by Kasie West
“What? No! I mean, Frank and I may be getting along better but that would be a jump. Alana liked you.”
“I never thought of her that way.”
“Not even when she asked you to my Cousins’ Night?”
“I thought she had somehow figured out I liked you and was helping me out.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“So when she asked you to the Fall Festival?” I pressed.
“I thought you were asking me. You were both standing by my car, if you remember. When I realized it was her, I was confused. But when she hung out with Frank most of the night I thought that maybe she knew Frank was going to ask you so she asked me so we could all hang out.”
My head felt like it was spinning. I laid it on his shoulder. “I’m sorry it took me so long to realize I liked you.”
“When did you realize?” he asked.
“The first time we stood here, actually, behind this stadium.”
“That long?” he asked, his voice showing his surprise.
“Don’t forget you were my best friend’s crush. Totally off-limits. I’m glad I realized at all.”
He laughed. “I should just count my blessings?”
“Yes. Totally.” I squeezed his hand that was still in mine. “That’s not when I started liking you, though. It’s just when I realized it. I started liking you the day I hit my head on the locker.”
“I guess that’s a little closer to when I started liking you.”
“When was that?” I asked, looking up at him.
“The first day you came to the tutoring center. You were so fun to talk to. We had a whole conversation about magazines. It had never been so easy for me to talk to a girl before. You found out more about me in that one meeting than I’d ever told most of my friends.”
I pulled my knees up to my chest. “I feel the same about you,” I admitted. “It’s just easy. But I still haven’t found out everything. You like to keep things inside.”
“I know. I’m working on it.”
“How are things going with your parents, anyway?” I asked. “Are they mad you’re here right now and not studying?”
“It’s still a struggle, but we talked about things, actually. Isn’t that your motto?”
“Yes, it is. What did you talk about?” I asked.
“About how I should be able to go out, if I have all my other responsibilities done.”
“So you didn’t talk about how you want to travel?”
“One step at a time.” He leaned over and brushed a soft kiss on my forehead. A shiver went through me.
“How did you know I hadn’t read the magazine, by the way?” I asked.
“I didn’t. For the longest time I thought you had. But then I guess Liza read through it in your car and she found me this morning and told me.”
“She did?” I took a breath of relief. “She doesn’t hate me after all.”
“That girl adores you.”
I couldn’t help but smile. Then I nodded my head toward his pile of golf balls. “Hey. I know a guy who can hit a golf ball through the goalposts all the way over there.” I pointed toward the football field.
Diego looked over. “Oh yeah? That would be hard to do. That’s really far away. I don’t know if I believe that.”
“Well, he is pretty amazing.”
He pulled me onto his lap. “You’re pretty amazing.”
My heart raced, and I traced my finger along the collar of his T-shirt. “I talked about you on the podcast today,” I said.
“You did?”
“Right before you called.”
“What did you say?” he asked.
“I guess you’ll just have to listen.”
“Should we listen together?”
I leaned over and kissed him, happy I could. “Yes. Friday.”
That afternoon, when I got home, I went straight over to my aunt’s house and smashed Liza in a hug.
“Stop,” she said. “I’m still mad at you.”
“You aren’t. I know you aren’t. You talked to Diego for me.”
She smiled. “Fine, I’m not. Just don’t ever talk about me on the podcast again.”
“Never.”
“Thanks for editing it out.”
“Did Tommy find out, anyway?”
“Yes, but we laughed about it and I told him about how I liked Kurt so it worked out fine.”
“Wait. You like Kurt?”
“Yes. But no, we’re not talking about me right now. What happened with Diego? Did you guys finally spill your guts to each other?”
“We did.”
“Good. I like Diego.”
“Me too.”
I left Liza’s house feeling lighter, and I called Alana as I walked down to the marina. A guy answered her phone. “Hello.”
“Um, did I call the wrong number?”
A loud mechanical noise sounded in the background.
“Nope. Alana is just in the middle of making smoothies.”
“Frank?”
“Yep.”
That was fast. “Tell her to call me when she’s done.”
“Is that Kate?” I heard Alana ask in the background. “Ask her if she finally caught her fish.”
“Tell her yes,” I said.
“Nice,” Frank said. “Speaking of catching fish—me, Alana, you, and Diego, my boat, this Saturday.”
“Okay.” I sat down on the dock and dipped my feet in the water. The sun was low in the sky and sent a shimmery reflection off the lake and backlit a sailboat in the distance.
“Yeah?” Frank asked.
“Yes.”
“Awesome.”
“As long as you aren’t a punk on the lake.”
“I will try my hardest.”
Friday, at lunch, Diego and I sat on a bench in the commons waiting for Alana. She’d told us she had a surprise.
Diego held my hand, like he had every time he’d seen me for the last two days. It still made me incredibly happy.
“You don’t post a lot of updates online,” Diego was saying. “Why not?”
I shrugged and tried to unwrap a burrito one-handed. Diego laughed but when I tried to take my hand back he wouldn’t let me.
“You’re a brat,” I said.
