CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Michael
Idon’t know how long I stand there after kissing her.
Everything else is noise. Distant chatter, a flicker of light from someone’s phone, the shuffle of chairs being dragged closer together.
None of it touches me. Not the blackout, not the weird prom party aftermath, not even the way someone’s calling me.
There’s just her.
Kate Cruz, preschool teacher, walking rom-com daydreamer, awesome baker, with her flushed cheeks and kiss-bitten lips and the faintest smile like she’s trying to hold the whole universe in her mouth.
I feel like I swallowed the sun.
“You gonna stand there all night or are you joining us, loverboy?” Bon’s voice cuts through the haze like a slap. She’s waving a flashlight in my direction.
I blink. Kate’s already drifted toward the others, her face politely neutral—except for the fact that she absolutely does not look at me. At all.
I clear my throat, trying to walk like my knees aren’t weak. “What’s happening?”
“Power’s still out, but it’s not the end of the world,” Bon says, gathering everyone out in the garden. “We’re improvising.”
“We’re playing games, she means,” Ryan says, and I look at him with confusion, so he adds, “Just go with it. She will not stop.”
“Like Monopoly?” I ask.
Joshua chuckles and places a hand on my shoulder. “Knowing my sister, it’ll be something that requires energy.”
“Exactly!” Bon exclaims. “We’re playing hide and seek!”
“Wait,” I say, laughing. “Are we actually doing this?”
“Yes,” Kate says from somewhere in the dark. “Because clearly we’re not mature enough for adult games.”
“I resent that,” Ry says, tripping over someone’s abandoned corsage. “How do we play?”
Emily claps twice. “Okay! Rules are simple. We hide in pairs, we seek in pairs. I assume Bon already put our names on pieces of paper.”
At that moment, Bon appears with a bowl with folded papers. We all gather around as she holds the bowl out. I reach in, unfolding my slip of paper—and immediately feel my face fall. “Richard.”
He sidles up beside me, peering at the paper to confirm. “Geez, man. You could try to look happy.”
“Sorry,” I say, offering a sheepish half-smile. “Didn’t mean to crush your spirit.”
Richard adjusts his glasses and sighs, overly dramatic. “It’s fine. I just thought we had something.”
Once everyone has their pair—Bon with Joshua, Emily with Kate (which stings), Haley with Ryan—we begin arguing over who should be it.
“Not it!” Bon shouts before anyone even opens their mouth.
“Not it!” Haley echoes immediately.
Richard raises his hand slowly. “I volunteer as tribute.”
I blink. “Wait, what?”
“I just feel like this group needs strong moral examples,” he says.
“You just don’t wanna hide out in the dark for longer than thirty seconds,” Haley says with a laugh.
Before I can even protest, someone’s already declared it official: Richard and I are it.
Everyone cheers and immediately breaks apart, dashing into the darkness like overgrown children. There’s laughter echoing through the garden, footsteps pounding, the soft rustle of leaves as someone clearly faceplants into a hedge.
But just before the last of them vanishes into the night, Haley turns on her heel. “Wait!”
Everyone freezes mid-scatter.
She points to the edge of the lawn. “Boundaries are from this hall to the treehouse. Nobody goes past the fence. And Kate is banned from the chicken coop.”
“That was ONE TIME,” Kate shouts indignantly.
“What happened at the chicken coop?” I ask, curious about anything that has to do with Kate.
“Nothing,” she says.
Haley smirks. “She fell over the fence and injured a chick, then she tried to nurse it back to health but it died, so we all had a funeral and everything. She was so attached to it, she already—”
“Named it?” I ask, because I’m starting to realize that with Kate, of course she did.
“Yeah,” Haley says. “Bartholomew. He had a cardboard headstone and everything.”
“Rest in peace, little Bart,” Bon adds solemnly.
The group dissolves into laughter, and I do too.
I’ve been learning all these little pieces of Kate Cruz like I’m being handed clues.
Aside from the obvious fact that she’s good with children and amazing at baking, she also names inanimate objects, takes a puff when she’s stressed out, and she gives funerals to chickens.
The kiss is still on my lips, faint and electric like a ghost of something I shouldn’t be thinking about. And yet I can’t stop. And weirdly, it feels good.
Richard and I linger on the porch steps, letting the others scatter into the night like fireflies. He rocks back on his heels, watching the shadows stretch across the lawn.
“Are you guys always like this?” I ask.
“Embarrassing? Childish? Loud?” He grins. “Yeah, pretty much. Only when we’re around each other, though. It’s like… it reverts us to who we were when we first met.”
“Must be nice,” I say absentmindedly. “Being friends with these people all your life.”
