Archive of Our Own

The deep-pitted sense of want that Gina Porter feels is a want that she had once thought herself entirely undeserving of. And yet, she has always found herself to be a hopeless romantic.

For her, this has come from a childhood raised on romcoms, hours spent watching them through the tiny screens on the back of airplane seats as she and her mother flew from one side of the country to another, or late nights spent alone in new cities at the lonely houses her mother had managed to find on impossibly short notice.

She wants this: a boy walking her to a 24-hour store after a party because leaving her now would be too soon, with music still pounding in their ears and him sweeping glittering shards of glass out of her way when she could’ve so easily walked around them; him standing outside her window with a boombox playing her favourite song just to make it up to her when he fucks up; a boy teaching her to drive and leading her up to a quiet clandestine place to kiss her just for the thrill of it all.

She wants this: the kind of love you see in the movies, the overwhelming kind of love, the type of love that takes you, mind, body, and soul, that leaves you falling, waiting for this bonecrush to reach her — as the credits roll, it never comes, and it’s nothing but sweet whispers and promises of forever, people loving with the whole of their hearts and expecting nothing in return.

Perhaps that has always been a jaded outlook, a picture with an inherent flaw, like a burn mark on old film.

For Gina Porter, the story then becomes her outright denial of being deserving of this want. How could she want in this way, when she has been so insistent upon driving other people away? How could she want, when nobody ever stayed? How could she want, when she gave so much of herself, but had gotten used to the feeling of receiving nothing in return?

She could never come to an agreement with the wanting. It felt unfair to wallow in that feeling. Unfair to her mother, for asking for more, more. Unfair to herself, for thinking she was deserving of asking for more from people. Unfair to those who were on the receiving end of her wanting, because she could never become a permanent fixture.

Time and time again, she had given the whole of herself to others. Perhaps this is simply a process she had become as accustomed to as moving to a new city, to a new state — the complete undoing herself to please others. Be it her mother, her brother, EJ Caswell. She has never consciously thought of this as a decision, as a choice to be made; it’s just something she does.

She had undone herself for others countless times over, disassembling the various parts of herself and putting herself back together in the afterglow with a mess of masking tape, thumbtacks, and glue. Would it be wrong to say that Ricky Bowen set that right? That he had put her back together?

That summer, she really had tried with EJ; but maybe that was exactly the problem with that relationship. In the movies, relationships never looked like a thing that people had to try at, nor something they had to put effort into. It was just something that just happened to people, leaving them with no choice in the matter.

She had felt that, once — with someone she had never anticipated. But things had changed, people had changed, and that summer, Gina was still wanting.

In a bid to be loved like she so desperately wanted to, she’d ignored that. And looking past this, she had ended up getting what she’d wanted out of EJ; a first kiss, a first boyfriend. It was what she’d always wanted, right?

It had felt like one of those magical movie moments for all of about five minutes; before she realized the soft orange summer lights were actually LEDs, before EJ paid more attention to himself than he did to her, tried to convince her that what he was spending his summer doing was beneficial to the both of them. It was never about that. Of course it wasn’t. It was never about him fighting for her.

It was about EJ Caswell, and his own quest for self-righteousness.

Summer was over; dead and buried.

She’d gotten what she’d wanted all along; but it had never felt like what she had always thought it would feel like. Maybe she’d never get that. And maybe she’d be okay with that. She’d make herself be okay with that.

That was to say — wasn’t how these things always went? You spent years wanting something desperately enough, but as soon as you got it, it's just this overwhelming sense of emptiness. It’s this unfathomable feeling of ‘what now?’ You think something will complete you, so when it doesn’t, it’s a sort of grief you have to come to terms with.

And she had.

Until she had found herself before Ricky Bowen, and all of sudden, she’s laying her heart on the line: a girl standing in front of a boy, telling him exactly how she feels about him and feeling okay if he doesn’t feel the same.

It was this: Ricky Bowen’s hand wrapped around her arm, his voice saying ‘wait’ as urgent as a plea for help. It was this: Ricky Bowen’s lips on hers, telling her all she’d ever need to know, both a sense of finality and the feeling that this is going to be the start of something more. It’s this: the image of them there, onstage, shadows beneath the spotlights in an empty theater, just the two of them. It was at once everything she knew she’d been waiting for. That feeling she knew she was deserving of. It was that moment near the end of the movie, where all the pain, all the turmoil that the characters have suffered through, makes it worth it in the end.

And when he pulls back from her, says ‘Don’t get me started,’ with his face like water in her hands, that feeling of ‘what now’ doesn’t come. The credits don’t roll. She doesn’t want them to. She wants this feeling to keep going.

And it does — when Ricky sneaks up to her hotel room in the late hours of the night, his eyes hazy in the darkness and saying: ‘The kiss can mean nothing, if you want it to. But I don’t want it to have meant nothing. What I’m trying to say — is that I want this, Gina. The real thing. The whole boyfriend and girlfriend thing.’ She can hear it in the silences, the pauses between his words as he tests the water, carefully choosing the words he’s going to say. ‘Jesus, what am I — will you be my girlfriend, Gina? Please.’

In the end, it turns into ‘boyfriend and girlfriend, huh?’ mumbled into her lips as she pulls him in from the corridor. It’s her, falling asleep with her head on his shoulder, their hands interlocked between them as the TV plays a crappy Hallmark film from the free catalog, about an uptight girl from the big city finding true love in the last place she ever would’ve expected — it’s Ricky waking up early to her face pressed into his side, just watching her breathe for a moment because it’s finally happened, they finally managed to get the timing right, they never have to play cat and mouse again, and he is Gina Porter’s.

It’s Gina waking up with streaks of sunlight on her face and Carlos pounding at the door for an early morning wakeup call, and it’s Ricky inexplicably hiding himself in the hotel bathroom when Carlos barges in. And, in the end, it’s Ricky trailing off down the corridor to his own hotel room an hour later, before running all the way back just to kiss her one more time.

The advent of Autumn in Salt Lake City is this: Ricky’s denim jacket draped over her shoulders on their walk home because of how cold it had gotten, and he doesn’t want her to freeze; the ozone smell, the cold air, lighting pressed in pinks and purples, all the sensations sending her back to the Autumn before, when she had first discovered what living for hope truly felt like; and now — moving forward, with her hand in Ricky’s as they walk through her door, and his lips pressed to her cheek as though the motion comes as naturally to him as breathing. It’s finally knowing that she has a home here.

This feels normal. There is an inherent rightness to everything. It feels like missing something she'd never even known she’d needed.

Later — when it’s long past midnight; they are at Gina’s new house. They’re sitting opposite one another on the floor of her room; Gina, with her back pressed against the mattress of her bed — Ricky, sitting with his legs crossed, dim orange lights, their only reminder of the daylight, playing on the dark features of his face. Downstairs, her mother’s already asleep, having spent the entire day setting the house straight: placing crockery into cupboards, painting the living room a muted gray color, pushing, then pulling furniture, couches, tables, dressers, into the right place, until it felt like a home.

Half of the contents of the cardboard boxes of Gina’s life are scattered across the room, their stories dancing around them like songs she knows all the words to. These things are finally getting a home, a place to belong, that isn’t trapped within the dark insides of a moving box.

There’s the teddy bear Jamie had bought for her when he’d first moved to LA. The red cardigan Gina had knitted for the teddy bear when her mother had first told her that they were moving to Salt Lake, that she’d be attending East High. The dance shoes she’d worn religiously when they were first staging High School Musical. Golden trophies from dance competitions she’d won when she was younger. The Playbills for various musicals she’d taken her Mom to see every time they’d found themselves in New York.

‘Is it starting to feel like home yet?’ Ricky says, eyes intent on her. This is how the past two weeks have been: eyes on her for as long as possible (which has proven detrimental to their safety when they’re driving around in his car past midnight, just for the sake of it), whispered promises, minutes spent with Ricky’s fingers pressed against Gina’s pulse points, and Gina’s hands in his hair.

(He does not tell her that all of these moments: alone on that stage, his face pooled within her hands, the physical sensation of her skin against his, every kiss, every held breath, every rise and fall of her chest as she sleeps — are these colossally overwhelming things to him: overwhelming that she exists, overwhelming because they feel like two binary stars, gravitationally bound to one another, that he should be allowed within her orbit, overwhelming because how could it ever be anything less than that? And yet, it feels strange to refer to it as such a massive thing — they are just Ricky and Gina.)

‘Salt Lake’s felt like my home for a while now.’

‘I guess it probably helps when you have an incredibly attractive, generous, and talented boyfriend bringing you takeout for dinner everyday.’ (There’s a cardboard pizza box open on the floor beside them.) (Yesterday, he bought her Chinese Food, and the day before that had been Indian Food.) (Tomorrow, he’ll bring her pancakes and she’ll say: ‘Dessert for dinner? Really?’ and Ricky’ll just smile at her because often, it’s the only thing he can bring himself to do around her.)

Gina hums. ‘Do you think I can get the number of this incredibly attractive, generous, and talented boyfriend?’

‘Wow, Gina.’ Ricky clicks his tongue. ‘I bring you food out of the kindness of my heart everyday, and this is the thanks I get? That hurts.’ He reaches out for another slice of pizza; then, leans back on the palm of his free hand. ‘Your brilliant and selfless boyfriend aside, this house? You like it?’

‘A house is a house, isn’t it?’ He leans forwards, reaches fingertips out for hers until their fingers are interlocked, Ricky’s cold hand fitting like a puzzle piece in Gina’s. He holds it there for a moment, just looking at her. And, inevitably, that prompts her to open up. ‘Yes. I like the house. But, I mean, you think I would’ve got used to moving after I’d done it for the eighth time, but I don’t know — there’s always something about trying to belong in a place you don’t recognise. Twice now I’ve walked into my Mum’s bedroom instead of mine.’

‘You can say that again. Have I told you about the time I accidentally walked into my Dad’s room at midnight to use the toilet? It was right when we’d moved and I still hadn’t got used to living in the new place.’

‘He tried to get you with a — what was it? — golf club?’

‘Baseball bat. I don’t know who he’s expecting to try and invade our house. Like, what would they even steal?’

Ricky leans forward and joins his other hand with Gina’s, their knees pressed against each other. (He’s noticed this, their constant awareness of one another, the constant need to be in contact, even in small gestures like this one.) (This awareness then becomes the knowledge that he would know her blind, a hand in a hand, from the rise and fall of her breaths.)

‘Like father, like son. I still can’t believe you tried to assault Corbin Bleu.’

‘And I can’t believe you actually watched that documentary.’

‘I’m not above trashy reality TV. Besides, can you blame me for being curious? Are you really trying to tell me that you haven’t watched any of it?’

‘I may have cast my eye over a highlight reel. If not to see my beautiful, gorgeous, amazingly-talented girlfriend shine as the lead.’

She scoffs. (Her heart flutters hearing him refer to her as his ‘girlfriend’. She doesn’t tell him this. She doesn’t even know how she would. How could she possibly explain to him in words the depths of what he makes her feel? Emotions she didn’t even think herself capable of, deserving of? But the feeling is there, this deep-rooted thing that tangles around the chords of her heart.) ‘That was such a line.’

‘Don’t blame me for not wanting to see some of my most embarrassing moments play out on a silver screen.’ He rubs the back of hand over his cheek. ‘Nobody understands the context of the hug, Gi. They just think I’m a weirdo who really wanted to hug Corbin Bleu.’

‘I mean… that is exactly how you came across when it happened. I distinctly remember thinking “wow, Ricky Bowen’s finally lost his mind, and all it took was a theater camp.”’

‘You keep those sweet nothings coming, Gina. As my girlfriend, you’re contractually obligated to now.’ (There it is again — making her heart beat faster, makes her want to smile in a way that would be so completely impossible to hide.)

‘I really should’ve read the fine print before I let you kiss me.’ She says. ‘I’m still a little mad at you for not telling me what you’d said to Carlos.’

(She knows exactly where she was when she saw it for the first time — a gas station somewhere on the border between Nevada and Utah. Her Mom was in the store buying snacks for one of the longest stretches of road on their trip. She was sitting in the car, her feet kicked up against the dashboard, watching scenes of her own life play out on her phone.

The scene is this: Ricky and Carlos sitting on a bench, immediately after the events of what Carlos had called ‘RCOSL’. Ricky telling Carlos that he wasn’t ‘pretending’ to crush on her. The knowledge that she had never been imagining things, lingering looks, stolen stares. The knowledge that it was as real to him as it had been to her.

She knows she has every right to be mad at him. For keeping things from her. For lying to her. For not being honest, and just telling her about how he felt. But the thing ends up being that every rational thought she’s ever trained herself to have goes straight out of the window when it comes to Ricky Bowen.

There wasn’t a single part of her that was mad at him — it was just that giddy teenage-dream feeling, the feeling that this wasn’t part of her reality, Ricky Bowen becoming a blustering fumbling mess when it came to her.

He’d ended up texting her not long after they left that gas station, right as they’d crossed into Utah. ‘Can you tell your Mom to violate a few minor traffic laws so that I can see you sooner?’

