Wesley comes out of the locker room last. The scouts who came to see Hunter decided to talk to him as well. Looks like he really is getting out of Ruby, even if it is just for four years.

Sabina is sitting on the concrete block at the front of the empty parking spot next to Wesley's beat up old truck when he gets there. She's looking up at the sky instead of down at her phone. It really does make her look like a freak, but she doesn't care. He likes it, too.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," he says, tossing his bag in the truck bed and unlocking the truck.

She stands up, suddenly nervous again now that she's in his presence. The sky had relaxed her and made her almost forget that she was waiting to go hang out with Wesley Parker. Now he's here, so she can't really forget. He slides into the driver's seat and waits for her to get into the passenger seat. He regrets not opening the door for her. She's the kind of girl he should be a gentleman for. He's never been very good at being a gentleman. She gets in the passenger seat, and he starts driving away from Ruby High.

The drive is pretty much silent. The only noises are those of the truck itself and of the radio humming country music quietly. Sabina still doesn't know where they're going, and her heart's beating way too fast for her to build up the courage to ask.

They pull into the parking lot of Fatso's Foods, that cliché small town diner with greasy food that every teenager hangs out at. She's a little disappointed that his surprise is just burgers and milkshakes, but instead of parking in the front of the restaurant, Wesley drives around to the back. Sabina's never been back there. Wesley knows only a few people ever actually have. He parks next the dumpster and gets out of the truck. Sabina watches him from the passenger seat as he climbs into the truck bed and onto the lid of the dumpster. Again, he's kicking himself for the lack of romanticism. Dumpsters definitely aren't the move. He doubts a dumpster has ever appeared in a romance movie or even a decent rom-com.

It finally clicks that Sabina's supposed to follow him. She jumps out of the truck, walks around to the back, and climbs into the bed. Wesley reaches out his hand to help her onto the dumpster. She's much shorter than him, so it's harder for her to get up there.

"See that ladder?" he asks. She nods. "Climb up it. Go to the left at the top."

She does as he says, and she gets off the ladder and onto a small stretch of the roof of Fatso's that juts out and has two lawn chairs on it. Wesley pops up behind her and turns her so she's facing the direction the chairs face. It's just open land. No buildings. No lights. No cars. No people. Just grass and trees and sky. She thinks it's beautiful. He knew she would.

"Woah," she says. There's nothing particularly special about the land other than its openness, but that's what she likes about it. That it's not spectacular but it's beautiful in its potential to be anything.

Wesley sits down in one of the chairs, and Sabina sits in the other.

"So this is your surprise?" she asks.

He nods. "Welcome to my favorite spot in all of Ruby."

"How'd you find it?"

He laughs and runs his fingers through his hair nervously. "The truth?" She nods her head. "Sophomore year I was making out with Valerie Bentley back here and a couple guys smoking weed started yelling at us from up here."

Sabina laughs. "Nice."

"You said you wanted the truth, so that's what you got."

They fall back into silence. It's not the type of silence that has them squirming in their chairs uncomfortably trying to think of some way to break the silence. It's the type of silence that makes them feel at home.

"So what now?" Sabina asks.

Wesley shrugs, again kicking himself for lack of preparation. "I dunno. Want to play twenty questions or something?" He wants to get to know her. He knows her from growing up together, but he still doesn't really know her. She certainly doesn't know him.

"You start."

"Ok, so you know that this is my favorite place in Ruby. What's yours?"

She looks across the empty field and tries to see the faint stars. "The dock in my backyard. It's the only place that feels like my own since nobody else uses it. What do you use this place for?"

He laughs uncomfortably. "This is where Hunter and I would come to to smoke." Again, he's killing it with the romance. "Before he started spending all his time with Marley and stopped partying." Sabina groans at Marley's name. "What do you think of Marley?"

"She's probably the fakest person in this town," she says. "At least Lilly and her mean girls are honest about how they feel about people. Marley likes herself and that's about it, not that she'd ever say that. She's constantly trying to change Rae and me to be more like her because she doesn't actually like either of us. She's just using everybody in order to make it through this town. She's quote-unquote best friends with Rae because she was the only person she knew coming in. She's dating Hunter because he's a football player, and the sure way to be accepted and cool at Ruby High is to be dating a Renegade."

Wesley whistles. "Don't hold back now, Bean. Tell me how you really feel."

Sabina slaps his arm playfully. "Shut up. Why do you like getting high and drunk all the time?"

He pauses for a long time. She's afraid that she's crossed a line and ruined everything.

"Don't you ever just want to feel numb?" he finally asks.

Numb. That's all she's felt for the majority of her life. Numb to her true self until she decided to stop caring about what other people thought. Numb to other people's opinions once they became too much for her to handle. Numb to the fading of her only friendship once Rae and Landon started getting serious. Numb to the burns of Lilly and the cheerleaders once caring became too painful that it almost destroyed her. Numb to her parents never being around. Numb to everything, except Wesley Parker for some reason. Even before he kissed her, she only felt anything when he talked to her and teased her. She wanted to be numb for so long to ease the pain, but now she's afraid she'll never be able to feel again. Except Wesley. For some reason, she can't be numb to him.

