Chapter Twenty-Six
When I squelch back to our dorm, Aisha immediately pounces. “What’s going on with you and Khoi?”
“Nothing?” I don’t know what she’s getting at.
She crosses her arms. “Char. Babe. I love ya, but if you were drowning, I’d call the Coast Guard or something and let them rescue your ass. I wouldn’t try to play the hero.”
“He’s my teammate. If he died it would completely ruin our chances at winning.”
“Riiight. So you jumped into the water because you were so concerned about your hackathon project.”
“Yep,” I say. “You get it.”
She does an overly dramatic, heaving sigh. So much theater-kid energy, and she’s not even a theater kid. “Did I ever tell you about my first girlfriend?”
“Trinity?”
“No, no, this was a girl I was besties with in middle school. Her name is Emma. We were crazy inseparable. We were on the dance team. I’m a huge simp for dancers.”
“Your middle school had a dance team?” My middle school didn’t have any extracurriculars. You showed up at eight thirty, tried to avoid getting thrown into a locker, then left at three.
“Yours didn’t?” She shrugs. “Anyway, I caught feelings in seventh grade while we were backstage getting ready. She was applying my lipstick, and this lightning bolt zapped through me when she cupped my chin with her palm. And I knew this wasn’t how I was supposed to feel about a friend.”
“Sooooo you fessed up?”
“No! I spent the next year in complete denial. I even went to the school dance with some boy from homeroom. Alvin James, bless his heart. I didn’t want to be queer.
It felt like I was making my own life more difficult.
At night I would pray to the deities that I’d wake up hetero.
Which didn’t work, by the way. Hinduism.
What’s the point of having so many gods if they’re all asleep at the wheel? ”
“Aisha, I’m sorry.”
“Also, I thought she was straight. I didn’t want to get hate-crimed.”
I nod. Lola’s told me similar things before, about being scared to hit on a straight girl. After she came out, somebody scrawled DIKE on her locker. She put on this act like she was outraged only by the terrible spelling, but I know that it chipped away at her heart too.
Aisha continues. “Like, Emma’s celebrity crush was that boy from Stranger Things.”
“Finn Wolfhard?”
“Nah. The cute one.”
“But Finn Wolfhard is the cute—”
“Let me finish! On the last day of eighth grade, I finally confessed. She was moving to London, and I was heading to boarding school, so I thought even if she rejected me and told everyone we knew, my life wouldn’t be over. But it turned out she’d felt the same way the entire time.”
I crack a smile. “That’s sweet.” Sickeningly adorable, really. Then something occurs to me. If Aisha is with Trinity, she’s not dating Emma anymore. “What happened?”
“Oh. We broke up three months later when she flew across the pond, although we stayed in touch. She has this fake British accent now.”
I’m pretty sure Aisha is doing story time because she’s suggesting something about Khoi and me but her tale isn’t super compelling.
All this struggle and angst just to date someone for like, one summer when she was fourteen.
The math isn’t mathing. Not sure what the point of love is if it ends before the next iPhone even drops.
She notices my skepticism. “It was worth it. Because of Emma, I found out that I like girls. And having that experience gave me the confidence to pursue other relationships in high school. Plus, our memories are really awesome? First date. First kiss. First kiss with tongue. First—”
“Okay, I get it,” I interrupt.
“But I do wish I’d confessed way earlier. We could’ve been girlfriends for so much longer. I wasted so much time and energy hiding.”
“You waited until you felt comfortable. That makes sense.” I can’t imagine how intense it is to come out, especially at that age.
“Yeah, yeah. Sure. I still regret not speaking up sooner.”
It’s almost curfew and I’m still sticky from the river, so I excuse myself to shower.
As I lather shampoo into my hair, I can’t stop thinking about what Aisha said. It must’ve taken serious guts to do something about her crush. Major moves for a fourteen-year-old.
And I know what she was trying to tell me. Aisha is about as subtle as an elephant.
White foamy suds slide down my bare skin and slip into the drain at my feet.
Why am I so sure that catching feelings for Khoi is going to screw up the hackathon? Not once did Drew ever mess with my GPA. But I basically did Chinook Shore classes on autopilot. Alpha Fellows hits different. This program demands all my brain cells and then some.
But the way Khoi got me to take breaks from the grind this week? Probably good for my neurons. It’s not like we could’ve leveled up our second checkpoint submission by throwing another hour at it. I mean, it’s a pretty fire proposal. And I got to play capture the flag.
So who knows. Maybe I’m using this hackathon thing as an excuse to avoid my own emotions.
Saturday afternoon, we’re at a liquid nitrogen ice-cream social when HellomynameisBrenda announces that the second checkpoint results are posted. There are abandoned cardboard cups, pink pools of melted ice cream, and a stampede to Stata.
In the lobby, there’s a crowd again, but Khoi is taller, so he pops onto his tippy-toes and cranes his neck. Then he does a triumphant whoop. “Char! We’re ranked first!”
“No way??”
“Way!” He shoves me forward playfully. “Go see for yourself.”
I weave through the crush. Maybe it’s my imagination, but people seem more willing to step aside and let me pass. And there it is. Our names at the top of the sheet. Khoi Anh (Astor) and Charise (Char) Tang. The team of parenthetical names.
A squeak of delight escapes my lips.
“It isn’t fair,” someone mutters behind me. “Astor is a professional developer. Of course he knew how to sell it.”
“Wish I was a pretty girl,” someone else grumbles. “Then he’d want to work with me.”
“She’s not even pretty,” the first voice says. “In the Bay Area there’s a girl who looks like her working at every boba shop.” Which is such a specific insult, I have to respect the effort.
If they want to munch on sour grapes, they can have the whole vineyard. We’re still first, which is going to definitely help propel us to the top during final judging, since results from all three checkpoints get combined.
I twirl to find Khoi. He’s standing in a pool of afternoon sunlight, which etches him beautiful and gold. My chest swells.
I dash over. When our eyes meet, he smiles and opens his arms. I run into the hug, and he lifts me off the ground and spins me around.
And then his face is right there, wide-open and wanting. So even though we’re in front of everyone, I kiss him.
His lips are shy at first, but then he reciprocates hungrily, like he’s been dreaming about this for a long while. Warmth floods my entire body, and I reach up to rake my fingers over the nape of his neck, through his hair.
Someone whistles. Suddenly embarrassed, I break away from the kiss and turn toward the source of the noise.
Our roommates are standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Obi looks confused. Aisha is grinning from ear to ear. She’s probably the one who whistled.
“Shut up,” I tell her. My cheeks are hot.
She throws her palms up. “I didn’t say anything!”
“Yeah, but you were totally thinking it.”
Obi frowns. “Aisha, you cool with this?”
“Don’t worry about me,” she says quickly. “I, uh, dumped Khoi.”
Khoi tilts his head, like, Why am I the dumpee in this fake scenario?
“Wait, so Char, are you two girlfriend-boyfriend?” Obi asks. “Or is there some new Zoomer trend where we’re kissing our platonic friends?”
I have a flight to PDX in August, but who knows if I’m going back? I can’t commit to anything when the future is such a question mark. “No labels yet,” I say.
“As long as you don’t sexile me,” Obi says. “You are not keeping me away from my A100.”
Khoi blushes. “Understood.”
“I’m serious. I don’t care if you’re naked. I will karate-chop the door down.” He pantomimes with a stiff palm.
“I have a condom from health class,” Aisha adds mischievously. “Want it?”
Khoi doubles over in a furious coughing fit.