The Rival

Chapter Twelve

We make it approximately fifty feet out of the Alphabet Party when Seb slows his pace and turns to me with wide eyes. “Do you smell—”

“Pancakes,” I murmur, drawn over to the alley off Main Street like the smell of sizzling butter is my brain’s one specific siren call.

Sure enough, despite the late hour, the lights are all on at Pancake It or Leave It. We reach the outside of the half-open door, where the smell of pancake is wafting out into the street, but neither of us takes another step.

“I don’t want to die,” I tell Seb plainly.

He speaks for us both when he says, “But.”

“But,” I acknowledge. “I also will die if I don’t have that pancake.”

Seb nods grimly in agreement. “Here lies Seb and Sadie. They died as they lived: too lazy to cook their own damn pancakes.”

“Get inside, you melodramatic brats.”

Betty kicks the door the rest of the way open for us. We glance at each other like we both just watched a wardrobe open up to Narnia, then step inside, bracing ourselves. But there’s no Betty to be seen. Just a cheerful blond woman with ombre Barbie-pink tips, dangly sun-shaped earrings, and a color-block outfit so bright that it probably gives us both more vitamin D than a year’s worth of sunshine.

“Hi,” says the woman, happily spearing herself some pancake. “I’m Daisy.”

“We’re Seb and Sadie,” I say, because Seb has noticed the small mountain of pancakes next to Daisy and appears to have lost all power of speech.

She looks between us. “Oh, I know you. ‘Nick Jr. and Netflix fed scripts to a bot and it wrote a cursed rom-com, and made Pancake It or Leave It one of the sets.’ That’s about what you said, right, honey?”

“This is my wife,” says Betty, who has emerged from behind the grill. She leans down to press a quick kiss to Daisy’s temple. “And yes, except you left out the part where I’m looking into suing them for scaring off my customers by arguing about the best font to draft in.”

Betty sets two empty plates not on our usual table but on the one Daisy’s eating from, and tilts her head at us to indicate they’re ours. “Hit me with your font opinions,” Daisy demands as we sit down.

“Seb’s not even allowed to call his an opinion,” I tell her. “He just uses the preset Arial size eleven on all his Google Docs like a robot who doesn’t know how to feel.”

“At least I don’t draft in Comic Sans like I just escaped the circus,” says Seb.

Betty groans as she walks back behind the grill.

“Comic Sans?” asks Daisy, leaning in with genuine intrigue.

“It’s one of those tricks I saw on the internet,” I confess. “If you have writer’s block or you’re worried you’re going to mess up, you just start writing in Comic Sans. Takes the pressure off. And brings justice to an unfairly maligned font that’s just trying its best.”

“Maybe some of us don’t need tricks to write,” says Seb, raising his eyebrows at me.

I raise mine back. “Or maybe you just don’t need to use Comic Sans because your writing’s already a joke.”

Daisy cackles. “Honey, you’re right,” she calls back to Betty. “They’re an adorable little shit show.” She points her fork at me. “And I’m going to steal that drafting thing.”

“You’re a writer, too?” I ask.

Daisy nods. “I used to work full-time for Hub Seed, but I freelance now. Makes it easier to pick and choose the kind of writing I want to do, which is more like, deep dives into niche topics. Plus I get to travel more for assignments. I only just got back.”

Seb and I both lean in so comically fast that Daisy blinks in alarm, but it can’t be helped. She just tapped two very specific nerves for us—me at the mention of Hub Seed, a site full of biting cultural commentary and some of the funniest, most poignant writers on the internet, and Seb because of the traveling and topic deep dives.

“What story were you traveling for?” Seb asks.

Daisy’s eyes light up. “All right, so—there’s this parenting Facebook group for a neighborhood a few hours from here in absolute shambles over a stolen baby name, and it’s escalated into a full-out neighborhood war. It’s the most passive-aggressive bougie upper-middle-class nightmare I’ve ever seen. Sabotaged tomato gardens. Stolen backyard gnomes. The local businesses have started taking sides. The coffee shop has two tip jars so you can contribute to which ‘team’ you’re on.”

