Crush

Seventeen

Maddie sat at the conference table, the laptop in front of her, waiting for the Skype call to come through. She'd run into Will and Lizzie in town that morning and between them, they'd all decided Tess needed to get out of the house. All three of them had tried and failed multiple times to get Tess to answer her phone, and it was Will who'd come up with the idea of staging an intervention and taking Tess up to the tree house to force her to have some fun. Though Maddie wasn't entirely sure whether it would work or not she was up for the challenge. When Lizzie said she had to work on the paper with her dad and Will suddenly remembered he had band practice, Maddie wasn't so sure she could pull it off herself.

"Tess likes you," Will had said when Maddie questioned whether Tess would even come if it was just the two of them. Hearing the words that confirmed what Maddie thought she was feeling from Tess had given her butterflies. Will had also offered to go up to the tree house to help Maddie clean it up a bit, since it was still full of dust. She'd have sworn Will was trying to set her and Tess up on a date, but since she didn't know Will all that well, she'd give him the benefit of the doubt. Besides, asking Tess on a date was what Maddie had tried to do this morning. What would it matter if it was a set up?

The laptop screen lit up as the call came through and when Maddie answered it, Freya appeared trying to wrestle her wild curls into a scarf.

"Hey stranger," Freya said.

"Hey. How's things?" Maddie asked.

"Good," Freya said. She peered closer at the screen. "Have you changed your hair?"

"What do you think?" Maddie turned her head left and then right so Freya could see it properly.

Freya whistled. "It's different," she said.

"You don't like it?"

"I didn't say that," Freya said. "I'm just so used to seeing it longer and blonder, that's all."

"I just, you know, wanted a change."

"Some change," Freya said. "How do you feel about it?"

Maddie shrugged. "I like it. I haven't had short hair since I was little. It's freeing being able to get up in the morning and just put a hat on."

"Ha! I wish I knew what that was like," Freya said shaking her head and loosening some of the curls that had so far managed to stay put in the scarf.

Maddie laughed and said, "Have you seen Andy?"

Freya threw her head back and laughed. "Are you kidding? All I've had from Andy have been a couple of pictures of girls at the beach and a text that said 'surf's gnarly'."

Maddie laughed. "Yeah. He sent the same ones to me. I'm glad he's having some fun."

"I think we all needed to let off some steam after the last few months," Freya said. "Speaking of, have you spoken to your dad?"

"No," Maddie lied. "Have you?"

Freya made a face. "Yeah. He's gone back to Sydney. He's not happy with Andy and me. He thinks we know where you are but won't tell him."

"Sorry," Maddie said. "Has he said anything?"

"About what?"

"About why I left."

Freya shrugged. "He's trying to put out spot fires. You know what he's like. All business."

"Yeah," Maddie said. "That's why I left."

"As long as he's dealing with business, he's leaving us alone," Freya said.

"Yeah," Maddie agreed absently. "So you're okay? With everything that happened?"