The Wrong Door

Harper almost took out her own ankle chasing Noah through the gym doors, which would have been a fittingly stupid way to end the night. By the time she got inside, he was gone, and the hallway had that after-the-game emptiness to it, everyone already funnelling home or toward whatever counted as a party in the cafeteria. She stood there for a second, feeling ridiculous, chest still heaving a little from the sprint.

Her phone buzzed.

NOAH: Can't wait to see you tonight. :)

She read it twice. If he'd sent that, calm and sweet and completely normal, then who had she just watched with his arm around a cheerleader by the fence? Harper made herself breathe. She'd spent enough of her life rehearsing catastrophes that never happened. She wasn't about to blow up her first real relationship over something she'd seen for maybe four seconds across a crowded field, in bad lighting, from far away. Talk to him instead of guessing and feeling cheated on. That was the whole plan. Simple.

She found his locker standing half open by the senior row, and something in her actually relaxed at the sight of it, which in hindsight was embarrassing. She reached in to leave the letter, and a stack of pastel envelopes slid out and hit the floor before she could grab them.

She dropped to her knees and started scooping them up so nobody would step on them. The first one had a glittery pen looping across the front — "To Noah, good luck at tomorrow's game, love, Emma" — and her half-smile disappeared somewhere around the word "love". The next one said something about how cute he'd looked in chemistry. The one under that asked him to meet after practice. The one under that was

mentioned last weekend in a way that made her stomach fold in on itself a little.

She kept counting without meaning to. Twenty, at least. Maybe closer to thirty, and her hands had gone still by the time she reached the bottom of the pile.

They're old, she told herself. From last year, probably, before he even transferred here. That had to be it.

Then she found the one that wasn't pink or covered in stickers. Plain white paper, three words on the front in block letters: Want the truth?

She shouldn't have opened it. She opened it anyway.

Meet me in the boys' locker room. After tonight's game. Come alone. X.

It fell out of her hand on its own. Someone had written that today, expecting him to actually show up, and Harper stood in the hallway staring at the door to the locker rooms, feeling something cold settle low in her stomach. She told herself no. Out loud, even, like that would help.

It didn't help. Her feet moved anyway, and every step down that hallway sounded three times too loud against the tile.

The lights were still on when she got there, water running somewhere past the benches, most of the team already gone for the night. Walking into the boys' locker room was, hands down, the dumbest thing she had ever done in seventeen years of doing occasionally dumb things. But every version of the truth playing out in her head right then was worse than the risk of getting caught.

She went in anyway.

"Hello?"

Nothing. Steam drifted out from the shower stalls, one still running behind a curtain, and her pulse ticked up a notch.

"Noah?"

Still nothing. She crossed toward it with her arms folded, like that would make her look less insane.

"So this is where you've been." No answer. "You could at least say something." The water kept running, oblivious to the whole thing. Her voice cracked halfway through the next sentence no matter how hard she tried to keep it level. "I saw you with another girl tonight. " Nothing. "I've spent a month wondering if you actually liked me, or if I made the whole thing up in my head. " She laughed once, short and not funny at all. "I even wrote you a letter. I felt so stupid doing it, and then you walked right past me out there like I didn't exist, and I felt..." Her eyes stung before she could stop it. "Invisible. That's the word. I don't need the expensive dates or the flowers or any of it. I just want one person who's actually proud to be seen with me." Her voice dropped without her deciding to let it. "So if you really care about me at all, kiss me at the next game. In front of everyone. Let them see it."

The sentence hung there in the wet, warm air a second too long.

She grabbed the curtain. "This isn't funny anymore." And yanked it back.

Everything in her brain just stopped.

Water running down dark hair. A towel slung low. Shoulders and a chest she recognised immediately and hated herself for recognising. Blue eyes went wide with the same shock she was feeling.

Luca Hayes.

Neither of them said anything for what felt like an unreasonably long time. Then his mouth started tugging up at one corner, slowly, like he couldn't quite believe his own luck.

"...Well," he said.

She had nothing. Not one word.

He leaned a hand against the tile, entirely too comfortable for a guy standing in a towel getting yelled at by his rival. "I definitely wasn't expecting a confession tonight."

Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again with still nothing coming out.

"So," he said, head tilting, obviously enjoying this more than any human being had a right to. "You want me kissing you in front of the whole school."

"I—"

"Sounds like you've been thinking about it a while, honestly."

"I wasn't talking to you."

"Yeah, I'm putting that together now."

"Oh my God." She dropped her face into both hands. "This is not happening right now."

"You walked into the boys' locker room."

"I know that."

"You confessed to the wrong guy in it."

"I know."

"Your lifelong rival, specifically."

"I KNOW, Luca."

He held out for maybe three full seconds before he lost it completely and started laughing, loud enough to echo off the tile, and Harper genuinely considered whether the floor might just open up and take her out of this conversation permanently.

"Stop laughing."

"Can't. I physically cannot."

"It isn't funny."

"It's the funniest thing that's happened to me all season, and I scored a touchdown tonight."

She glared through her fingers. "If you tell one single person about this, I will end you."

He raised both hands, all innocence. "Haven't said a word."

"You will."

"Might."

"You're the worst human being currently alive."

"Worse things have been said about me."

She groaned into her hands. "I'm never setting foot in that school again."

"Bit much."

"My entire life is over."

"You say that every semester during exams, too, if I recall."

"This is different."

"It really is." His grin hadn't dropped an inch. "Nobody's ever confessed their feelings to me while I was mid-shower before. Genuine first."

She wanted to throw something. Preferably something with weight to it.

"You know what."

"What?"

"I take it back. All of it."

"Little late for that; you already said it out loud."

"I didn't mean any of it."

"You sounded pretty convincing to me."

"I thought you were Noah."

Something behind his eyes dropped a degree, just slightly, easy to miss if she hadn't spent her whole life reading his face out of pure spite. "So he's who you actually want."

"Obviously."

He looked away, just for a second, then shrugged like it cost him nothing. "His loss, I guess."

She frowned. "What?"

"I said—"

She stood mid-sentence as footsteps approached, out past the entrance. Voices, two males, getting closer.

"Dude, I swear somebody came in here."

"For real?"

"I heard a girl, man, I'm telling you."

Harper's stomach dropped straight to the floor. "Oh no."

Luca glanced toward the door. "They're coming."

"If they find me in here—"

"You'll never live it down, ever, not for the rest of high school."

The voices kept getting closer, one of them already laughing. "I'm checking the showers."

Harper grabbed Luca's wrist before her brain had fully signed off on the decision.

"What are you doing?"

"Saving both of us. Don't argue."

He didn't get the chance to. She hauled him back behind the curtain with her, and outside, the footsteps stopped, close enough now that whoever it was had to be standing right on the other side of the tile.