Her Mom had glanced over and seen her smiling at her phone like a giddy love-lost teenager. Which was exactly what Ricky Bowen was capable of turning her into.)

He ends up shifting, moving himself so that he’s beside Gina, leaning back on her mattress, his thigh pressed into hers, that constant ever-present touch between them.

‘Oh, they left that in?’ He sighs. ‘What Carlos wants, Carlos gets, I guess.’

‘I just can’t believe you let yourself get caught on a hot mike. I mean, what were you thinking?’

‘Gina, you made thinking very hard for me that day.’ He sighs. ‘You don't… hate me, do you? Like, for not telling you about it sooner?’

Here, she turns away from him, because she knows she just won’t be able to handle the look she gets back. ‘Actually, I happen to think it was sort of… sweet. Admirable? For protecting my feelings. Something like that. You could’ve just as easily taken advantage of the whole EJ situation, you could’ve — but you didn’t. So… thank you.’ She turns back to him to see him grinning at her, a reckless sort of smile. ‘And now I regret saying anything nice.’

‘I give you permission to call me an idiot.’

‘You’re an idiot.’

‘You’re such a romantic.’ Here, he squeezes her leg. ‘Jesus.’

‘Was that a good Jesus, or a bad Jesus?’

‘It was more of a “Holy shit I can’t believe Gina Porter is my girlfriend, why did we ever wait this long, we could’ve been doing this the whole time” sort of Jesus.’

‘Oh, you’ve got it bad, Bowen.’

‘I’m not gonna sit here and pretend that’s not true.’ He leans back. ‘My luck, though, Channing getting the first time I’d ever actually admitted I liked you on camera. I’d felt it for as long as I’ve known you, but I kept trying to pretend I didn’t, because admitting it was the truth was this huge scary thing, and because everything else going on just made it so confusing. I felt so shitty, I was with Nini, then you were with EJ, and I didn’t want you to hate me for waiting until you were with EJ to say anything about it. So I just… pretended that that wasn’t what was happening. One of the worst performances of my career, and they never doubted it for a second.’ He sighs, finding Gina’s hands between them without ever having to look down, rubbing his thumb in circles over the top of her hand.

‘Well,’ he starts, ‘You made pretending not to like you sort of impossible after the whole “What Do You Know About Love” thing. You know, the whole time I was thinking “why is she looking at me like that, she’s shoving me around like this and this is the best feeling I’ve had in months, I want this to keep going, I want to spend the rest of my life like this,” that I was paying absolutely no attention to not looking like I was chasing you around like a lost puppy.’ He shakes his head, that slight movement, betraying his own disbelief. ‘Turns out, it was almost obnoxiously obvious. That’s what most of the tweets under the Frozen hashtag are saying at least.’

‘About the whole “What Do You Know About Love” thing —’ Gina starts, her hand finding its way to the loose curls at the base of Ricky’s neck. ‘I think that’s when I realised how stupid it was trying to run from this. I know I was doing the whole thing to make EJ jealous but… but if Jet or any of the other boys had been Kristoff, it wouldn’t have worked. It’s because it was you.’ She looks up at the ceiling trying to avoid his gaze. ‘Because it might’ve been the case that I wasn’t completely acting either? And maybe part of it was trying to convince myself that I didn’t still have feelings for you? Like, being that close to you just to prove that I could do it without feeling anything at all.’ She says. ‘And look how that turned out.’ She holds up their interlocked hands. Ricky’s looking at her, the corners of his eyes softening the longer he does.

Gina ends up saying, slow and rehearsed, ‘You’ve really liked me for that long?’

‘Homecoming. That’s when I knew. Me and you, in that car, everything about it, I just — I felt so lost before that. I was just so angry all the time, I was looking for any excuse to be angry at someone, joining theater was a way of actually taking control of what was happening to me and I had, like, no one in my corner, but you just — it was just us in that car. Like we were in our own world, and absolutely nothing else that was happening mattered.’

Gina steadies herself, if only for a moment, talking slowly so the words come out properly. ‘I don’t even think you’re aware of it Ricky, but you did the exact same thing for me. Like, I’ve been to so many places in my life, I’ve met so many people, but no one's ever bothered to try and break down those walls in the way you did. You were so insistent upon seeing the true Gina Porter, which is why, I guess, you were the first person I let all the way in. Thanksgiving — I’ve never had someone fight so hard for me before. I mean, you were blowing up my phone,’ here, he lets out a breath, remembering it as well as she does, ‘It scared me. It was all these feelings I’ve never had before, and you were the reason for them, and you’d seen so much of me but you never shied away from it. And sometimes… sometimes I wish I’d given in. Knowing the ending was predestined, I still selfishly wished I’d let myself hear your voice again. Because as much as you’d seen me, I’d seen you.’

‘No, no. Don’t apologize. Never apologize. You did what was right for you at that moment.’

‘I still felt bad. And waltzing in on opening night like I wasn’t going to ruin the whole status quo. Walking back in expecting things to still be the same between us. Saying what I’d said to you when —’

‘Gina. Don’t do that. Don’t think about the what-ifs. It’s about the journey, right? Everything happens for a reason. And sure, sometimes those reasons feel incredibly shitty in the moment, but, I guess, lingering about the bad shit that happened in the past is a foolish thing to do. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt over the past year, it's that you’re allowed to be nostalgic about the happy stuff. Just because it was clouded by shit stuff doesn’t make those happy feelings any less real.’

‘I mean. That all-nighter we pulled trying to save Miss Jenn’s job was pretty alright.’

Ricky grins. ‘Ah. I remember it all too well. Sometimes, I can still hear your voice: “Richard, it is a jazz square. You look like a baby deer learning to use its legs for the first time.”’

Gina shrugs. ‘Not everyone can be good at everything the first time.’

‘Coming from the girl who was doing donuts round the Target parking lot, like, ten minutes after insisting she “didn’t know how to drive manual.” By the way, I’m fully intending on keeping my promise about those skateboarding lessons. But knowing you, you’ll probably be gliding down a ramp about three minutes after letting go of my hands.’

‘The driving thing was a total fluke, I promise.’

‘Oh, so it had nothing to do with me being a good teacher? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. “I had a brilliant teacher.” There, you happy?’

‘Gina Porter, I don’t think I have ever been happier than I am right now. Believe me, I am not just saying that.’

His hand comes up gently, brushes the length of Gina’s jawline, and her stomach tumbles as he bridges the gap. They’ve kissed so many times before, but every time feels like the first; every time it feels like standing upon the precipice of some untrodden land, some adventurous thing, the coming together of everything. He smiles into her lips as he kisses her.

‘What was that for?’

‘Making up for lost time?’

She hums as he falls into her again. Turns out, this was the feeling she’d been waiting for the whole time. The finality, the completeness. It’s not that she requires love, requires someone’s hand in hers to feel complete. She’s never felt this completeness in such a way before. For so much of that relationship, she was trying to be someone she wasn’t, trying to be some perfected version of herself. She was doing what she did best — acting. Pretending that this was how it was supposed to feel. That it was normal to hide the flaws and the faults for the betterment of the relationship.

She doesn’t feel this completeness because she is in a relationship — she feels this wholeness because of Ricky Bowen. She had changed because of him, but it had never been to become an idealized version of herself for him. He doesn’t care that he can see the brush strokes that compose her.

The reality of it is the flustered sort of feeling she gets every time he kisses her, the giddiness, like she’s being swept off her feet just from a look in her direction, the butterflies in her stomach lurching with glee when he pulls her into him. It’s him sighing lazily as their noses bump together, like he’s finally relaxing. Like the both of them have finally stopped running.

‘Shoot.’ He mutters.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I bought you something.’

‘You did?’

‘I did.’

‘For what?’

He shrugs. ‘Because I wanted to?’ He rubs the palm of his hand into his eye. ‘I may have stayed up till 5am last night making you a blanket.’ He sits up, reaching for the ink-stained canvas bag he’d chucked on the floor of Gina’s room as they’d got here, his skateboard resting between its straps. He unzips it and pulls out a brown blanket, stitches loose and fraying at the edges but it still manages to make Gina’s heart skip a beat.

‘Shut up.’

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘It was metaphorical. As if you made this?’ She leans forward, running her fingers over the stitches.

‘Apparently so.’ He scratches behind his ear. It’s a sheepish gesture: a kind of a quietness that she’s only caught in glimpses before — a kind of quietness that belongs to her in its entirety. ‘I guess the thought process was for it to be a housewarming gift, you know? Something to remind you that you belong here. Because, you do. You belong in Salt Lake, Gi. You’ll never not have a home here.’ He leans around her, draping it over her shoulders. ‘As it turns out, it’s a lot harder than you make it look. I tried following a Youtube tutorial, but then the girl started talking about purling? My point is, Gina, I really hope you cherish this, because blood, sweat, and tears went into the making of this blanket. And I mean that in the most literal way.’ He shows her a torn corner, stained darker than the rest of the blanket. ‘That’s my blood.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Me and the knitting needle may have had a… minor altercation.’

‘Is this some kind of blood vow?’

‘I mean, are you into that? Because if you are, I don’t know, who’s to say?’

‘God, you’re so weird Ricky.’ She sighs. ‘But also, you’re kind of, like, the sweetest person I’ve ever known.’

‘Gina, I am going to keep that compliment with me until the day that I die.’

And, by 1am that morning, it’s the both of them sat on Gina’s balcony, it’s the stars looking down on them, it’s the sepia light of street lamps glowing on wet concrete and the cold, the biting September cold: it’s his jacket around her shoulders, her sinking into the collar that smells like him and every single moment leading up to this, and the cold ozone smell perfuming their silences, their looks, their momentary touches. It's the blanket Ricky had made for her draped over their legs. It’s the whole scene drenched in ultraviolet light, and the dark shadows dancing on Ricky’s face.

He’s supposed to be gone by now. Technically, he’s not supposed to be here after midnight, but her mother’s asleep, and he’s done this countless times before, and she’s not going to be the one to tell him to leave.

(He doesn’t tell her that Gina’s balcony is probably his favorite place on Earth. It's everything, the closeness, the coldness. Only the day before, he’d shown up, knocking on the glass, Chinese Takeaway in hand, only for Gina to tell him: ‘Use the front door. My Mom’s not going to bite your head off.’)

(Here, Ricky looks at her. He doesn’t realize he’s doing it at first, until he catches himself. It’s a subconscious sort of a thing, the way you’d look at the stars at night, or waves crashing into a distant shore, or leaves bristling in the boughs above your head. Something you would think would be fleeting, until you realize that it’s always there, somewhere. There is always a breeze nestling itself into your hair no matter where you may be — somewhere, there are always waves crashing into a shoreline, ever changing with the coming and goings of currents. It is a constant, stable thing, as innate as breathing, as rudimentary as stepping forwards.

She’s this: pink sunrises, golden sunsets, and everything in between.

She’s this: valleys, canyons, cuts through stone, everything formed through constant weathering, a result of what has happened to them before this very moment.

She’s this: a book who’s words he could recite by heart; a street he’d walk over and over again until he could know every blade of grass, every leaf upon every tree, every crack in the sidewalk.

She’s this: Gina Porter, at once everything he has ever wanted, and everything he has ever needed.)

‘This whole documentary thing is sort of crazy to think about, isn’t it?’ Gina says, cold air prickling her cheeks. ‘I mean, we’re, like, famous now.’

‘Yeah.’ Ricky says. Gina’s balcony is small, and their legs have ended up tangled together on the landing. ‘How do you feel about it?’

‘About the mortifying ordeal of being known by the whole of America? Believe me I am… thrilled by the prospect of it.’

‘You sound it.’

‘I have, like, fifty-thousand TikTok followers now.’

‘Alright. So that’s fifty-thousand people I’m going to have to fight off with my Dad’s baseball bat.’

‘I keep getting comments about… the EJ thing. People think because they’ve seen the documentary they know the full story. When they don’t. Not really.’ Part of this is because she doesn’t think this is a thing she could ever explain. How could you explain this, the velocity of Ricky Bowen, everything fitting into place like stars in the night sky, to someone who hasn’t experienced it firsthand? ‘I don’t think half of our friends even know the whole story.’

‘Shit, yeah.’ Ricky says. ‘Oh, Gi, this is going to sound so terrible, but these past two weeks I haven’t even thought about telling everyone about us. It hasn’t even occurred to me to tell anyone, because it’s like — well, it’s like all I’ve found myself able to think about is you.’

There’s a thought. Gina sits up. ‘Maybe we should… keep it that way? For a little while?’

‘Yeah?’ He takes her hand in his. ‘Is that what you want?’

‘I mean — I think so? I agree, about these past two weeks. I think this is the happiest I’ve been in — well, a long while. And, like, I love our friends, but — I don’t know. I kind of like this. I like the midnights. I like not having eyes on us, not having to worry about what other people have to say. It’s not just our friends either. It’s everyone else. I know you’re already going to say I shouldn’t but I’ve been doom-scrolling the hashtag, and there’s so many people taking EJ’s side in this and — and whatever people may think about us, I don’t want to hear it. Not yet, at least.’

