The Dating Game

THIRTY-FIVE

After a few minutes, the stunning meteor shower comes to a bittersweet end with one last star shooting across the sky. I watch as it soars, wondering what it would feel like to be a meteorite—to be free to shine as brightly as I want to and to have everyone wish upon me like a lucky charm. What would it feel like to be a star?

"Well, that was fast," Chase says beside me, pressing himself up from the floor and then taking a sip from his water bottle. He places it next to his bag when he's done and crosses his arms as he stands up straight, staring at me.

"What?" I ask, kind of worried about what he could be thinking right now.

"Did you make a wish?" he asks.

I raise my eyebrows at him with a skeptical smile. "No, I didn't make a wish."

He tilts his head. "Why not?"

"Did you really think, of all people, I'd make a wish on a shooting star?" I ask him, deciding the change the subject before I expose to him how horrible I am at lying. "Besides, it's not like they come true. Wishing on a star is just something society came up with to get people to appreciate their beauty or something."

"But don't you like the hope that it might come true?" he asks as our eyes meet.

"Hope is a dangerous feeling," I accidentally let slip out. It's low, so he hardly hears it, but I can tell that he didn't miss it. So before he can ask what I mean by that, I change the subject again. "What did you wish for?"

He smiles. "You think I made a wish?"

"Of course I do," I say, "You're you."

He shrugs in agreement. "Well, I'm not telling you."

"Why not?"

He carefully drops down, leaning over his feet to whisper in my ear, "Because then it won't come true."

The sensation is alarming, especially when it makes all of my blood rush to my cheeks, and I try my best not to look away from him again and feed into his idea that he makes me nervous. Instead, when he offers his hand out for me to grab, I stand up on my own and brush any dust off my jeans before making my way over to the edge of the roof. There's a concrete wall lining the edges, tall enough for me to rest my hands on comfortably and tall enough for me not to have a panic attack thinking about what would happen if I fell off.

Chase meets my side in silence. Instead of talking, we both just take a few seconds to breathe in the late-night air. It's close to midnight now, and I couldn't be less tired. After watching such beautiful stars shoot across my head, sleep feels like my last priority.

"Do you really wanna know what I wished for?" Chase asks when the air between us falls static. I look over at him, watching him stare at me with those soft green eyes. Without even trying, I nod my head and he takes a breath.

"First, I need to tell you something."

My brows furrow and my arms tense up when he says that. "Why?"

"It just won't make sense without any context," he tells me. I worry for a moment that what he's about to say is going to change everything, but then his eyes begin to glimmer when he tries to speak.

"Are you okay?" I ask. I know what it looks like when someone's about to cry. "You don't have to tell me if it's too much for you."

"No," he says instantly, putting his hand up and silencing me without a word. "I want to tell you. You deserve to know me."

I keep my mouth shut as he takes a few more breaths, bracing himself for what's coming next. I watch the different gears shift in his brain as he tries to figure out how to word his next sentence, and I watch his eyes shut when he fails to think of a good plan.

"Just tell me what you're thinking," I tell him, mindlessly shifting closer to him. I keep my eyes glued to him to show him in my own way that he can trust me. If I look away, there's no telling what I might be thinking, so I just stand there and listen.

"Um," he begins slowly, "I know how you see me. It's how everyone sees me—the player, the douchebag, the popular guy who only talks to girls he's interested in." His eyes shift beyond the concrete wall. "It makes sense; that's what I wanted people to believe. It was a whole lot better than what I really was."

I frown at him, not sure what he means.

He senses the silence. "Lonely."

I feel my heart twinge at that word, but more importantly, that word coming from Chase. If anyone saw Chase, who's always surrounded by the people that idolize him, that's the last thing they would think. They'd want to be him, or be with him, or be beside him. They'd think Chase is perfect, or at least acts like he is, and they'd assume he has no reason to feel lonely.

"So much happened to me in such a little time," Chase reveals, bringing my attention back to him. "My dog died before I started high school—the dog who was my best friend in the entire world—and it felt impossible trying to move on without him. I mean, you've known me since middle school; you saw how depressed I was freshman year."

I reach into my memories for a moment where I ever saw Chase unhappy and a few days into freshman year seems to reveal itself. I remember him walking down the hallway alone, not wanting to talk to anyone and nobody wanting to talk to him. We were never friends back then, so I never tried to help him feel better, but everyone just kind of knew each other. I don't think anyone really knew Chase, though. Not back then.

"Anyway, it was a hard year," Chase says. "I didn't really talk to anyone except Holly until Dylan convinced me to try out for basketball, and ever since then, it feels like everyone's just expected me to be perfect and happy all the time. I faked a smile so often that I couldn't even tell myself whether I was actually happy or not, and it got to a certain point where that fake happy was all I knew."

"Chase..."

He shrugs. "It's fine. Like I said—that was my normal. Pretending to be happy was still being happy, and I was okay with that. But then something happened that fucked up my entire life." He takes a deep breath. "Holly isn't my only sister; I had another one."

"You had another one?" My heart aches at that word; I can't imagine what he's gone through.

He nods. "Her name was Stella. We all have different moms, but she lived with us for a while but didn't really have a good relationship with my dad. He didn't accept her when she came out as trans and things got really bad, so she ended up moving out as soon as she turned eighteen."

"What happened to her?"

"She, uh," he tries to say, biting his lip gently as he struggles not to cry. "She was supposed to move in with a friend, but she never made it. Police found her body a few weeks later at an abandoned warehouse."

"Holy shit," I mumble, not believing what I'm hearing. I was right when I said I couldn't imagine what he's gone through, but this is so much worse than I thought.

A sad, empty chuckle escapes his mouth. "Yeah, it, um— it wasn't great news." He wipes his eye with a single knuckle. "There were signs of struggle and everything, but nobody caught the person that did it."

"Chase, I'm so sorry," I tell him, taking his hand in mine and squeezing just slightly. He looks at me with a red nose and a tear on the brink of falling out.

"Thank you," he tells me sincerely. "But I didn't tell you this story to get you to feel bad for me."

My chest tightens as I wonder if I made a mistake in any of my words. I want to reassure him that I don't pity him and ask if I said something wrong, but the way he's looking at me right now makes me feel like I need to just keep my mouth closed and let him finish.

"I wanted to show you why I am the way that I am," he says. "And why you're the one who makes everything better."