“What’s the baby name?” I ask immediately.

Daisy’s smile hooks up into a grin not unlike the one Seb makes when he’s chasing a good story. “That’s the question of the hour, isn’t it? I haven’t decided if I’m going to say in the article. Wait until the middle of the piece for a good time to drop it or just leave it a mystery altogether.”

“That’s genius,” Seb blurts, almost like he’s mad at himself for not thinking of it when we were only told about the story eight seconds ago.

Daisy shrugs happily. “We’ll see how it shakes out. I take it you two are writers?”

I nod. “We’re actually competing for the same position in Newsbag right now. It’s a student-run zine.”

“Oh, I love Newsbag, ” says Daisy. “I graduated from Maple Ride but I’d still read every issue if I didn’t. They make some good shit.”

“Did you write for it at all?” Seb asks.

“Nah. I didn’t realize I wanted to be a writer until way after college.” She points at us with her fork. “You two are lucky you’re starting out early. Getting your foot in the door and whatnot. It’ll make it easier to find writing gigs after graduation.”

“For me, maybe,” I say. “Seb here is majoring in engineering.”

Daisy’s eyebrows lift in surprise. “Well, good for you,” she tells Seb. “Someone’s gotta build those bridges, I guess.”

Seb shifts in his seat, his eyes briefly grazing the table before popping back up. “Yeah. I’ll have to give the first one I build the same baby name from your piece just to really rattle those parents,” he says.

Daisy laughs, standing from the table. “Well, I’m going to hit the hay. Good luck being the testers for Betty’s batch tomorrow. She still hasn’t told me the flavor.”

Betty is somewhere in the back working on the batch, so we settle into the quiet of the empty room. Seb’s eyes are back on the table. It isn’t hard to guess at what’s on his mind. I nudge his foot under the table.

“Why are you majoring in engineering?” I ask. “You spent most of high school writing for the school paper and doing theater and amassing a giant meme collection. And then suddenly you just got good at math and decided that was that?”

Seb’s lips quirk upward. “You know, my math talent is kind of your fault.”

I sure hope not, considering how much of a thorn in my side he was about it. “How do you figure?”

“Well, you stopped helping me with my math homework when we were kids. So then I had to actually—you know. Try. ” His smile is teasing, but there’s a faint sadness in it. “So I got good at it. And then I got really good at it. And now…” He gestures vaguely at campus. “Engineering.”

I’m surprised he remembers our math origins as far back as I do. He really had zero natural aptitude for it when we were kids, even just the early basics. Or maybe he just plain wasn’t interested. But I was. I liked the natural order of it. The way rules built up to fit neatly into other rules, and as long as you understood them all there weren’t any surprises.

But I guess math did come with one surprise, which was Seb coming out of left field in the middle of high school and suddenly getting very, very close to crushing me at it. I may have ultimately had the better scores, but that didn’t stop him from getting elected president of the math honor society senior year.

It’s funny—the math thing always felt so personal. The only reason I could think for him to get that good at it was to find some other way to rile me. I can’t help feeling a little smug, now that he’s just short of confessing he did.

But that’s always been the trouble. How personal these competitions get. And none so much as the one we’re in now.

“So you really don’t need Newsbag at all,” I point out.

Seb’s expression falters like a flickering light, but his voice is steady. “It’s not like I just gave up on wanting to write because I’m doing math.”

“Then why aren’t you majoring in journalism, if you want to write so badly?” I demand. At least this bid to further ruin my life would make sense. “I know you’ve got some deal with your dad about Blue Ridge’s program, but say you do win the Newsbag spot, and you don’t transfer out. What then? You still major in engineering here?”

