A teasing smile flashes across Eve’s face. “So who are you really missing?”
Heat creeps across my cheeks, and I get up to wash my bowl—and hide the fact that my face is turning red to match. Eve follows me, doing a little dance with Smush.
“No one.”
Eve gives a disbelieving laugh.
“Harper’s in love, Harper’s in looove,” she sings as she swings Smush around in a waltz.
I drop my bowl into the drying rack on the counter. “Don’t you have homework to do?”
“I’m procrastinating.”
“They don’t work you hard enough in comedy school.”
She purses her lips at me. “Now you sound like Mom. I do not go to comedy school, I’m majoring in film so I can write comedy for—”
She puts Smush down so she can talk with her hands, launching into her favorite rant. It’s an all-too-familiar one since she declared a major in film and TV, especially now that she’s about to finish her junior year and Mom has spent the entire month since NYU sent students home hounding her about career prospects. Once she’s in full rant mode, she’ll tire herself out before she can remember to pester me about my crush.
—
I’m supposed to be doing math homework, but my textbook lies facedown on the fluffy white carpet next to me. I’m instead sprawled out on the floor, staring at Alyssa’s latest Snapchat story, my head propped up on the couch leg. I have no idea how to do the work, nor do I have any desire to figure it out. Especially because Alyssa just posted a snap story makeup tutorial that’s both hilarious and cute, which is extremely unfair. How am I supposed to focus on anything else?
But then I hear my mom’s footsteps coming down the hall. I snatch open my bio textbook at random and flip it onto my stomach just as she emerges into the living room.
“Studying?” she asks.
My eyes sweep over my homework. I truly have no idea how any of this works, but I nod anyway, and she gives me an approving smile.
Breathing out a sigh of relief, I wait until she’s disappeared into the kitchen before I pick up my phone again. I tap right to Alyssa’s name in my contacts. I have her number from when we had to work on a lab together outside of class, and our chat history is depressingly limited to schoolwork.
Hey! Do you get any of this bio hw?
I hit send before I can think about it, but that doesn’t stop my brain from thinking anyway when the delivered notification pops up under my blue bubble of text. Oh god oh god oh god why? Did I seriously just ask her about homework? I cringe. So transparent, yet so not flirty.
Still, I spend more time over the next hour checking my phone instead of doing the math homework, until she finally responds with a picture of her notes from class. I knew my text was cringey, but I still shrivel up inside when she doesn’t say anything more. I shoot back a quick thanks!! (two exclamation points, Harp? Seriously?) and settle back down to finish my homework.
Half an hour later, after I’ve tried feeding bits of my textbook to an uninterested Smush, I’m back on TikTok. The app has a way of swallowing time whole. My muscles are starting to atrophy when I scroll to the next video in my bottomless feed, and freeze.
The video’s already looped back to the beginning before I have a chance to process what I’m seeing. Because it’s Alyssa. On my FYP.
Coming out.
To an audience of over a hundred thousand likes, and piles of comments.
The video loops around for a third time, and I recover from my shock enough to feel a smile tugging at the corners of my lips. She announces that she’s gay via a snappy choreographed dance that illuminates text in each corner of her video frame as she moves. Her parents are in the background, and while they’re confused and trying to follow the steps at first, they all end up tripping and laughing over each other.
The song she’s dancing to is going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day, I think as I let the video loop for a fourth time. I can’t help grinning like a total idiot at it, though.
And, if I’m honest, there’s a part of me—a small, teeny tiny, very loud part of me—that’s singing. Alyssa is gay.
Does this mean I have a chance with her? She’s known I’m gay ever since I came out last year, after all.
Not if all we text about is homework, I tell myself, shoulders shrinking. I swallow past the anxious bubble that immediately hardens in my throat as I open our text chain. I just texted her about homework. Will this make me look desperate?
I take a deep breath, and type out a message anyway.
Omg you’re tiktok famous!! Congrats on coming out
Her response comes almost immediately.
Thanks!! It was so fun lol. Went really well!
It makes my heartbeat thunder so hard I feel it reverberate in my fingertips.
I’m so glad! Here for you if you need anything
Thanks, Harp!
Of course!
I stare at the screen, willing my fingers to keep typing, to say something—anything—that would keep the conversation going, but I draw a blank. Before I can think of anything, she gives my text a heart reaction, and just like that, the conversation is dead.
I drop my phone back onto the floor and sit up straighter. I can’t text her about homework again. I’ve already initiated two conversations with her today.
I switch back to TikTok, trying to get my mind off Alyssa and her vibrant laugh when I remember how many likes she got. How funny her video is, how effortlessly she brings smiles to other people’s faces. Even strangers scrolling past