‘So, what does this mean, Gi? No acting like a couple at school? No hand holding in the corridors?’

‘No goo-goo eyes at me during auditions, either.’

Ricky feigns a gasp. ‘I do not make goo-goo eyes at you.’

Gina shrugs. ‘Literally every scene from Frozen: The Musical: The Documentary would disagree with you on that front, Bowen.’

‘I thought I was being subtle! Alright. No goo-goo eyes. But if we just happen to find ourselves alone in a classroom together and there is categorically nobody there to see? What then?’ Here, he makes a point to look at her lips.

Gina rolls her eyes. ‘You can’t wait the eight hours we spend at school to not kiss me?’

Their noses are already pressed together. The night thrums.

‘You’re right. Maybe we should get all the kissing in now, then?’

‘I wouldn’t be opposed to that.’ She mumbles.

He leans in, kisses her under the stars.

‘And what about driving you to school?’

She shrugs, her face cupped within his hands. ‘Friends give each other rides.’

‘Gina Porter! Did you actually just friendzone me?’

‘And so what if I did? What are you gonna do about it?’

He kisses her again. Kisses her because he can. Kisses her for every single moment leading up to this one; for every moment that will happen after this one. Kisses her because every racing thought he’s ever had, every fear about this being his senior year, about the choices he’s going to have to make this year, is silenced with Gina’s lips parted and the rosey smell that clings to her skin that he knows is going to remain within him like smoke in his lungs.

‘God, I’m glad you’re here, Gi. I’m glad your Mom’s here too. You deserve somewhere that feels like home.’ He sighs, like his whole body relaxes as he leans his cheek on Gina’s shoulder. ‘It suits you. Salt Lake, I mean.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’ He nudges into her.

She’s watching the way the stars twinkle in the night sky. Last semester, when they were living on opposite ends of the country, her Mom had told her that if Gina were ever to miss her too much, she should look up at the stars and know that her Mom would be looking up at the sky too, and the alignments of the stars would be the very same. She spent so many sleepless nights looking up at the sky hopefully last semester, waiting for shooting stars that never came.

In the end, she hadn’t needed a wish to end up here. Gina and Ricky had found one another, first as ships crossing paths frantically at night, a torrid and temporary affair before destinations were changed, and yet, they still navigated the same paths, following the same mudded roads. And second, in the daylight, not needing Polaris to find their true north.

‘Gi. I would steal every star out of that night sky if you said you wanted one.’

‘Don’t worry. I wasn’t planning on requesting one any time soon.’ She leans into him, his arm falling over her shoulders, a movement as natural as a heartbeat.

‘I would though.’

‘You wouldn’t be scared of falling? I mean, space to Earth? It’s quite far.’

‘Not anymore.’

Ricky leans his head back against the railing of the balcony. Gina’s got the moonlight within her eyes, the wind catching in the curls of her hair as though it belongs there, and the chill of September in Salt Lake City biting at the contours of her face, her cheeks her nose, and she either doesn’t feel it, or doesn’t care, and she’s still and she’s breathing.

‘I think I could stay here forever.’ He manages to hum.

‘Me too.’ Gina sighs. Under the stars, breathing — she’s home.

The vibe in the Cafeteria by lunchtime on that first day back at East High is weird to say the least. And it’s not just because of the lingering glances directed towards their table from the rest of the student body. (Apparently, Frozen: The Musical: The Documentary had become a bigger deal than any of them could have anticipated. Two freshmen had come up to her to tell her that she was amazing as Anna. Ricky standing beside her had gotten a polite ‘You were alright too,’ whilst Kourtney had spent a good half an hour signing headshots before they even made it to their lockers.)

When she and Ricky had made it to school that morning (not mentioning when Ricky had pulled her back, one, two, three times to kiss her before they had even made it out of his car), there had been a bunch of trailers parked in the carpark. And despite fervent chatter about what possible reasons they could be there, nobody has been able to ascertain exactly why. (They have some idea, of course. This is East High. Nobody says it, though.)

The ‘theater kids’ (a phrase Kourtney seems insistent upon rejecting) are packed around one of the lunch tables.

On her first day at East High, Gina had eaten lunch outside on one of the benches. She had not known anyone, and therefore, did not have a place to sit. It hadn’t been embarrassing, not then, she’d been through enough schools to understand how this process went, but it felt so incredibly isolating. As if she was on the outside looking in.

No matter how regularly it happens these days, she’s never going to undermine how beautiful it feels to have a place to finally belong. It's not much — the two lunch tables it takes to occupy all of them, the luminous glow of low sunlight glancing in through the windows of the cafeteria, the table of jocks playing the same combination of Stormzy and Fall Out Boy every day, without fail. But it's like she knows what it means to be an East High student, to be a Wildcat (leopard), because this feeling of being known as someone more than the over-ambitious transfer student is one of the best feelings in the world. (Second only to the moments she and Ricky get together, in the car on the way to school, at the skatepark late at night, throwing grapes into his mouth on her balcony.)

Ricky is the only absentee at lunch. Of course Gina’s wondering where he is, but she can’t bring it up without Carlos’ questioning eyes on her, asking ‘Why does it matter to you where Ricky is?’

Carlos is the closest anyone is to knowing the whole truth. He knows the truth about Gina’s feelings for Ricky, that she’d insisted to herself that she’d put to bed when she’d started dating EJ. He knows about the truth of Ricky’s feelings for Gina, (as does anyone else who’s seen Frozen: The Musical: The Documentary.) What he doesn’t know is about what happened on that stage after they’d all left, he doesn’t know about the night at the hotel before they flew back to Salt Lake, and Gina helped her mother pack. He doesn’t know about the night, two weeks ago, when Ricky had tried to teach Gina to skateboard, when they’d fallen back against the concrete and just laid there for hours, silences that they both understood, never needed to be articulated. He doesn’t know about the night when Gina had texted Ricky, ‘I can’t sleep.’ ‘Neither can I.’ ‘Take me somewhere?’

Gina likes that these things belong wholly to her and Ricky. She cherishes these moments when they are alone in the world, existing just as themselves. Sometimes she thinks it is strange to feel this way — this is a high school relationship, she’s sixteen, how could something at sixteen ever feel like forever? — but then Ricky will draw lines between the freckles on her legs, and she’ll think this is it.

And it’s the most natural feeling in the world, like knowing tomorrow is the day after today, like knowing the sun will come up in the morning — Gina will have Ricky.

Carlos sits up. ‘You know, I watched High School Musical 3 for the first time before we left for camp. Honestly, it was not terrible.’

‘Not terrible?’ Gina scoffs. ‘Carlos, it’s by far the best of the three.’

Kourtney shakes her head. ‘No, that would be High School Musical 2.’

‘You’re both wrong, because the original is the best.’

Gina rolls her eyes. ‘You have no room to speak. You didn’t even watch the sequels until this year.’

‘She has a point.’ Kourtney’s saying. ‘Why did you wait so long?’

Carlos groans. ‘We’ve been over this. Sequels are never as good as the original.’

‘Temple of Doom beats Raiders of the Lost Ark.’ Kourtney says.

Gina says, ‘Yes, and The Last Crusade beats both of them.’

(She and Ricky had watched all the Indiana Jones movies with Ricky’s Dad over the Saturday before school started. In breaks between movies, Ricky explained how he’d grown up watching the movies on Sunday nights, how sitting down to watch 80s classics was sometimes the only time his Mom and his Dad actually sat down together — like a family. He told her about the nightmares about men with melted faces he’d had after watching Raiders of The Lost Ark when he was eight years old.

They’d started the night on opposite ends of the couch, hyper aware of Mike Bowen’s presence in the room with them. By the third movie, she was comfortable lounging back on Ricky’s arm, with Mike Bowen telling them that they should watch the fifth movie together when it came out in cinemas.

These movie nights just sort of fell into place for Ricky and Gina, not strictly planned until Ricky ends up scrolling through Netflix whenever Gina’s at his, and making a list on Letterboxd titled ‘Ricky and Gina’s.’ They’d watched Ten Things I Hate About You, Gina’s choice. Stand By Me, Ricky’s choice, (they’d both ended up bawling at the end, Gina’s tears staining Ricky’s shirt, and had to watch Wayne’s World (also Ricky’s choice) to cheer themselves up afterwards.) Heathers, Gina’s choice. He’d managed to get her to watch Hereditary, when she’d grabbed the remote, but he’d tickled her until she’d dropped it — and he had spent half the film hiding behind her. ‘Chicken. You’re not even watching it.’

‘How are you not scared right now?’

‘Because it’s not scary?’ Until she’d pulled her face away from the screen and hidden between Ricky’s chest and his arm.)

‘Yeah but then the fourth one was shit.’ Carlos says, mumbling slightly as he speaks.

Ashlyn says, ‘We do not speak of Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure. It’s like the weird cousin of High School Musical.’

Face contorted, Big Red says: ‘Wait. I’m confused. Are we talking about Indiana Jones or the HSMCU?’

‘If we’re talking musically,’ Kourtney starts, ‘Fabulous beats Breaking Free.’

‘Yes.’ Gina says. ‘But Can I Have This Dance beats every other song in the franchise.’

Ricky ends up stumbling into the cafeteria not long after. A long-running tradition at this point. Carlos rolls his eyes.

‘Seriously Ricky, somebody needs to buy you a watch. This is getting ridiculous. I’ve run out of Mamma Mia lyrics to quote.’

‘Sorry.’ He’s muttering as he sweeps around the table, his bag over one shoulder and his guitar case in the other. ‘Had detention.’

‘On the first day of school?’

‘Yeah. I was late to second period.’

(They do not tell Carlos that this was because Ricky had run from one end of the school to the other to see Gina between classes, pulling her into an empty supply closet, ‘This is your idea of romance?’

‘Sorry I didn’t bring us to the Bahamas of supply closets?’

‘Are you seriously quoting Emma Stone right now?’

‘...Yes I am. We watched that god awful film together, I should, at the very least, be allowed to use it to my advantage.’ There was the weekend they’d spent watching every Spiderman movie, Tobey Maguire through to Tom Holland, and Into The Spiderverse. This weekend had also included Ricky dangling himself off the back of his sofa, with Gina sitting on the floor, in an attempt to recreate the upside down kiss from the first Spider-Man. An attempt was the best way of describing it, because Ricky hadn’t even been able to get far enough off the ground.

‘Ricky?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Why are we in a supply closet?’

‘Oh. I missed you. Also needed an excuse to tell you how pretty you look today.’

‘It’s been two hours.’

‘Gina. The heart wants what the heart wants.’

‘Ricky?’

‘S’up?’

‘Just kiss me already.’

‘Are you — that took less convincing than I thought.’

For the five minutes they had, they talked about the eyes on them, the trailers in the parking lot, auditions at the end of the day, ‘It may surprise you to hear this, Gi, but I don’t want to Zefron my way through auditions again.’

‘Ricky, you’ve got the lead three times in a row because you’ve been the best person for the job. Full stop. Don’t sell yourself short,’ Ricky hiding his face and the huge smile upon it from Gina’s unwavering confidence in him in her neck, until the bell had rung and he’d whispered, ‘Shit, my class is on the other side of school. I’ll see you at lunch.’

Of course, they cannot say this. Within the East High walls, they’re not together. They’re not boyfriend and girlfriend. They’re just Gina Porter and Ricky Bowen — friends.)

When Ricky finds his way to her, Gina holds her breath. His arm around her shoulders, his lips on her cheek, feels so natural. Gina would ordinarily find herself leaning into it — but he freezes, braces himself, when he realizes where they are. It’s Carlos cocking an eyebrow, Kourtney clicking her tongue as her eyes focus on Ricky’s hand, still round Gina’s shoulders.

Ricky shifts awkwardly on his feet. ‘Kourtney!’ He moves around the table, pressing an awkward kiss to her cheek. ‘Ashlyn —’ He shoots her finger guns, before leaning into her cheek too. ‘Long time no see, right?’

He goes to move towards Carlos, too, but he holds a hand up. ‘What was that about?’

Ricky sighs. ‘I just missed you guys! Am I not allowed to have missed you guys?’

‘Missed you too… buddy.’ Ashlyn blinks.

‘Alright. Pretty weird start to the year.’ Carlos sits up. ‘Although, I will say, it's not as weird as all the trailers in the parking lot.’ He straightens himself. In Carlos-speak, this means he has something else to say.

‘You know something.’ Kourtney leans forward. ‘What are they filming?’

(Ricky takes a seat beside Gina. Beneath the table, he knocks his knee into Gina’s — then leaves it there. She likes this — the subtlety of the movements, the undercurrents.)

‘High School Musical 4. I heard. I don’t know. I wasn’t there.’

‘What?!’ This is Ashlyn, yelling at an octave above her normal register, so loud that any eyes that hadn’t been on them before now are.

‘Lower your voices!’ Carlos says, ushering everyone closer. ‘You cannot say a word of this to anyone. I mean it. This cannot get out.’

