Heartthrobs Don’t Date Wallflowers (Texting the Boyband)

Chapter 17

seventeen

I walked through the whole day at school like a zombie, unable to focus on anything. I kept replaying Zach’s words in my mind.

Have a good day, princess .

There was no reason for him to call me that. It wasn’t like it was a normal thing to say to somebody that you barely knew, really. Why did he call me that? None of it made any sense. None of it. Unless...

I couldn’t even process the idea. I couldn’t even let myself think it. Because if the guy I was texting all this time was Zach... No. He couldn’t be.

He couldn’t be.

Between breaks, I would pull out my phone, waiting for a text from Not Zesty, something that would show me that he wasn’t who I thought he was. I had no idea what he could say that would prove it, but I found myself waiting for it anyway. Occasionally, I’d open the group chat and check on everything, but he didn’t text in there either, even though the others did. I watched Jude through all of English class that morning, noting every time it seemed like he was typing and how a message would come through. But everyone was replying so fast that I couldn’t time it perfectly to figure out which one of them he was. All I did know was that Jude being in the group chat only made it that much more likely that Zach was too.

No matter how many times I looked—and I was practically glued to my phone the whole day—no new messages came in from Not Zesty. I felt like he was avoiding me and there was only one reason I could think of for why he would do that—he knew he’d given himself up and he was waiting for me to make the next move.

I was ashamed to admit that when I watched the bonfire that night, I wore Zach’s sweater. I could tell myself all I wanted that it was just the first sweater I could find, that it was warmer than my other ones, that it went best with my outfit, but I knew exactly why I was wearing it.

The whole time I watched them, I waited for my phone to go off. I watched Zach in the backyard, too busy playing guitar to be texting, and waited for a text to come in from Not Zesty and prove to me that I had this all wrong.

But no text came through and I gnawing feeling that I knew why.

I would have stayed there all night if I could have, but the sound of a car turning onto my driveway around ten o’clock pulled me away—there was only one person who would be showing up this late .

“Poppy’s here!” I yelled as I ran back inside. I’d been looking forward to Poppy coming home for a visit ever since she left for school again after fall break.

But when she came running through the front door, duffel bags slung over both shoulders like some kind of chaos-filled airport scene, and shouted, “I got us Take Five tickets for tomorrow!” I was a little less excited than I probably should have been.

If it had been any other day, I would have screamed along with her. Sure, I wasn’t a massive fan of the band, but free tickets to any concert was something worth screaming about. But today? All I could think about was Zach and Not Zesty and wondering how on earth my sister managed to get tickets to see the one person I probably should have been staying far away from right now.

“How?” I asked, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of me.

Poppy dropped her duffel bags right in the foyer and Mom sighed from as she walked in after Poppy and saw them. Poppy didn’t notice. She grabbed my hand and tugged me over to sit on the couch, still beaming like she’d just won the lottery.

Which, I guess, in her mind, she kind of had.

“Well,” Poppy began, clearly gearing up for a whole story, “at school, we had this raffle thing. You know, like, one of those campus events where they give away random prizes to make people show up to stuff no one wants to go to?”

I nodded. Not because I knew, but because I wasn’t about to interrupt her now.

“Anyway, they had the tickets as one of the prizes. I mean, I almost didn’t enter because it’s T5, and you know how everyone at school is obsessed with them. I figured, what’s the point? But my friend dragged me to it, and I guess it was fate because…” She reached into her pocket and pulled out two crisp, shiny concert tickets. “Guess who won?”

She held them up like she was holding the keys to the universe, her grin stretching so wide I thought her face might split in half.

“And it’s tomorrow!” She waved the tickets in my face like they were fanning some kind of magical, life-changing air. “I already cleared it with Mom in the car. We’re going.”

I took one of the tickets from her hand, staring down at it. The date, the venue, the words “Take Five – LIVE” printed in big, bold letters. This was real. I was going to see him tomorrow, whether I liked it or not.

“Wow,” I managed, my voice a little weaker than I intended. “That’s… really cool.”

“Oh my God, Ivy, you’re going to freak!” Poppy said, clearly not noticing that anything was wrong. I couldn’t blame her. Excitement like this clouded everything. And it was for the best anyway, because I wasn’t sure exactly how to explain I was in the middle of a love triangle that might have all been one guy. “Hudson’s voice? Ugh. He’s, like, my new favorite human being. And Zach? Don’t even get me started.”

She sighed dramatically, while I had to resist the urge to cringe at the mention of his name. How was this happening? I felt like I was going to faint. Or throw up on Poppy’s shoes. Maybe both. Just in case, I turned away from her and leaned my head down into my hands.

“You’re excited, right?” Poppy asked. Her fingers brushed my back. “I mean, I know you’re not super into them, but it’s going to be fun. I promise. You might even leave with a crush on Hudson like me.”

“Sure,” I said, hoping my voice didn’t betray me. “I can’t wait.”