"Yeah," she answers simply.

"Sometimes I just want to forget that this is the best my life will ever get... that this is my peak," he says. "What happened to you?"

"What?" She doesn't understand his question at all. What does he mean what happened to her?

"I say normal as a bad thing, but you used to be normal. You used to dress like everyone else and act like all the other girls. You even used to be a cheerleader. What changed?"

"Brooke Douglas died." Brooke was in their grade. During their freshman year, she died out of nowhere. She wasn't sick or anything. She just dropped dead from some unknown heart defect. "It made me realize that anything can happen to any of us at any moment, and I'd spent the previous fourteen years of my life pretending to be someone I'm not. I didn't want to die and have never actually lived as myself, so I gave up pretending. I gave up being who everyone wanted me to be and became me. I didn't want to wait eighteen years to get out of this town and finally be Sabina Harper. I'd already wasted too much time."

At this, he leans over and kisses her. Everyone in Ruby falls into the same trap, and he loves that Sabina found her way out of it. He loves that she's not all the other girls. Every girl he's ever been with has basically been the same person in a different body, but Sabina is Sabina.

The simple peck lingers and becomes more. He pulls her onto his lap, and he can hear the cheap lawn chair buckling under their combined weight. One of his hands holds her waist while the other cups her cheek. Sabina's no longer afraid of being numb forever because she feels everything right now. She feels everything.

"How many girls have you brought up here?" she asks.

He shakes his head. "This is my spot with Hunter. We made a no girls rule. He'd probably kick my ass if he knew I brought you here." She can't help but smile at that. "You're super cute when you smile." She smiles even more. "How long have you liked me for?"

"What makes you think I like you?" she teases.

He grimaces. "I'm going to pretend that didn't actually hurt."

"I had the biggest crush on you in middle school," she confesses.

"And in high school?"

"Not so much."

"What? Why not?"

"A girl actually not being obsessed with the Wesley Parker? Shocking, I know!" She nudges him in the side to show that she's teasing. "Well, obviously I do like you. It just wasn't a full-blown crush like it was in middle school. You went from being my brother's brace-faced, scrawny, acne-faced best friend to being Wesley Parker- the hot freshman who made varsity Renegades who every girl was in love with. Your braces came off, you suddenly had muscles, your skin cleared, and you were hooking up with seniors and any other girl you wanted. You also kind of became a partying mess. You were just kind of everything I hated about Ruby thrown together into one body."

"I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted." He laughs lightheartedly, but he really doesn't know. He really wants her to see him as more than that. Everyone just sees him as the Renegade.

"But you were also always one of the only people who was actually nice to me," she continues. It's true. When she got stood up on a date with Calvin Broward, Wesley picked her up, bought her ice cream, and took her home because Landon was out with Rae. Whenever Lilly or other girls make fun of her and he's around, he doesn't just duck his head and keep walking, pretending like it's not happening. He's stopped and stood up for her more times than anyone else. Lilly practically stopped messing with her when Wesley was dating her because Landon said they made some type of deal. He laughs at her jokes that nobody else finds funny, even when he doesn't find them funny. "So I guess I still did have a crush on you but I didn't call it that because I didn't want to be like all your other girls."

"There's no one else in this town like you," he says. "Probably in the world."

"How long have you liked me for?" she asks.

"When did I become friends with Landon?"

"I don't know. First grade?"

"Okay, so since first grade."

"Shut up!"

"It's true!" he says, kissing her cheek. "I always thought you knew. I mean, I did always flirt with you."

He liked her in elementary school when he would tug on her pigtails and play tag with her at recess. He liked her in middle school when she was his assigned cheerleader and when she offered to help him with math so he wouldn't fail off the football team. He liked her freshmen year when she changed out of her cheerleading uniform during the middle of the day one Friday and came out in clothes everyone else thought were weird. He liked her last year when Calvin Broward, a senior on the team, asked her out just to stand her up and make fun of her in front of his friends. He liked her when he kicked Calvin Broward's ass in the locker room the next day. He likes her now that she wears clothes none of the other girls would be caught dead in and listens to music nobody else has heard of.

"I thought you were just doing it to mess with me because you knew I liked you." She's blushing in the dark. She hopes he can't tell. He can tell. "Or to piss off Landon."

"Okay, so maybe it was kind of because of that, but I still did like you," he admits.

They sit on the roof of Fatso's for hours just talking, asking each other questions and giving their honest answers while stealing kisses here and there. They could spend all night up there, but Landon texts Sabina eventually, wondering where she was. Wesley takes her home then to prevent a full-on Landon freak out and kisses her at her doorstep before running back to his car to prevent Landon from seeing him.