‘Mom’s life.’ Ricky says, idly pulling his phone out his pocket.

‘Miss Jenn had me go to the Principal’s office to get audition scripts, something about sending them to his printer so he’d be responsible for the printing costs, something like that. And it was just — there on his desk.’

(Gina’s phone buzzes. She picks it up. She tries to train the features of her face downwards, tries not to outwardly express the feeling that's currently at supernova-level within her heart.

Ricky: u look really pretty)

‘What was?’

(Gina’s phone buzzes again.

Ricky: i missed u

She clears her throat, trying to hide her smile behind her hand.)

‘Filming notices. Also potentially a filming contract. And by almost potentially I mean there absolutely was. I rifled.’

‘You rifled?!’ This is Ashlyn.

‘Shit.’ This is Ricky.

Leaning back, Carlos says, ‘All I’m saying is that if I even sense Zanessa on campus grounds, my head might explode. And by might, I mean it absolutely will.’

‘What happened to you only being casually interested in the first film?’ Ricky asks.

‘This is what you get for being late to lunch. Sometimes, people change.’ Carlos adjusts his glasses. ‘Speaking of, Ricky, how does it feel to be a senior?’

(He doesn’t register this, because beneath the table, his hand is finding Gina’s, urging his pinkie finger around hers.)

‘Huh?’

‘Wow. I may as well be talking to the air. I said “how does it feel to be a senior?”’’

‘Oh. Well, it’s the worst feeling ever. It’s sort of this never-ending feeling of impending doom that I am completely unable to avoid.’

(Gina’s pinkie becomes her whole hand, Ricky’s thumb pressed into the soft skin of her wrist and tracing quiet lines.)

‘Oh, I’m sorry I bothered asking.’

‘No — no it’s alright. It’s senioritis. Everyone feels like this, right?’ He looks to Kourtney for support.

‘Oh. I don’t feel like that at all. As much as I love you guys, I feel fully ready to step out of the halls of East High and into the wider world. I’ve got so much ahead of me.’

‘Yeah,’ Carlos says, ‘I’m sure your manager has the next three years of your life completely planned out for you.’

‘Pretty much. Kourtney Greene takes Broadway. I can already see it.’

‘Oh,’ Ricky’s saying, ‘Alright. I guess I am alone in this. It’s just — you know those, like, “where do you see yourself in five years” activities that Mazzara got us to do? I couldn’t — I guess when I try to picture myself in five years time, I’m — well, I’m still in Salt Lake. It’s like, I know that I’m not going to be here forever, but I guess my heart hasn’t really caught up to the truth yet.’

(Gina squeezes Ricky’s hand, and he squeezes back.)

Carlos ‘Alright. That was quite profound for,’ he checks his watch, ‘12:34 on a Tuesday.’

Ricky shrugs, letting out a breath. ‘Yeah. It’s whatever. That’s just a bridge I’m going to have to cross when I come to it.’

‘Or you could… I don’t know, address the issue before graduation?’

Ricky shakes his head, blithe. ‘Nah. That’s not my style.’

‘Yeah, speaking of your style, auditions start at quarter to four today. Be there on time.’

Ashlyn frowns. ‘No, Los, they start at four. On the hour.’

Carlos rolls his eyes. ‘Gee, thanks Ash. Now he’s going to show up at quarter past.’

‘Ohhh, you were allotting for the Ricky—’

‘For the Ricky Bowen effect, yes.’

Ricky beams. ‘Aw. You guys. I’ve got a theater term named after me?’

‘At this point, you’ve out Zefroned the Zefron.’

Gina hums absentmindedly. All she can really focus on is the feeling of Ricky’s hand in hers and how long she’d been waiting for a feeling like this. That silly kind of teenage love that comes with girlhood, all the giggling, all the hushed voices. Everything she’d ever missed out on. The romcom experience.

It’s Carlos that ends up noticing her quietness, ‘Gina, you’ve been really quiet today. Something up?’

She falls back into herself, the chattering of voices in the cafeteria, the tray in front of her, Ricky’s hand in hers.

‘I’m golden.’ She says, smiling. ‘Just psyching myself up. This is the big one, right? The redo. And I’m not planning on being the understudy this time.’ (Ricky squeezes her hand. He’s beaming at her.)

There’s a sort of twinkle in Carlos’ eye, because he knows about Ricky’s crush on Gina, but he doesn’t know that they’re holding hands beneath the table, that Gina is all of Ricky’s midnights, every feeling that he has, that they fall asleep beside one another as if they’ve been doing this all their lives.

Ricky thinks that she must know. She has to. Even if he hasn’t said it yet. He thinks she knows.

(Auditions happen later that day. This time, Ricky gets the timing right. Before her audition, he pulls Gina back into the corridor and presses a kiss to her cheek ‘for luck.’

‘You think I need luck?’

‘Gina, you should know full well that I’d take any excuse to kiss you.’)

It takes five minutes for Gina to realize that Ricky isn’t taking her to East High. Their usual route through downtown has turned into Ricky taking her through the sticks of Salt Lake City, roads of concrete turning into roads lined with trees, whole swathes of dark green and crimson — places she’s never seen before.

His fingers tap on the steering wheel as he drives, in time to the David Bowie song playing on the tinny car speakers. The windows are rolled all the way down, wind tugging at Gina’s hair. The lighting is golden, and warm, even when they are everything but.

‘Are you planning on telling me what it is that we’re doing, or were you just hoping that I wasn’t going to notice?’

‘Senior skip day, Porter.’

‘It is not senior skip day.’

‘I am a senior, and I am skipping. Therefore, it is a senior skip day.’

‘It’s attempted kidnapping, that’s what it is.’

‘Oh, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I’ll drop you off here and eat the painstakingly hand-prepared picnic that’s currently awaiting us in the trunk all by myself.’

‘Ricky we’ve got rehearsals after — hold on. We’re going on a picnic?’ She can’t help the smile that spreads across her face at the thought of him staying up all night planning this. He must notice it, too, beaming back at her as she nods forwards, reminding him to keep his eyes on the road ahead of them.

‘That was the plan, yes. But, I mean, if you don’t want to come, I can just turn us around and have you at East High before your math lesson starts.’

‘Whoa. Wait a minute. I didn’t say no.’ He turns and looks at her again. ‘Eyes on the road, Bowen.’ She smiles to herself. ‘Ricky, we’re Gabriella and Troy. We can’t not be at rehearsal.’

‘That’s funny, because I distinctly remember Troy and Gabriella missing the first act of their senior musical.’

‘Yes… because Gabriella was at Stanford.’

‘That’s pretty much exactly the same thing.’

‘It most definitely is not.’ She sighs. ‘Wow, I really shouldn’t have made you watch it with me because now you’re just going to hold it against me.’

‘Yeah, that’s not what you were saying when you fell asleep on top of me fifteen minutes in. You missed pretty much the whole thing.’

‘That’s so not my fault.’

‘What, it’s not your fault that my chest is such a comfortable pillow for your cheek?’

‘Yes, exactly. That’s what I said.’

Ricky rolls his eyes. ‘They can block Kourtney and Carlos’ number. Believe me. They’ll be fine without us. Come on.’

She sighs, exhaustively. ‘Where are we going?’

‘There’s a woods out here I used to come to with my parents. I thought it’d be a nice place for a date.’

‘Oh, so this is a date, is it?’

‘Gina,’ he says, his voice flat, ‘Don’t tell anyone, but I really like you.’

She fake-gasps. ‘Really? I never would’ve known.’

‘It’s a funny story, actually. I was up until, like, 3am making finger sandwiches. Which are apparently a thing that I was not aware of until quarter past one in the morning. And, just to preface, about the cakes —’

‘You made cakes?’

‘You could call them that sure!’ Gina blinks at him. ‘As it turns out, baking is a lot harder than you make it look.’

‘How hard is it? Just read the instructions.’

‘Actually, I was using Youtube and she just kept going so fast and she said something about a teaspoon and I didn’t know what that meant so I just kind of eyeballed it and —’ His voice trails. ‘My point is. This whole day is ours. We are not even going to think about the shell-shocked panic Miss Jenn will be in come half three in the afternoon when she finds out her leads are missing.’

‘And you don’t think people will… I don’t know, maybe start to wonder about why we’re not there?’

‘You felt under the weather.’

‘And you?’

‘Believe me, nobody’s going to be wondering about where I am.’

Hesitantly, Gina says, ‘Alright, Bowen. But why today?’

‘Do I need a reason?’

Eventually, Ricky pulls his car down a dirt road, running around the car to open Gina’s door for her. It’s these small things — his hand immediately finding hers to help her up, carrying the whole wicker basket of food insisting that it's ‘not that heavy’ despite the constant groaning as they set off up a hill. It’s everything — it’s Ricky, it’s Salt Lake, it’s the fact that they’re skipping school to do something like this.

Gina had long ago had her italicized oh. moment, when she knew that they were always bound to be more than just friends. And thus, the knowing that comes along with the feeling doesn’t hit her like a truck. It’s like a breeze, taking her by the hand, leading her out into a meadow that’s beaming in the light of stars, speckles of fireflies. She knows.

Watching Ricky head off down the lane, his face bright, anticipatory. All she can do is stand there and think, ‘Oh. I am in love with Ricky Bowen.’ Knowing that she’s in love with Ricky is not this huge, scary thing like what she’d been led to believe. It’s not something she fights against — knowing she’s in love with Ricky is like knowing what color pink is, like knowing dark clouds overhead means rain, like memorizing the lyrics to a song.

It’s the feeling that this could be forever, Ricky and Gina, finding themselves lost wherever, with one another. It’s Gina, knowing exactly what this feeling means.

Half an hour of walking later, they end up finding a bench up at a viewpoint, with the whole city open up beneath them, and the snow-capped Rockies acting as the backdrop.

Ricky was right about the cakes. They’re objectively awful. But that’s not what matters. What matters is the idea of Ricky, up late at night, thinking of ways to make her happy and coming up with this. The idea of Ricky putting all of this together, for no reason other than to see her smile.

They’re up there the whole day. At one point, Ricky runs off into the woods around the viewpoint, Gina running behind him, and they end up building a den out of huge branches they found scattered across the floor, propped up against a huge fir tree. They waste away the whole day up in the woods, doing nothing, doing everything. With every sigh, every exhale from the wind, acorns and pinecones fall down like rain. Each time the wind shudders, the full weight of a Utah winter coming to pass, Ricky pulls Gina into him, keeping her warm.

It’s Gina pulling Ricky by the hand to the very edge of the hill as the sky starts to leak orange and red and pink, watching darkness approach as the city beneath them begins to light up in bright white. It’s them lying out on a picnic blanket, all the stars in the night sky looking down on them, as they have so many times before. Gina’s wearing Ricky’s jacket again, sinking down into the collar. Ricky’s hand trails lazily on Gina’s waist as they sit there for passing moments, looking at one another.

Gina’s looking into the darkness of Ricky’s eyes. He’s looking at her. At times, they’ve found themselves able to have entire conversations in complete silence.

In the end, though, it’s Gina that cuts through the night’s quiet.

‘You know how you were saying about you still seeing yourself in Salt Lake in five years’ time? Is that true?’

He shifts, propping one hand beneath his cheek. His other hand moves from Gina’s waist to a curl of her hair beside her face.

‘Yes. But it’s like — wow, I really don’t know how to explain this.’

‘Can you try?’

He hums. ‘Well, when I pictured myself, it was like I wasn’t any older than I am now? I was still seventeen — shit — eighteen. And the funny thing is, you were there. It was days like this, you know? Just… forever. Kissing in the East High corridors when we think no one can see us. Driving around Salt Lake when we can’t sleep at night. Staying up all night, doing something just so I get to see you smile. But then, like, it felt so selfish for me to picture you there. Gi, I don’t want you to be stuck in Salt Lake for the rest of your life. I know you’ve fought so hard to be here, but, like, you don’t want to live out your days here, right? I don’t want you to pick me over your future. You’re so amazingly talented, you deserve to be somewhere that highlights that, and Salt Lake City isn’t that place. It will never be that place.’ He’s looking at her, intent. She knows these are conversations they could only have with one another. She knows that this closeness, this fragility, is reserved for them. ‘You’ve got dreams, aspirations, hopes for what you want to be and it’s like I’m just… I’m getting by.’

He lets out a breath, one that materializes in the cold night air around them. ‘Honestly, that “profitable skills” thing I did last semester just threw me entirely. It made me realize, like, shit. I can’t just stay here forever, I can’t stay eighteen forever. When I was younger, I didn’t really know I’d grow up — or, I did, but I didn’t feel like it. It’s… just the same when you’re younger, you know? The same house, the same faces, the same garden. But now? Now I know that I’m going to get older, that I’m powerless against that. But then, where do I go from here? I’ve never tried at anything, not properly. I’ve just half-assed everything I’ve ever done, so now it’s like I’m stuck. I’m moving in place. I’m treading water until I drown. And I guess some of it has to do with the fact that I’d never been able to fathom getting this far in life, that something would happen and I would never have to worry about making choices about my future, so I just… I never ended up thinking this far ahead. I just stuck my head in the sand and pretended that I wasn’t growing up, that I wasn’t getting older, that I was never going to have to choose what I was going to spend the rest of my life doing. But now — now, the future has become the now, and I’m just — I’m stuck.’

