“Seconded.” Carter coughed through a swig of juice.

Like me, Austin lived with both his parents. Mr. and Mrs. Banks were really nice, but Austin was the youngest of four boys, and with five years between him and his next brother, as his parents described to the entire neighborhood, he was “unplanned.”

“I need some air.”

“Take as long as you need,” said Carter. We were still getting used to the whole feelings thing. As weird as it was to really talk to them about my dad, some of the stress had definitely disappeared.

I strolled to Eliza’s room. The Wicked soundtrack blasted on her speaker system. Her open door revealed her sitting at a steel, paint-splattered drawing table with charcoal in her hands. Maybe I was just using her as a distraction. But a distraction had never made my knees so wobbly.

“Yo.”

“Hey, Nick. I hoped you’d make it down here.”

Eliza’s room was the same size as Carter’s, but instead of filling it with movies and video game consoles, it had antique furniture with a lot of artwork: a desk with fancy drawers, a bed that matched her orange walls and held about a million stuffed bird-animals, and the drawing table. The latter wasn’t supposed to be splattered in paint, though. That was the result of one of my and Carter’s pranks gone awry—which was why we’d never pranked her art stuff ever again.

Sitting in the swivel chair at her desk, I leaned back and swiveled in fast circles.

“What are you making?”

“You’ll see . . .” She frowned at the printer paper–sized drawing.

“Can’t wait.” My shoes tapped to the music while I rapped my finger against the chair. Eliza’s bright orange walls were covered in her own artwork—mostly charcoal drawings with a few splashes of color, and abstract watercolor paintings.

“Finished.” Eliza’s sweatpants brushed against my soccer shorts as she came to sit sideways on my lap. “What do you think?”

If she’d been any other girl, I would’ve taken that moment to run for the hills. And given how much hill-sprinting practice I did, I could’ve been out of the house and two towns over in minutes.

Because it was her, my voice went weak, the drawing shaking in my hands. Each line she’d drawn, just for me, mesmerized my eyes. My arm wove around her back.

I really hope Carter and Austin are still playing video games.

Etched in black and white were a boy and girl. They stood on a dark roof that overlooked a grass soccer field. Dressed formally, they were masked by shadows from a cloud-covered moon. Still, the stars lit up the field and the girl’s long dress.

Wow.

“Do you like it?”

“You sure your name’s not Vincent?”

“I’ll have to check my birth certificate.”

A new feeling decided to enter my arsenal of emotions. It flashed through my fingers, swelled in my legs, and even made my jaw feel weak. I yearned to take her all in: the fact that I sat beneath the sweetest girl.