He lets out a grim, breathy laugh. “I mean—I don’t know. I’m still thinking. But yeah. My dad thinks coming to school for writing would be a waste of my time and their money.” Seb presses his lips together, and then seems to correct himself. “I mean—he didn’t say it in those exact words, but I’m the only kid. I know how to read the room on that kind of thing by now.”

I’m not even their kid and I know how to read that room, too. Seb’s dad has always been competitive. Supportive, yes, but also unapologetically ambitious—he has to be, working in corporate law. Seb didn’t get his taste for ruthlessly competing with me in a vacuum, that’s for sure.

Which is why I’m less surprised about the pressure Seb’s parents are putting on him than I am that Seb is giving in to it.

“So—what? You’re just going to let him decide your whole future?”

Seb shakes his head. “No. I just want to tread carefully, is all. That’s what I’m trying to do with Newsbag. I’m hoping if I get the role then I can show him I’m serious about it. That he’ll see what we’re doing on Newsbag and the level I can write at and it’ll—I don’t know. Legitimize the whole ‘I want to be a writer’ thing.” He winces to himself. “And if my dad still doesn’t come around—well, at least if I’m on Newsbag, I’ll have enough expe rience writing that I won’t be doomed in the job market after graduation.”

It’s then that I understand it—not just from the words he’s saying, but from the determined set of his brow and the unwavering tone of his voice. He doesn’t just want this. He wants it as badly as I do.

It should probably rattle me, but if anything it comes as a relief. It was unsettling, the idea of competing this intensely with someone who didn’t want it half as much as I did. The idea that maybe Seb was just choosing this to rile me the way we did to each other all the time back in school.

“So you definitely want to be a writer,” I say.

Seb nods slowly. Thoughtfully. “Yeah. I mean, I will be. I think it’s just—” He works his jaw like he’s trying to decide how much he’s going to say. I can feel the decision being made in the moment he turns his head to look me square in the eye and says, “I love writing. I love meeting new people and going into weird rabbit holes and watching a story take shape in my head. But it’s more than that. It’s that writing is the only thing that feels like it’s just mine, you know?”

We both know I do. I wouldn’t have hid behind “Jerry” this entire time if I didn’t. But Seb was never hiding behind anything; in fact, between his Instagram and theater and that “instant popularity, just add humans!” effect he’s always had, I’d say he was doing the opposite.

“You’ve got plenty of things that are yours,” I say, hoping that I don’t sound defensive. I’m just genuinely curious what he means.

Seb’s smile is rueful. “Yeah, I know,” he acknowledges. “But most of that comes with like—a certain kind of pressure. Like I have to put on a performance. Meet some kind of expectation. And writing on my own I get to take my time and form my own thoughts without anybody watching or judging, you know? At least not until after the writing is done, and it’s exactly how I wanted it to be.”

Suddenly that throwaway comment from earlier feels anything but.

“So they’re judging the real you, and not the idea of you,” I say, echoing it.

Seb’s eyebrows lift, not in surprise but in a relief of his own. The relief of not having to explain.

“I never have to worry about that with you, though,” he teases. “You judge the hell out of the real me.”

His eyes are lit up again like he wants me to rise to the bait and do just that, but there’s a strange ache in my throat that stops me. A secondhand kind of sadness for Seb. My dad’s words have been rattling in my head for the past few weeks: You know how he gets, keeping to himself sometimes. You always have a knack for snapping him back.

Seb’s got a knack for something, too. He can put other people at ease. He can make people feel seen and heard. He’s always been surrounded by people who have needed that from him but not necessarily people who see or hear him right back. Not even because they don’t want to—but because Seb’s not always good at letting them.

It’s Janie and Roger and a whole slew of other people who were into Seb who I think of then. How I used to feel smug, thinking how I knew him better than anyone else did; how I knew at the beginning of any relationship or near relationship that it wouldn’t last. Now that I understand it had less to do with me understanding Seb and more to do with Seb not letting himself be understood, it just makes me sad.

