The End of Our Story by Meg Haston

Author:Meg Haston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-01-26T16:00:00+00:00

BRIDGE

Spring, Senior Year

THE next morning, my skin is still vibrating from the kiss. I race across the tennis court during PE, wanting to shriek the words to Leigh. But I can’t. Not until I know what we are.

“So, what’d you do last night?” Leigh lobs an easy ball my way, a neon sun backspinning over the net. Despite having a general policy against a heart rate over 130, Leigh is somehow good at tennis.

“Hung out with Micah. And, ah—” I whack the ball as hard as I can, and it hits the fence behind her and rolls two courts down. “Sorry.”

She waits until the gym teacher at the other end of the court isn’t looking. Then she gives me the finger and takes her sweet time interrupting the game next to us—two sophomore stoners, and the game next to them: Ana and Thea.

I watch Ana scurry for my ball and my whole body tingles like I’ve been under the sun for days. I watch her laugh and toss the ball back to Leigh, and my brain shifts into overdrive. They aren’t a good match, Wil and Ana, not the way we are. She’ll find someone next year, someone who wants college and a tie collection and a golf membership. I didn’t ask for this. He needs me. But my excuses are thin, and beneath them is simmering guilt. The feeling that I’ve done wrong by her. I look away. I pretend to stretch. I am sweat-soaked under low clouds.

“Seventy-six–love,” Leigh bellows before she serves. She’s been making up scores all period.

We lob the ball back and forth until she gets bored and decides to end the game, punishing me, point after point. We meet at the net and slurp the Big Gulp Leigh filled with gas-station iced coffee on the way to school.

“What’s going on with you?” She squints sweat out of her eyes.

“Nothing. What do you mean?”

“You’re, like, smiling. It’s weird.”

“I can’t smile?”

“Not lately, you can’t.”

I reach for the Big Gulp and suck the last of the syrupy dregs through the straw. “Maybe I’m just having a good morning.”

“It’s fucking PE.” Leigh shakes her head. “Nobody on earth is this happy this early in the morning unless—” A sly grin crosses her face.

“Leigh.” I cut my eyes down the court. “Shut up.”

“Ohmygod.” She socks my bicep, hard.

“Leigh.”

“You got laid! For the first time in, like, a year!” She yelps loud enough that the stoners on the next court burst out laughing. Ana and Thea glance over.

“I. Did. Not.” I grab her arm and drag her across the court, toward the locker rooms.

“Ladies?” the gym teacher yells.

“Feminine issue!” I yell back. We hustle off the courts, Leigh squawking the whole way. When we get to the locker room, I shove through the double doors and I check beneath the bathroom stall doors before I say, “Okay. I did not get laid.”

“Buuut—” Leigh pulls me down to the bench in front of my locker. “Spit it out, Hawking.”

“I kissed Wil. Last night,” I blurt.

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