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

tucked in underneath. Raina says that’s acceptable and I look hot and I should let my hair down.

But I think I want to pin the sides back.

The doorbell rings. And a few seconds later, my dad yells, “Peapod!”

Weirdly, my first thought is Noah. Even though he’s been letting himself into our house and up to Ryan’s room for years. I mean, if it weren’t for the formality of the doorbell, I’d just assume it was Andy getting out of his voice lesson early.

No matter who it is, I better intervene before Dad hits some new great height of awkward dadness. I race downstairs, my boots clapping on the hardwoods. Entering the foyer, I feel strangely winded. Maybe just breathless.

Maybe some part of me knew.

Matt Olsson’s supposed to be in Alabama, but he’s not in Alabama.

He’s in my doorway.

Scene 54

He’s nervous. I can tell from the way he’s pacing. And the way he keeps smiling and then unsmiling and then resmiling. “Do you have a minute?” he asks.

“Oh! Um. Brandie and Raina—” I start to say, but when he looks over my shoulder, I realize they’ve started following me down.

“Hi,” Raina pats Brandie’s elbow. “We were heading right back up to Kate’s room, weren’t we, B?”

“Right,” says Brandie.

“Uh. So. Brandie and Raina are here.” I smile sheepishly, and then turn back to Matt. “But what’s up?”

Matt starts to step toward me—but he seems to change his mind partway through, leaning back against the doorframe. “I should go,” he says finally.

“Wait. What?”

“I don’t want to intrude on your girl night.”

“You’re not intruding! We’re just getting ready for the fuck—the football game. The football game. Sorry.” I blush. “You’re totally invited. I thought you were going to be in Alabama for some reason.”

“No, I am.” He pauses. “I’m driving there now, but I just thought—I have to tell you something.”

My heart’s thudding like crazy. Matt has to tell me something? Something worth derailing his trip to Alabama? This couldn’t—

This couldn’t be a love declaration, right?

I mean. Wow. Wow. I kind of thought that was more of a movie thing than a real-life thing. In real life, you just kind of flirt and touch and keep maneuvering to be together, until you’re either drunk or sleepy enough to hook up, and then you sort the terms out later. But I could almost swear Matt’s about to flip that script completely. He’s got that Fitzwilliam Darcy look on his face. Or even that Eugene Fitzherbert look. Definitely a Fitz look.

My hands are shaking. Maybe my whole body’s shaking.

“Okay, so—”

Something crashes in my room, followed by Raina’s voice through my door. “Oh my God, ignore us! Brandie, you—” The rest is muffled with giggles, but Matt’s already reaching for the knob. “I don’t want to keep you from the game,” he says quickly.

“What? No. You’re not—”

“We’ll talk later. I should head out anyway.” He hugs me tightly. “I’ll see you on Tuesday, okay?”

I nod, dumbfounded. I can’t quite catch my breath. I don’t know what’s more astonishing—the fact that he left so abruptly, or the fact that he was here in the first place. I can hardly wrap my mind around it. Matt Olsson was here, and he wanted to tell me something. He had to tell me something.

But then he yanked it right back.

Scene 55

Andy picks us up for the game after his voice lesson, and he’s got this jittery, backstage-on-opening-night sort of energy. He keeps glancing sideways at me in the passenger seat like he’s trying to read my face. I don’t quite know what to make of it. Anderson knows Matt came over—Brandie and Raina didn’t hesitate to blurt that out. But the whole Matt encounter was so quick and confusing that it’s hard to pinpoint how I feel about it—much less how Anderson feels about it.

We pull in around seven, about a half hour before the game starts, and the parking lot’s already packed. Even though the sun hasn’t quite started setting, the air’s crisp, almost chilly. It’s sort of nice, because it gives an excuse to huddle up. Always best to maximize body contact with your friends to fend off the terror of walking into a football stadium.

It’s not that football games are strictly f-boy dominated zones. There are a lot of little kids here, too, and old people, and teachers, and pretty much everyone. I used to come to the Roswell Hill home games all the time when I was younger. We even used to have bake sales here for middle school honor chorus, and once they did this whole bouncy house community fundraiser thing with professional Elsa and Anna character actors. Raina still has a selfie with Elsa as her phone background, Harold be damned.

Still, there’s no denying the very real f-charge in the air.

“I guess we’re playing Lassiter,” says Brandie, taking note of the bold letter signs in the away section.

“I hate Lassiter,” Andy says, so emphatically that Raina bursts out laughing.

“Since when do you have sports opinions?”

“It’s not a sports opinion. They fucked us over in the one-act competition freshman year. Remember?” Andy shakes his fist. “I will never forgive.”

“So it’s a revenge thing. You want our fuckboys to beat their fuckboys.”

“Our fuckboys are gonna destroy their fuckboys.”

We head up into the stands, settling in near the marching band, a verified safe space for theater kids. There’s a pregame performance by the color guard, which Brandie actually joined for a year until it conflicted too much with play rehearsal. She’s still friends with a lot of the guard girls though. I always feel like drama club, marching band, and color guard are secret allies, who will one day join together and overthrow the f-force.

“Hey,” Anderson says, scooting so our bodies are flush together. He hooks his arm around my shoulders. “You look really pretty tonight.”

I smile. “So do you.”

And somehow, even though we’re at a fuckball game, I feel completely at home. Which is a feeling I only really ever get when I’m