Twenty-Three
T he drive is longer than I anticipated it would be. On the highway, Krystal takes the I-10 ramp to the north side of town. A song from her Spotify playlist plays softly from the speakers. I recognize the melody from the time I hurt myself falling off the BCycle.
“What are you doing?” she asks when I grab her phone from the console, but she doesn’t protest when I unlock the screen with her face when she turns her head toward me.
“Snooping through your music,” I answer, putting her phone down after following her Spotify account from my phone. “You have some bangers.”
“Thanks.” Her eyes train on me for a moment, glittering black pools I could drown in. She places a hand on my thigh, and my whole body warms at her touch.
I close my eyes and let the music and the warmth of her hand wash over me. I’m hoarding every memory I have of her so I can pull them out when I have need of them. When all this is over. When Julian moves out and Marcela and Theo get married and I have no idea what my life will look like after the scavenger hunt. The gentle timbre of her voice, the dark curls falling over her shoulders, the tattoos swirling over her skin, her touch radiating heat at every point of contact.
I’m not sure if I can trust her promises yet. Not when I’m already bottling up every scrap of her I can get my hands on. It’s too easy to envision an ending before we’ve really begun.
A while later, she takes the exit for the UTSA campus and crosses the intersection.
“Where are we going?” I already know this question is no use (she ignored me the last two times I asked), but this time she surprises me by flashing a brilliant smile.
“We’re almost there.”
We drive up a steep hill until we’re cloaked on both sides by trees. If this is part of campus, it’s not one I recognize. Finally, she comes to a stop when we reach a small parking lot at the very top of the hill. She turns off the ignition and sends another giddy smile my way.
She unbuckles her seat belt, and I do the same. I glance around, hoping for some clue, but alas. Despite being parked on top of a particularly steep hill, there’s nothing of note at the bottom but more trees, overgrown grass, and a paved road I can only assume leads to campus.
“Over here,” Krystal calls from the back of her car, where she’s sorting through the layers of blankets in her trunk. She tosses a pillow at me before climbing inside. I catch it with a surprised oof , holding it to my stomach.
“I’m confused,” I tell her. “Where—or what —is this view supposed to be?”
“You’ll understand in a second.” She pats the space beside her that’s covered in a thick layer of blankets. “Come here and look up. It’s starting soon.”
“What’s starting soon?”
She doesn’t answer, only pats the blanket harder. I heave a sigh before climbing in beside her. The absurd thought that this is almost like camping comes to mind.
Or a date . If I’m being honest, this whole night has felt like a date. The kind of first date that feels like the hundredth.
The best kind of first date.
Not that I would know. Not from any previous experience anyway. But she’s setting a pretty high bar if this is meant to be a non-date.
I glance up at the near-black sky, and then back at her. “Well?”
“You comfy?” she asks instead, adjusting the pillows at my back and placing yet another blanket over my lap. They just keep appearing, and I have no idea where they’re coming from. “Want any snacks?”
I gape at her. “You have snacks back here?”
“Oh yeah.” She reaches behind her for a storage organizer I hadn’t noticed earlier. “I have Cheez-Its, Goldfish crackers, hot Cheetos—”
A loud popping sound startles me out of my wits. The car shakes slightly under us from the movement. I place a hand over my chest, heart racing beneath my palm.
“Oh! They started early!” She shoves the box away and nudges me with an elbow. “Look up!”
I already am. A blast of red fireworks lights the sky, so close I can fool myself into believing I’m able to reach out and touch them. Another blast, this time white and green. A shower of colored sparks directly above our heads.
“Wow,” I breathe. “Wait, where are the fireworks coming from?”
“Six Flags.” She shrugs, but her eyes are twinkling. “I haven’t been here since they opened the park back up for the season. You reminded me when you asked about my favorite view in the city. Well”—she glances back up at the sky as another round flies into the air, this time pink and purple—“here it is.”
“This is incredible,” I tell her, awestruck.
“I know.” She smiles, showing her teeth. “There are probably a number of good spots around here to watch them from, but this one’s my favorite. The parking lot’s almost always deserted.”
“I didn’t know you could see them so clearly from here.”
“Isaac had a night class here once. He didn’t have a car at the time, so I used to pick him up when the shuttles stopped running. That’s how I found out about the fireworks. I came back one night when he didn’t have class and drove around until I found this spot. Then I parked, hopped onto the hood of my car, and just… watched the firework display.”
“Wow.” The sky is full at this point, sparks raining down as new shapes replace them. “So you found yourself a secluded, comfortable spot to watch the fireworks show for free. And with snacks.” I shake my head at her, but I’m smiling far too widely. “You little rebel.”
“This is like the upgraded version of sneaking outside food into a movie theater.” She laughs. “My mom would be proud. Which is exactly why she can never know this spot exists.”
A laugh bursts out of me. “This would make a great first date spot, actually. Especially when the nights get cooler, and you can cuddle up with your absurd amount of blankets.” I use one to cover my shoulders. “Who else have you taken here?”
She goes quiet for a moment. Then, without looking at me, she says, “You’re the first, actually.”
“What?”
“You’re on hallowed ground, Angel,” she says lightly, but her eyes are burning with an intensity that clogs my throat. “I don’t show this place to just anyone. It’s too… personal.”