“I guess,” Richard says, but his tone shifts. “But then that’s all they’ll ever see you as. Their friend.”
The pause between us stretches long enough to say what he doesn’t.
I know it’s about Haley. I’m not blind, I see the way he looks at her. I don’t know what’s going on with them, but from how I see it, he likes her.
And like the true bro that I am, I don’t press. It makes me wonder what the others think when they look at Kate and me. If anyone else notices the way I look at her.
“So, you kissed Kate,” he says, and I freeze.
My stomach twists. “What?”
Richard shrugs like it’s no big deal. “I thought I saw it. Wasn’t wearing my glasses, so maybe I imagined it. But judging by your face… I didn’t, huh?”
I drag a hand down my face. “Dude.”
“Relax, man. It’s not like you committed a crime.”
It sure feels like I might’ve. Like I stole something fragile. Kate is… Kate. Sweet and careful and perpetually underestimated. She’s like everyone’s little sister.
“Sorry,” I mutter. I don’t even know who I’m apologizing to.
Richard squints at me. “Why are you sorry? She kissed you back, right?” I nod. “There you have it,” he adds.
And then he says, more thoughtfully this time, “She’s… never kissed anyone before. She always bragged about waiting.”
I knew that. I knew that I was her first kiss. “For the right moment?” I ask to confirm.
“No,” he says. “For the right kind of love, she says.” He shakes his head with a chuckle. “She’s always been one of those hopeless romantics.” And then he mutters under his breath, “Unlike her heathen sister.”
I laugh. “You really like her heathen sister, don’t you?”
“Unfortunately,” he replies. “Anyway, you ready?”
I nod, and we start walking. The grass is damp under our shoes, the night humid with the threat of rain that never came.
Lights are still out. Everything is blanketed in soft darkness, broken only by the occasional flashlight beam or glow from someone’s phone screen.
Manang Linda and the others are still in the garden, finishing off the buffet.
They don’t even bat an eye to adults running around. It’s like it’s normal around here.
“I say we skip the obvious spots,” Richard mutters. “They’ll expect us to check the treehouse first. Haley always hides there.”
“Where would Katie hide?” I ask before I can stop myself.
Richard doesn’t answer right away, but he smirks. When we pass the chicken coop, he says, “She’s with Emily, right? That makes things trickier. Emily’s more strategic with these things. Always one step ahead.”
“And Kate’s… not?”
“No, she’s the kind to hide in a very easy spot so the seeker will feel better about themselves.”
I don’t respond. I’m thinking of Kate’s laugh echoing in the garden earlier, the soft weight of her hand in mine, the way her lips tasted like lemon soda and something sweeter underneath. I’m thinking about how careful she was, how careful I was.
We pass the treehouse, just in case, but it’s empty.
“Told you,” Richard says, ducking behind a hedge that leads toward the far side of the property. “We’ll loop around toward the old toolshed. Haley used to hide behind it when she was mad at Bon.”
“How often was that?”
“Every other weekend,” he says, then pauses. “Those two were dramatic teens.”
We keep moving, weaving between trees and skirting the fences around houses. I catch glimpses of movement—shadows ducking behind bushes, a whisper of fabric near the back patio—but no Kate. I know I should find the others, but Richard can handle that.
Eventually, we split up—unspoken agreement. Richard heads toward the patio. I follow the path toward the far side of the property, near the old mango tree that leans over the wooden bench.
And that’s where I see them.
Two figures crouched behind the mango tree, almost entirely swallowed by the dark.
“Stop squirming, you’re gonna give us away.”
“I have a cramp,” Kate whispers back, equally sharp.
“You’re twenty-seven. You don’t get cramps from crouching for five minutes.”
“Tell that to my thighs.”
I hold in a laugh and step quietly closer, until I’m just behind the tree trunk. I tap the tree gently.
Kate yelps and falls over sideways. “Oh my god—!” She almost stumbles until I catch her on her waist, and she stares at me in shock, maybe not expecting it to be me. Her cheeks instantly heat up again.
Emily sighs. “Adorable,” she says. She doesn’t hover, just dusts the dirt off her dress and continues to walk forward. “Consider me tagged,” she says as she walks away.
Kate immediately scrambles so she’s standing, but now she’s barefoot, holding her heels. “You got me!” She chuckles nervously. She smiles, but it’s tight. Nervous. She looks like she’s waiting for something. “You gonna tag me or what?” she asks, eyebrows raised like she’s daring me.
I grin. Then I lean forward, as Kate stumbles backward, hitting the trunk of the tree. She’s smiling as she looks at my lips, and I instinctively put them on hers. Just quick. “There,” I say. “You’re it.”