“Have you ever thought about just—worrying less about the expectations part?” I ask him. “Like in real life. Not just your writing.”

Seb’s eyes cut back to mine with a wry slant to them. “Well, if that isn’t a choice suggestion coming from you, Jerry.”

“Well, it’s like you said. I’ve been more—myself, here. Whoever she is. But I don’t think that’s the case for you.” I shake my head, trying to find the right words. “I’m not trying to say you’re putting on an act or anything. I just think you’re good at being needed. But kind of like—not great at opening up about stuff you need.”

Seb is quiet, like the words have momentarily stunned him into it. I don’t bother wondering if I’ve overstepped. I know I’m right. But he stuns me himself when he says, “Maybe. But you always seem to have a sense for it anyway.”

“Me?” I say, only just managing not to laugh.

Seb nods, and I see the truth of it in the expression settling on his face—the same one he’d make when he came back from wandering off on his own. The one only I’d see, because he’d find me first before he found everyone else. I think I’ve always understood the quiet meaning of that face, even if right now is the only moment I’ve tried to explain it—like he’s hovering somewhere in between himself and the rest of the world, and I’m his middle ground.

It’s a strange thing, feeling the weight of a responsibility I wasn’t sure I had. Whenever Seb came back we’d usually just pick up our conversations where they left off; the tone of them just shifted in that natural way they always did when one of us was in a strange mood. I never thought of it as being something Seb needed, because that ebb and flow was built into us so early that it never felt like something worth noticing. Like the way your blood just runs under your skin.

I clear my throat, but the faint ache of guilt is still there—the guilt of Seb crediting me for something I didn’t try at nearly hard enough to deserve.

“If I do, it’s only because I’ve made it my personal mission to exploit your every weakness,” I say.

But Seb isn’t interested in that particular bit of our history anymore. He leans back in with curious eyes. “Why do you want to write for Newsbag ?”

I draw in a breath that I would use to dismiss anyone else, but it’s Seb. I want him to know this means every bit as much to me as it does to him, especially with what he has at stake.

“I want to work in comedy.” It feels so good to say those words out loud for the first time that I can feel the power behind them, so viscerally that it feels like fanning a flame in me. “I don’t know what kind yet—maybe a writing room or for something like Hub Seed or some medium that doesn’t even exist yet. I want to push boundaries. I want to make people laugh. I want to do more of whatever the hell we just did with Jock for a Day on an even bigger scale, and that scares the hell out of me sometimes, but I—I just do. I know it would surprise pretty much everyone we know, but I just do.”

I’m breathless at the end of it, my fingers tingling in a way that makes me feel absurdly like I can ball up the hope and the bone-deep resolve of it and feel it glowing in my hand. My heart is racing like I’ve finished a marathon; my head feels clear enough to see into a future that’s nowhere near happening yet.

But when I turn to look at Seb, he looks calm as he’s ever been. Calm and proud. Like he’s been waiting longer to hear me say those words than I have.

“Well, I’m not surprised,” he says. “But yeah. I bet a lot of people back home will be.”

He continues to stare at me, with a look more pointed now, giving me the space to explain. As much as I hate to admit it, he made it easier by going first.

“In keeping with our complete inability not to copy each other, I think—it was the same for me,” I tell him. “Writing has always been the thing that’s just mine. Somewhere I can just be blunt and weird and not worry about potential consequences.”

“The consequence being… people knowing that you’re funny as hell?”

My face flushes. Apparently the theme of the entire night is getting inadvertently flustered by Seb.

“The consequence being…”

I have to pause, then, because it’s hard to explain. Not just to Seb, but to myself. It sounds so trivial put into words but feels so uncompromising in real life.

“I think I’ve always known the kind of funny I want to be doesn’t quite work with my family. They’re—you know how they are,” I say. “The kind of family you can’t help noticing, usually for the wrong reasons. Loud and messy and wild.”

