Page 2 of Catching Feelings

Ryan: so are you over your jet lag yet??

Ryan: what’s the time difference to South Carolina?

One minute later:

Ryan: alex just told me we’re on the same time zone.

Ryan: still, I bet you’re tired

Ryan: all that travel

Ryan: but lmk when you have time to meet up?

Ryan: we should talk about that party

A tiny sliver of me is impressed by how much the guy simply doesn’t care about double, triple—septuple?—texting.

But the rest of me is suddenly bogged down with dread.

I’d hoped (maybe naively) that when I went to stay with my dad for the summer, anything lingering between us after the end-of-year party in June would just… fade away. Ryan’s never been a guy to get attached, and given what a mess that night turned into, I was sure he’d want to let it go. I’m certainly not looking to start something this fall. Too much to do and no time for a relationship, thank you very much. Especially not with Hamilton Lakes’s most notorious flirt.

But number of times Ryan has texted me since I got back? At least twenty. Three of those were admittedly glorious selfies, one making the most devastating puppy-dog eyes I’ve ever seen, and they’d almost tempted me.

Almost.

By the time I look back up, there’s a second melting milkshake on my place mat, and the whole booth is watching me.

How long was I dissociating?

“Who was that?” Kara asks, eyes narrowed.

I groan and click my phone off. “Three guesses and the first two don’t count.”

Naomi whistles. “That boy is persistent.”

I swirl the straw through my milkshake with all the vigor of my internal turmoil. “I can’t wait for hockey season to start again so he has somewhere to put all that misplaced energy. Besides, I don’t get it. Wasn’t he dating Haley and Olivia this summer?”

Naomi nods. “Haley, then Olivia, then Haley again. As far as I could tell. Though Olivia’s been on his story a lot more lately? So maybe the pendulum is swinging once again?”

I throw my hands up. “Exactly! How does he have the audacity to reach out to me when he has something going with half the school?”

Priya frowns. “Have you told him you’re not interested?”

I brandish my phone in the air. “I thought leaving him on read all summer would send a pretty clear message!”

She arches one skeptical eyebrow. “Well, it clearly did not. Have you considered… an honest conversation?”

I shudder theatrically, and they laugh right on cue. But I’m not really joking, because there’s no way I’m having that conversation if I can avoid it. Too many ways for it to blow up in my face, like the last time the truth came out in my life.

Ryan is woven into every thread of the Hamilton Lakes social web—and that’s the one place my life is still normal. Still surrounded by love and laughter instead of silence and hurt feelings.

If I lose that, then I’m really alone this year.

Kara nudges me gently, bringing me back to Earth. “Well, you know Ryan. He’s the kind of guy who will always think he has a shot unless you’re dating someone else.”

I snort. “You might be right. Well, y’all are going to have to be my bodyguards this year, because there’s no way that’s happening. This is not the time.”

Harper fiddles with her bracelets, humming knowingly. “I’ve heard that one before…”