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Moscow, Idaho

Y ou forgot your wallet?” Maddie asks Jake Schriger.

Maddie is all dressed up, even though it’s just breakfast. She’s wearing jeans with an oversize beige sweater that falls artfully off her shoulders. It should be obvious to Jake that she’s taking this seriously.

It’s Valentine’s Day. She told Kaylee it was a date. She told Xana and Emily it was a date. They’re all eager to hear how it goes.

And Jake has forgotten his wallet!

The guy sitting opposite her in this cute downtown Moscow café called the Breakfast Club is a junior in the Delta Tau Delta fraternity who’s been hotly pursuing her—“pining for her” is how some of her friends put it—for over a year.

Maddie always has a lot of admirers. Though Jake is handsome, nice, fun, and a great water-skier, for some reason she’s always kept him at bay. Maddie has to give the guy credit, though. He’s never given up. He’s stuck around. He’s grown on her, and she’s thinking of relenting.

Now he’s stuck her with the bill.

Maddie can already hear the girls shrieking with laughter. She knows they’ll make fun of her. Sure enough, when she tells them, they think it’s hilarious.

That night, Emily posts a picture of Maddie—all made up, false lashes on, clearly ready to go out—on Snapchat. It’s cheekily captioned: Didn’t Even Pay for the Date.

Still, the handsome upperclassman succeeds in winning Maddie’s affections.

Soon after Valentine’s Day, Maddie commits to Jake. She stops seeing other guys. And from then on, they’re a thing.

Just over a year later, on April 27, she’ll post a throwback on Instagram of some of the couple’s best times together: Boating in Coeur d’Alene. At the Watershed Music Festival. Hanging out at school.

Maddie captions the post: One year with my best friend!! Life is so much sweeter with you in it I love you lots & lots @jakeschriger.

Jake will soon be graduating and moving to Boise for a job. Maddie wants to move there too, get a summer job, and be with him.

Why? Because Jake, she has decided, is her future.