This year, though … this year I have a date. The date. Chase hasn’t officially asked me yet, but we’d had a good time the night before, and he’d asked me out again for the next weekend. He wouldn’t ask me out again and not ask me to the second biggest dance of the year that was only a month from now, would he?

I lift my face to the sun, just in case.

“Some of us don’t pull off every single color,” says Gia with a sniff, as if I should somehow feel bad that green doesn’t make me look sick the way it does to her, and white looks good as long as I’ve gotten some sun, the way it never would on Shannon. “We have to do some advance planning.”

“Speaking of advance planning,” says Shannon, “has Chase asked you yet? You were very stingy on date details last night.”

She’s referring to the group text that went on for half an hour after I got home, and she’s full of crap because I told them everything from how much of the movie we spent making out (at least half) to what snacks we got (popcorn with extra butter and Milk Duds—he’s a man of taste) to his exact wording when he asked me out for the next weekend (“I had a great time tonight—do you maybe wanna hang out again after the game next Friday?”) But she’s right that I didn’t say anything about Homecoming, because it never came up.

Maybe it’s more of a third date conversation?

“I can’t believe you went on a date with Chase Harding and you’re not talking about it nonstop.” Kiki sends a delicate splash in my direction. “Who even are you? This is like the only thing you’ve wanted for six years.”

Is it? God, that’s sad. If you ask me what I want now, it’s so many things—to learn how to sail, to show everyone my newfound poker skills, to spend a Sunday taking pictures at the botanical garden, to make perfect latte art, to meet Clementine Walker, to get my bookselling job back, to maybe even finish writing that romance novel someday.