“And you feel like you can’t be?”

My brow furrows. I’ve never really thought of it in terms of wanting to be like them. Most of my childhood was focusing on whatever it took to counteract them.

“They wouldn’t be able to handle that version of me. And even if they could—someone needs to balance them out. Keep an eye on them so they don’t get too carried away. There’s just never been any room for me to be like that, too.”

Which I’m starting to understand is exactly what I am. Loud and messy and wild enough not just to write silly articles as Jerry or the quiz that got me published but enough to get hundreds of strangers to run around campus slinging hacky sacks and handing out flyers and wage a dodgeball war on the quad loud enough to piss off the administration. Enough to cause chaos of my own.

Seb’s right. I have been more “myself” since I got here, and in the first few weeks of it I’ve already caused more chaos than I have in every year of my life combined. And just like that, there are two competing thoughts swimming in my head: Who knows what else I’m capable of? And then a nervous undercurrent just behind it: Who knows how bad things might have gotten for my family if I’d let myself be like that all along?

Then Seb says something that stops both thoughts in their tracks. “It can’t be easy, pretending to be something you’re not all these years with the people you love most.”

My eyes sting and the room goes blurry so fast that I don’t even have time to be embarrassed about it. It’s just happening. I blink it back, not because I don’t want Seb to see, but because there’s so much else I need to say and nobody else I want to say it to.

“Well. That’s just the thing. I love them. I want—to make things easier. They expect me to be a certain way the same way your dad does.”

I put my hand up to stop him as he pulls in a breath, because I know he’s going to push back against that the same way I did for him. But Seb and I really are two peas in a fucked-up pod, because just like him, I have a plan to deal with it. Maybe not a good one, but an existent one.

“And yeah. Maybe once I have a chance to grow into myself here, I’ll be able to be that way around them, too. Figure out a way to bridge the gap between their Sadie and this one.” I’ve collected myself by the time I glance over at him, a small but genuine smile on my face. “But in the meantime I’ve got my writing, just like you. It’s always been a safe place to be myself.”

“Not the only safe place,” Seb says quietly. Self-consciously.

I let out a wet laugh. “If I’m my ‘real self’ around you, Seb, then I think that just makes me a vengeful monster.”

Seb’s smile kicks back up, like the beginnings of mine stirred it back into place. “Well, yeah,” he agrees. “But you’re also funny as hell about it. And honest. We never have to pretend or worry or overthink. We just—get each other.” He pauses then to tilt his head down, to really level with me. “I think if that weren’t the case, we would have stopped making each other’s lives hell a long time ago.”

I knock my knee into his under the table. “Are you implying that you enjoyed getting repeatedly crushed by me all these years?”

Ever my mirror, he knocks mine back with his. “Well, yeah, some of the time. Specifically the times I was crushing you. ” The mischief is back, but our usual bite is gone. His voice softens when he adds, “But I mean—it did keep us in each other’s orbits. I don’t think it was an accident that we were always competing for the same things. We’re alike, but not that alike.”

I put my hands on the table, weaving my fingers together as I narrow my eyes at him to make a show of looking like I’m deep in thought. “So you think all this metaphorical bloodshed was just an excuse for us to be near each other.”

Only Seb doesn’t tease back this time, his voice quiet and steady. “Wasn’t it, kind of?” he asks. “I mean—we’ve known each other from the beginning of everything. Who else was going to understand us half as well?”

My eyes are in danger of stinging again, but not out of any sadness. Not out of confusion or hurt or any number of feelings I’ve had about our little rivalry over the years. I’m just overwhelmed by the plain truth of it finally being spoken out loud for the first time.

“Yeah,” I manage. “We’re a little bit stuck that way, huh?”

If I’m not mistaken, Seb’s own eyes start to mist up, but then we both startle at the abrupt reappearance of Betty, who dumps a large stack of pancakes on our plates.

