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I ’ve looked at Jax thousands of times since we were in second grade. We’ve stripped out of muddy clothes on the porch of his parents’ house, down to Mickey Mouse underwear. That was back before his dad packed his boxes in his Jeep and left. We’ve shared eye rolls behind the backs of parents, teachers, cheerleaders and a big louse of a guy who used the word gay in a nasty way. Even after the year we spent apart, we know each other so well that Jax can tweak an eyebrow and I know what he’s thinking and I can’t stop laughing .

Meeting him again here was a surprise, but it was the best surprise. Beside Ellis, he’s the one thing left over from my old life. He’s my one friend who knows both the old Ashley Landon and the new .

That’s a friendship I can’t risk .

But now it’s Friday night, and there’s some other girl talking to him in the Student Union. She’s all silky blond hair and a white-toothed smile. When he looks past her at me, our eyes meet. His hazel eyes are usually serious. But sometimes, they crinkle with laughter at the edges, making him squint in a way that makes me feel light .

I like it when I’m the one who makes him smile that way. It’s easy for me to make him laugh because we’re so close. Too close to fall in love .

But he winks at me, right in front of the silky-haired girl who I was just wishing I could be, and I think maybe I don’t believe in such a thing as too close anymore .

Later that night, as I’m packing my backpack up, I say, “Look at you, winning over all the ladies .”

Jax smiles back at me but doesn’t answer. “I can walk you back to your dorm if you want .”

“Gallant,” I tell him .

As we cross the tile floor, passing the dark Starbucks stand, one of my favorite upbeat songs by The Pandas comes on. I glance over at Jax, who eyes me skeptically, as if he knows what I’m thinking .

I take that as my permission to embarrass him in public. “You could be my looooover,” I croon along with the lead singer. “You could be my friiiiend. We could find a way to be toooooo-gether in the eeeeee - nd .”

He shakes his head at me. “You’re a mess, Landon. Your musical taste is terrible, and you’re not even hitting the right tune .”

I’ve heard it all before, so I grin at him and go on singing, but to my surprise, he grabs my hand. He pulls me in close to him, our hips meeting briefly before his arm slips around my waist. He holds me with surprising confidence .

“You’re not the only one who can be ridiculous,” he tells me as we playfully waltz/stumble out the doors and into the warm fall evening .

Jax’s crush on me was a thing I had taken for granted for a long time when I was younger, something I ignored because I didn’t like him that way. Now, when I find myself thinking about him in class, when he calls me Landon –the only person in the world who calls me by my last name, such a weirdo–it would seem obvious that I should say: “Hey, you. I love you back. I know, about damn time, right ?”

But as I make my way back from class and down the hall of my dorm, there’s a girl screaming at her boyfriend, who stands in the corridor with his baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. For a second, I think he’s being long-suffering–the way Jax has always been with me–but then he says flatly to her, “You are such a crazy heifer .”

Jax is the one link I have to my old life. Ellis knew the old me, but she’s as different now as I am .

When I imagine saying something to Jax that might ruin our fledgling, reborn relationship, my lips squeeze shut .

I’m pretty brave with a sword in my hand and ghosts on my heels, but I’m not brave about this .

Maybe someday, I can be a normal girl .

Or maybe someday, I’ll be somebody else, somebody fearless with her crushes as well as her curses .

For right now, I’m just Ashley Landon, sub-par medium, college student, and potential girlfriend .