💫 The Chase: Searching for A Crush In A Trail of Stars
💔 Conner, Part 3
Did you miss part one? Read it here.
And part two here.
T H E C H A S E
I was wrong. Conner, it appeared, had no interest in me. I had seen him several more times over the summer, but never as eventful as that night.
When I wasn’t working The Matchmaker with Reece or attending journalism camp, most of my time was spent with Erin, hunting boys. Sometimes Reece and Aurora would join, too. We would drive around town, blaring The Eminem Show, scouring for that silver two-door with stars on the back, sometimes stopping at Subway to refuel, and only retreating to the local grocery store when we couldn’t find it to stalk Erin’s crush, another guy in a band who resembled a skinny, punk version of Johnny Depp, who worked as a stocker.
Not forgetting that Conner had previously been pursuing another girl in town, we also spent the summer investigating whether or not he was single, even making a point to ask Johnny Depp Jr. during one of his shifts.
“I don’t know,” he told us one day in the soda aisle, his cheekbones looking especially sharp, and his black hair spiked up with gel. “I haven’t seen Conner in a few months. He was single then, though.”
One of Erin’s friends went to a different high school but knew Conner, too, so we questioned him over lunch one day. He said he was single, and why did we want to know? We gave him a brief history.
“Dang, you fell for him quick,” he pointed out. “You fell for him after just one lap!”
I frowned. Maybe the history we gave was too brief. I felt there was more to it than that.
“And you’ve been running around, chasing cars with stars all summer?” He continued, smiling. I didn’t feel like receiving truth bombs, but he continued to drop them.
“Man, you’re strung! It’s just a boy.”
Erin and I turned to look at each other. “We need to learn that,” she said with a smile, but I took it personally. I used to tell myself that all the time: “It’s just a boy.” When had I stopped?
This was the most effort I had ever put into trying to date a guy. A lot of it was fueled by the boy-crazed encouragement of Erin and Aurora. Reece was supportive, but a lot less invested since she had picked up a summer job at the local grocery store after The Matchmaker had closed. I began to wonder why I was trying so hard, or if I was even trying hard enough. I had seen Conner on more than one occasion that summer, but what was I doing about it other than chasing stars?
I considered a time we had run into him at the bowling alley. He hung out with us as we waited for our lane and collected our shoes, all of us chatting while he adorably played air drums to the song playing throughout the building, his fiery curls bouncing to the beat. All I did was delight in his presence from a distance and gush about him with the girls when he walked away. Maybe I’m just setting myself up for heartache.
After that conversation over lunch, I was nearly ready to give up. The summer was closing, he wasn’t even a student at school anymore, and for all our efforts, I assumed he was pursuing some other chick anyway. I started my senior year with little hope that I would even see him again.
One night out, the eves of summer slowly fading, we saw it: stars. I quickly U-turned. We had never had success in this before, so now that I was following him, I didn’t know what the next step in this hormone-driven plan was.
“This is dumb this is dumb this is dumb,” I kept repeating out loud, catching up to him. Conner was idling at a stoplight, so I pulled up next to him.
“Rachel!” Aurora exclaimed, “he’s telling you to roll your window down!”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The 9 Lives of Rachel Jitsawat to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.