“Yes, I am.” He brushed a kiss to my knuckles.
“I don’t know,” I said, answering his social media question. “I’m private. You don’t post a lot, either.”
“I know.” He set down his bag of chips and took his phone out of his pocket. “But I think we might need a picture of the two of us together. Since you have so many of you and Hunter.”
I tilted my head his way. “Those pictures are like six months old. Have you been stalking my social media?”
“Yes,” he said unapologetically. “How else was I supposed to see you when you were constantly ditching me?”
“I wouldn’t say constantly.”
“Constantly,” he said. He held his phone out in front of us and pulled me up against his side.
“You know I take the world’s most awkward pictures,” I said.
“You’re adorable.” He kissed my cheek and snapped a picture.
“Awww,” Alana said. “So cute.”
Diego lowered the phone. Alana stood in front of us, with a group of about twenty people behind her.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“It’s my surprise. A listening party.”
“A listening party?” I repeated in shock.
She held up a wireless speaker. “The podcast was uploaded and we’re all going to listen to it together.”
My mouth dropped open. This was definitely a surprise, but not really the good kind.
Alana pointed to the grass in front of the bench and on cue, the group of twenty sat down.
“Did they rehearse that?” Diego mumbled next to me, and I smiled.
“Diego, you are in for a treat,” Alana said. “This is Kate’s best episode yet.”
/> “I can’t wait,” he said.
My cheeks went hot. I usually hated listening to my own voice but this week would be particularly embarrassing. “Maybe we should listen to this later, when we’re alone,” I said to Diego.
“Or we can listen to it now,” he offered.
So we did. And he heard me stumble through a very unpracticed and halting confession. Then I listened to his voice on the speakers tell all the listeners that he was Looking for Love. Several people in the listening group “awwed” and giggled.
Diego smiled my way when I told Victoria she needed to take over.
“Thank you,” he whispered in my ear. “I know that was all really hard for you to say publicly.”
“I had to.”
He kissed my hand. “I did, too.”
The rest of the day, people called Diego “Looking for Love” in the hallway, or stopped to ask us questions.
“Is this what fame feels like?” he asked.
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
We stopped at his locker before heading out to the parking lot. “Hey, can I store my history book in your locker? It’s closer to my class,” I asked, digging the textbook out of my bag.
“Already want to move into my locker?”
I laughed and handed it to him. He shoved it in and dug around his locker for a while, exchanging books and looking through papers.
I wrapped my arm around his waist. “Have I ever told you that you take an inordinately long amount of time at your locker?”
“You’ve timed me?”
“I don’t have to.”
“This coming from the girl who spent ten minutes at her locker the day she hit her head on it.”
“I kept getting interrupted.”
“I’m just saying.”
I took a black marker out of my bag and wrote D+K on the inside of his locker door.
“Cute,” he said. “People are going to think I did that.”
I drew a heart around it. “Now they will.”
He snatched the pen from my hand and beneath my heart wrote Mi amor.
My heart skipped a beat. I may not have remembered a lot of Spanish from class, but I knew what that meant: my love. I wasn’t sure how to respond, though; it’s not like he said it out loud. He didn’t seem to expect a response; he just shut his locker door and took my hand again.
We headed for the parking lot. I could see my car in the distance, Max and Liza waiting for me there.
“Diego?” I asked.
“Yes?”
“I have a weird request.”
“Okay?”
“My brother.”
“Frank told me about the fight at the carnival. Who do you and I need to beat up?”
“No beating up. Maybe just a talking-to will do the trick. I’m going to suggest the next episode of the podcast be for people who have struggled with bullying to call in.”
“Maybe I’ll have to call in that day, then,” Diego said.
“You’ve struggled with bullying?”
“My entire seventh-grade year. Some kids can be mean.”
“They can.”
“But then some can be really nice. Since then I’ve always hoped I could be the latter.”
“I think you’ve succeeded.”
We reached the car and Diego patted Max on the back. “I heard you defended my girlfriend the other night.”
“Who?” Max asked.
Diego held his hand to the side of his mouth and loud-whispered, “Your sister.”
Butterflies took flight in my stomach. Even though I figured as much, it was the first time he’d said the word girlfriend out loud and I liked the sound of it. A lot.
Diego turned to me and wrapped me up in a hug, kissing my cheek several times as I laughed.
“Right?” he asked.
“Absolutely.”
“Ew,” Liza said. “I’m going to call in to the podcast on Wednesday and ask how you politely tell friends that they are acting too cheesy.”
I grinned at her. “And I will say, is there such a thing as too cheesy?”
“Have you ever wakeboarded?” I asked Diego as I climbed onto Frank’s boat from the dock at the marina.
“No,” Diego replied.
“Water-skied?”
“Nope.”
“Tubed?” I asked, throwing my towel onto one of the chairs and turning to watch him hop into the boat. He joined me where I stood behind the driver’s seat.
“I have sat on a WaveRunner one time.”
My mouth dropped open. “You mean twice? Because you sat on one a couple weeks ago when you found our abandoned one in the cove.”
