“You look beautiful,” Levi says when he picks me up the Friday night after the SATs in his new Prius, and I blush. We do not usually say things like this to each other. Our move from good friends to something else has been slow and steady at school, and I wish we could stay like this, on the cusp. Luxuriate in the potential before I inevitably screw it up or he realizes that this was all a mistake.

That I’m a mistake.

Every night this week, we’ve texted late into the night, and twice I’ve fallen asleep holding my phone and woken with a circle on my cheek from my PopSocket. I liked the indentation, like physical proof I’ve been struck by Cupid’s arrow.

My mom helped me get dressed tonight. She wanted me to wear her bandage dress, which is red and so tight I’d have to choose between sitting and breathing. What if we’re going some place casual like In-N-Out? I’d be forced to order a Double-Double in something once worn to the Emmys. I opted instead for my favorite ripped jeans and a peasant blouse—a step up from school, a step down from trying-too-hard.

Levi calling me beautiful feels like a stretch—at least in the ways in which my mom is synonymous with the word—but I feel…attractive under his gaze. I feel seen. Maybe like with the word smart, I can find a more expansive view of the word beautiful so that it can somehow include me too.

“Thanks,” I say, and of course I ruin the moment by playfully punching his shoulder despite the fact that this is not a locker room and we are not teammates. Still, I don’t know how to take the compliment, how to fold it up like the notes that used to get passed around in sixth grade—Do you like me? Y or N—and keep it in my pocket like a good-luck charm. I should have stepped on my tippy-toes and kissed him on the cheek. I should have grabbed his hand. I should have smiled back.

He’s wearing a blue cashmere sweater and khaki pants, and I realize that in the five years we’ve known each other, I’ve mostly seen him in jeans or athletic shorts. He’s stepped things up a notch too. He smells like that expensive candle my mom likes to burn in our living room, an almond woodsmoke, and it makes me want to lick it right off his neck.

Levi Haas.

Once we are settled in the car, Levi puts on music, a guy and a guitar, acoustic and relaxed, and I wish Shola could telepathically tell me who’s playing since music is one more thing she knows and cares more about than I do. I worry this is one more test in my life that I will not pass.