‘I get that.’ Gina’s hand finds its way to Ricky’s cheek, a path it has memorized.

‘You do?’

‘Moving around so much, I got used to not knowing what was going to happen the day after tomorrow. I mean, you make plans, you make friends, and then you move again, and it all goes down the drain. So, by the fourth school I was at, I stopped planning ahead entirely. I started doing things without thinking about the consequences. I was living for the now. I was acting without thinking. Before Salt Lake, I would always get this hopeless feeling that whenever I felt good, I just knew it wasn’t going to last. So I ended up holding on tightly to what was making me happy in the moment. I pushed myself into doing things, so at least I could’ve said that I’d tried. But the thing was, I always knew that graduation would be the end point. It would always be the final destination, you know? I always knew that once I got to that point, I’d be free to live my life on my terms. I’d get to choose where I wanted to be. I’d get to choose the people I had around me. I’d actually get some degree of control over my life. I guess — what I’m trying to say is that, is that what you want? Do you want to stay in Salt Lake forever?’

‘I don’t know.’ His voice falters. He takes a hold of Gina’s hand, like he’s grounding himself to her. ‘I guess I’ve never really thought I’d have any other option. Like I’d never find something I was actually good at. Something that’d make people see me and think “now there’s a kid that’s done something good with his life.”’ He pulls back, sitting up, his eyes glossy. ‘God, this whole thing is stupid. Like, why am I actually crying over this?’

‘Ricky, it’s okay. Growing up is terrifying. You’re allowed to be scared for the future. You don’t have to pretend you’re not. I’m not going to think any less of you because of it.’ Gina sits up, pressing her face into his shoulder, linking her arm into his. They’re looking down at the city lights. ‘Do you wanna know where I see myself in five years’ time?’

He turns towards her. ‘Yeah. I do.’

‘Well, I’ll be at a performing arts college in New York. Maybe I make it to Julliard. I take the subway every morning to egregiously early morning dance classes. I spend the whole day in lectures, running lines, and it’s hard work, but I’m really enjoying myself because I know, by the end of it, I’m going to end up on Broadway. At the end of the day, I take the subway back home, to our really shitty apartment, because it's all we can afford. And you’re at college in New York, doing something you absolutely love, something you’re really passionate about. Something you’re amazing at. Maybe you end up getting a teaching degree, something where you can help other people that feel the exact same way you feel. You can help them find their place, like you helped me find mine.’ She brings her hand up to his face again. ‘Ricky,’ (Does she know that everything stops everytime she says his name?) ‘I found a home in Salt Lake. But it's not because it was Salt Lake. It could’ve been anywhere in the world. I could’ve been in LA, Chicago, Paris, London, Rome. But I know that if I’d found you, I would’ve found a home.’

‘Really?’

‘Really, really. I’ve meant every word I’ve ever said to you. You’re not a maybe, you’ll never be a maybe to me. Never in my life have I had something as concrete to me as you are. Cause the thing is, Ricky, is that you’re my future. In every sense of the word. And I mean that. No matter where I picture myself, you’re always there. I’d never choose my future over you, or you over my future, because they’re the same thing.’

He wipes his cheeks with the back of his hand. ‘You really think I’d make a good teacher?’

She grins at him. ‘You say you’ve “always half-assed everything” but I don’t see that. You know what I have seen? I’ve seen the way you light up when you’re doing something you actually enjoy, like the way you come alive onstage. If that’s what you want to do, I think you’d make a brilliant teacher. I can already see you pulling out your guitar to help a bunch of kids learn their seven times tables.’

(Two weeks later, he ends up slipping a leaflet for a college in New York into her locker with a note accompanying it saying — I’ve applied.)

By now, it's well past midnight. They’re still at the edge of the viewpoint. The whole night sky is opening up above them. This far away from the city, they don’t have to worry about the light pollution obscuring the stars. This is how they were always meant to be seen. Gina looks up, and she can see the faint watery lines of the Milky Way so far above them, she can see every star in the night sky looking down on this moment. She can feel Ricky’s eyes on her.

A sky full of stars, and it's her he ends up being drawn to.

‘Do you think the stars watch us in the same way we watch the stars?’

Gina hums absentmindedly. ‘What is so brilliant down here that they could be looking at?’

‘I don’t know. I think there’s a lot of good on Earth if they look hard enough.’

‘Since when did you become an optimist?’

‘Would it be too corny to say “when I met you”?’

‘It would be.’

‘Yeah, well. Maybe that’s what we’re destined to be now. That one high school couple that everybody absolutely detests. You and me, Gi. Who would’ve thought?’

She turns away from the stars, looking at Ricky. ‘I genuinely think this has been one of the best nights of my life.’

He’s already looking at her. ‘Good. I’m glad. God knows you deserve it.’

They fall back, so that they’re lying face to face.

‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘This whole thing,’ she gestures up at the stars, ‘I never thought I’d be that girl, you know? And, God, I never would’ve thought that I’d be sitting on a mountainside under the stars with Ricky Bowen. Like, if you’d told me that at the start of last semester I would’ve punched you in the face. Like, I guess I didn’t even think it possible to feel like this. It’s like this whole other person inside of me that only comes out when I’m with you.’

The fact is, that Ricky has managed to teach her what it means to feel loved. How unerring it should feel. That this feeling isn’t a scary, bottomless pit — it’s golden, and it’s whole.

‘Gina.’

‘Ricky.’

‘You’re pretty.’

She bites her lip. It takes everything in her not to kiss him right there and then, just bring him in and bridge the gap.

He looks at her. Blinks. His breathing is ragged, coming out shakily. He goes to talk. Pauses.

‘Gina.’

‘Ricky.’ She doesn’t have to ask what this is about. She already knows.

‘I love you.’

She sits up so that her chin is resting against his chest, feeling the steady beating of his heart.

‘I love you.’ He says it again, quieter. She goes to hide her face behind her hands, but he has his hands on her cheeks before she can, just holding her there, so softly. It’s the quietness with which this truth is delivered. It’s not a big statement, it’s not a showy display of affairs — why would it need to be, when it has been the truth for so long? ‘In fairness, I have for a while now. Now just felt like the right time.’ His thumb traces her skin. ‘Everything was so loud before and now it’s like… I don’t know? like everything’s quiet. Like I can actually sleep at night. Like I’m not scared of what’s coming next. Like this is what I’ve been waiting for.’ Then, he says: ‘You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted to let you know.’

She smiles, pressing her face down into his chest. She doesn’t want to look at him. She can’t look at him. She can’t for fear of heart imploding in upon itself with a happiness she didn’t even know possible.

‘I love you.’ This is mumbled into the fabric of Ricky’s hoodie. Her cheeks ache from smiling.

‘What was that? I didn’t quite hear you.’

She mumbles again, the heat in her cheeks growing, looking anywhere but Ricky.

‘Gina.’

She looks at him.

‘I love you too, dork.’

He smiles, leans his head back against the picnic blanket, like it's the best thing he’s ever heard.

‘Jesus.’ He wraps his arms around her shoulders, pulling her even closer to him. ‘I love you. I wish I could say something other than that but I genuinely don’t think my synapses are firing properly at this current moment in time.’

‘You’re so—’ She goes to grab at his arms, but he gets her wrists first, twisting them so that he’s half lying on top of her.

‘I love you.’

‘You said that already.’

‘I know. I’m just saying it again.’ He leans close to her pressing a kiss to the place where her jaw meets her ear. ‘I don’t know, I kind of like the way it sounds.’

She sighs, putting her hand in the back of his hair.

‘Me too. Can I just—’ he shifts his weight so that he’s resting on his arms, looking down at her. ‘I’ve spent so long running from feelings like this. All the soppy shit. And now it’s like. I don’t know, you’ve seen me and now I can never be unseen. And it’s scary, but it’s like, not scary in a bad way — I don’t know. I’ve never felt more alive, I guess. I’ve never felt more like myself.’

Ricky smiles. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever loved anything in my life as much as I love you. I just — feel so much more now.’ He lets out a laugh. ‘Do you know how long I’ve been holding that in? Every time I’ve picked you up for school, dropped you at home; every time we’ve sat and tried to watch a movie before getting impossibly distracted; Gina, every time I’ve ever seen you, it’s been there.’

‘Really? But you never — you didn’t say anything?’

‘Because I didn’t want you to feel like you had to say it back. I didn’t want you to feel like I expected it of you.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah. Oh.’

She laughs. Like, really laughs. The warming kind of love, where it feels like you’re glowing from the inside and the only way to let it out is by laughing up to the heavens. ‘Oh my God. I love you?’

‘I don’t think hearing that is ever going to get old.’

‘Say it again?’

He smiles. ‘I love you, Gina Porter.’

Halloween, October 31st, is Gina’s birthday. In the past, this has been marked but her and her Mom sitting and watching Hocus Pocus, Halloweentown, every classic Halloween movie they could find, together on the couch wherever they were living at the time, eating through bowls of candy that were supposed to be for trick-or-treaters. Her Mom would then usher her to the kitchen, introduce her to the stack of presents awaiting her, and Gina would sit and unwrap them as she helped her mother bake the birthday cake.

Tonight, though, Gina’s at the skatepark with Ricky. Sometimes, it's easier to come here: it’s equidistant between their houses, it's one of Ricky’s favorite places, and it's fast becoming one of Gina’s favorites too. It’s not late, but the skatepark is quiet, as if it's been reserved for them.

She’d spent the morning at Ricky’s. When she’d got there, he’d muttered a string of ‘happy birthdays’ into her lips, into her cheek, as he kissed her over and over again, then promising that her gift was coming, ‘later.’ She’s not sure when ‘later’ is, exactly. Mike Bowen had strolled in, vaguely humming the tune of Dancing Queen, pulling her into a hug as he said “Happy Birthday!” and handing her a card — which had contained two tickets to whatever had been most recently coughed out of the A24 labs. He’d grinned at her (that same smile clearly having been passed onto Ricky) and had explained that now, they could have a proper night at the movies.

There had been two pumpkins sat up on the countertop in Ricky's kitchen.

‘Oh, this pulp smells vile.’ Gina said, scooping out her pumpkin.

‘I mean… they were on clearance for a reason. What’s yours supposed to be?’

‘Ricky, are you serious?’ She’d gestured at the carved face on the front of the pumpkin. ‘You seriously don’t know?’

‘I’m not going to question your artistic endeavors.’

‘It’s Jack Skellington.’

He’d tilted his head to the side. ‘Oh. I can sort of see it now.’

With the carving knife she’d been using, she’d gestured at Ricky’s own pumpkin.

‘I don’t think you have room to talk, yours looks like it's had some sort of tragic accident?’

Beneath the thrumming of electricity pylons at the skatepark, Gina’s got her tongue stuck out, eyes and body focused, slowly rolling around on Ricky’s skateboard. He’s sat up on one of the ramps, his guitar held loose between his hands, ideally picking at strings, but his phone screen is in his left hand, illuminating his face. Usually, his phone stays in his pocket when they’re together, but tonight, he’s been checking it nonstop. She knows something’s up; she’s just not pieced it all together yet.

They’re about three lessons into Gina’s foray into skateboarding. The first lesson had been spent with Ricky’s hands on Gina’s waist, and Gina saying: ‘No, Ricky, you really don’t understand how bad my balance is.’ Lesson two had been Ricky slowly letting go of her hands, her hands still outstretched like a tightrope walker.

Rolling around slowly like this is about all she can muster, her hands still hovering out at her sides as if that’s going to prevent her from falling — though Ricky’s concrete in his insistence that she’s brilliant, ‘for a beginner.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It doesn’t mean anything!’

‘Yeah? Watch this.’ Honestly, she’s not sure what her thought process is when she kicks off and heads for the smallest ramp in the park. She braces her knees as she heads over the crest of the curve. As it turns out, she doesn’t brace nearly enough, and ends up stumbling as the skateboard rolls over flat concrete.

‘Shit.’ Ricky slips from his ramp and comes bounding over. ‘Are you okay?’ Gina blanks him, lying her head against the ice-cold floor. She’s really selling it. ‘Shit. Shitshitshit.’ He props her head up onto his knee. ‘Gina, please move something.’

Slowly, wincing slightly, Gina opens her eyes. ‘My hero.’

‘Oh.’ He lies back next to her. ‘Oh, what the hell. You didn’t just do that.’

Looking over, she grins at him.

‘I’m being serious. You gave me a heart attack.’

‘Hm? Let me check.’ She leans over, pressing her cheek to his chest. ‘Oh, you weren’t kidding.’

He sighs, as they sit there for moments.

‘I told you you were good for a beginner. Emphasis on “beginner”.’

‘Ricky, that was an intentional fall.’

