The bleachers are full by the time the three of us roll in, but the nice thing about being that ideal combination of loved and feared is seats always seem to appear when you need them. We squish in a row toward the front of the center section, and my eyes immediately land on Chase, tall and lean in his navy-and-white uniform, with biceps so beautifully carved I want to lick them.

I’ve always loved watching Chase play—the way his muscles ripple when he pulls back his arm for a throw, the way his footwork looks like a manly dance … I know I’m biased, but he’s genuinely good, good enough to play in college, which is his plan. (He also plans to major in sociology, though he’d be interested in sports medicine if he were better at science. Yes, I know a lot about Chase Harding’s aspirations.)

Coach Montgomery calls a time-out and I use the opportunity to scan the crowd to see who else has shown up. I get a smile and wave from my lab partner, Jamie Nguyen, who’s sitting with her—what do you call it when someone’s neither a girlfriend nor boyfriend? Non-binary-friend?—Taylor, a cute junior with a mop of lavender curls, and I recognize a bunch of other random classmates. I don’t see Jasmine.

That’s no surprise. She’s home prepping for her party. A party that could be ten people or a thousand, for all I know. She never actually confirmed I made the cut. But I’ll be there, and my stomach is bubbling just thinking about it, wondering if her room is hiding memories similar to the ones I keep scrapbooked in mine. Is there a strip of pictures of us in her mirror? Or has everything faded away for her, the way it seemed to when we talked by her car?

I’m snapped out of my thoughts by the crowd erupting, and I jump to my feet along with everyone else, wondering if Chase ran in a touchdown.

At what point did I take my eyes off him, anyway?

“Harding is killing it tonight,” a guy in front of me says to another, and my heart bursts with totally misplaced pride. For the rest of the half, I stay glued to every pass, every kick, every play. Harding is killing it tonight, and by the time the buzzer sounds at halftime, my heart is thumping in that old familiar way.

“I can smell the hormones dripping off you,” Shannon says as she reaches into her purse and pulls out a pack of gum. She takes a piece and passes it down the line of us. “God, you still want him so bad.”