Asha grinned and shimmied at me before disappearing down the hall. A minute later, the water pipes groaned when she turned on the shower. While I waited for her to return, I changed out of my pajamas—a Harry Potter T-shirt that readMy Patronus Is Pizzaand a pair of baggy flannel pants that had seen better days—and attempted to make my bed. As I was arranging my pillows, Big Blue, my stuffed brachiosaur that I’d had since I was little, fell on the floor. Lord Pugton shot out from the dark space below the bed, snatched Big Blue between his slobbery jaws, and escaped before I could save my favorite stuffed animal.
“Get back here, you little shit!” I dropped to my knees and crouched over so I could peer under the bed. Two reflective eyes stared back at me. Even when I lay down on my stomach and stretched out my arm, Asha’s dog was parked an inch beyond my fingertips. “If you don’t come out right now,” I warned him, “I’m going to kill you. Seriously. I’ll make an ugly little hat from your pelt and everything.”
“Who are you talking to?”
I straightened up quickly, smacking my head on the bed frame inthe process. Asha was standing in the doorway wrapped in a towel, her long, dark hair dripping down her back.
“To that demon you call a dog.” I rubbed the lump already forming on the top of my skull. “He stole Big Blue.”
She laughed and walked over to my dresser. The bottom drawer was hers, and she rifled through it before pulling out athletic shorts and a fresh T-shirt. “He’s doing you a favor then,” she said, but after tugging on her clothes, she called Lord Pugton out from his lair and rescued Big Blue from the clutches of evil. Blue’s long neck was soggy where it had been chewed, but it was nothing a trip to the laundry room couldn’t fix.
“So,” Asha said, plopping down on the end of my bed. Her fingers wrestled her thick hair into a braid. “You totally left me hanging last night.”
“I did?”
“Um, hello? You can’t send me a vague, yet equally intriguing text and never respond. That’s cruel.”
“You messaged me back? I don’t think I got anything.” In fact, I remembered staring at my ceiling unable to fall asleep, waiting for Asha to respond. I’d needed to tell someone, to unload the excitement that had built inside my chest, but I never heard the telltale buzz of an incoming text.
Stretching out across my mattress, I reached for my phone on the nightstand. “Crap,” I said when the screen refused to light up. “It’s dead. I must’ve forgotten to plug it in. Sorry, Asha.”
“It’s fine. Just tell me what happened. Otherwise, I’m going to die. My gravestone is going to read, ‘The SuspenseActuallyKilled Her.’”
“Okay, okay! So after you went to get us drinks…”
I told her everything. From Alec spilling his soda on me to listening to music in the garden. Everything, that was, except for Alec’s real name. I saved that bit for my grand finale.
“He offered you a ride home?” she asked when she thought I was finished filling her in. My best friend was a hopeless romantic, and she heaved a long sigh, just like she did every time we finished watchingThe Notebook. “God, that’s the cutest.”
“That’s not even the best part.”
“There’s more?” The dreamy look in her eyes cleared, and she sat up straighter. “Don’t tell me! Aaron has a twin brother I can date, doesn’t he?”
“Nope,” I said slowly, enjoying Asha squirming in anticipation. “Better.”
“What’s better thantwocute boys?”
I leaned in and paused. Exciting thingsalwayshappened to Asha. She was some kind of magnet for luck, like the time she accidentally dialed a radio station during the middle of a contest and won a weekend getaway to New York City. Or there was the time the van ran out of gas, and who came along to give her a lift to the nearest station? Eddie Marks, soccer captain extraordinaire and man of my dreams. But this experience was all mine, and I was going to savor the moment.
“Come on, spill!” she begged, bouncing up and down on my mattress so that she nearly fell off.
I laughed. “All right, all right!” I said.
And then I told her the truth, Alec’s name gushing from my lips in an excited whisper.
Asha’s eyebrows furrowed into a V. “Aaron knows Alec Williams? Like from the Heartbreakers?”
“No, no,” I said, shaking my head. “AaronisAlec Williams.”
***
At first, Asha didn’t believe me. It took more than five minutes to convince her that Aaron No-Last-Name was a bona fide member of the Heartbreakers, and when she finally accepted my story as truth, she was upset I didn’t get a picture of the two of us. Apparently I needed proof. As if I’d lie about something this monumental.
“I don’t understand why you didn’t ask for one,” she whined.
“Because,” I responded, chewing on my fingernail. I was struggling to explain myself. “That would have ruined everything.”
“But it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Asha stared at me as if I’d lost it, and maybe I had…
