Listen to Your Heart

by Kasie West

  “Good morning, Kate,” Alana said. “Diego was just telling me a funny anecdote about a girl who brought her entire rock collection to tutoring yesterday.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “It wasn’t that funny,” he said. “I have to talk to one of my teachers before class. I better go.”

  “Diego,” I said when he got one step away. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  Alana widened her eyes at me as if saying, You’re going to do this now? Have I taught you nothing? But it didn’t matter because he said, “Not right now,” and left. His voice seemed sad, not angry, and that just hurt even more.

  “Ouch,” Alana said.

  “Yeah, I felt that one.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and I knew she totally meant it. “This is going to end with us giving each other a speech about how we don’t need no stinkin’ boys, isn’t it?”

  “That doesn’t sound like a bad ending right now,” I said.

  I hadn’t seen Frank sneak up behind us, until he was between us, an arm around each of our shoulders.

  “Good morning,” he said, and kissed Alana’s cheek.

  “What did I tell you last night?” she said.

  “That I should keep trying because I’m growing on you.”

  “I didn’t say that!” Alana said.

  “I was reading between the lines. Was I right?”

  She laughed and shoved him away.

  “I can work with that,” he said.

  I was impressed that he was still coming around at all. I would’ve thought that, in Frank’s world, Alana liking another boy would mean Frank had to walk away and maintain his pride. But I was slowly learning Frank wasn’t everything I had thought he was.

  “Oh, Frank,” I said. “While you’re here. Remember when I accused you of sabotaging the marina?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, I mean of posting pictures on the website.”

  “Yes, I remember that.”

  “Well, I was wrong.”

  “I actually did post pictures on the website,” he said.

  I patted his shoulder. “I was wrong about other things, Romeo. I’m sorry.”

  “That one actually sounded like you meant it.”

  “It was at least ninety-five percent sincere.”

  “We’re going to change our parents’ hearts yet, and it probably won’t even take death, Juliet.”

  The next morning, the only glimpse I had of Diego was the back of his wavy hair as he disappeared into a crowded hallway.

  “Don’t worry,” Alana said, obviously seeing him as well. “I haven’t talked to him, either.”

  “I just never thought of him as a guy who held grudges.”

  “When pride is involved, people can hold on to a lot of things,” Alana said wisely.

  “How am I going to talk to him? At the very least I just want to explain to him why I didn’t tell him.”

  “Why would I help you figure that out?” She winked my way. “Every woman for herself, remember?”

  “I love you, too,” I said.

  “Good luck on the podcast today.”

  At this point, there was really only one way to get my message across to Diego. It would be embarrassing, it would involve letting more people into my personal life than I felt comfortable with, and it would make me more vulnerable than I’d ever been. But it was important. This wasn’t a very good pep talk, I realized as I repeated the thoughts once again as I sat getting ready to record the podcast.

  Alana was back on the production crew. This time, she and Frank sat at the phones.

  “Good afternoon, Oak Court!” Victoria chirped into the microphone. “You’re listening to Not My Problem, with Victoria and Kat.”

  “Today it needs to be Kate,” I said.

  “What?” Victoria asked, looking startled.

  “I need to be Kate today because I have something to say, as Kate.”

  Victoria’s eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline. “Okay, then, Kate. Take it away.”

  “I have a problem.”

  “And it’s not that you hate people?”

  I laughed a little. “No. Quite the opposite in this case actually.”

  “You love someone?”

  I thought about that for a moment. Was it love? It was on its way there, I knew that. “Maybe,” I said, my heart pounding. “I’m not sure he feels the same way. In fact, I’m pretty sure he is or was in love with my best friend.”

  “Oh,” Victoria said. “You’re actually going to share.”

  “Yes. See, I’m hoping he’ll give me a chance. I screwed up before I ever got to tell him how I felt. I kept a secret from him, and now he’s not speaking to me. And I miss him.”

  “What do you miss about him?” Victoria asked.

  Of course she would make me put everything out there. Make myself even more vulnerable. Drop some fronts I had up. But she was right, I needed to.

  “I miss his attentive gaze,” I started, “and his insightful observations and his humor and our conversations and I miss his smile.” I caught my breath. “He hasn’t smiled at me in a while. That sounds so cheesy, I know it does. I’m not used to being this open.” I bit my lip. “I’m used to hiding behind sarcasm and indifference.”

  “How does it feel to let it out?”

  “Not good.”

  Victoria laughed, obviously surprised by that answer. “I thought you’d say freeing.”

  “No, it’s terrifying. But I have to do it. I have to do it because if there is even a tiny chance that he returns any of these feelings, then it is worth it.”

  “Are you going to be vague and keep the guy anonymous or are you going to share with the listeners the name of your mystery love?” Victoria asked.

  I hadn’t prepared myself for that question. Was I going to be vague? What would be better? I didn’t want to embarrass Diego or make him even angrier with me. But hadn’t this whole thing started because we were keeping secrets?

  A buzz sounded in my earphones, followed by Alana’s voice. “We have a caller.”

