Chapter 18
JORDAN
I’m standing on Paige’s porch with a honey blaze nectarine in my hand. The same nectarine I found rolling around loose in my car after our grocery run two nights ago. It’s been almost two weeks since the rafting trip, and since then, I’ve seen Paige a total of two times—once last Tuesday when our friend group got together for a Fourth of July barbeque and once this Tuesday for a grocery run. I can feel the distance between us stretching like a rubber band that’s about to snap. I need to see her. So here I am with a nectarine as an excuse.
I put my car keys in my gray shorts and am lifting my hand to knock on the door when I hear the strums of a guitar float through the open porch window. Dipping my head, I peer through the window screen, curious to see who’s playing, only to find Ian bent over a guitar as Paige sits across from him on the couch. I slide away from the window and contemplate leaving.
Moments later, I back off the porch, knowing I had promised Paige space with Ian. I barely reach the bottom step when the door swings open and Ji pops out.
“Oh, it’s just Jordan,” Ji calls inside.
Yep, that’s me, ladies and gentlemen, Just Jordan.
Watching Ian with Paige has already made me feel like I’ve been demoted to second string. Now I’m practically benched for the season.
I wave at Ji with the nectarine in hand.
“I thought you were my Amazon package,” Ji says.
“Nope, just a fruit-delivery service.” I toss the nectarine to Ji, who catches it. “Will you give that to Paige?”
Just then, Paige pops her head out of the living room, wearing high-waisted jeans and a forest-green shirt that brings out the color of her eyes. Her hair’s curled, and I can tell she’s put in extra effort. She looks good.
“Jordan? What are you doing?” Paige asks.
Ji passes her the nectarine, and Paige lifts it to her nose. “Oh, thanks. I didn’t know it was missing.”
And now I feel like an idiot. I tuck my hands in my pockets and back down the last porch step. “Have a good night.”
Paige steps onto the porch barefoot. “You’re leaving?”
“Yeah, I’ve got some… stuff,” I mumble.
“Oh, come on, you can stay a little longer,” Paige says.
She looks at me with pleading eyes, like she’s asking me if I’ll leave my green beans to get an Oreo milkshake. And who can resist an Oreo milkshake?
“Okay.” I walk back up the steps, and Missy nearly barrels into me on her way out the door.
“Hey, Jordan. Bye, Jordan,” Missy says, shrugging on a pink blazer. “Late for a pageant meeting. Talk to y’all later.”
Classic Missy. She’s always running late to everything.
I chuckle and follow Ji and Paige inside. But once I enter the house, I realize I have two options—follow Ji back to wherever she was before she came to the door or join Paige and Ian as he gazes into her eyes and strums love ballads. And trust me, he will definitely be gazing. At the Fourth of July barbeque at Colton’s parents’ house, Colton invited Ian out of goodwill, and everyone seemed to get along with him fine considering the history. But for most of the night, I paid less attention to the way he conversed with everyone else and more attention to how he followed Paige around, looking at her with those smiling eyes, and wrapping his hand around her back, her arm, her shoulder. He’s like a human adhesive.
I can’t watch that again.
“Hey, Jordan.” Ian steps out from behind the living room wall that divides it from the kitchen.
“Hey, man.” I give him a nod, which he returns.
Ian and I may not be friends, but since our double date, we’ve found some common ground. And by common ground, I mean if I keep my distance from Paige and he doesn’t break her heart, then we won’t punch each other.
Considering he’s been exclusively with Paige almost every night this week, we have no reason to break into fisticuffs.
Ian turns to Paige. “Where can I find the bathroom?”
Paige leads Ian down the hallway to the half bathroom, and I follow Ji into the kitchen. Ji’s wearing tan heels, flowy business slacks, and a white blouse with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She sits at the kitchen table that’s overflowing with fake flowers of varying sizes.
“Gala prep?” I ask, remembering the invitation to the Pine Lakes Gala fundraiser I received in the mail a few weeks ago. Ji and Mrs. Delgado are in charge of this year’s Gala, so I can only imagine the stress they are under since the event is just over three weeks away.
