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“What was the other school?”
“Ithaca College. It’s in upstate New York. And neither of them was my first choice, by any stretch. I wasn’t even going to apply to Stanwich, but—” I stopped before I said something I didn’t want to go into. I didn’t want to explain why I was getting a nearly free ride, or the price I would have to pay for it. I hugged my knees, remembering a second too late that they were still wet. “Anyway. My dad said the choice was mine—but it’s like it wasn’t even a choice, you know? Because Ithaca would have just meant a ton of loans, and Stanwich was basically free. And it wasn’t like I even really wanted to go to Ithaca in the first place, so…”
“I know what you mean. It—the same thing kind of happened to me.”
“It did? But I thought—that you wanted to go to Michigan. To be the next… Evan Hansen.”
“Evan Hansen is the character in the musical, not the composer. Nice reference, though.”
“It’s really all I have. I’m out now.”
Russell’s smile faded, little by little, and he took a breath. “I got rejected from USC’s musical theater program. And from Temple’s. And from Tisch. The musical I submitted as my sample—it just wasn’t ready. And my dad told me that. And of course I should have listened to him—he would know, after all. And while Michigan is great, I just…” He shook his head. “It didn’t turn out the way I was hoping.”
I nodded as I looked at him, feeling somehow lighter, knowing we had this in common too. “I know how you feel. It’s why I’m not looking forward to tomorrow.”
“All because of some brisket.”
“Right? Like if I’d ordered a burger or something, I might have ended up going to a totally different college. So you’re right. You never know those little choices that are actually going to make the biggest difference.”
“Wouldn’t it be great if you could? If, like, you could get an alert on your phone—‘Turn left ahead.’ ‘Don’t eat that brisket.’ ‘Go talk to the cute girl in the bus station.’ ”
I smiled. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said simply. “As soon as I saw you, I was only pretending to read. I was just staring at the same page.”
“It’s a good thing you’d read the book before.”
Russell smiled but didn’t look away from me. “When that guy told me you were looking for me, it felt like the moment I’d been waiting for.” He moved a touch closer to me and hooked his ankle around mine, entwining our feet. “It was like something out of a story.”
I blinked at him, surprised but thrilled that he thought this too. “Like Theseus’s Sailboat.”
“Yes! Is that stupid?”
“No, I thought the same thing. It’s like that, but… better. Because it’s actually real. And… this can happen.” I reached out for his hand on the concrete, getting a little zingy jolt the second I touched his skin.
I knew that when people had been together for a while, this wasn’t a big deal at all. I’d seen the way that Didi would take the hand of whatever girl she was dating. I understood that eventually, things just became familiar and easier. But right now, in the newness of whatever this was, it felt like there were sparks and electricity every time I got close to him.
Russell picked up my hand and kissed it, looking at me over our entwined fingers. “Hi.”
The lights around and inside the pool suddenly snapped off all at once, like they’d been on a timer. Now the only light was coming from the floodlights in the parking lot, the faint neon glow of the cowboy hat, and the occasional lighted window in the rooms above us.
I reached my other hand out and touched his face, cupping his cheek. He leaned his head into my hand, giving me the weight of it for just a moment. I traced my fingers over the planes of his face, like I was trying to memorize it. I ran my thumb over his lips and he kissed it. It was all more than I could take, and I leaned in and kissed him.
And it was as if we’d both been waiting for the same moment, the same downbeat of the music, because we were kissing like we’d never stopped. It was just like the football field again, but more comfortable now—this was just what we did. Less finding our rhythm, more settling back into it.
His arms were around me, and he was running his fingers under the hem of my tank top, touching my bare skin, making me shiver and gasp against his mouth as his hands spanned my waist and his thumbs traced circles on my stomach.
But after a while—I had no idea how much time had passed—I became aware that as nice as this was, sitting on a concrete pool deck was really not the most comfortable thing, even if you’re really enjoying all the other aspects of the experience.
And Russell must have been feeling the same way, because when we took a break to catch our breath, he stood up, leaving wet footprints on the concrete. He pulled me to my feet, and then into his arms, pressing me close. We just stood there for a moment and I wrapped my arms around his waist, still a little amazed that I got to do this. “Maybe,” he said, “we should…” Then he looked around and frowned.
I laughed at his expression, and Russell laughed too, the sound shattering the stillness of the night. A light flicked on in a room two floors above us. I looked up at it, worried for a second, but then dismissed it. Probably someone just wanted to read or something; it had nothing to do with us.
“Well,” I said, gesturing to what was in front of us. “We could always… go swimming?”
He leaned back a little bit, like he wanted to see me better, and smiled. “We could do that.” He slipped a hand up under my tank top again, letting his hand rest there, just above my hip bone. “I don’t have a bathing suit, though.”
“Me neither,” I said, trying to ignore that the skin under his hand suddenly felt like it was on fire, and it was currently all I could think about. “I actually thought about packing one, but…” I took a big breath. How was it me who was proposing this? But all at once, it just seemed like the only thing to do. “I guess we don’t really… need them?”