‘It didn’t look intentional.’

‘The first fundamental of acting is selling it.’

He hums. ‘Maybe we should stick to those guitar lessons.’

She sits up. ‘Yeah?’

He helps her up, heaving her up with a hand that stays in his as they clamber up the height of the ramp Ricky had been sitting on. She sits close to him, legs pressed together, and he reaches the guitar around her, so she’s fully entrapped within his arms.

‘So what — I hold onto this part?’ She puts her hand onto the neck of the guitar. Ricky’s hand comes over the top of hers.

‘Look at you.’

She turns to look at him, presses a chaste kiss to his lips.

‘So I guess this hand goes —’ He takes her hand and positions her hand onto the body of the guitar.

‘You strum and I do the chords?’

‘Sounds good to me.’

She strums, whilst Ricky moves his fingers over the strings on the neck to guitar, until they’re somehow managing to get out something akin to a melody.

Ricky’s phone buzzes. He moves to reach for it. Gina gets there first. Ricky freezes.

‘What?’

‘What?’

‘What was that for?’

‘Ricky, don’t think I’ve not noticed you checking your texts the whole time we’ve been hanging out.’

‘Whoa, okay, no I haven’t?’

‘You’re a terrible liar.’

‘No, alright, Gina — this isn’t what you think.’

‘And what do I think this is?’

‘I don’t know. What do you think this is?’

‘You’re hiding something from me. I wanna know what it is.’ His phone lights up again, another message coming through.

Carlos: we’re almost done, distract her for another 15?

Carlos: you owe me dude

Another text comes through.

Carlos: ew i said dude your bro-iness is seeping into my bloodstream by osmosis or something

‘What’s this about?’

‘I can explain.’ Gina blinks, tilts her head at him, pouts. ‘God you should not have the ability to crack me that easily.’ He leans his head back. ‘I was thinking about how you’d said that you’d never really had a birthday party before, what with moving all the time, just you and your Mom, you’d just never really had the chance. So I ended up thinking, what if we threw a birthday party for you? And Carlos jumped at the idea, returning the favor, I guess.’

‘Wait. Actually?’

‘Yeah. Everyone’s there right now, helping your Mom decorate the house.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘Gina, it was supposed to be a surprise.’ He rubs his hand over his face. ‘I need you to act like you’re completely unaware of this when we walk in there.’

‘Fine by me. I’m an actress. I act. But it's Halloween. I don’t have a costume? And neither do you?’

‘Ah, Gina.’ He taps his temple. ‘That is where you’re wrong.’ He pulls down the neck of his shirt, revealing —

‘Shut up.’ She shoves him. ‘Spiderman? Really?’

He shrugs. ‘Yeah. And I thought — you don’t have to if you don’t want to because this is very much toeing the line of how much people are going to overlook — but if I’m going as Spiderman —’ He reaches behind him, for his backpack, pulling out a black headband, and a white shirt with a Spiderman face in a love heart, ‘You could be MJ?’

She smiles. ‘Ricky, I’d love to be the MJ to your Peter.’ Then, ‘So… what I’m hearing is that we have about fifteen minutes to kill before I’m allowed back into my own home.’

‘Pretty much.’ He says. ‘Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask you — do you think you can go over Can I Have This Dance with me?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I mean, I’m not quite sure I’ve got the footwork down. I’m fully aware that I don’t know my left from my right, but I’m really trying to be the best Troy possible here, and I do not want a repeat of last year.’

‘Ricky.’

‘Gina.’

She takes his hands, moves them to her waist.

‘You know how to sing.’

‘As far as I’m aware.’

‘Think of it like singing. How do you know you’re playing the right chord? Do you think about moving your fingers? Or does it just happen?’

‘It just happens.’ Gina takes the first step forwards, Ricky’s foot comes backwards.

‘That’s how I think of dancing — I don’t think. I just follow the lead.’

They hum along to music they can’t hear, Ricky continually looking down to check that his feet are in the right position, whilst Gina keeps prompting his chin upwards, ‘Just look at me. Your feet will know which way to go. If you think about it too hard, you’ll trip.’

‘What if I step on your toes?’

‘You won’t.’

Gina’s been over the choreography a dozen times. She knows what steps come next like she knows the lines on her hand. And apparently, Ricky knows this as well as she does. He spins her at the right times, lifts her once, twice, like he’s not even having to think about it.

At the end of the song, he dips her. His face is quiet.

‘How was that?’ He slowly pulls her back onto her feet, his hands linger on her waist, and her arms stay around his shoulders.

‘I’m beginning to think that you just wanted an excuse to dance with me.’ He smiles, bringing her lips to his. ‘You’re gonna blow Zac Efron out of the water,’ is spoken mumbled into his lips.

‘Oh believe me, that’s all you.’

‘Do you think Carlos is ready now?’

‘I mean — we can dawdle back. Just remember to act like you didn’t see this coming.’

When they make it to the door of Gina’s house, she can already hear the whispers coming from inside. Her heart races. She knows she’d made friends in Salt Lake, friends she’d keep for life. But it doesn’t change how grateful she is to have friends who would do something like this for her.

‘Ready?’ Ricky asks. She nods, turning the handle of the door.

‘Surprise!’ Everyone shouts. The lights bloom on in a room she’s already coming to love.

Carlos steps forwards. ‘Ash quick!’

The music starts, Dancing Queen, by ABBA, because — of course.

‘Happy birthday, Gi.’ Ricky leans close, his hand quietly touching at the small of her back, somehow finding a quiet moment in the roar of an accelerating party. ‘I’ll come find you later, yeah?’

She hums, watching him go as he weaves through the crowd.

Every member of the East High theater department is currently packed into her house. Worktops are hidden beneath packets and bowls full of snacks, the ceiling decorated with pink and black banners, streamers, and balloons. Someone, probably Carlos, has plugged a karaoke machine and propped it up onto the kitchen island.

Carlos is the first to head over, Seb in tow. They’re dressed as ketchup and mayo — ‘Please, not a word. I got to choose last year, so Seb chose this year.’

‘Condiments are fun!’ Seb says, a dazed sort of look in his eyes.

‘How do you like the party?’

‘You did this?’

‘With a little help. But yeah, I guess you could say that.’ He smiles. ‘I mean, this whole thing was Ricky’s idea, which I fully plan on questioning you about later.’

Gina trains her features down, willing the corners of her mouth not to give her away.

‘He’s a good friend to me.’

Carlos squints. ‘Because it's your birthday, I’m going to decide to believe you.’

Gina’s Mom ends up coming over too, starkly out of place amongst the East High student body.

‘Surprise, baby!’

‘Mom? You’re — you helped?’

‘What, I wasn’t going to notice a bunch of kids setting up a party in my own house?’

‘No, it's just — you’re okay with this,’ she gestures around, ‘whole thing?’

‘I mean, it did take a fair bit of convincing on Ricky’s behalf, but you only turn seventeen once. I know you’ve not really had as much of a chance to be a teenager as everyone else your age, what with my job and all, so I thought you deserved the chance to just… let your hair down. Relax. Stop pushing. It’s your birthday, Gi. You’re gonna be an adult next year. And I don’t want you to resent missing out on things.’

Gina pouts, wrapping her arms around her Mom. ‘Thank you, this is — thank you.’ She holds on, tighter. Some part of her doesn’t want to ever let go. ‘I can’t believe it was Ricky that convinced you.’

Gina’s Mom shrugs. ‘He made some compelling points.’ Gina’s Mom holds her daughter’s face, and Gina leans into it. ‘He loves you, you know. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this happy.’

Gina smiles. She doesn’t want to cry, not in front of her Mom, so she pretends her eyes aren’t prickling with tears. Her Mom looks at her, and Gina gets the sudden feeling that she wants nothing more than to just stay here, with her Mom, forever.

But her Mom’s looking at her, and she starts to wonder if she thinks that Gina’s enjoying this more than she ever enjoyed any of their traditions. If she’s finally getting what she wants — freedom from her mother.

‘I love you.’

‘I love you too.’ Gina’s Mom smiles. ‘But I’m sure you guys don’t want me crashing this party, so I’m going to go upstairs and be as quiet as a mouse.’

‘Mom?’

‘Gigi?’

‘Come down later? We can do Islands in the Stream.’

‘Of course.’

When Ricky emerges from upstairs a couple of minutes later, he’s wearing the Spiderman costume, and Gina’s heart is pounding in her chest — that fuzzy feeling reaches the pit of her stomach and settles there.

‘Ricky.’

‘Gina.’

‘Yeah. This? I like it.’ She pulls the headband on. ‘And now we’re matching.’

‘You look — wow.’

‘Wow?’

‘Wow. Beautiful. Pretty. Every word in between.’

‘Dork.’

Everything about the party has droned out. The music’s muffled. It’s just Gina and Ricky standing alone in the crowd.

He finds her hand. ‘I was thinking we could… maybe try that kiss again later?’

Her heart speeds up in her chest. They’ve been dating for almost three months now. She doesn’t feel like that giddy feeling is ever going to subside. She’s just going to have to learn to live with the dizzy feeling that Ricky’s capable of pulling from her.

‘Oh, that’s what you were thinking?’

Ricky grins at her.

Music drones quietly in the background, and everything has this fuzzy sort of nostalgic feeling, like she’s not really here at all.

Carlos makes a face as he finds them in the crowd.

‘Are you two seriously hard-launching a relationship at your birthday party?’

‘Relationship?’ Gina scoffs. ‘No, we’re not dating. This isn’t a couples costume. This wasn’t planned.’

‘Gina, you’re terrible at improv. Ricky, you threw this whole party for her. Don’t tell me that doesn’t mean anything.’

Gina’s face scrunches. She makes an executive decision. ‘You cannot tell anyone about this.’

‘What?!’ Carlos squeaks. ‘No like, actually. You two are — and you’re — and Ricky. I mean, I was just guessing, I didn’t actually think that — Oh my God.’

‘Carlos!’ Ricky half-shouts, so his voice is heard above the crowd. Reduces it back down to barely a whisper. ‘Nobody knows.’

‘No. Actually?’

‘Actually.’ Gina says. ‘Just you, my Mom, and Ricky’s Dad.’

‘Oh. My. God. What happened? Did you see what he said in the documentary and realize you were in love with him? Did he tell you how he felt before you saw it? Did you — you need to tell me everything.’

And, lost in the crowd at the party, they do.

‘You know the Frozen premiere? When you left to call Seb?’

‘...Yes.’

‘Well, everyone sort of… left after you? And then it was just me and Gina left.’

‘Everything just — came out? How I felt about him. How I’ve always felt about him. I kind of… told him that if it didn’t happen right there, it would never happen.’

‘So I sort of… kissed her.’

‘And I may or may not have kissed him back.’

‘What?!’

‘Carlos! Quiet!’ They say in unison.

‘Ricky, Gina.’ He grabs a hand each. ‘I cannot tell you how honored I am that you chose to tell me first.’

‘I don’t think it was much of a choice.’ Ricky says.

‘Yeah, I’m going to be honest with the both of you, because you’re my friends and I love you. You’re terrible at hiding it. I mean, Ricky, you kissed her in the cafeteria the first day back, and tried to pretend you hadn’t by kissing the rest of us? And you both vanished from that one rehearsal we had. And also… you both kept vanishing places. Also? You’re both completely incapable of looking anywhere but each other for more than a few seconds at a time.’

Ricky scoffs. ‘I have no idea what you could possibly mean.’

He lets out a breath. ‘Sorry I just — I can’t believe this is happening. Why haven’t you told anyone?’

‘Because,’ Gina starts, ‘Because of the documentary. I didn’t want everyone thinking we were terrible people. I didn’t want everyone thinking that this had been going on during camp.’

‘Even though it kind of was.’ Ricky adds.

‘Even though it kind of was.’ Gina admits.

‘Wow. Okay. Well. I’m happy the both of you are happy.’ Carlos looks over his shoulder. ‘Don’t worry your secret's safe with me. Now. I’m going to go dance, and retroactively try my hardest not to think about everything that you’ve just told me.’

‘Hey, Gi! It’s our song, get over here!’ Kourtney shouts from somewhere across the room.

‘I should probably —’

‘Yeah.’ He holds her hand for as long as he can until she’s lost in the crowd.

Ricky finds her again, sitting on a bench in the garden. By now, it's a while later, the party continuing onwards, the music still a muffled thing, coming and going in waves. It still feels like she isn’t here, not really.

‘Ditching your own party?’

‘Not ditching. Just… taking a breather.’

‘Can I sit?’

Gina smiles, moving over and making space for Ricky. It’s quieter out here, more peaceful. She can still hear the thrumming of the music, can still hear people yelling and chatting, but it’s colder out here, and Ricky’s sitting beside her.

‘Having fun?’

‘The time of my life.’

‘Wanna talk about it?’

‘Do you think we should tell everyone else? About us, I mean.’

Ricky thinks for a moment. ‘Do you want to?’

