This is stupid. This is really, really stupid. I wipe my palms on my sweats and check the time on my phone again. Two minutes. You have two minutes to come up with an entirely different reason why you asked him to meet you in the middle of nowhere.

I don’t even realize I’m pacing until a particularly large twig snaps beneath my feet. The fact that I’m nervous is a sign I shouldn’t be doing this, right? I should not be doing this. I finally have an almost friend on the team and I am going to ruin it, and for what? I don’t even know if she wants this.

But you can’t know if you don’t ask for real, and you can’t ask for real until you do this.

But you sort of asked. And you sort of know.

I should leave.

But I don’t.

When Miguel finally arrives, he’s three minutes late, and I have worn every twig in a six-foot radius down to splinters. “You’re mixing up your secret rendezvous buddies,” he says dryly as he picks his way over to me in the woods of the nature preserve about a mile away from school. I discovered it on a run, and the path around it has become my favorite route ever since, especially when I need to think. I’ve never even taken Amber here, though I’ve thought about it. I hate having anyone intrude on it, but I certainly wasn’t gonna ask Miguel Santiago to climb through my window. “You want the one with boobs.”

And how. “Funny, Santiago. But yes, as you may have guessed, this is about the buddy with the boobs.”

“What did Loud do now?”

“She didn’t do anything.” I take a deep breath, hoping this isn’t the ask that fucks up a friendship I don’t even have yet. “I just—look, I was thinking of asking her to homecoming, but, uh, obviously she already has a date. And I know y’all have your arrangement and you don’t wanna be out, but I’d have to kick my own ass if I didn’t at least ask if there’s something we can do here.”

The look on his face is weird and unreadable but doesn’t look like anger. “Have you talked to Amber about this?”