“Yes.” She lets out a long sigh. “I’m in the process of making forty centerpieces. No big deal.” Ji grabs a Styrofoam ball and a hot glue gun then dabs a bit of glue in the center of the sphere before placing a tiny white rosebud on top. By the looks of the two other rosebud-covered balls already on the table and the giant bags brimming with Styrofoam balls at her feet, I can understand the long sigh. That’s going to take her days.
“Do you have another glue gun?” I ask.
Ji looks up at me with hopeful eyes. “Yes.”
I sit on the chair next to her. “Can I get one of those Styrofoam balls?”
She plops one into my hand. “Thank you. But I’m telling you now, you’re going to regret you ever offered.”
“Offered what?” Paige walks into the kitchen and places her nectarine inside the fruit bowl.
“Jordan just offered his hands as a sacrifice to the centerpieces.” Ji sucks air between her teeth and shakes her hand before wiping hot glue from her finger. “That one’s going to blister,” she says with her finger in her mouth.
“On second thought.” I put down the Styrofoam ball and pretend to leave the table.
But Ji grabs the back of my T-shirt and yanks me back to my seat. “Sit. Stay.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I grab a fake flower and clip the tiny rosebud from its stem before gluing it onto my sphere.
Paige clears a spot next to me and starts snipping the rosebuds for us to glue to the Styrofoam. “That was really nice of Mrs. Delgado to invite all of us to the Gala.”
Ji shrugs. “Well, it’s a community event to raise funds for the all-abilities playground in Pine Lakes, and she’d love to see the ‘young people’ play a more active role in the community—her words, not mine. But she also has high expectations for the dance floor as it’s the centerpiece of the room, and she knows we’re more prone to ‘groove and move.’ Again, her words.”
“Ah, well, I’ll bring my groove then,” I say.
“Not too much groove.” Ji eyes me.
“You’re the only person I know who can get kicked out of senior Homecoming for being… how did the principal describe it?” Ji purses her lips in thought. “‘Too enthusiastic’ during the Cha-Cha Slide.”
“Hey, Principal Henderson was not knocking my moves when I became the school mascot junior year after the original mascot broke his leg. She gave me a standing ovation when I tried out. She loves me.”
“She loved that you made her pep rallies bearable again.” Paige snorts and slaps her leg. “Get it? More bear able? Our mascot was the grizzly bear.”
Ji shakes her head.
“You’re such a nerd.” I chuckle and tap Paige’s foot beneath the table with my own. Paige tries to kick me back, but I dodge her just in time. I give her a victorious smile, but her face scrunches with this look of adorable determination.
Before she can retaliate, I clamp her lower leg between both of mine so her foot is locked in place. Paige thins her lips to stop the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth and plucks a flower stem from the table as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening, but all the while, below the surface, she yanks and wriggles her foot like a worm that's about to be fish bait.
She does this without success until she brings in her other leg for reinforcement. All-out war erupts beneath the table, and neither of us will relent.
I try my best to glue a flower and am pretty confident I’ll go down as the first man in history to win a foot battle while crafting, but then Paige’s legs go slack. She holds a rosebud in front of her, paying it extra attention before she cuts it from the stem.
Her sudden stillness makes me hyper-fixate on the leg sandwiched between mine. I take several measured breaths to slow my spiking heart rate. We may be playing a harmless game, but the feel of her smooth, slender calves against mine doesn’t seem harmless. Paige must sense my complete and total distraction because she slips her foot from my hold, and just like that, the game is over.
I can feel more than see the smirk on her face. But I can’t bring myself to look at her.
“Paige?” Ian peeks into the kitchen.
“Oh hey.” Paige smiles back at Ian. “You ready to play that Spanish song for me?”
Ian stands a little taller. His eyes are solely for Paige, and I can’t blame him. If she was mine, I don’t know if I would ever look away.
Paige snips one last flower then leans over to me and whispers, “Loser,” before giving me a dimpled smile and hopping to her feet, following Ian into the living room. She sends me one last look of triumph before disappearing.
I know she’s teasing me about the game, but watching her walk away with Ian, I know that’s exactly what I am. I am losing. Losing the best friendship I’ve ever had. Losing the girl I love.
Losing Paige.
I turn to Paige’s empty spot to collect the flowers she snipped and try to forget that Ian is singing sweet nothings to Paige in the other room.
Ji stays unusually quiet, and when I look up, she’s eyeing me skeptically.