Not just any pancakes, but pancakes covered every inch with rainbow sprinkles.

“Betty,” says Seb in a noticeably choked-up voice. “I’m worried about you serving these tomorrow. People are going to think you like us.”

Her scowl only deepens. I make it worse by adding, “If I weren’t terrified of you, I would hug you right now.”

Betty shudders. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says, already halfway across the room. “Eat your damn pancakes and make sure you shut the door on your way out.”

I’m not really sure what happens after that. I take a bite and then I’m just—gone. Back in my blue-and-green striped party dress and standing on top of a chair because I’m too happy to sit, my dad on one side of me making sure I don’t tip over, Seb on the other side of me hoisting himself up to stand on his own chair, because neither of us ever did anything without the other. People are singing “Happy Birthday,” and Seb and I are blowing out candles on a massive stack of rainbow-sprinkled pancakes, and Seb’s mom is telling us to make a wish, and Marley’s telling us not to tell anyone what the wish is if we want it to come true, but Seb and I are looking right at each other and laughing because we know we’re going to tell each other what we wished for anyway.

Half my plate of pancakes is gone by the time I manage to speak, not even sure what I’m going to say until it’s out in the open air. “Remember the first time we had these?”

Seb laughs like there was no reason to ask in the first place. “You ate yours face-first like a dog. Your mouth was all rainbow-streaked the rest of the day.”

I grin and dip my head into the plate, catching a cut-up piece with my teeth. “Maximum pancake, minimum wait time,” I say, voice muffled with pancake.

He laughs again, but it’s a soft enough sound that I know he’s still back there, too. Not just back to the Sunday we first ate those birthday pancakes, but to a time when we could share them without years of friction and hurt and confusion heavy in the air between us.

“That puppet prank started all of this. I didn’t think—” He sets his fork down, his body suddenly very still. “I mean, I only ever meant for it to be funny.”

I nod slowly, putting down my own fork. “I overreacted.” I consider apologizing, but think the better of it, suddenly defensive. “I mean—we were eight.”

All those defenses crash when Seb speaks again, his voice just above a whisper. “We were best friends.”

The words land even harder than he meant for them to, because we both know we were more than that. Even when we were little there was an inevitability to us. Not one that could be defined by friendship or family or romance, but was undeniably, permanently shared.

My own voice is shaking, but I square my shoulders.

“The thing is—my parents—they really freaked me out that day, because I freaked them out. I hated that feeling. Of letting them down.”

I wait until I have Seb’s eyes on mine again, and do something we’ve never done before. I reach out and put my hand on top of his. He instantly flexes his fingers to wrap them around mine, like we’ve done it a thousand times.

“It wasn’t about you, really,” I go on. “I was angry, but I was also just—really determined from that moment on not to be a ‘problem kid.’ To be easy to handle. And in my little-kid brain that meant staying away from you, because you were the reason I freaked out in the first place.”

Seb nods, staring down at our hands. “Why did you, do you think?” he asks. “I mean—we’d pranked each other before.”

It’s a conversation we couldn’t have had even a few days ago, I realize, because I’m only just starting to understand the full depth of what happened. I’m only just starting to examine the full depth of my own self.

“I was so nervous,” I tell him. “It was the first thing I’d ever written, and I was sharing it with everyone I knew. That, and—you wanted to win so badly. It felt like you did it to make sure I wouldn’t.”

Seb’s eyes meet mine and I see every bit of the regret in them before his gaze drops again. “I did want to win,” he confesses. “I think that was around the time I started to feel the pressure. I was already falling behind in math, and only skating by because I had your help. I wanted a win.” He squeezes my hand. “But I hope you know by now that the prank wasn’t supposed to be anything other than that.”

Of course I know. The same way we both know that all the “pranks” that happened after it were meant to be sabotage. That we may have been innocent in the way we mishandled each other once, but we weren’t in all the moments after that.

“Well, not to steal wisdom from Elsa. But the past is in the past,” I say.