  Victoria held up her hand. “Can we wait a few minutes on that? Kate is still sharing.”

  “I think you’ll want to take this one … Kate.” Alana met my eyes through the glass. She looked equal parts nervous and apprehensive.

  “Let’s take the call,” I said, not sure what Alana was trying to convey with that look. It almost seemed like a bad thing. Was she trying to save Diego from my saying his name on the podcast? Was she trying to save me from further humiliation? Was she trying to help herself? Make it so she could tell him how she felt about him before I could?

  “Hello,” Victoria said, “You’re on Not My Problem.”

  “Hi,” the caller said. It seemed so strange that even from just that tiny, two-letter word, I could know who spoke it. But I did know. “Is Kate recording today?” the voice asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m here.”

  “Hi, Kate.”

  “Oh!” Victoria said. “It’s Looking For Love.”

  “It’s Diego,” he said. “My name is Diego Martinez, and I need to talk to Kate.”

  “Talk away, Diego,” Victoria said. “She’s listening.”

  “I’m sorry, Kate,” Diego said. “I’ve been acting badly.”

  “I understand,” I said, my heart racing. “You were blindsided. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kept a secret from you. It wasn’t for the show. I promise. I had no idea you’d keep calling.”

  “I know,” he said quietly. “I shouldn’t have accused you of that. I was hurt. And embarrassed. I felt like I’d been rejected both on air and in real life. I was trying to be a big person about it all. But in the end that one more piece of information I was told at the carnival pushed me over the edge.”

  “You don’t need to be embarrassed,” I said fervently. “You weren’t rejected. She likes you. She’s always liked you. I should’ve just told you. I was always just trying to help you tell …” I almost said Alana, bu
t that wasn’t my secret to broadcast. I’d already learned my lesson with Liza. “… your crush how you felt about her.”

  He let out a breathy laugh. “Why didn’t you just read the magazine, Kate?”

  The headphones slipped down the back of my head and I pushed them into place. “The magazine? Oh, the magazine …” Was something in the magazine? How did he know I hadn’t read it? Had Liza told him?

  “What just happened?” Victoria asked.

  I met Alana’s eyes through the glass and she shrugged.

  “Read the magazine. And come find me if it changes anything,” Diego said, and then he was gone.

  “I’m so confused,” Victoria said.

  “I need to go.”

  “We’re in the middle of recording.”

  My heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest. Diego hadn’t heard my confession, obviously, but he would when this all aired. For a moment, I thought I was going to be the embarrassed one, since he liked Alana. But he’d referenced the magazine that was sitting in the back of my car. He obviously hadn’t just handed me a random magazine he thought I’d like. There was something I was supposed to see.

  I ripped off the headphones and placed them on the floor. Into the microphone I said, “Sorry, Victoria, to leave you alone like this, but I know you can handle it and I can’t wait one second longer.” I really hoped Ms. Lyon wouldn’t give me an F. But I had to do this.

  “Good luck,” Victoria said as I sprinted out the door. I snagged my backpack off the couch and didn’t look back. I could hear someone, who I assumed was Alana, follow after me. I fumbled in the front pocket of my bag for my keys as we neared my car and pushed the unlock button. I opened the back door and snatched the magazine off the seat.

  I turned back the cover. I noticed right away the red pen that had been taken to the first article. The headline had been manipulated, parts written over or letters and words crossed out and replaced. It went from saying: Eight Ways to Stay Safe in the Water. To saying: Eight Ways to Say Yes to the Fall Festival. Each of the eight tips were crossed out and now had various ways of saying yes—I’d love to; of course; please, yes; sure; yes, thank you; I thought you’d never ask; no, I mean yes; yes!

  I swallowed hard. “Oh no.”

  I turned the page. The next article’s headline had been doctored to read: Have I been patient enough?

  Page after page was filled with festival references and different ways of asking me to go. The very last page, in black Sharpie, written over the face of a surfer said: Will you go to the Fall Festival with me, Kate?

  I was a horrible person. Diego was right. I’d told him no in a subtle way. We’d stood behind the bleachers of the baseball stadium that night and he’d asked me if I’d read any of the articles in the magazine he’d given me and I’d said yes. He thought I had read this and was politely rejecting him. And yet he was still so sweet to me. So sweet until he found out I knew it was him calling in all along. And that had hurt him. He’d thought I was mocking him. Using him.

  This whole time I thought he liked Alana and he really liked … me?

  Alana, who had obviously been reading over my shoulder, said, “And the best woman won.”

  I met her soft stare. She smiled at me. “It’s always been you, Kate,” she said. “It was never me.”

  “I didn’t know,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

  She took me by the shoulders and said, “I know. And we made a deal, right? We’d still be best friends no matter what.”

  I nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Why a magazine?” she asked.

  “That first day I took Liza to the tutoring center, I tried to guess what magazines he read. Then after that, anytime there was a new magazine I noticed it and … no …” My mouth opened and closed.

  “What?”

  I laughed a little. “No, he was trying to guess my interests after that. He’s the one who brought in the new magazines every Monday. I didn’t realize it was him bringing them in until now.”