“Can you pass me another glue stick?” I ask, uncomfortable under her stare.
Ji raises an eyebrow. “Are you going to foot wrestle me for it, too?”
So maybe Paige and I weren’t as covert as I thought. I chuckle nervously. But it’s not the fact that Ji saw what we were doing that makes me nervous but rather how Ji is now looking at me like I’m the x component of a math equation.
“I make it a rule not to foot-wrestle a woman in heels,” I tell her. “I’d rather keep my metatarsals in place.”
Luckily, Ji passes me a glue stick then doubles down on her crafting. I can only hope that’s the end of it—whatever had her looking at me like that.
An hour later, Ji and I are halfway through the rose balls when my phone alarm goes off. Time to check up on my mom.
“Sorry,” I tell Ji, motioning to the phone.
“No worries.” Ji’s chair scrapes across the floor as she stands and yawns. “I think I’m going to call it a night anyway. Thanks for all your help.”
“Sure,” I say.
“And tell your mom hi and that my mom loved the quilt she made for my new niece. It was adorable.”
“Will do.” I send Ji a small wave goodnight and head outside.
After my call goes to voicemail two times, I start pacing around the bushes below the wraparound porch outside Paige, Missy, and Ji’s house. Finally, Mom answers after the third try. I swear she’s just messing with me these days.
I ask her how her day was and if she got the new medication that should have been delivered this morning. Her voice brightens as she assures me she’s got everything she needs. My mom sounds happy tonight, if a little distracted. After a short conversation, I tell her goodnight, and we hang up. It’s not an in-depth check-in but enough for me to sleep well, knowing she’s okay.
After I pocket my phone, I hear the softest purr beneath me. Cabby Cat winds between my legs before plopping her furry body right on top of my toes. I bend down and pick her up, bringing her face up to my nose. “Hey, Cabby Girl,” I croon in a voice only reserved for her.
The faint creaking of door hinges pulls my attention to the lighted front door as both Paige and Ian step out. My eyes dart around, wondering where I can go that won’t make me look like I’m spying on them from the shadowy corners of the lawn. Cabby gets tucked under my arm football-style as I make a beeline for the bushes.
Several branches catch on my shirt, but I crouch farther into the foliage regardless. Cabby, however, is not so gung ho about this plan and starts crawling up my shirt like she’s Tom Cruise scaling buildings in Dubai.
“Well, I guess this is goodnight,” Ian says, pulling the strap of his guitar case over his shoulder. He stands on the porch step right below Paige, putting them at eye level.
I don’t need a dating manual to tell me what will happen next. Ian trails a hand down her arm and takes Paige’s hand, apparently ramping up for the big moment. But just when I think he’s going in for the kiss, he slides his hand out of hers, does a little wiggle with his fingers, fist-bumps her limp hand twice, then snaps.
What is he doing? He had everything lined up, and it’s like he glitched at the last second.
Paige’s laugh is airy but flat, not necessarily a bad sign for Ian but enough to tell me she’s forcing some part of her reaction. “Oh, was that…”
“Yep. Remember our handshake from freshman-year government class?”
“It’s been so long—I totally forgot about that,” Paige says.
Ian brings up his hand, and they try the handshake again. This time, Paige tries to get into it, but she wiggles her fingers when he fist-bumps, and they both end up laughing it off.
“We’ll work on it.” Ian smiles. “Night, Pages.”
“Goodnight.” Paige watches Ian get into his car and pull out of the driveway before she waves to him.
I wait to hear the front door click open and shut, but Paige is taking her sweet time. Meanwhile, in the bushes, my quads burn with the intensity of a thousand suns while Cabby claws at me like I’m her personal cat tower.
“Jordan Miller, in the bushes, with my cat,” Paige says from above me.
I yelp, falling forward onto my hands and knees as Cabby leaps to the grass and disappears around the house. “Paige!”
“Mm-hmm? Spying, were we?” Paige leans her crossed arms against the railing, looking down at me as the porch light illuminates her face.
I crawl out from the bushes and flop onto the grass, facing her. “I was just trying to get a glimpse of that steamy goodnight handshake.”
“Jordan!” she says in her most chastising tone.