But for once, Seb and I aren’t on the same page. He isn’t willing to bury it the way I am, shaking his head.

“It changed everything. Our friendship. The way you act with your family. The way I act with mine, even. Because after we stopped talking, I was so upset that I really started to fall behind—not just in math, but everything. It was the first time my dad was ever disappointed enough to sit me down and talk to me about it, and I hated that feeling, too.”

His hand is still in mine, the squeeze of it less intense but somehow more affecting.

“It made me double down on everything. To be the best I could possibly be.” He lifts his hand and mine and presses my knuckles to his forehead. “And for better or for worse, there was only one other person who could always keep up.”

We’re suspended like that for longer than we’ve ever been—so still that it feels like we’ve reached some kind of equilibrium. Like we’ve spent our whole lives in a race, and in this moment finally settled into the sensation of being exactly ourselves and exactly enough.

“It did change everything,” I acknowledge, my throat thick. “But in some ways I think—the stuff with our families was always going to shake out that way. I think maybe it’s why we had that incident in the first place. You wanted to live up to your dad’s expectations. I was too scared to be myself with anyone, let alone my family. Maybe it was only a matter of time before some catalyst set us off.”

What I don’t say but I know Seb hears: Maybe it was only a matter of time before something brought us back together.

Seb squeezes my hand one last time before releasing it, his eyes brightening. “Oh, so it’s all our parents’ fault,” he says. “Perfect. Problem solved. Rivalry over. Peace throughout the land.”

I lift a congealed sprinkle and toss it at him. “He says, shaking in his sneakers now that both our Round Two articles are about to be submitted for Newsbag ’s judgment.”

Seb snaps his fingers in an “aw, shucks” defeat. “It was worth a shot.”

Everything feels lighter then. Our voices. The air between us. It’s pronounced enough that I know I mean it when I say, “You know, the weird thing is—I don’t regret any of it.”

Seb’s eyes are steady enough on mine that I know he feels it, too. Still, he raises his eyebrows, a familiar challenge in his voice. “You once called me the human equivalent of an unpoppable zit.”

“Was I wrong, though? Especially because, if I recall, you had only just told Allie Zimmer that I couldn’t dog-sit for her that weekend because I had fleas. ”

“You’d just decimated me in the neighborhood bake-off. I deserved a weekend with Chewy way more than you did.”

“You filled our entire sugar canister with salt to fuck up my whole first batch!” I counter. “It’s been eight years since my mom has gone near any kind of cake batter because of you.”

Seb grins smugly, but whatever he’s going to use to counter me, he lets it go.

“You were saying,” he says instead, “about the lack of regrets.”

I ease back into my chair, my bones humming, the kind of relaxed I don’t remember being in a long, long time. “I just mean—there’s this universe we’re in, where you and I drove each other up the wall. But there’s also a universe where we maybe just never spoke at all. And maybe it’s just the rainbow-sprinkled pancakes talking. But I think no matter what we are to each other, our lives are better with each other in them than without.”

Seb is quiet for a while. We both are. But I know better than to say anything, because he’s staring at his hands in the way he does when he’s lost in a thought he’s trying to make fit in the real world.

“You know what the first thing I thought was, when you got in and I didn’t?” he asks.

The question takes me by surprise but not so much that I can’t immediately answer. “‘How can I put Sadie in a crate headed for the Bermuda Triangle and make it look like an accident?’”

His smile is instant but aimed at the floor, like he’s still working himself up to say something.

“Want to know the second?”

He’s looking right at me now. I nod, and he holds my gaze and says, “‘I’m really going to miss her.’”

Earlier in the night it felt like something was hitting me from behind, but those are the words that hit me squarely in the chest. The words that settle there and make a home. Like there was always a space right there in me for them to fit, whether I wanted it or not.

