Chapter 137: A Kid’s Crush?
Liam ended the call with a quick goodbye, tossing his phone onto the cushion beside him without much thought. Whatever that conversation had actually been about, he wasn’t dwelling on it — there was nothing going on with Vanessa worth building a narrative around, not from his end anyway, and the call itself had been strange enough that he filed it away without further analysis.
Mateo, still hunched over his homework a few feet away, glanced up.
“Who was that?”
“Friend,” Liam said simply, already reaching for the remote.
Mateo paused, pencil hovering over his notebook. “But it was a girl.”
“Yeah.” Liam responded with a raised brow.
“So can guys and girls actually be friends? Like, for real?”
Liam glanced over, catching something in Mateo’s tone that didn’t quite match the casualness of the question. There was genuine curiosity there, but it wasn’t really about Liam or Vanessa at all — Liam could see that immediately, the way Mateo’s eyes held onto the question a little too intently for it to just be idle conversation.
“Sure, they can,” Liam said. “As long as neither of you actually likes the other. Once real feelings get involved, that gets complicated fast.”
Mateo’s face fell slightly, and he looked back down at his notebook, going quiet.
Liam caught it and immediately felt something click into place. He should’ve seen this coming — a sixteen-year-old asking that particular question wasn’t philosophical curiosity. There was a girl. Obviously there was a girl.
“Hey,” Liam said, leaning forward slightly. “You got a crush on someone?”
Mateo’s face went red instantly, the color spreading fast enough that there was no point denying it, though he tried anyway.
“N-no. I don’t— that’s not— why would you even ask that?”
“Mateo.” Liam called out.
“I don’t have a crush.” Mateo kept on denying.
“Your face says otherwise.” Liam pointed out.
“My face doesn’t say anything.” Mateo denied it.
“Your face is currently the color of a tomato.”
Mateo groaned, dropping his forehead onto his notebook, muffled words coming out against the page. “This is so embarrassing.”
“It’s not embarrassing,” Liam said, genuinely amused but keeping his tone gentle. “Honestly, I think it’s kind of cool. I can’t even remember the last time I had an actual crush on someone. Like the real kind — nervous, can’t-talk-straight kind.”
Mateo lifted his head slightly, peeking over the edge of his notebook. “Really?”
“Really. That stuff kind of fades once you’re older. You get numb to it a little.”
Mateo sat with that for a second, some of the embarrassment easing off his shoulders. He sighed, long and dramatic, the sound of someone finally giving up the fight.
“Her name’s Jessica,” he admitted. “She’s a cheerleader.”
Liam nodded slowly, already running through what that detail actually meant in the ecosystem of a high school. A cheerleader. Which meant she almost certainly ran in the same circles as the athletes who’d been making Mateo’s life miserable — Cody, Bryce, whoever else was in that orbit. The odds, purely on paper, weren’t great. High school hierarchies didn’t tend to bend easily, and a bullied sixteen-year-old going up against that kind of social positioning had the deck stacked against him before he even said a word to her.
“She in your grade?” Liam asked.
“Yeah. We have bio together.”
“You talked to her at all?”
Mateo’s face went slightly pink again. “A little. She asked to borrow a pencil once.”
“That’s a start.” Liam tried to be positive.
“That’s not a start, that’s a pencil.”
“Every relationship starts with something dumb like a pencil, Mateo. Trust me.”
Mateo let out a small laugh despite himself.
“It’s not gonna happen, though. Guys like Cody talk to her all the time. I’m just—” he gestured vaguely at himself, “—me.”
Liam felt something tighten slightly in his chest at that, the same instinct that had sent him rushing to the school days ago flaring up again now. He recognized the shape of it — a kid who’d already decided, before even trying, that he didn’t measure up.
That kind of thinking didn’t come from nowhere. It came from exactly the environment Mateo had been describing all week, an environment built specifically to make him feel small.
“You know Cody’s the same kid who got scared out of his mind by Darren, right?” Liam said. “The guy currently mumbling nonsense and drooling on my couch pillow.”
Mateo cracked a smile. “Yeah.”
“So maybe don’t measure yourself against a guy who pissed himself the second an actual grown man looked at him wrong.”
Mateo laughed properly this time, louder than he probably meant to, glancing toward the bedroom door like he half expected Darren to wake up and demand context.
“It’s not really about Cody, though,” Mateo admitted after a moment, quieter now. “It’s just— I don’t know. Girls like Jessica don’t really look at guys like me.”
“Why not?”
Mateo shrugged, gesturing vaguely at himself again, the same gesture as before, heavier this time.
Liam studied him for a second, choosing his next words carefully.
“You know confidence is like ninety percent of it, right? Not the six-pack, not the letterman jacket. If you walk around already convinced you don’t have a shot, that’s the actual thing keeping you from having one. Not your looks, not your grade in gym class. That.”
Mateo looked up at him, something hopeful and skeptical mixed together in his expression. “You really think that works?”
“I know it works. I’ve seen it work.” Liam leaned back, thinking for a second, an idea forming.
“Alright. Here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna help you actually talk to this girl. Properly. Not just pencil-borrowing small talk.”
Mateo’s eyes widened slightly. “Wait, seriously?”
“Seriously. We’ll figure out an actual plan. Something real, not some cheesy line you saw in a movie.”
“You’d actually help me with that?” Mateo was confused why Liam was going so far for him.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Liam asked.
Mateo stared at him for a moment, something shifting behind his expression — gratitude, maybe, or something closer to disbelief that anyone was willing to put this much effort into something this small in the grand scheme of his life.
“Thanks, Liam,” he said finally.
“Don’t thank me yet. You still gotta finish your homework first.”
Mateo groaned, dropping his head back onto the notebook, but he was smiling when he did it, and Liam felt something settle comfortably in his chest, watching him get back to work with just slightly more energy than he’d had five minutes earlier.
Jessica. Cheerleader. Bio class. Borrowed a pencil once.
Liam kept the details stored in his head, already turning the beginnings of a plan over in his head, mildly surprised at how invested he already felt in something that, on paper, had nothing to do with him at all.