‘Yes. I think so. It feels like a natural progression. It feels like the right time. You make me so happy, like, I don’t think I’ve stopped smiling since you kissed me, and, I don’t know. It feels weird trying to pretend that this happiness isn’t because of you.’

‘Okay.’

‘Okay.’ Gina says. ‘I don’t think we should outright tell anyone, I just don’t think we should… hide it as much. What do you think?’

‘Gina, I’ve been following your lead. Your terms. I’ll do anything you ask me to.’ He sits back. ‘Is this just about telling people, though?’

Gina holds her breath. ‘I think my Mom thinks I resent her? That I haven’t had, the “normal” teenage experience?’ She shakes her head. ‘I guess I thought living here with her again would feel like old times. It feels like now, I’m just going to grow up and I’m never going to be this close with her ever again. I just feel like a terrible daughter, you know, that she thinks I hate her because of her job. That she thinks I’ve wanted this,’ she gestures to the party continuing on behind her, ‘More than I’ve wanted our Halloween traditions.’

‘You’re not a terrible daughter, Gina. Do you know what I’d give to have a relationship with my Mom like you have with your Mom?’ Gina leans her cheek against the backrest of the bench. ‘I mean, I haven’t seen her since I went to Chicago during Spring Break. It’s like she left Salt Lake, and forgot all about me. But you and your Mom? Gi, when she’d realized she’d forgotten about Valentine’s Day, she had me running around every Target in the city trying to find a gift for you. And when I couldn’t find a stuffed bear, and we settled for chocolates, she told me, specifically, which chocolates to get, because she knew you wouldn’t eat the ones with coconuts in them, or the caramel ones.’

‘Ricky?’

‘Gina.’

‘You got me those chocolates?’

He pauses. ‘Shit.’

Gina sits up. ‘Actually?’

He rubs his hand into the corner of his eye. ‘Yes.’

Gina looks at her feet. ‘But you never — you didn’t say anything? No, actually, you did. You teased me for thinking it was you.’

He winces. ‘I know. God, I know Gina, I’m sorry. You were never meant to know — you were always supposed to think they were from your Mom.’

‘But why? Why not just tell me? Why make me feel like an idiot for thinking they were from you?’

It's like the scene from the documentary, when she’d seen it for the first time, when she’d heard Ricky admit to having a crush on her. She doesn’t even feel angry about it. She knows she has the right to, she knows she probably should, but she’s just so irrevocably seen by Ricky, the fact that he’d done something stupid just to make her smile — she can’t find it within herself.

Maybe it's a mistake to forgive Ricky so easily. Maybe that’s just the kind of fool she becomes when she’s breathing his air.

‘Because, I was with Nini. I was still — I liked you, even then, and it was this terrible thing, finding myself thinking about you alone on Valentine’s Day, whilst I was singing a song for my girlfriend. I couldn’t find the time for her, but here I was, driving around at midnight for you? I felt awful — but it was something that cheered you up, just the thought of making you smile? — I didn’t care.’ He leans forward, putting his head in his hands. ‘I was going to sign the card, you know? But things were already so weird between us, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you, even when I was with Nini. Look, Gi, if you’re mad at me, if you want to slap me, then you’re fully within your rights to —’

‘Ricky.’

He looks up at her.

She should be angry. In the summer, she’d been angry at EJ for keeping St. Louis from her. She ended up not speaking to him for a good two days. But… something’s different about this.

Maybe it’s because he’d kept it from her all this time, just to make her happy, just to make her think that her Mom hadn’t forgotten about Valentine’s Day. Maybe it was because EJ had kept St. Louis from her for all the wrong reasons. Maybe it's because this is Ricky Bowen, and he says things so earnestly, like he’s speaking with the whole of his heart.

‘When I said we’d drawn a line beneath the chocolates, I meant it. I don’t want to be stuck thinking about things we could’ve done differently. We’ve both made some stupid mistakes. Besides, wasn’t I who said I’d be flattered if you went behind my back for a good reason?’

‘God, that was a stupid thing to ask you. I’m sorry.’

Gina smiles at him.

‘My Mom adores you, you know? In hindsight, it makes a lot more sense now, but — she loves you.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. She’s always asking after you, always wondering when you’ll be around next. She’s always talking about how right you are for me, how glad she is that I found someone like you. I mean — she let you throw this party? She wouldn’t have done that for just anyone.’

Ricky smiles, the apples of his cheeks blushing. ‘That’s good.’

‘It’s very good. She hated EJ.’

‘Gina?’

‘Ricky.’

‘What do you usually do on your birthday? With your Mom?’

She hums. ‘Well, usually, we sit down, watch a bunch of Halloween classics. And then she bakes a birthday cake whilst I’m opening presents.’

‘We can do that.’

‘Oh?’

‘When everyone’s gone, when the party’s over. Gina Porter, I’m going to make you the best birthday cake ever created.’

‘After your last attempt at cakes?’

‘It’s not like I can get worse at baking cakes, can I?’

‘I don’t know. It’s you. Anything’s possible.’

‘It’ll probably help having an expert in the kitchen.’

‘I’m telling you, it's all Youtube.’

‘You’re being humble.’

‘Ricky?’

‘Gina.’

‘I love you.’

There’s a closeness to be found within this cold air, like they’re in their own bubble. She’s already leaning in to kiss him.

Right then, Ashlyn comes out into the garden. ‘Oh. Am I interrupting something?’

Gina doesn’t say anything.

‘Oh. I am interrupting something. Are you two —?’

Gina nods. ‘Yeah.’

‘Oh. Cool! They’re playing Go Gina by SZA, so… Carlos instructed me to come find you.’

There’s glitter on the floor by the time the party comes to an end. Slowly, but surely, everyone wanders out of Gina’s house, going their own separate ways. Her Mom’s already asleep upstairs. Her and Ricky had snuck up there, bringing her a plate of leftover party food, only to find her asleep with a quaint British murder mystery droning on her laptop.

Gina’s had a bit to drink. Enough where everything has this fuzzy dream-like appearance to it. Enough that, when she realizes it's just her and Ricky left alone in her house, her heart flutters, enough that she can feel it ripple across her body.

‘Gina.’

‘Ricky.’

‘Happy birthday.’

Gina smiles. ‘Is this when I get my present?’

He nods. ‘This is when you get your present.’ He passes her a lump of a package, wrapped in light pink paper.

‘Jesus, Ricky. How much tape did you use?’

‘Enough.’

‘Yeah—’ She grunts, trying to rip apart the wrapping paper. She pulls open a kitchen drawer and pulls out a knife, which she promptly stabs into the corner of the package. ‘There. Alright.’ She tears at the corners revealing the present within.

It’s a book, with a light pink cover, covered in stickers and glitter. She looks up at Ricky. He nods.

She opens the first page, to a small photo taped to the page.

‘Is this—’

‘Homecoming.’

It’s a picture of the auditorium, all the balloons and banners taped to the ceiling. In the background, she can make out Carlos and Ashlyn on the dancefloor. But the main focus of the picture is the table. Gina sitting alone on the other side.

‘When did you take this?’

‘After our argument, before you poured that drink on EJ’s head.’ She tilts her head at him. ‘I don’t know what possessed me to take it, but I’m glad I did. You look beautiful.’

She turns to the next page. Them posing together during dress rehearsal. The next page, a picture of them falling asleep with their heads on each other’s shoulders, crammed onto a giant beanbag, when they’d pulled that all-nighter to try and save Miss Jenn’s job.

‘I didn’t even know this happened?’

‘Neither did I, until Red sent me the picture.’

The next page, Gina beneath a lamppost when they walked to Ashlyn’s at Thanksgiving. She’d been walking and talking, and he’d pulled back, telling her that he needed to tie his shoelaces.

She’d seen a flash, and turned.

‘Did you just take a picture of me?’

Ricky had shrugged. ‘I want to remember this moment.’

‘You’re a dork.’

The whole book is a photo album of moments Gina didn’t even know Ricky remembered, her at the cast party after opening night, Beauty and the Beast rehearsals, Carlos’ birthday. Gina asleep at the hotel after the Frozen: The Musical: The Documentary premiere. The night up at the viewpoint.

There’s empty pages after the last photograph, too. Rubbing the back of his head, Ricky says: ‘That’s for everything that happens in the future. Speaking of,’ he skips ahead a couple of pages, to a page that’s titled simply as: ‘Prom.’

Gina turns to him slowly. ‘Shut. Up.’

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘Ricky, you know full well what I’m —’

He smiles, but it's a quiet thing, like he’s not fully sure of himself. ‘I know it's six months away, but I know how you like knowing your plans so far ahead of time, so I thought there’s no time like the present. So how about it?’ He steps forward, putting his hands on her waist. ‘Gina Porter, will you go to prom with me?’

‘Really?’

‘Really, really.’

‘I ‘d love to. I love you.’ She pulls him in, kissing them in this hazy sort of afterglow. ‘So much that it feels like my heart might explode?’

‘I hope it doesn’t, cause then I’d have to lay down and die right next to you.’

She squeals. ‘Oh my God, Ricky. This is crazy? I can’t believe this is real life? I can’t believe you’re real half the time. How do you exist?’

‘I’m just me.’

‘Yeah, you’re like… the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’ There’s no way she’d be saying any of this stuff if Carlos hadn’t dared her to down three shots earlier. ‘I’m being serious right now. Like. God — I just never thought I’d find someone that understood me in the way that you do? Like, I can just breathe, and you’ll understand what I’m saying without even having to hear me? And you know, when I was without that, I genuinely thought about leaving Salt Lake. Because it was you that made me feel like I belonged here.’

‘Yeah. I made some… stupid decisions when I thought I was never going to see you again. Those two months before you left were the happiest I’d been up until this point, and when you left… I don’t know, it was like I was trying to hold onto anything that reminded me of that.’ Ricky rubs his hand into his eyes. ‘You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me too. I just can’t ever imagine going without you again. Like, the feeling I get when I’m around you, it’s just… I don’t even know how to describe it, I feel like it’s bigger than words.’ His hands are on her waist, her hands are dangling over his neck. ‘I wish there was something stronger to say than “I love you.” Cause that doesn’t feel like the whole weight of it.’

Gina sighs, leaning her head back to assess the damage of the party. ‘We should probably get around to cleaning up all these bottles before my Mom wakes up.’

‘Right. You take the living room and I’ll take the kitchen. And then—’

‘And then?’

‘I’m baking you a birthday cake.’

‘Ricky, you really don’t have to.’

‘I want to.’

So it goes, for half an hour, they clean Gina’s house, pulling down decorations, popping balloons, pouring discarded drinks down the drain, sweeping glitter from the floor. Every time Ricky moves past her to put something into the bin, he squeezes her hand, presses a kiss to her cheek.

She’s spent so long wishing for this closeness from somebody, kissing her for the sake of it, holding her hand for no reason other than to be close. Now she’s got it, and she’s still trying to convince herself it's real. It just feels so impossible — this feeling.

When the house is clean, when all is said and done, Gina’s sitting up on the countertop sipping iced coffee through a straw. (Ricky had made it for her without her asking.)

He’s bent over, rifling through cupboards.

‘Where do you keep your flour?’

‘In the one by the fridge.’

‘Hmm.’ He reaches up. ‘Gi, I think you’re all out.’

‘Wait — really?’ She jumps down from the countertop, landing unsteady on her feet until Ricky grabs at her, steadies her. ‘I could’ve sworn — I must’ve used it all up when I made those lemon cakes for rehearsal on Friday.’ She hums, slowly walking back to the countertop. ‘I guess this means no cake.’

‘Or…’

‘Or?’

‘Isn’t there a 7/11 down the road?’

‘Ricky, it's 2am.’

‘We’ve got all the time in the world.’

That’s how Ricky and Gina find themselves wandering down glassy pavements at 2am in the morning, willing the local 7/11 to stock flour. They hold hands the whole way, Ricky occasionally stopping to spin Gina, pulling her body flush to him, and kissing her beneath the glow of a streetlight. Everything has that hazy quality about it, as if you’re subconsciously aware that you know this night is one you’re going to remember, one that you’re going to look back on with that fuzzy nostalgia feeling.

Everytime she looks at Ricky, she has to remind herself that this is real. Then, he’ll kiss her again and she thinks: Yes, this is happening. Yes, this is forever.

Static hums in the 7/11, harsh artificial lights illuminating aisles and aisles of neon advertising. Whilst Gina locates the flour, Ricky ends up buying the both of them slushies, a move that Gina ends up questioning when they make their way back outside and meet the bracing now-November cold. Drizzle dances in the air around them, catching itself on Ricky’s eyelashes.

They dawdle along the road, taking their time. With each step they take, the rain gets heavier, the air gets colder, but neither of them notice, nor care. They walk slowly, because getting home now would be too soon.

‘Are you going to invite your Mom to graduation, do you think?’ Gina asks, taking a slow sip from her slushie. They’ve got their arms interlocked as they cross the parking lot.

‘Maybe? I mean — I don’t know if she’ll even want to come.’

‘Of course she’ll want to come. It's your graduation? It's a big day.’

