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

Noah, back pressed against the refrigerator, enthusiastically making out with some girl with long dark hair and patches on the butt of her shorts. His non-cast hand is sliding up and down her back, almost methodically, and he keeps switching between glomping her neck and glomping her mouth. I can’t look away. Wow. I mean, I knew he was skanky, but wow, Noah.

“Oh please,” says Anderson. “In front of the fridge?”

“They were going to get drinks,” explains Vivian, “but they didn’t make it.”

I blink. “We’re in hell.”

Suddenly, Anderson’s face lights up. “Hey, Matt’s here.”

“Where?”

Andy taps his phone. “He just texted. He had to rescue a drunk guy on the back patio, but he wants to know where we are. I’ll just tell him we’re coming to the patio, okay?”

“Wait.” I look up at Andy. “You and Matt text?”

“I mean, it’s not a thing. It was really just to coordinate the audition rehearsal.”

“Right.” My voice comes out soft.

“Um,” Vivian says slowly. “I’m going to run to the restroom.”

I glance up at her, startled—and thoroughly, electrically self-conscious. Cool. No big deal. Just me and Andy being so transparently thirsty that people have to run for the bathroom to escape the radius of our awkward.

“Come on,” Andy says, grabbing my hand. I lace our fingers together, out of sheer habit, even though a part of me wants to beam myself away from him, beam myself out of this party, beam myself home. Instead, I trail half a step behind Andy, feeling mostly numb. It always takes me a minute to acclimate to unsettling news. I always have to find the way back to myself again.

Not that this is even newsworthy. I mean. Two humans exchanged phone numbers to coordinate an activity outside of school. An activity to which I was even invited. And the fact that Matt hasn’t asked for my number doesn’t mean anything. No big deal. It’s nothing.

Sean Sanders’s back patio is mostly just a few squares of concrete, jutting out into the grass of his expansive backyard. There’s a covered-up Big Green Egg grill off to one side and a whole bunch of plastic chairs arranged in clusters. A few f-boys are sitting there, drinking and smoking and laughing and watching other f-boys play flip cup at a table in the yard. But Matt’s removed from the action—we find him sitting cross-legged with his back against the side of Sean’s house. Sitting beside him is a flushed, baby-faced f-boy wearing a sleeveless jersey and the requisite unanchored baseball cap.

The boy grins up at us. “Hiiiiiiiiiiiii, Fiona.”

“He’s been calling me Fiona, too,” Matt says. “I’m just rolling with it.”

“Who is this?” Andy asks.

“No idea.”

“I’m driiiiink,” the guy explains.

Anderson just stares at him for a minute, unblinking—and then he snaps back into himself. “Okay, buddy bro, I’m just gonna . . .” Andy squats in front of the drunk boy, reaching toward his head, and for a moment, I’m bizarrely convinced Andy’s going to slap this f-boy’s face. But instead, he grabs the drunk guy’s hat, rotates the brim forward, and tugs the hat firmly onto his head. “Yup. Wow, okay. That was satisfying.”

“So you just found this guy wandering around out here?” I ask Matt. “Is he okay?”

“Yeah. I mean, he seems fine. But I found him lying down on the concrete, which was kind of—I don’t know. He said he was stargazing. I just don’t want to leave him alone until we find his friends, I guess?”

Okay, so Matt’s a literal angel. Just look at him. First party at an entirely new school, and he’s already taking drunk strangers under his wing. I’m not particularly religious, but even I can recognize a biblical situation when I see one. Sacrificing his own night to help a stranger in need. Talk about a worthy crush. Eric Graves would never.

“Maybe we should go back in and look for someone named Fiona?”

“Nope.” Anderson settles in across from Matt, so close their knees are almost touching. “I’d rather babysit this drunk f-boy disaster all night long than go back in there.”

Matt laughs. “Totally one hundred percent agree. Kate?”

I sink onto the concrete. “Literally always up for not partying.”

“Yassssss,” affirms the drunk boy.

A cheer erupts from the flip cup table, and I look up in time to catch Chris Wrigley pouring a cup of beer over his own face. Ryan and Noah have drifted out to the patio too, hovering around the edges of the group. I don’t see the butt-patch girl, not that I care, but Noah’s certainly showing off that chaotically disheveled makeout hair. Of course, he catches me staring and shoots me a beaming, drunk smile.

I look away quickly, but that’s a mistake too.

Jack Randall appears to be humping the Big Green Egg grill.

Scene 23

Nine in the morning on Saturday, and Noah Kaplan’s in my kitchen. No Dad, no Ryan, no dogs. Just Noah at our kitchen table with a bag of braided challah, rolling a wad of it into a bread ball. The classic Noah technique.

“Sup, Little Garfield?”

I pause. “What are you doing here?”

I mean, it’s not like it’s the first time I’ve come down in my pajamas to find Noah helping himself to the contents of Dad’s pantry. But today feels different, for some reason. I guess my mind keeps sliding back to that vision by Sean Sanders’s fridge—the girl with the patches on the butt of her shorts, Noah’s hand on her back. The way their faces kept squishing and unsquishing. Like, wow. That was sloppy. A cringingly, sloppily, vomity-gross kiss. The true kiss of an f-boy with absolutely no shame.

I guess it’s just weird having that kind of f-boy in my kitchen.

“I live here now,” Noah says calmly.

I roll my eyes. “Sure.”

“Nah, I came back with Ryan.”

“Ryan drove?” I sink into the chair across from Noah, remembering my brother’s flushed, smiley face. The red cup. “He was drunk!”

“You can put your jaw back up, Little G. Madison drove. Good party, right?” He smiles. “You looked so cute. I like your