Poppy seemed satisfied with that, nodding to herself and hopping off the couch. “Okay, I’ve got to unpack. But seriously, Ivy, get ready for tomorrow. We’re going to lose our voices screaming, I swear.”

She skipped toward the stairs, leaving me alone in the living room with the ticket still in my hand. How was I supposed to act tomorrow? Would Zach see me in the crowd? Should I tell him I was going? Would he care?

And more importantly, why did it even matter to me?

I wasn’t planning on seeing Zach again before the concert, but it seemed like he was planning on seeing me , because when I walked into my room in the early afternoon the next day, he was sitting at his window. The second my light turned on, his head shot up. I didn’t even have time to sit down before he held up his first sign.

Fancy seeing you here

It took me a second to find my notebook under the pile of discarded homework, my laptop bag, and a paper plate that had been sitting there since who knew when. I cringed as I watched everything fly off my desk. He couldn’t see the actual desk through the window, but I could only imagine what it must’ve looked like from his view. Just a random assortment of things flying past the glass that probably made me come off like a total slob. My fingers finally snagged on my notebook and in my attempt at not looking at his face, I completely missed my pen holder and knocked it over, making pens fly through the air and across my floor. I cursed under my breath. That would be pain to clean up—and I would definitely be doing it later, because I didn’t need to supply Zach with even more embarrassing memories of me, like crawling around picking up pens.

I hastily wrote out a message in big bold letters.

Fate’s pushing us together

We hadn’t spoken at all since he drove me to school yesterday morning and I was pretty sure we both knew why. Unless, he really had just called me Princess for no reason and was now confused why I was avoiding him because he wasn’t Not Zesty. That was always a possibility.

I held up a second sign :

What’s up?

While I waited for him to write out his response, I glanced around my room. It never really occurred to me that he could see in here, the same way I could see into his. The room wasn’t really decorated yet, but there was a poster for Minute to Midnight, another popular boyband, which Zach probably thought was a dig at him. It was actually because someone gifted it to me right before I moved and was the easiest thing to unpack. I guess I should have been grateful it was a Take Five poster instead.

When I turned to the window again, Zach was holding up a sign. It was a little lopsided but readable.

Concert tonight

Well, I guess that made the decision for me. I wondered about telling him but since he brought it up, I saw no reason not to mention it.

I know! I’m gonna be there

He looked genuinely surprised. He turned the page of his notebook—I was realizing this was probably the most wasteful way for us to talk—and scribbled quickly.

No way

I didn’t want him to think I was only coming because he’d been so nice to me the last couple of days, so I quickly added:

My sister won tickets

I watched him as he wrote his response, my eyes trailing the way his hair fell forward when he ducked his head and he bit his lip in concentration like he was trying to make his writing beautiful. And just for a moment, butterflies fluttered in my stomach and I thought, I really hope it’s you I’ve been texting.

I still had no idea. Not even close. I didn’t know anything about Not Zesty—not his actual name, what he looked like, or really, any proof that he was even a real person. I picked up my phone, scrolling through all our random, late-night banter that somehow never got old. Talking to him was just easy. The same way it had been feeling, lately, with Zach. But still, I had no reason to believe he was the boy sitting across from me except for one word. But if this was him…

If this was him, he was the one.

I put the phone back down and rested my chin on my hand as I watched him again. When he looked up a minute later, I tried very hard to not look like I’d just been staring at him the whole time his head was down. Which was hard to do, because how did you show someone you weren’t staring at them? I probably looked like when someone said “act natural!” and everyone struck the most unnatural pose in the world .

Coming to cheer me on?

100%. Forced her to get the tickets

Hopefully I don’t disappoint

We stared at each other for a beat, his lips quirking in a way that made him look almost nervous. My response was simple:

Never.

He gave me one of his rare grins, and I prayed that he couldn’t see the way it made me blush. I didn’t want to look away, didn’t want to lose my chance to see the smile that came out so infrequently, but he looked away first anyway. The door opened behind him and all I could see was a shadow of someone. He looked over his shoulder and shook his head, like he was talking to them. I knew he wouldn’t be able to stay here forever—I was sure he needed to start getting ready for the concert soon—I knew I definitely did—so I quickly turned the page of my notebook to give him one last message. He looked back just as I finished writing my message and pointed a thumb over his shoulder, like he was saying he had to go. I nodded but quickly held up my sign:

Break a leg

He mouthed thank you as he stood up. I didn’t move from my spot, even as I watched him step away. And then my hands started moving of their own accord, writing something before I could think it through. I didn’t even realize what I’d done until I looked at it and saw the words staring back at me.

I LOVE YOU

I couldn’t hold it up. I couldn’t tell him unless I knew for sure who he was. That he felt the same way. And it didn’t matter anyway, because when I looked up again, Zach was gone and his curtains drawn. I bit my lip and dragged my finger across the page. I guess this would just have to wait.