Heartthrobs Don’t Date Wallflowers (Texting the Boyband)

Chapter 20

twenty

There was absolutely no chance of me being able to sneak out of that venue with Zach, even as much as we both wanted to. He told me that he had to leave with the band and that Rob, their bodyguard, would come hunting him down pretty soon if he didn’t get back. So we shared a quick kiss goodbye, and then he was gone.

It was weird the way my heart ached for him as soon as he walked away, when just two weeks ago I barely even knew he existed. How had we come this far since then?

When I got back to the main hall, I realized Poppy had been so excited about the concert that she hadn’t even noticed me slip away. She was just so busy raving about everything that she had seen that night. Honestly, I was glad that I hadn’t been kidnapped or something because I’m not sure she would have even noticed until the next morning.

I smiled and nodded as she talked about things and tried to sound excited when I was chatting back, but all I could feel was the tingle of my lips and the way it had felt to have Zach so close to me.

We went out on an actual first date the next day, down to the lake that I didn’t even know Bibridge had. After it, he offered to walk me back to my door, but I thought the last thing I needed was an internationally-known boyband member showing up on our doorstep and making my parents wonder why he was out with their very shy daughter who, as far as they were concerned, probably had no friends. My mom tried to act like she thought that I was going to fall straight into a friend group the second I walked into a new school every single time, but since I never told her about the friends I’d made—I didn’t even know how to begin explaining that all my friends were either celebrities or their girlfriends—I wasn’t sure she had genuine faith in me.

So, I was alone as I snuck inside late that night. The house, as always, was quiet, but this time it was because everyone was asleep, not because I was alone. I closed the door as softly as I could, cringing at how loud it was, then took off my shoes and carried them in my hand so they wouldn’t clack against the wooden floor. I glanced around to make sure nobody was waiting for me, but the house was silent.

Technically speaking, I didn’t have a curfew—mostly because it had never come up. I’d never wanted to stay out late like this before. But I was pretty sure it was frowned upon for me to be out past midnight, so I didn’t really want to wake my parents up and have that little discussion. I snuck upstairs, trying to keep the sound of my footsteps as quiet as I possibly could. When I got to the top of the stairs, I glanced at my parents’ room. Door shut, lights off. Perfect.

I let myself relax a little more as I walked into my room and threw my shoes off to the side where they landed softly on the carpet. I let my guard down a little too much, though, because as I was looking over to see if Zach was back in his room yet, I didn’t even notice the girl sitting on my bed. Not until she said, “So how was the date?”

I screamed, and then thankfully managed to catch it after three seconds. I peered into the hallway again, but my parents’ light stayed off. I closed my bedroom door and glared at Poppy, who was grinning wolfishly at me. She was sitting cross-legged on my bed with her brown hair thrown up in a bun and wearing an oversized Hartwell Academy t-shirt, looking way too comfortable.

“What are you doing in here?” I asked. I grabbed some pajamas from the closet and started to change. There was no way I was staying in my date clothes just because Poppy was here.

“I wanted to hear about the date,” she said. She silently clapped her hands together. “You’re getting home late. That’s a good sign, right?”

There were a few times that I really noticed that Poppy was younger than me, but this was one of them. She was only a year younger than me, but she hadn’t been on a date yet. And being at boarding school meant having more regulations around her, actual curfews, times she had to be back in her dorm, limited free time to do whatever she wanted. It was different being there than being here with parents who worked all the time and had more free time than I knew what to do with.

Honestly, sometimes I felt like we were in the wrong worlds. I would have been happy to stay inside all day, all the time, while Poppy was the one who liked to go out and about and roam. And I suppose maybe boarding school was good for that. I didn’t know much about it, but I was sure she probably had tons of excursions. But I just had the feeling that she would take advantage of the lack of supervision here much more than I did. Maybe that was something I could get better at now that I was dating Zach.

“Yes,” I said. “I guess it’s a good sign.” I pulled on some sleep shorts and a huge t-shirt and fell onto the bed, near her feet.

“Tell me all about it,” she said. She leaned forward and pressed her chin into her hands. “Everything. Not a single detail left out. Promise me.”

I rolled onto my back, falling into the squishmallow that I had propped up against the wall and stared at the ceiling. The little glow-in-the-dark stars stared back at me, reminding me of that first call with Not Zesty, everything I had told him about myself. Now I tried to imagine it was Zach on the other end of that line. It was hard for me to picture. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. The idea of me holding that phone, talking and speaking to one of the biggest celebrities in the world and having no clue about it.

“It was perfect,” I said. “We went out to the beach and looked at the stars.”

“Did he kiss you?” she asked.

I smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, he kissed me.”

She squealed and practically jumped on me, hugging me so tight that I thought she might be trying to actually crush my lungs. I hugged her back just as tightly though, because I got fewer and fewer of these hugs nowadays. Poppy was my best friend. Having her so far away was hard, but I was glad she could have been here for this.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ve been very patient all day, but now I need to know. Tell me the whole story from the beginning.” She grabbed my arm and gripped it tight, looking at me with the biggest smile in the world. “Everything from the moment you moved into this house. How did you and Zach end up here?”

I stared back at her, not even sure where to begin. And then I realized, because there was one moment, one crucial moment, that changed it all.

“Well,” I said. “It all started when I texted the wrong number…”