| photo by Steve Dimatteo from Pexels |

"Where are you?" Mom asks, sounding a little frantic.

"I told you last night that Noah was picking me up this morning—we're meeting Samantha at that coffee place?"

"When did he get here? I didn't hear the doorbell—I looked everywhere for you, Allyson."

"Okay, yeah," I say, grimacing at Noah. "You were um, busy and I...went into the garage—to look at my car—but then Noah pulled up in the driveway and I just went outside. I'm sorry, Mom. I wasn't thinking..."

"That I'd be worried?" she asks—in pretty much the same tone she was using with Dad. "You could have left a note, Allyson. Or sent a text. I looked everywhere for you." She huffs out a derisive breath. "Everywhere but the garage."

"It wasn't something I planned, Mom. I just..." Needed to get away from her.

"I want you to spend time with your friends, Allyson—you know I do. But you have to let me know when you're leaving the house. I need to know where you are at all times, do you understand me?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She's quiet for a moment. Calming herself down, I guess, because when she says, "Okay, honey," she almost sounds normal. "Are you at the coffee shop now?"

"We're on our way," I say. Deliberately vague.

"Text me when you get there and before you leave, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"I love you, Allyson."

"Yeah. Me too. Bye."

I end the call, drop my phone in my purse and press my cool palms against my cheeks.

"Do you need to go home?" Noah asks.

"No, it's fine. But I have to text her from the coffee shop. So. You should maybe—if you still want to—tell me about the um..."

"Right. Where'd I leave off?"

I shake my head, still a little flustered. "Just start over. If you don't mind."

"No problem," he says. "You barely spoke to anyone the first day you worked here. They make lifeguarding sound like it's this huge responsibility when you're in orientation. It only takes a week or so before you realized you're just a glorified babysitter."

Noah's eyes shift away from the pool, and when they connect with mine he smiles. And it's so close to the one from my dream that my arms prickle with goose bumps. I cross them, rubbing my skin to generate friction, but that only makes Noah smile wider. So it's a wasted effort.

"One day I climbed onto one of the stands and took off my shirt," he says. "And it was like all of a sudden you were there, checking me out. I wanted to climb right back down and kiss you, but I wasn't sure you were thinking what I hoped you were thinking."

The swim team image pops into my head: half of Noah's muscular chest, one sturdy arm, a long powerful leg. And yeah, I think it's safe to say I wanted Noah to climb down and kiss me.

"On our next break, I jumped in the water to cool off," he says. "Only I did it with a one-and-a-half somersault off the diving board—to challenge you. That's something we used to do back in ninth grade. We were always challenging each other to do stupid stuff."

"Like what?"

"I could jump off a swing the farthest. But you were a faster milkshake drinker. You were impervious to, uh...frozen...drinks and stuff."

"You mean brain freeze?" I ask.

"Yeah, sorry. I didn't mean to..." He points to his head. For some reason.

I wave him on, because I want the rest of the story. "Did I do a somersault, too?"

"Uh, no. That's something I learned back in Georgia—how to dive and do tricks and stuff. I shouldn't have been doing it in front of all those kids, though. If the manager had been there I would've gotten fired on the spot."

"So why take a chance like that?" I ask.

Noah's head jerks back and both hands lift off his thighs. His face says he can't believe I have to ask that question. But then his hands drop with a sigh. Like maybe he just caught himself remembering that I don't know him like that anymore.

"I risked it 'cause I'm a dumbass," he says. "Also because I was trying to impress you."

I want to ask if it worked—was I impressed or did I think he was stupid? But Noah sighs, louder and longer, and his head flops back against the seat, eyes closed. And my neck prickles in a way that would make Grandma Clark say someone just walked over my grave.

"You answered my challenge with a front flip," he says. "We went a couple more rounds after that. Then when we broke for lunch, I asked if you wanted to go out that night and you said yes."

My breath hitches a little, which is stupid and embarrassing—but I've been waiting for this information since I read about the Raisinets cupcake.

"It'd been a long time since I felt that good about anything in my life," he continues. "And I guess I let the fact that things were finally heading in the right direction for us go to my head because the next chance I got, I rolled back the fulcrum—that's an adjustment on the diving board that makes it loose, like bouncier. That way I was able to use my weight to get the height I needed to do a twist-and-a-half before I hit the water. You rolled your eyes because my performance got some applause. Then you walked out to the end of the board and bounced a couple of times, and that made me nervous. I was about to blow my whistle and make you get down so I could put the fulcrum back the way it's supposed to be, but you stopped and winked at me and I..."