Just then the lights in the room next to the restaurant space turn off. Betty must be turning in for the night, too. We wordlessly get up from our perch, carefully turning off the main lights in the room and shutting the door behind us before heading back out into the night.

It’s strangely quiet for a Saturday. Or maybe it’s just that my heart is so steady in my ears that I don’t want to hear anything beyond us. Like I already know his heart is in sync with mine, the way we usually happen to be.

“You should tell your parents about Newsbag, ” says Seb, when we reach the street of our dorms.

“It would only complicate things,” I say. “I mean, look what happened with your parents knowing about it.”

Seb shakes his head. “I think there’s a reason why you focused that second piece on how your relationships with your family change when you come into your own,” he says. “You already know it’s time.”

I steal a move from Seb and hum in acknowledgment. He wraps a light arm around my waist to pull me into the side of him, a quick but grounding gesture.

“And because they deserve to have a chance with ‘real Sadie,’” he says, tilting his head to look at me. “I think they’ll get along with her just fine.”

I don’t protest. I don’t duck my head. I like where I’m at right now—comfortably against Seb, slowing our pace, his hand light against the side of my waist.

We come to a stop outside his dorm, and I shift to face him. It’s one of those magic hours of the night where everyone is already in bed or out, and we’re the only ones in the street, suspended in our own kind of limbo. Seb’s gaze flickers to my lips and back to my eyes again, and I feel my own lips part almost as if in anticipation. But we could. But we might.

I’m half wondering if Seb will pull away like he did onstage, but he doesn’t. He just settles his gaze on me not with intent but curiosity. It occurs to me then how strange it is to know everything there is to know about Seb except for this one thing. Except for something as simple as putting his lips on mine. The urge to tilt myself forward almost feels like some scale balancing to correct itself, like of course I should know about that, too, since so much else of Seb is already mine.

Seb smiles then, this careful, bright kind of smile I’ve never seen before. Somehow self-conscious but certain at the same time.

The voice in my head changes: But we will.

I lean in closer, tilt my face toward his. There’s no cut to commercial. I’m so presently with him that in my next breath it feels like there is nothing else. Nothing but the heat between our bodies, the kind that burns hot enough that I can see it blazing in his eyes. That scorches past our tangled history, our pretenses, our doubts.

I shiver in anticipation. We’re already so close that our noses brush, that I can feel his breath against my lips, warm and inviting and—waiting.

Waiting for me to decide.

For years, kissing felt like it was only a rite of passage and nothing more. Something I fixated on like a finish line everyone else had reached. But I understand now what I didn’t understand then. Those other near kisses weren’t sabotaged by the universe. I could have made them happen, if I wanted. I chose to brush it off every time.

Seb is waiting now, but I’ve been waiting. Whether I knew it or not, I’ve been waiting for this. Long enough to know that the wait isn’t over. Maybe a first kiss never felt important. But kissing Seb does.

So I stop another kiss, one last time. I step back. Seb watches me carefully until I speak.

“When I kiss you,” I tell him, “it won’t be during a months-long mission to eviscerate you.”

Seb’s fingers press lightly just under my ribs. He raises his eyebrows like he’s trying to be smug, but the relief in his voice is so plain that he can’t pull it off. “When?” he asks quietly.

And then come the words neither of us want to say—that there might never be a “when.” Not if I win. Not if Seb leaves. My smile flickers, and Seb doesn’t miss it, leaning in again. I press my forehead into his collarbone. He moves his hand up to the back of my neck and squeezes lightly. We’ve never been this perfectly still, this terminally close. The feeling of his warm, firm body against mine is enough to make me dizzy with want, to make me come dangerously close to forgetting the odds stacked against us.

Us. For the first time, it’s not me against Seb. It’s the two of us against everything else. I’ve never been so overwhelmed by such a quiet understanding before; it’s the smallest shift in the ground under us, but it’s changed the whole view.

Seb lets me go, and for the first time, I dread the end of this competition. There is no way to win it without losing, too.