“That was the one time I was referring to.”
I took him by the shoulders and looked him in the eyes. With all the sincerity I could muster, I said, “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah yeah.”
“No, seriously. Your life has been so sad up until this point. What kind of friend have I been the last few months to not ask you these questions? To not have fixed this sooner!”
Alana added a six-pack of Diet Coke to the built-in ice chest under the bench seat along the back. “Kate is very passionate about the lake and everything that happens on it, in case you haven’t learned by now. She actually suggested the entire podcast be dedicated to the lake at the beginning of the year.”
Frank powered the boat on. “You did? I would’ve voted for that.”
Alana hugged Frank from behind. “Then there would’ve been two whole votes.”
“You wouldn’t have voted for that?” Frank asked.
“No way,” Alana said. “And since we’re the only three lake kids in the class, you both would’ve been out of luck. Good thing she submitted advice.”
“Because we all know how passionate I am about that,” I said.
“I need some advice,” Alana said.
I rolled my eyes. “Oh good. Just what I wanted to give out today.”
“How do we make today not awkward when all the people on this boat were either on the giving or receiving end of being loved or hated in the last several weeks?”
“No comment,” I said. “I’m off the clock.”
Frank pointed to the dock we still hadn’t pulled away from. “Max! Liza!” he called. “Do you want to join us?”
Max wasn’t big on boating like I was, but who could resist the pull of a really nice boat? Not my brother.
“My advice to your question,” Frank said to Alana, “is to invite people who weren’t involved in the hate or love fest.”
Max and Liza boarded the boat and Frank steered us away from the dock. I pulled the baseball cap I wore down lower on my head. I loved postseason Saturdays when it felt like we had the lake entirely to ourselves. Like it was ours for the taking.
Liza plopped down on the bench seat. “Hey, Alana. After this, maybe you can make us some of your famous chicken.”
“My competition-winning chicken?” Alana winked at Diego and he let out a grumble.
“Where did you learn to make that anyway?” he asked.
“My mom, who learned it from her mom.”
I wrapped my arms around Diego’s waist and whispered, “Maybe she can teach you.”
“Are you trying to say I have experts in my own backyard that I can learn from before becoming a world traveler?” he asked teasingly.
“What? I didn’t say that at all. I’m off the clock, remember?” I smirked and opened the middle section of the windshield to admit me into the bow of the boat. I sat on one of the forward-facing seats.
Diego joined me, taking the seat across the small aisle. “You look like you’re in your happy place.”
“You have no idea.”
“I think this can be my new happy place, too,” he said.
I was definitely happy. But I was learning that my happiness wasn’t necessarily tied to one particular place or event, either. With Diego, I had the feeling I could be happy anywhere.
We passed the five-mile-
per-hour buoy, and I heard Frank say, “Hold on!”
The boat picked up speed, and the air flowed over my face. I laughed, and Diego reached across the aisle for my hand. Now the air whipped against our hands and arms, seeping through the gaps between our fingers. Diego smiled over at me. I thought about what he had written on his locker door, how I hadn’t responded, when I knew in my heart how I felt.
“My love,” I said.
Book number ten. This was my number. The number of books I hoped I would be lucky enough to write and put out into the world. And here I am at my goal because of you readers. Thank you! Thank you for your support and encouragement. Thank you for reading my words and sending me fun notes and positive feedback and rooting for me. You are the best! I appreciate you all so much. I don’t think I could keep writing without you. And apparently I’m not stopping at ten books, since I have several more under contract. So I hope you’re ready to keep reading them!
I also want to thank my family. This isn’t the easiest of career choices. There are lots of ups and downs. Lots of late nights, or times where I’m deep in my own head staring at walls. And they still love me! Good thing, because unrequited love is the worst. So to my husband, Jared, and my kids, Hannah, Autumn, Abby, and Donavan, I love you. You are my everything.
Next, I’d like to thank my agent, Michelle Wolfson. I may be biased, but I think she is the best agent in the entire universe. You may be saying to yourself, but you haven’t traveled the entire universe. Regardless, I stand by this claim. Thanks for all you do, Michelle!
Thank you, Aimee Friedman, my amazing editor. You always have great ideas and suggestions and I know my books wouldn’t be as good without you. You are awesome. And thanks to the rest of the Scholastic team for all you do: Yaffa Jaskoll, Rachel Gluckstern, Monica Palenzuela, Charisse Meloto, Rachel Feld, Isa Caban, Olivia Valcarce, David Levithan, Lizette Serrano, Emily Heddleson, and the entire Sales team and School Channels team.
I have some of the best friends ever. Friends who read my books and give me advice. Friends who get me out of my head. Friends who love me even when I’m grumpy. Those people in my life are: Stephanie Ryan, Candi Kennington, Rachel Whiting, Jenn Johansson, Renee Collins, Natalie Whipple, Michelle Argyle, Bree Despain, Elizabeth Minnick, Brittney Swift, Mandy Hillman, Jamie Lawrence, Emily Freeman, Misti Hamel, and Claudia Wadsworth.