Ricky hums. ‘Will you come?’

Gina looks up at him. ‘Are you seriously asking me that? Of course I’m coming.’

He lets out a breath. ‘Cool. I know I should call her but… I don’t know. I’m putting it off, even though I know the worst that’s going to happen is—’

Ricky’s arm comes out across Gina, stopping her from going any further. Glittering in the harsh parking lot flood lights is a pile of glass shards, probably from a broken beer bottle. Ricky steps forward, kicking the shards of glass away which, with the thin fabric of his baseball boots, probably isn’t the smartest idea. In the end, he offers her his arm again, and leads her around the glass.

‘What was I saying?’ He says, trying to regain his stream of consciousness. That is, until he stops again. ‘Oh my god.’ His face immediately brightens. ‘Gina.’ He turns to her, grin on his face.

‘Ricky. You’re about to say something stupid, aren’t you?’

‘Remember when I said I wanted to try the Spiderman kiss again? Like… properly?’

‘...Yes.’

‘Well… it's raining, for one. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but is that not a jungle gym on the other side of the road?’ He turns to her. She can’t even attempt to hide the matching smile on her face.

Gina sets off running.

‘What are you doing?’ Ricky yells after her, chasing her down.

‘Racing you?’

‘You had a head start!’

Gina gets there first. Ricky scrambles up to the top of the climbing frame, wrapping his legs around a pole at the top. ‘You ready?’

‘I should be asking you if you’re ready. You’re the one about to be upside down.’

‘Oh, believe me. I’ve been preparing my whole life for this.’

He pulls the Spiderman mask down over his face, and slowly lowers himself over the side of the climbing frame.

‘Gina,’ when he pulls himself level with her.

‘Ricky.’ She pulls down his mask, exposing the bottom half of his face. He’s already smiling; Gina is too. The rain above their heads swells, drips from her nose, over her lips. She lets out a single breath that dances up above them in the cold.

She presses her lips to his. Once. Then twice. Her hands are on either side of his face; he tastes like the rain.

They end up getting back to Gina’s house at half three in the morning. Ricky’s still insisting on making a cake.

‘You’re getting my kitchen wet, Bowen.’

She sits on the floor of her kitchen, soaking wet, wrapped in the blanket Ricky had made for her when they’d first moved in. Eventually, she peels off her costume, changing into her pajamas. She spends a lot of time watching him, from her place on the floor. The way his nose scrunches when he’s trying to figure out measurements. The way he sticks his tongue out when he’s mixing all the ingredients together, by hand, even though there’s a mixer in the cupboard under the sink.

When the cake goes in the oven, he picks her up; one hand under her legs, the other under her arms, and carries her to the couch. In the end, they’re sitting on the couch, tangled beneath a blanket, watching Hocus Pocus, and eating a cake that, in all honesty, isn’t terrible.

She won’t remember it in the morning, but when the credits roll, when the sun starts to come up, Ricky says: ‘Gi?’

She hums, only half-paying attention, falling asleep against him, like she’s done so many times before.

‘I’m gonna marry you someday.’

(The first thing she says to Ricky the next morning is: ‘Why did my brother just text me to ask why he’d received a threatening text from an unknown number?’)

‘The calm before the storm, huh?’ Ricky says, knocking his knee into Gina’s.

Opening nights have always elicited a strange feeling from Gina. She’s a theater kid to her core, but she’s barely ever dwelled in the opening night feeling. Part of this is because, while she auditioned for shows, saw them through blocking to dress rehearsals, frequently, she’d ended up moving during the span of rehearsals. The other half of that was that she’d never really engaged in the whole ‘theater kids occupying iHop after opening night’ rite of passage that everyone else had been through. She’d never made friends at school before East High — so she’d never been invited to the post-Opening Night celebrations. Most of the time, she’d go home with her Mom and celebrate there.

East High’s different though. Of course it is.

At East High, she’d been welcomed back with open arms, letting her go on for Kourtney halfway through the show. At East High, they’d invited her to the cast party, even if she’d kept to herself the entire time for fear of enjoying herself too much, (prepare for disappointment, so you’ll never really be disappointed.)

It was at East High she remained.

In the end, it was at East High that she’d found a home.

Regardless, opening night still gives her that nervous feeling, that active hope that she knows all her lines, that everything goes perfectly, that she puts on a show. The fact remains that she doesn’t have the best track record with opening nights — even at East High. Always, they’ve found a way to throw a wrench in the works.

But this time is different. She knows it is.

The school elects to hold High School Musical: Senior Year: The Musical in the gym. This time, it's not because the theater has burnt down, but because they’re going back to their roots, and here feels right. And so, the gymnasium has been turned into a theater of sorts, the far end having been turned into a stage. Curtains hang low; everything dressed in white and red.

Ricky and Gina are sitting alone in the gymnasium, Through the open door, she can hear the hustle and bustle of the rest of the cast getting ready for the show, running through the last of their lines, getting into costume.

But they are here, sitting in the quiet, their legs pressed together. He’d lead her up to the bleachers, hand in hand.

‘Are you nervous? Excited?’ He asks.

‘More excited that I am nervous.’ She tells him. ‘You know, the funny thing is, I always thought theater was a competition before I met you. I was always trying to prove myself, trying to prove that I was the best at something, so if I left, people would at least think back and remember me, you know? But now? I’m here for the right reasons, I’m here because I’m having fun.’

He smiles. ‘I wouldn’t even be here without you.’

She turns to him. ‘I think you would’ve found your way to it eventually.’

He shakes his head. ‘No, no. I know what I would’ve done, what I’ve always done. I would’ve half-assed it, because my heart wasn’t in it, and Carlos would’ve dishonorably discharged me before the show was over.’ He says. ‘Gina, everything changed when you got to East High. I don’t even think you see how much you’ve changed everyone.’ He scoffs. ‘You know, I was thinking about something Troy says, when he goes to Stanford to see Gabriella.’

‘Yeah?’

‘“I’m not the only one that changed when you got to East High. People that I used to just pass in the hallway — we’re friends now.” That’s what you’ve done, Gi. I mean — I never would’ve been friends with Carlos, with Kourtney, if you hadn’t shown up and convinced me that I deserved the lead. And all the other times you’ve set me straight after that. Gina, you’re a Wildcat now. And there’s nothing you can do to change that.’

Gina grins, hiding her face in Ricky’s shoulder. ‘I don’t think you know how much it means to hear that. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, you know? To know that I actually deserved to belong someplace.’

‘Gina. If we’d never met, you would’ve deserved it. If you’d never come to East High, you still would’ve deserved to belong.’

She wraps her arm around his.

‘Ricky.’

‘Gina?’

‘I wish you could see yourself the way everyone else sees you.’ He doesn’t say anything; he turns and looks at her. ‘You play it down, getting the lead four times in a row, because you think you don’t deserve it. But you do. Because you’re amazing at it. You just don’t let yourself see it that way.’

Eventually, Ricky says: ‘You were the first person that believed in me. The first person to think that I was actually capable of this.’ He scoffs. ‘I think I’m finally starting to think that way. And it’s because of you.’

She hums, sighing as she leans further into him. ‘We’ve got a show to get ready for.’

Ricky stands, offering her a hand: ‘Come on then. Let’s go get ready.’

As the show comes to a close, they’re standing on opposite sides of the stage. Carlos and Kourtney step forwards ahead of them, soaking in the applause of the raucous crowd.

‘You ready?’ He mouths at her.

Gina decides, then, that she wants everyone to know. She’s okay with everyone knowing.

They meet in the middle, hands intertwined, step forwards. A curtain call she’s been through before.

She turns to Ricky.

‘Kiss me.’

‘Right here? Right now?’

She smiles. ‘Right here, right now, Bowen. No more hiding.’

And he does. He kisses her.

After Prom, Ricky and Gina drive up to the viewpoint. They’ve done this a lot in the past six months, more frequently now that the weather has started to get hotter. Sometimes, they’re up there until the sunsets, until it rises again in the morning. Sometimes, they end up moving their movie nights up here, a laptop on a dashboard, the screen at full brightness, Gina and Ricky somehow occupying one seat, leant all the way back. (She’d wrestled him for it once, and made him watch Dirty Dancing. The whole night, he’d insisted that he ‘didn’t think it was that good’ until it was 1am, and in the headlights of the car, he was telling her that he thought he could manage the lift. They’d gotten pretty close, before collapsing to a heap.)

Tonight, they stop at a drive-thru, ordering burgers and fries and milkshakes. Ricky’s playing that same David Bowie song, the one she’d heard when they’d driven up here the very first time. Something about speeding away through the night, just the two of them. Something about a coming of age film, something about feeling infinite.

Gina sits up, leans over, and presses a kiss to his cheek.

Gina’s Mom had helped her get ready for Prom; put flowers in her hair, blushed her cheeks, added delicate purple to her eyelids. Those flowers, Ricky picks one by one from her hair, and sticks into the glovebox of his car, behind his phone case, in his pockets, any space he can find. He’d brought her a purple corsage, pinned a boutonniere in the same color to the lapel of his suit.

‘Pickle?’ she asks him, splitting the buns of her burger. He opens his mouth, and she passes it towards him.

He twists the key of the car, setting the engine alight. The aux comes on automatically, playing an Elvis Presley song she grew up listening to. Ricky switches the speaker all the way up, opens his door.

‘What are you doing?’ She asks, sitting up, pulling her window down so he can hear her from where he’s moved to the front of the car.

‘Asking my girlfriend to dance.’

‘We’ve spent the whole night dancing.’

He shrugs. ‘So what’s one more?’ He opens her door, takes her by the hand. ‘Come on.’

She rolls her eyes. She takes his hand.

The stars never look as beautiful as they do up here, swollen in the darkness. She thinks about the night he told her he loved her. She thinks about forever.

One of his hands finds the small of her back, the other grips her hand. They sway.

‘You’ve been practicing?’

‘I had a good teacher.’ He shrugs. ‘I think I’m gonna take a gap year. So we can go up to New York together.’

‘So you have a reason to stay, even if you hate it there?’

He shakes his head. ‘So I have a reason to leave here.’

‘Ricky, if you don’t want to leave here — you don’t have to. I don’t want you to come with me if you think you’re going to hate it.’

‘No, Gina, that’s not — I’ve always been afraid of things changing. I’ve always resented the idea of it. But — I’m not scared of it anymore. Not when you’re going to be with me.’

‘I want you to be sure of this, though. This isn’t a small thing. This is New York.’

‘I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life. I love you. I’d follow you wherever you go.’

Ricky graduates from East High a month and a bit later. It’s on a sunny summer day, and all the guests are packed onto white pew-like benches, as all the graduating students sit on chairs in front of them. There’s a stage right at the front, dressed in white and red balloons.

Ricky stands when they call his name, shakes the principal's hand. Gina stands on her feet, yelling as loudly as she can. When he steps from the stage, though, he doesn’t return to his seat.

Gina finds him under the bleachers.

‘Ricky.’

‘Gina. I was sort of hoping you’d find me.’

‘You graduated. How does it feel?’

‘I don’t know. Doesn’t feel any different. Definitely doesn’t feel like I’m going to be at college next year. I don’t know. I still feel like I’m seven years old, sitting in my parents’ house, learning to play the guitar.’

‘Mmm.’ Gina hums. ‘I know. I don’t feel like I’m seventeen. I feel like there’s so much stuff I haven’t done yet — fundamental stuff to being a teenager, you know?’

‘Well,’ here, he smiles, even if the features of his face are still muted, ‘We’ve got a whole summer ahead of us. Hey, we can even make a whole new bucket list. Things we can do together?’

‘Yeah.’ Gina says. ‘I’d like that.’

Ricky sighs. ‘Sometimes I wonder if Salt Lake is ever going to miss me as much as I’m going to miss it. Things don’t feel as big when you’re a kid. But the thing is — it’s different from the other times I’ve felt like this. Because as scared as I am, I’m also, like, so impossibly excited. For our future. Gina,’ he smiles, kicking the grass beneath his feet. ‘I love you. So much. More than I think I could ever tell you.’

She knows. He’s never had to say it — every day, he’s proven it. Everyday he’s done something just for the benefit of seeing her smile. Every single time he takes her up to that viewpoint. They’ve both stopped running. They don’t need to anymore.

Gina holds her hand out for him. He takes it. By the time they make their way back to the football pitch, Kourtney’s giving her Valedictorian Speech.

‘In the words of the greats that came before us,’ she gestures vaguely behind her, ‘We’re all in this together.’ There’s groans from the audience, a tacky line for sure, but Kourtney’s capable of delivering it. ‘I mean it. Before East High, we were just a bunch of 14 year olds, unsure about so much stuff, trying to find a place for us in the big wide world. And now we’re at the end of it. And I know I’ve found friends for life. I know I’m going to look back on these times with nothing but the fondest memories of you all.’ She folds her hands on the plinth. ‘I’ve been Kourtney Greene. You remember the name.’

Ricky nudges into Gina. ‘My Mom’s here.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. You wanna meet her?’

‘I’d love to.’