“You could.” Zander is smiling when he pulls me toward him, his blue eyes locked on mine, his cropped blond hair shining in the sun. His arms wrap behind me as he walks me back, until my butt bumps into the car door. Zander’s lips are warm and soft, and so sweet when they meet mine. I sometimes still think about how surreal it is that I kiss him now. That after years of thinking about it—and okay, I’ll admit it, obsessing about it—I finally get to do it. I grope around for the handle behind me and slide away from Zander before our driveway PDA gets out of hand. I’m not making out with him in front of his house, not with all of the Peeping-Tom neighbors at their windows. I drop myself into the front seat and he does the same. As we back out of the driveway, I don’t even know where we’re going, but I don’t care. I’d go anywhere with Zander.

As we’re pulling out of his subdivision, Zander turns the music down. “Don’t be mad, but I can’t hang out tonight,” he says.

“But you just said—” What was that whole song and dance at his house for?

“I didn’t want you to be stuck with my family on a Friday night.”

“Thanks. I guess…” Instead I’m going to be stuck by myself on a Friday night, because there’s no chance my best friend, Emma, hasn’t already been scooped up by her new boyfriend, Mani. “Why can’t we hang out?”

“Peterson has a thing at his house.”

Tim Peterson is a senior on the baseball team—one of Zander’s teammates.

“And this is a no-girlfriends-allowed type of thing? It’s not just a party?” I say.

He doesn’t respond right away, and I wonder what exactly is happening over there that I can’t come along for. “It’s a party, sort of. But, like … okay, it’s a tournament.”

I’ve been to a lot of Zander’s tournaments, and none of them happen at anyone’s house.

“Peterson got the new Madden and the draft is tonight.” He looks at me like I must not understand. “You know, picking our teams.”

“I know what a draft is.” We’re pulling onto my road. “And that’s going to take all night?”

“We’ll probably just hang out after,” he says as we pull into my driveway. “I could maybe stop over after?”

When did it became such a chore for him to work me into his schedule? I think about telling Zander that it’s the second time he’s ditched me this week. But instead he kisses me, and tells me he loves me as I close the door behind me. And I don’t say anything, because he’s already said the one thing I’ve always wanted him to say.