38
MORGAN
There is a single purple carnation stuck in the spokes of my bike wheel, a piece of paper wrapped around the stem. I sit down on my porch steps, staring at it like it’s going to bite me, not sure what else to do.
Dylan comes out a few minutes later, his coffee mug still steaming, ready for the long workday ahead. “I thought you left. Don’t you have a shift at the center?”
“There’s a flower in my bike,” I say, like that explains it.
“Do you . . . do you need me to get it out for you?” he asks, clearly confused.
“I think it’s from Ruby,” I say, still staring at it.
“Ah, okay.” He sits down beside me on the steps, and then we both just look at it for a minute, saying nothing.
I glance at him. “Aren’t you going to be late for work?”
“It can wait.” He takes a sip of his coffee while staring at my bike. “This feels more important.”
I let out a sigh. “What do you think the note says?”
“Probably something good.”
“Really?”
“You don’t hide flowers and notes for people unless it’s something good.”
“Okay.” I nod but don’t move from my spot.
“Okay,” he agrees, taking another sip of his coffee so calmly, like we both aren’t being ridiculous, like we both aren’t already late for things and getting later by the second.
I rub my hands together quickly, trying to psych myself up. “I’m going to grab it.”
“Good plan.”
“Totally going to grab it,” I say again, still not moving.
“Smart move.”
“I’m doing it.” I stand up. “For real.”
“Go get ’em, tiger,” Dylan says, and I raise my eyebrows. “Too far?”
“Too far.”
“How about ‘Godspeed’? Does ‘Godspeed’ work?”
“That works,” I say.
“Godspeed, then.”
I jut my chin and march over. My hands tremble as I pull out the flower, nearly dropping the note in the process. Then I run back to the steps.
“Good work, soldier,” Dylan says as I unfold the paper. “What’s it say?”
I take a shaky breath, and my eyes scan the words in front of me. “She says I’ve inspired her, and she wants to talk. She says she understands if I don’t want to, but she really hopes I will.”
“How do you feel about that?” Dylan asks.
I rub my thumb over her swoopy handwriting. I can’t bear to look away. “I don’t know. I miss her so much.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Is there even a point?”
Dylan nudges me. “There’s always a point when you love someone.”
“But it doesn’t say that. It just says I inspire her, like, me standing by my principles.”
“Morgan, it’s a note, not your wedding vows.”
I look at him. “But I don’t want to inspire her. I want her to be in love with me.”
“I can’t decide if it’s endearing or annoying how obtuse you are.” I fold up the note and slip it in my hoodie pocket as Dylan stands to leave. “You want me to drop you off at the center on my way to the shop?”
“No,” I say, trying to put all this together in my head, trying to figure out what it all means. “I think the bike ride will do me good.”
The ride to the center is too short, mostly because I pedal as hard as I can, the confusion mixing with adrenaline to make me feel one step short of a superhero. A very unsure, cautiously optimistic superhero, because that note . . . Maybe Dylan is right about it. Maybe it could be about love, if you squint.
Aaron catches me when I walk in, pulling me into the break room to hand me a bottle of water.
“You okay?” he asks. “You look a little off.”
“I feel a little off,” I answer honestly. “But possibly in a good way. Ruby left me a note.”
“Hmm,” Aaron hums, looking thoughtful. “She also had a screaming match with her mom this morning. I could hear them all the way in my house. Why do I have a feeling it’s related?”
“Is she okay?” I blurt out.
“I don’t know. She peeled out of the driveway, and that was that.”
“Aaron,” Izzie cuts in, leaning her head into the break room. “Your next visit is here.”
Aaron looks like he wants to say more, but he dutifully heads out, leaving me alone in this too-small room with a bottle of water and a brain full of questions.
I pull out my phone, not even hesitating before shooting Ruby a text: I got your note. It was really nice.
And then I add: I miss you.
Three dots appear, but then they go away. I stare at my phone, my heart in my throat, and wait for them to reappear.
They don’t.
Frowning, I head into the common room. After school yesterday, a bunch of us came here to drop off the last of the backpacks and celebrate completing our end-of-year project. The new display table looks awesome with the donation bags on it.
Now that that’s done, my plan for today is reorganizing the bookshelf. Normally, they’re alphabetical by author, but Izzie gave me the green light to reorganize them by color for Pride Month. Sure, making a rainbow out of books is a mindless job, but I like it.