I smile and get to my feet, brushing dirt and grass from my body. “I was calling my mom, but then Ian and you came outside, and I didn’t want to give stalker vibes…”
“So you hid in the bushes?” Paige walks toward the porch steps. “How very not stalkery of you.”
“If I’m not mistaken, you were crouching behind a bush when we first met. You’re like the OG shrub stalker.” I meet Paige halfway and take a seat on the middle porch step.
“Ha ha.” She sits next to me.
I lean my elbows on the step behind me, and as if we'd planned it, Paige and I let out a big sigh at the same time.
She laughs, and I can’t help but notice the circle of light framing her hair like a golden halo. Somewhere nearby, a frog croaks and crickets chirp, and the summer air feels just right, and there is nowhere on earth I would rather be than on this porch with Paige.
Paige and I look at one another for a moment, neither of us trying to fill the silence between us. There’s nothing awkward about it, just a feeling of home stretching inside me before it nestles into my core. And when Paige gives me her soft smile, I wonder if it’s the same for her. Does she feel complete with me like I do with her?
“How’s work going with your California team?” I ask. After Paige told me about the Z3 opportunity during our rafting trip, she started freelancing for them the following week. And since her internship with Wonderman & Fleck technically would have ended tomorrow, Paige talked to her current boss about Z3. She graciously extended Paige’s internship to the end of next month so that Paige would have time to hear back from Z3 and could make a decision one way or the other. But I know what Paige will choose—nothing puts a light into Paige’s eyes faster than talking about Z3.
“They aren’t my team yet.” She eyes me. “But things are going well. I really like them. And they really liked my ideas for our pitch.”
“What’s your pitch?”
“It’s for a hearing-aid company. The tagline will be Bringing Back Life’s Soundtrack.”
“I love that.” I smile, but my chest feels like it’s splitting in two. She’s going to get this job. I know it. I’m trying to be supportive while trying not to think of what life would be like if Paige were to move. I want to kick and scream like a child whose favorite stuffed animal has been taken away, but that wouldn’t be fair to Paige. She deserves the best. And if Z3 is it, so be it.
“Dove made me think of it when she talked about hearing her grandchildren and the stream in her backyard again after getting her hearing aids.”
“You’ve got to tell her that the next time we see her. She’ll love it.”
“Oh!” Paige jolts upright as if just remembering something and scurries to the door. “Wait there—I’ll be right back.”
When Paige returns, her glasses are on, her hair is in a bun, and she’s wearing her favorite sage-green overalls, the kind so stretchy that they could fit three humans inside. This is Paige in her purest form, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
She shuffles down the steps, holding something behind her back. “Guess what I found?” she sings as she reveals a ratty old composition book—but not just any ratty old composition book. This is our notebook, the one Paige and I passed back and forth to one another all through our junior and senior years.
My mouth drops open. “No way!”
She puts it into my hands, and a wave of nostalgia crashes over me.
“I can’t believe you still have this,” I say. “When did you find it?”
“I was going through my old high school stuff. Ian mentioned this card he gave me once.” She shakes her head. “Anyway. I was trying to find it and came across this. I haven’t opened it yet. I wanted to read through it with you.” Paige’s eyes glisten like she can’t wait another second.
So I open it.
For the next thirty minutes, we flip through the book, reliving our high school experiences with every turn of the page. The book nearly bursts with taped-in Polaroid pictures, ticket stubs from movies and concerts, doodles, song lyrics, notes back and forth, and, to my surprise, so much shameless flirtation. I have to stop myself from peering at Paige every time we read an excerpt that feels like it came from the pages of a Twilight book.
Was I always this obvious? Am I this obvious now?
We stop scanning pages on one that says, “That is NOT my song.” The words jump out mainly because they are the only words spanning the two-page spread, but also because each letter is emphasized by angry strokes of Paige’s pen.
I chuckle. “You were extremely subtle.”
She flips the page back to the previous one and reads the text, then backhands my arm. “You said my song was the blue song!” she says, referring to Eiffel 65’s “Blue (Da Ba Dee).”
“What’s wrong with that? That song’s a classic with great storytelling.”
“It’s about a blue man in a blue world. Did I miss anything?”
“Sheesh, Devons. Broaden your horizons.” Straightening, I prepare to defend this song to the death. “I believe the song’s an exposé about how you can have all the glamorous things in the world but still feel––”
“Blue?” Paige narrows her eyes at me.
