“What?” I asked Frank. “Do I have something on my face?”
Diego chuckled. “That’s my line,” he said.
“No.” Frank removed his hand from behind his back, revealing a long-stem red rose. “Will you go to the Fall Festival with me?”
My stomach tightened. What?
“Oh. I …”
Frank bit his lip. “I know I should’ve asked in a more elaborate way. I had something planned but it didn’t work out last minute. The phones were busy.”
“You were going to call in to the podcast?” I asked.
He shrugged and a cute, shy smirk took over his face. I was glad the phones had been busy. That would’ve been so embarrassing. I didn’t need the whole high school and town listening to someone ask me out.
I couldn’t help but glance at Alana. Her expression was unreadable. I refused to glance at Diego. Then I looked back at Frank.
“Um … yes,” I finally said. Why not? My heart was already on the floor. Maybe going to the festival with Frank would help matters. And we seemed to be getting along better lately.
“Yes, you’ll go with me?” he asked in surprise.
I nodded.
He grabbed my hand, kissed my knuckles, then said, “I’ll pick you up at five thirty for dinner before the game.” He turned toward Alana and Diego. “Should we all go together?”
Alana nodded. “That would be fun.”
“Okay,” I said.
Frank flashed one last smile at me, then backed toward his car. “I’m going to leave before you change your mind.” He nodded toward Alana. “You can get a ride home with Kate?”
“Of course.”
With that, he got into his car and drove away.
I took a small breath and stared at the rose in my hand. The bud flopped over a bit. “That was weird.”
“Good weird?” Alana asked.
“Well, it’s Frank Young … but I guess we called a truce, right?” I said.
Alana shrugged. The fact that she seemed as unsure as I was about this whole thing made me question myself. Maybe I shouldn’t have said yes.
I set the rose down by the fence, picked up the empty grocery bag, and began undoing our hard work. Alana and Diego joined me. As we cleaned, Alana would wad up notes and throw them at either Diego or me, which for a while started a bit of a war. When I realized this was creating more work for us, I stopped.
I got to the back bumper and Diego sidled up beside me. “Did you get to take care of the bully thing you were worried about on the podcast yesterday?” he asked.
I brought my hand to my forehead. “I completely forgot. I usually just let Victoria lead, so I’m not used to introducing a topic. I’ll have to think about how to do that for next week.” How could I have forgotten something so important? This kid was getting bullied, and it completely slipped my mind.
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” He took off another row of orange Post-its and added them to his growing stack. “You and Frank, huh?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“Everything starts somewhere.” He looked over at me through his long lashes, his soft brown eyes lit with a smile.
He was right. Everything did start somewhere. And as I stood there beside my best friend’s crush, removing sticky notes from his old Corolla, I knew exactly when I had started liking him. It was when he drew a V on my temple standing in that empty school hallway. It was when those same brown eyes had met mine that day, all sweet and caring.
We know where we stand, I reminded my heart. Firmly in friend territory.
“I’m going to kiss Diego tonight.”
I dropped the mascara wand I’d been holding.
Alana and I had gone straight from school to her house and were now sitting in front of the mirror in her bedroom, getting ready for the Fall Festival. Alana’s room was various shades of pink. I wasn’t sure if it was the lighting or the background color, but my skin always seemed to have a healthy glow there. Maybe I needed to change the paint in my room.
I now had a large black streak across my bare leg from the mascara. I picked the wand up from where it had landed on the ground. “Um … okay.”
Alana took the cap off her eyeliner. “Where would be the most romantic place to do that?”
Did I really have to give her advice on this? “Probably anywhere it happens will be romantic.”
She gave a dreamy sigh. “So true.” She leaned forward and applied her eyeliner. “What about you?”
“What about me?” I retrieved a makeup wipe and scrubbed at my leg.
“Are you going to kiss Frank tonight?”
“No!”
“That horrific of a thought, huh?”
“Yes. I mean … no, not really, it’s just, give me a minute here. I hated the guy like a week ago.”
“Why did you say yes, then?”
“Should I have said no?”
“Well, no. But if he likes you, you’re kind of leading him on.”
“I don’t think he likes me. I think he asked me because there was no one left to ask.”
The football game was loud. It had been a while since I’d been to one and I’d forgotten. But here I was at a football game with the guy I used to hate, the guy I needed to start hating for my own sanity, and my best friend.
Frank pointed up ahead and yelled over the noise of the crowd. “Look, they lit up the Ferris wheel.”
Alana clapped. “Oh! That looks fun! That’s so awesome of your dad to pay for the rides.”
I leaned forward so I could yell to Alana, past Frank, who stood between us. “You and me on the roller coaster later?”
“For sure.”
“What?” Diego yelled. He was on the far side of Alana and probably hadn’t heard a word we’d said.
“Ferris wheel!” Alana said. “Let’s ride it later.”
“Sure,” he responded.
I wondered if that’s where the kissing would happen. At the top of the Ferris wheel. I wasn’t going to think about that.
“I’m going to get a soda!” I yelled.
“Okay,” Alana called back. Frank moved like he was going to come with me, but she grabbed his wrist and said something I couldn’t hear.
He laughed and stayed.
Why had she done that? Was she worried about Frank’s feelings? That I was leading him on? Maybe it was me she was worried about. I did have a horrified reaction to the kissing question earlier. Maybe she was trying to save me. I took the stairs up the bleachers, then down the back side. I drew in a deep breath.
“Kat! Hi!” someone called as I walked by. “I loved your carpool advice!”
“Oh. Thanks!” I said.
“That’s Kat from the podcast!” I heard someone else call.
Then I heard another voice.
“Kate! Wait up.”
I turned to see Diego following after me. My heart liked this development. I tried to talk it down. Diego wanting a soda did not equal a declaration of any kind.
“It’s so loud in there,” he said. “I needed to give my eardrums a break.”
Where we now stood, in the back of the stadium, it was still loud but not deafening. “I know,” I said.
“You too?”
“I came to get a drink.”
“Let’s get in line, then.”
We joined the back of a long line at the snack hut and proceeded to not say anything at all. I usually had no problem talking to Diego. I was making it weird because I liked him. I needed to make it un-weird.