His forehead wrinkles before his eyes open. "You smiled at me," he says. Like it's something he's just remembering. "You took a few steps back like you were going to get a running start for a cannonball—something I'd seen you do a hundred times at my grandparent's pool. But this one time, your foot slipped."

I lean forward, trying to see the diving board, to imagine myself running, falling. Almost drowning. But it's too...abstract, I guess.

"I used to dream about it," he says. "I left out that detail when I visited you at Faircrest, because I didn't want to creep you out, but that's the real reason I started driving up there. I needed to get a new image of you in my head, something good to think about when I woke up in the middle of the night."

"Did it work?" I ask.

"Yeah. The third time I drove up, you were outside, sitting by the fountain with your mom."

"Are you serious?" I ask. But I shake my head before he can answer, because of course he is. "My mom has only ever sat with me there one time, Noah. That's where I told her about seeing your face."

That can't be a coincidence.

"Do you think that's a coincidence?" I ask. "What did you do when I smiled at you? From the diving board, I mean. Before I slipped. Do you remember what you were thinking?"

"Slow down, Ally. Give me a second to catch up."

Nope. I don't think I can. "You said I smiled at you—then what?"

"I probably smiled back."

"What were you thinking?"

Noah shakes his head, squinting at me like I'm a crazy person.

"Just answer the question," I say. Before my freaking heart explodes.

"There wasn't time to think. I just reacted. I dove off the platform and—"

"No, before that. Your smile. What were you thinking?"

"Oh. Well, that's easy." His cheeks go splotchy as his eyes dip. Down, and right back up. "Pretty sure I was thinking about how much I wanted to kiss you."

My insides go soft and warm. Like oatmeal. "I think that was the moment from my dream," I say. "Your smile is the last thing I saw and..."

"You remembered?"

I shrug because even now, knowing that it was a moment that really did happen... "It didn't feel like a memory. I keep thinking of it as a message. From my um, unconscious mind."

Noah huffs out a breath, half-smiling. But it's not like he's laughing at me. Not at all. He's amazed. "Would you go out with me?" he asks. "Like today, after we meet with Samantha. Would that be weird?"

It would be like we were picking up where we left off.

"Yes," I say, mostly to the weird part. But I don't clarify, because I can't deny that I feel something for this amazing boy. I won't say it's love—because that would be crazy—but it's definitely more than friendship.

He reaches for my hand, threads his fingers through mine and gives me this lopsided smile that's so adorably shy. Kind of like his smile in that ninth-grade photograph. Then he leans—all the way over. His approach is hesitant and his entire face is a question. I think I know what he's asking—but that's also what I thought yesterday, and I was wrong. So I close my eyes and wait for him to make his own decision.

"Okay," he whispers. So close, I feel the warmth of his breath. His lips touch mine. Just barely, and then he pulls back and waits. For my brain to get the message to open my eyes.

"I wanted to do that yesterday," he says. "But you had taken that medicine and I didn't want to take a chance that you were out of it or whatever. I'm really sorry if I hurt your feelings."

"Um, no. It was okay."

Noah pulls my hand against his chest. I'm not sure if I can actually feel his heart beating or if it just seems that way because my own heart is galloping. "Let me rephrase that," he says, scratchy and uncomfortable. Like burlap. "I know I hurt your feelings, and I'm sorry, Ally. It's just, we've never kissed before, and I wanted to be..."

He leans in again. And this time, this kiss is not so quick. There's more contact—and a little lip movement, which is soft and really nice. I'm anticipating his tongue, but when it touches mine there's this... Zing is the word that comes to mind, because it was in one of the novels. It sounded funny to me when I heard it. Because I couldn't imagine, I guess, what that might feel like: the electricity in someone's touch. 

I smile—which makes Noah smile. So our teeth knock together, and we both laugh. But we don't separate. If anything, the laughing relaxes us a little. And so the next kiss is better. It's still soft, but there's a lot of lingering in the contact, and warm, minty breath—and god, the electricity of it goes everywhere.