I’m an hour into my shift when a familiar voice pulls me out of my work. “Hey.”
“Hey.” I turn around, giving Danny a small smile. Guess I know who Aaron’s appointment was with. I look at him, not sure if I should apologize or if apologizing will only make it worse. For all I know, he’s coming to tell me how glad he is he never has to see me again.
“You hungry?” he asks, holding out a napkin with a couple cookies on it. I haven’t had one since the day I lost it on him.
“Thanks,” I say, taking one. He bites into the other, a thoughtful look on his face.
“What’s all this?”
“I’m redoing the bookshelf,” I say. “I’m not doing peer counseling here anymore, obviously. So I’m just trying to be useful somehow.”
“Cool,” he says.
“Look, I’m really sorry about what happened. I shouldn’t have flipped like that. It wasn’t really about you, and I shouldn’t have let my own drama cloud my judgment.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “I know what it’s like to get super overwhelmed. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry you’re not a counselor anymore.”
I shrug. “I sucked at it anyway.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“We both know I’m way too much of a mess to be counseling anyone right now, but thanks.”
“Sometimes those make the best counselors, I think,” he says. “Besides, when you weren’t yelling at me to sue the NFL, you did give pretty good advice.”
“Does that mean you told your boyfriend how important it was for you to be out?”
Danny nods. “I was scared, but I told him exactly how I felt, just like you said. I told him I didn’t care if it meant the end of my football career, but that I really hoped it didn’t. And I told him I wanted the whole world to know how grossly in love we are with each other.”
I grin. “That’s awesome. Now you guys don’t have to hide anymore.”
“Thanks. But we’re actually not out.”
“But you just said—”
“I said I told him everything that I felt.”
“But wasn’t the whole point that you weren’t happy being a secret anymore?”
He shrugs. “Kind of?”
“You lost me.”
“After I told him all that, I let him talk. It got really heavy. There was a lot of shouting at first, and it was harder than I thought it would be. But someone once told me not to shy away from tough conversations, so I didn’t.”
“You guys broke up, then?” I ask, because this sounds so, so much like me and Ruby.
He shakes his head, and my eyes widen. “I realized that my ‘truth’ or whatever wasn’t more important than his reality. He’s not comfortable being out, and his home life isn’t the most supportive. I decided that I love him enough that I can wait.”
“So you guys are going to keep lying?” I ask, and he flinches at my words.
“I’m not lying. I’m protecting the person I love the best way I can. And it might not work out; the pressure could get to both of us. But we agreed if that started to happen again, we would be honest and go from there. Right now, we’re good. We both get where the other one’s coming from. If my choice is having him some of the time or none of the time, I pick some.”
“And you’re okay with that? For real?”
“I have to be. I’m not going to break up with the person I love just to prove a point.”
And it feels like someone just dropped an anvil on my head because . . . That’s not what I did, is it?
“Oh my god,” I whisper.
“What?”
I snap my eyes to his. “I made a huge mistake.”
“No, your advice was great. I probably never would have had the courage to be honest with him without it. I went in there all fired up, ready to tear the hinges off the closet because of you.” Danny laughs. “And even though that can’t happen right now for a bunch of reasons, the conversation made us closer. If you hadn’t pushed me, I wouldn’t have said anything until I was so fed up that we would have been beyond saving. I should be thanking you.”
I swallow hard, staring at the table. “I didn’t listen.”
“Well, I’m not going to repeat it.” He smirks. “Now it just feels like you’re fishing for compliments.”
“No, I heard you. But not the girl I cared about. The girl I care about. I did exactly what you did, but then I didn’t listen. I made her feel like there was no option.” I shake my head. “I thought there wasn’t. And now I think maybe she’s trying fix things. She left me a flower, and she wrote this note. But I think I should be the one trying to make it up to her.”
“Oh,” he says, “shit.”
“Yeah.” I look up at him. “What do I do now?”
“You really still care about her?”
“I love her,” I say firmly, no hesitation.
He scratches his eyebrow. “Then it sounds like you have a tough conversation you can’t shy away from.”
“She’s at a pageant . . . I can’t . . . Should I go? I should go, right?”
“You should always go.”
I narrow my eyes. “Wait a second. Does this mean you just become my counselor?”
“Probably.” He grins. “So . . . you need a ride or what?”