"

"No."

"Genuinely?"

"No."

"For me, then, somehow?"

"I'm going to need you to see a doctor."

"So it is one."

"It is not."

"Then who's it for?"

She hesitated a half-beat too long, and something in his face went still in a way she didn't have time to think about.

"...Someone finally asked you out."

The heat that showed up on her face wasn't something she could control, unfortunately. "Not your business."

"That's a yes, then."

"Fine. Yes."

His voice came out flatter than usual. "Who."

"Noah Carter."

A teammate jogged by, half-yelling. "Captain, the coach wants everybody now!"

Luca didn't move. "Noah. The transfer."

"That's him."

"The one you tutor in chem."

She frowned. "How do you even know that?"

"I pay attention."

"You mean you spy."

"I observe."

"That's the creepier version of the same thing."

Something reluctant tugged at the corner of his mouth. "So this is a whole thing, then."

"Might be." She looked down at the envelope, and for the first time all night it didn't feel like something to be embarrassed about. "We've been talking for about a month. He said tonight would be different. Said he wanted to make it official, in front of people, the whole thing."

Whatever crossed his face lasted about a second before he put it away somewhere she couldn't reach.

"Good for you," he said.

"You don't mean that."

"You're right, I don't."

"That's more believable, at least."

"If he screws this up—"

"You'll do what, cry about it?"

"I'll break his nose."

She actually stopped and looked at him. "You'll what?"

He didn't get to repeat it, because that was the exact moment she spotted Noah cutting across toward the parking lot, and every other thought in her head evaporated.

"There he is." She lifted a hand, waved, and put an entire month of hoping into it. "Noah!"

Nothing.

"Noah!"

He kept walking. Not toward her — past her, toward the fence, where a girl in a varsity cheer uniform was already turning to meet him halfway, arms going up around his neck like she'd done it enough times to have it memorised.

He smiled at her. The unguarded kind. The kind Harper had spent a month collecting from him in small, careful doses and had never once gotten this easily.

He reached up and fixed a piece of her hair.

Harper's own face did something she didn't have a name for.

The girl laughed at whatever he said next. He leaned in to say something else, quieter, and she shoved his shoulder, delighted, the way you push someone you already know you're going to kiss.

Harper didn't move.

"No," she said, mostly to herself. "That's not—they're probably just—"

Luca followed where she was looking. Whatever was in his face now wasn't jealousy. It was closer to anger.

The girl kissed Noah's cheek.

"Maybe they're friends," Harper said, in the voice of someone trying to talk herself down off a ledge that wasn't actually that high.

Luca didn't answer.

Noah's hand found the girl's waist and stayed there, easy, familiar, like he'd put it there a hundred times before tonight.

Harper felt the bottom drop out of the whole evening. She looked down at the envelope, three nights of rewritten sentences, and every word in it suddenly felt like it belonged to a different, dumber version of herself.

"I should go talk to him."

"Harper."

"What?"

"Don't build the excuse before you've heard the actual answer."

She smiled at him, and it wasn't a real one, and they both knew it. "I'll be fine."

She pushed toward the parking lot, letter crumpled in her fist, and didn't look back.

Luca watched her go until the crowd swallowed her. Then he looked at the boy with his hand on somebody else's waist for a long moment, and his hands closed into fists at his sides without him deciding to do it.