  “You two are going to be sickeningly sweet together.” Alana picked up my keys from where I had apparently flung them onto the back seat of my car along with my backpack and handed them to me. “Go get your man.”

  “Are you going to be—”

  “Of course I’ll be okay. It will be fun to watch Frank try to win my affections. I’m ready for someone who’s totally into me now.”

  I hugged her tight. “I love you.”

  “You too. Tell Diego I said hi.”

  I shut the back door and opened the one on the driver’s side.

  “Actually, never mind,” Alana added. “Don’t say anything to Diego about me. You should just kiss him. Wasn’t that Victoria’s advice to him once? If he had taken that advice from the beginning and not your lame advice about patience, none of this would have ever happened.”

  I laughed. “Yes, Victoria gives much better advice than me. That was determined long ago.”

  Alana gave me a playful push into my car, and I pulled the door closed. Then I rolled down my window.

  “Wait, I have no idea where to find him. I don’t even have his cell number.”

  “I’ll text it to you.”

  This is Kate. Where are you?

  The hill behind the stadium, Diego texted back almost immediately.

  “Thank you for not being too far,” I whispered.

  I drove over the single block and parked next to Diego’s car. I carefully exited and stared up the hill. Sequoia trees blocked my view so I couldn’t see him, but I started walking up, anyway. When I arrived, he was holding a golf club and a pile of golf balls were by his feet.

  We locked eyes from forty feet away.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in the middle of recording a podcast?” he asked.

  “Yes, but I had a magazine to read,” I said, inching my way forward.

  “Did you like the articles?” he asked.

  “So much. Even better than the originals.”

  “Yeah?” He twisted the golf club back and forth, perhaps a nervous reaction.

  I finished my walk to him and held out my hand for his. With no hesitation, he placed his hand in mine. I smiled and drew the word Valor on the back of his hand. A shiver went through him, but then he tugged on my hand, bringing me closer to him.

  I looked up, meeting his eyes. “I once got some advice that if I liked someone and wanted to know how that person felt about me, I should just kiss them,” I said softly.

  “Really? I got that same advice.” He dropped my hand and the golf club at the same time and pulled me into a hug.

  I pressed my cheek against his, savoring the feeling of being this close. Then I turned and kissed his cheek, then his jaw, then the spot right below his ear.

  He let out a low hum. “I think I’ve run out of patience.”

  I smiled and finally let my lips meet his. He tasted like mint and smelled like pine. Or maybe that was the trees. It didn’t matter. It was my favorite smell in the world, and this was my favorite feeling in the world. His hands traveled the length of my back and up into my hair. I stepped even closer to him and nearly tripped on the golf club that lay between our feet. He wrapped one arm tight around my waist, lifting me off the ground slightly, and kicked the golf club out of the way. We continued to kiss, soft at first and then the way we should’ve been kissing for weeks, urgently and holding back nothing.

  He pulled away first and looked at me, slightly breathless. “Tell me everything.”

  It took my brain a second to catch up to what he’d said. “Everything?”

  “From the first time I called in to the podcast until now.” He pointed to a fallen tree nearby and we both walked to it, hand in hand, then sat down.

  “Okay, the first time you called in, anonymity was kind of our selling point for the podcast and we planned to keep true to our word,” I said. “We would keep the callers anonymous for the listeners. I didn’t think it was a big deal. I didn’t know any of the callers
, anyway.”

  “Until me.” He ran his finger up and down each one of mine in his hand.

  “I wasn’t sure it was you at first, either. You were disguising your voice. Alana didn’t think it was you.”

  “Alana … so you assumed I was talking about her the whole time?”

  “Yes, she liked you. And everything you said on the podcast made it seem like your crush was her.”

  “Like what? Because I was pretty sure everything I was saying made it seem like it was you …” He paused and smiled. “You know, since it was you.”

  “Like how she treated everyone the same, how she liked another guy.” I paused, frowning. “What did you mean by liking another guy?”

  “We talked about this. Your ex.”

  “Oh, right.”

  He smiled again. “Oh, right.”

  “You also talked about how she left when you invited her places and never stuck around when you were in places together.”

  “I talked about the fact that you did that.”

  “I did not.”

  He nodded. “You did. Always.”

  “I guess I didn’t think about it.”

  “Because you didn’t like me. I was right at first, when I worried you didn’t like me back.”

  “Yes, I guess it’s good I told you to have patience because if you’d told me right away I would’ve been too worried about Alana’s feelings to even think about it.”

  “So I should take Frank out to dinner, then? As a thank-you?”

  “Frank? Why?”

  “Because she started liking him, and then you didn’t have to worry about girl code.”

  “No, actually … I just started liking you too much. I talked to her about it. We came to an agreement.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “What kind of agreement?”

  “The kind that lets me have both you and Alana in my life.”

  “I like that kind of agreement.”

  “Me too.”

  Diego was quiet for a moment. “So you’re telling me that Alana doesn’t like Frank? When Liza yelled out on Friday that you liked your best friend’s guy, I thought maybe you had started liking Frank.”