I throw her a smile. “There you go. You got it.”
“You’re right. That sounds just like me.” She snaps the book shut and rolls her eyes.
Unashamed, I keep grinning.
“At least that one is better than half the other songs you claimed were mine.”
I chuckle. Anytime Paige gave me sass in high school, I would tell her that I had found her song, and almost always, it was some song with terrible lyrics or a really sad backstory just to mess with her. The truth was, I could never find a song good enough for her. Nothing ever gave me that all-encompassing feeling that is Paige. At least, not until later.
“None of those were ever your song, Paige. Trust me, your song has much more… meaning.”
She stares at me, all traces of humor gone. “You’re serious. You have a real song for me?”
I nod.
She looks shocked. “What is it?”
I click my tongue. “I can’t tell you that.”
“Jordan Miller!” she says, her expression one of stubborn determination.
Unfortunately for Paige, that look has the opposite effect on me. Now I can’t tell her. Keeping it from her will be too much fun… not to mention the fact that telling Paige her song would be like exposing my whole soul to her.
“I told you your song years ago,” Paige says.
“Oh, I remember. When ‘Winter of You’ came on the radio, you freaked out and shouted, ‘This is your song!’ I nearly drove us off the road.”
She smiles at the memory. “But seriously, now you have to tell me.”
“Ah, Devons, timing is key.” What a lame excuse for the real truth—that I can’t tell her how I feel. “But you definitely do have a song.”
“How long have you known my song?” she asks.
I blow out a breath. “About five years.”
“Five years ?” Paige’s eyes widen with surprise. She counts back five years on her fingers and then looks at me, eyebrows furrowed. “Senior year?”
“Right after senior year.” Despite this not being a confession, vulnerability creeps through me just the same.
Paige rests her chin on her hand, waiting for me to expound. I hesitate to tell her more, wondering if this might be too much, but this is Paige, and whether she continues dating Ian or moves to California, our relationship is about to shift anyway.
And I know I will regret not telling her what she’s meant to me.
“I had just dropped my mom off to her fourth round of chemo and was driving to one of my classes on campus. I was having one of those days where everything ended in a downward spiral, and I just needed a reason to be happy. So I thought of you. I remembered our Spotify list and turned it on Shuffle, and this song came on. I’d heard it before, but this time, I was truly listening. It was like everything you are to me was in that song. And every time I would have a bad day, I’d listen to it and think of you.”
When I meet Paige’s gaze, tears shine in her eyes. She covers her face with her hands and rests her head on our tattered book. “You’re not supposed to make me cry,” she mumbles.
Seeing Paige’s tears makes me want to wrap my arms around her and pull her into me. My resolve to keep Paige at a distance is unraveling in real time. For just this moment, I want to break my own rules. I want to be a carefree seventeen-year-old who flirts outrageously with his best friend between the pages of a composition book. I want to tell her more, so much more, but I’ve already said too much.
Suddenly, her head flips back up, her bun nearly smacking me in the face. “I am furious with you.” Tears still gleam in her eyes.
“Me? Why?”
“Do you know how many songs are on that Spotify list? Hundreds. How am I supposed to find my song in that? Now you have to tell me.”
I yawn and stretch my arms. “It’s getting late. I should get to bed.”
Reluctantly, I step away from the porch, where Paige is shaking her head at me.
“I’ll be thinking of you as I drive home to your song,” I say, just to bug her.
“You better believe I will find it on your Spotify history.”
I take a few steps backward toward where my car’s parked on the street. “I’ll delete it. Goodnight, Devons.”
“You’re the worst.”
“I know.”
When I pull into my driveway twelve minutes later, my fingers feel as stiff as a corpse’s. I relax my tight grip on the steering wheel and stretch my hands, wishing I could dismiss the pain in my chest as quickly as I can my fingers. Flipping through the pages of that notebook tonight was like falling for Paige all over again.
How in the world will I ever let her go?
If she doesn’t end up with Ian, she’ll end up in California. No matter what, I’m losing her. And even though I want to spend every remaining second of the time we have left by her side, I know from experience just how difficult it will be to say goodbye afterward.
I need to double down on my efforts to put distance between us. I need to—somehow—remove my heart from Paige’s grasp.