Kate in Waiting by Becky Albertalli (ereader with android txt) 📕

I can’t drive until this comes off.” He lifts his cast arm.

“So, what, you just walked here?”

Noah pops his sneakers off using only his feet. I always forget he can do stuff like that. Picking up stuff off the ground with his toes, and then sort of tossing it up into his hands. He says it helps keep him lazy. I don’t even get how he’s an athlete.

He scoots back beside me by the headboard. “Of course I walked here.”

“You walked here from your house.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“That’s like an hour-long walk.”

“It was nice.” He pats the head of my guitar, yawning.

“In the rain.”

“I like rain.”

“You’re, like, completely dry. You’re not even—okay, you’re just making stuff up, aren’t you?”

“Possibly.”

I shove him hard in the shoulder.

“Okay, okay! Little Garfield. Sheesh.” He glances at me sidelong, eyes crinkling. “If you must know, I’m here because your brother, Ryan Kevin Garfield, stole my phone—”

“He stole your phone.”

“Well, I left it in his car yesterday.”

“Ah.”

“And unfortunately, my sources have informed me that it’s still in his car, which is currently parked at Georgia Tech, and will be for another”—he checks my wall clock—“forty-six minutes.”

“Which is why you’re here . . . now.”

“My ride had places to be, Little G.”

“Your ride. You mean your mom?”

“No, it was definitely a limo. Like a big limo full of hot girls.”

“Don’t call your mom a hot girl. That’s weird.”

“It is weird.” He wrinkles his nose. But then he smiles and taps the head of my guitar again. “Anyway. Sorry I interrupted your whole thing. What were you singing?”

“Nothing. I wasn’t.”

“What? Come on, you should keep going. I really like that song—”

“Nope.” I set my guitar down, pushing it toward the foot of my bed.

“Come on, you’re so good, though! It sounded amazing. It was the MLB of singing. I was like—whoa. She really means it—”

“I don’t.”

“You totally do. Who were you singing about? Wait, let me guess. Shawn Mendes. No. No, wait. Who’s that guy from that movie?”

“That guy from that movie.” I bite back a smile. “Very specific.”

“You know who I mean. The cheekbones guy. With the French name—”

“I have no idea where you’re going with this.”

“I’m going to start leaving my phone in Ryan’s car more,” Noah says. “If it means I get to experience Kate Garfield singing to Timothée Whatshisname . . .”

All the air whooshes out of my lungs. Noah’s smiling expectantly, but when he looks at me, it falters.

Kate Garfield Singing.

His eyes widen. “Kate—”

“It’s not funny.” I scoot off the bed, grabbing my guitar and shoving it into its case. “Okay? You’re not funny.”

I slam the case shut. And Noah’s mouth falls shut, too.

Scene 16

Of course, the minute Andy and I walk into school on Monday, there’s Noah, ready to pounce. “Kate!” He intercepts us in the lobby. “Hey, Anderson.”

“Hiiii.” Anderson glances at me sidelong, eyebrows raised.

“How’s it hanging?” asks Noah.

“You mean my testicles?” Anderson asks. “They’re fine, thank you.”

For once, Noah’s speechless.

Anderson smiles and elbows me gently. “Love you. See you in history.” Then he adjusts his messenger bag—backpacks ruin Andy’s aesthetic—and disappears down the hall.

Noah blinks. “Why are we talking about testicles?”

“You brought them up.” I blush. “I mean, not up, physically—”

“This conversation needs to be, like, a hundred percent less literal,” says Noah.

“Yeah.” I nod quickly. “Yup. Anyway—”

“Anyway,” he says, suddenly serious. “About yesterday. I just wanted to apologize again—”

“No, no, no. You’re good. I overreacted. It’s fine.”

“No, it was a stupid thing to say. I just wasn’t thinking about that whole mess. Not—I don’t mean the singing was messy. Just the Instagram stuff.”

“Noah?”

“Yup?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.” He nods. “Great. So we’re good?”

“Good. Great.”

“Great,” he says. “Perfect. Because I need your help.”

“My help?”

He smiles slightly and nods. Then he squares his shoulders, looking right into my eyes.

Aha. I recognize this maneuver. The eyegasm. An f-boy classic. It’s this extra split second of eye contact, but with the intensity ramped up to eleven, typically ending in a makeout. Even Jack Randall pulls it off, and he’s so stoned half the time he can barely keep his eyes open. But Noah’s, like, unsettlingly good at it.

“My help with what?” I say flatly.

I refuse to succumb to the eyegasm.

But man. Noah’s got these huge, gold-brown eyes, and his eyelashes are ridiculous. It’s honestly unfair. F-boys should be required by law to have that muscly jock hotness that does nothing for me. Like, I truly, sincerely don’t care about six-packs. Six-packs are meh.

But pretty eyes? Those are not meh.

“Well, I was thinking,” says Noah. “Maybe you could teach me how to sing.”

“How to sing?”

“Preferably by Thursday.”

“You’re trying out for the play?” I raise my eyebrows.

“For Senior D. They’re making me.”

“Right.”

“I just kept thinking yesterday, like. Wow. Kate’s such a good singer. Maybe she could tell me her secrets. But I was like, no, you can’t really teach someone singing.” He rubs his hands along the length of his cast. “But then I remembered what you said on the bus—”

“Oh. Noah. No, that’s not—”

“And I thought, you know what? I’m not great, but maybe I could get better with some training. Right? Always room for improvement.”

“Yeah. There’s room.”

I don’t quite know what to say. I don’t even know if he’s serious.

Here’s what I do know: Noah’s not one of those guys like my brother, holding back wells of untapped talent. Noah Kaplan singing sounds like a goose slowly dying. We were in Temple choir together for over two years, and even the cantor gave up on him. She flat out stopped in the middle of “Oseh Shalom” and asked Noah to mouth the words. And instantly, the whole choir sounded fifty times better. If it were me, I’d have been mortified, but Noah seemed to find the whole thing hilarious.

“Are you actually required to try out for a singing part?”

“No idea. I didn’t ask.”

“I think you should ask.”

“What if I want to try out for a singing part?”

I laugh. “Why?”

“Because.”

“What, is there a hot girl in that class or something?”

“Is there a hot girl.” Noah pats my shoulder. “Kate.