Something charged fills the air when she looks at me now, and I’m overcome with an emotion I can’t name. It’s a lot like that moment in her bed, lying side by side, both of us breathing hard. The one at the top of the Ferris wheel, the dying sun setting her hair on fire and her calling me an angel with no amount of teasing whatsoever. Now, beneath a shower of sparks, hidden away in a place she hasn’t shown a single soul but me.
“But you don’t mind sharing it with me?”
She doesn’t answer the question, but she doesn’t look away from me either. This is somehow even more romantic than the top of the Ferris wheel at sunset, maybe because of how special this place is to her. If I tip my face forward, would we pick up where we left off?
For the second time tonight, I wonder what it would feel like. The brush of her lips against mine, the sweep of her tongue, the graze of her teeth. My pulse races at the possibilities. My arms are shaking, jittery from nerves, but it’s not an altogether bad feeling. I hardly know what I’m doing when I start to lean toward her, our faces a mere inch apart, and then—
“I’ve decided I’m not going to kiss you,” she says, almost reluctantly. It’s the last thing I expect her to say when our faces are this close together. If there was ever a time to kiss someone, it’d be now, wouldn’t it?
“What?” I blink at her. “Why not?”
“This is your first kiss, Angela. I can’t be the one to take it from you,” she explains. “Your first kiss should be yours to give freely. If you decide to give it to me, I’m honored to have that moment with you. If not, that’s okay too. It’s your choice. That was the whole purpose behind the scavenger hunt, wasn’t it?”
My heart feels so full that she understands what the scavenger hunt means to me. Even so, part of me can’t help but resent myself for coming up with the scavenger hunt idea in the first place. But it was my choice to take charge of my dating life, to discover what possibilities were out there for me. Nothing is going according to plan, but one thing is clear: until I decide what is happening with the scavenger hunt, I can’t kiss Krystal. No matter how much I may want to.
“I really hate how right you are.” I lean away from her until my back hits something solid. Then I stifle a groan. “You would’ve kissed me when we were on the Ferris wheel.”
“You’re right. I would have.” She nods, sighing softly. “But I’m glad I didn’t. It gave me the chance to really think about where you are in all of this. What you need from me.” She pauses a moment, choosing her words. “You asked for my help in setting up the scavenger hunt. No matter what happens or how I might feel about you, I’m going to ensure everything goes according to plan. Even if that means you end up with someone else at the end of it.”
Even though I know she’s right, there’s still one detail I can’t get past.
“How you might feel about me,” I repeat, and she glances away. “How do you feel about me, Krystal?”
Is that too direct a question to ask? She still won’t look at me, even though I can’t take my eyes off her. But I’m not letting her off the hook, even if it’s the polite thing to do. Even if ultimately we want different things.
“How do you feel about Leti?” Her tone is even, not throwing the words at me like a jab I’m not expecting, even if that’s ultimately how they land. “You know what? Don’t answer that. It’s not fair of me to ask, and I probably don’t deserve to know anyway.”
“Everything is confusing,” I tell her. “I just… I wish things were different. Nothing is clear to me anymore.”
“Well, at least we both can agree on that.” She smiles sadly. “I don’t want to hurt you. I can’t. Not you, Angela.”
“Because you think you’re not capable of love.”
“It’s not about what I think.” She sounds frustrated. “It’s what I know.”
I wish she could see what I see. How her friends and family manipulated the situation, made her out to be the villain for daring to want more than the life she had with Isaac. To want someone who really saw her.
I see you , I wish I could say. Right now, I see you running.
“You’re capable of anything you want,” I say instead. “And you can talk to me, you know. I’m not him. I’m not the friends and family who took his side over yours. I wish you felt like you could talk to me without shutting down.”
“This is hard for me.” She glances down at her hands. “If it helps, I’ve told you more than I’ve told most people.”
Knowing how isolated she is from the people who were supposed to care about her, I believe that. Maybe I’m the only one who gave her a chance to explain her side without judging or making her out to be a villain.
“But you’re still holding back. Because you think if we get any closer, you’ll hurt me like you hurt him.”
“Even if I was capable of love, true love, the kind of love you deserve from someone better than me”—her eyes burn through me—“I still come with a lot of baggage. We’re in two completely different places. Your first romantic relationship shouldn’t destroy you. I wouldn’t mean to, but I would.”
“I don’t believe that.”
She softens, a sigh deflating her shoulders.
I let out a long sigh too. “You’re right about the scavenger hunt. It does mean a lot to me. But you mean a lot to me too.” I grab her hand. When she doesn’t move away, I intertwine our fingers. Her skin is warm and smooth, and her touch eases something in me the way her words didn’t.
“Life is long, you know,” she says. “Who knows? Maybe a few years down the line, we’ll be ready for each other. You’ll have experienced all your firsts, and I’ll be healed enough to believe in love again.”
“Or someone else will destroy me for the possibility of love, and we’ll be back to square one,” I joke as she gives me a quelling look. “Kidding. Kind of.”
“I’m not ready for you yet,” she says in a whisper I almost don’t catch. “I wish I was, Angela. Believe me. But… I’m not there yet.”
She rests her forehead against mine. We remain like this for a moment, hands touching, breathing each other in, staring at each other. The sky is awash with bursting, brilliant light all around us. And, for a moment, it’s almost enough.