The Great Between

Max's Gelato Plan

When Leo calls at eleven the next day, I have been waiting at my desk for half an hour, showered and dressed in fresh clothes. My hair is still damp, twisting at the ends as it dries. Leo's video call comes through and the screen lights up with my image, reflected in the computer camera. I'm grinning like a kid on a new bike and my stomach is a jittery bundle of nerves. Why am I so nervous? It's just Leo.

'Hi!' He pixelates himself in a swish of excited movement.

When he comes back into focus, his smile is broad and bright and there. He is right there, after what feels like months of separation. But he was wrong yesterday when he said it would feel like seeing him in real life again. There is still a palpable distance between us, a divide that can't be crossed.

He snaps me back to earth with an awkward little cough. 'Stella?'

'Sorry, hi.'

His smile opens up again and he leans towards the screen.

'I told Dad we were going to study for Lit,' he whispers. 'So if he comes in, pretend to be talking about the poems. Wait, I do need to actually talk to about the poetry essay.'

'I haven't it started yet.'

'But you're meant to be the smart one. And the writer!'

I stop myself before I blab: The only thing I've written for months is a birthday card to finally tell you that I like you as more than a friend and I'm scared to send it in case I destroy our friendship and right now I'm honestly trying very hard not to just blurt everything out to you because that would be too much for this lovely Sunday morning, a morning made more lovely by you being here with me, in a way, even though it's strange seeing you through the screen and...

Oh god. If I don't tell him soon, I may just implode with the pressure of keeping all this to myself.

'I'm sure yours will be great,' he says. 'Your writing is always so beautiful. Like, your stories, not essays. Though maybe the essays too.'

He called me beautiful! Or, he called my writing beautiful. Is that the same? Maybe it's better because it means he's read stories that have deep-held parts of me in them and he thought those parts of me were beautiful too. The compliment takes all my words away and I stutter out a meek, 'Thank you.'

I catch a glimpse of myself in the top panel of the screen and kick myself internally. My face is as red as Leo's shirt and I look as flustered as I feel, but Leo keeps talking as if I haven't just stumbled and flushed my way through receiving a very basic compliment.

'I started reading the book you gave me for my birthday,' he says. 'I really love it! I wish we could study stuff like it in Literature.'

I wish he wouldn't use the word love. It sets my heart beating much faster than is medically recommended.

'There's not enough death or sex in it to qualify for Lit,' I say.

Yeah, Stella, because the way to talk to boys is to tell them about death and sex in works of fiction.

'Not all Lit books are about sex or... wait never mind, they all are.' He laughs and my chest is electric with that fluttering feeling. 'Wait, do people die in Hitchhiker's? No, don't tell me! I don't want spoilers.'

'There's not much death,' I say, scanning my memory. 'Unless you count the destruction of Earth, but that's in the first chapter, so it's hardly a spoiler.'

Leo shakes his head at me with mock seriousness. 'You've ruined the reading experience for me, Stella. What a terrible friend you are.'

I roll my eyes at him and a scuffling sound fills the background of his call. His dad appears, waves at me, and says, 'So he finally let you tutor him for Literature, huh?'