“Your mom doesn’t like that you’re with me, does she?” Jack asks. It’s a week after they met, and I’m surprised he’s bringing it up now.

“Probably not.” I don’t bother sugar-coating it. “I’m guessing she wants me with a doctor or a lawyer or some other professional with a title that says, ‘important.’”

We’re sitting on a swinging bench on his mom’s front porch. It’s a week before classes for my senior year begin, and only one day before Jack leaves to go on a three-month tour.

“Rock star doesn’t scream ‘important?’” Jack asks. There’s some sarcasm to his tone, but also genuine curiosity.

Sighing, I try to explain the way Michelle Spark thinks. “Unless you hit household name status, or some level of fame that she can point to at a cocktail party and everyone will nod their heads in understanding, then being a musician doesn’t cut it for her. It’s not necessarily in a petty, shallow way with my mom. It’s more like she’s brainwashed and truly believes that people aren’t important unless they have certain societal marks of acceptance. And those marks of acceptance are narrowly defined.”

“What’s she think of Jett?” Jack asks, still apparently curious.

“Well, he’s an Olympic medalist, so even though he’s a professional athlete, which doesn’t come with much stability, he meets the criteria of successful.”

“So it’s about stability, too?”

“I guess. The thing is, if Shay had a musician boyfriend like you, a success by anyone else’s standards, I don’t think Mom would care because she knows Shay is reliable and steady.” I look out across the front lawn and purse my lips. “With me, she thinks I’m a loose cannon and probably thinks I need a doctor or a lawyer to keep me grounded or support me or something.”

Jack squeezes the shoulder he has an arm around. “She doesn’t really think that,” he says, almost dismissively.

“No, she does. For a while there she was working on me to be the one to get on the right career track, after Shay announced she was going pro, but recently I think she’s given up on me entirely.” I try to say it like it’s funny, or not a big deal, but I know Jack will see through it.

Jack pulls me closer so my head rests on his shoulder. “I know I don’t know her, but I still find that impossible to believe. Maybe she just sees that you figured it out on your own with the blog really taking off, and don’t need her advice anymore. Kick, you’re a fucking superstar. How can she not see that?” He says it with conviction, and the fierceness in his tone startles me.

I raise my head then to look at him.

“You have to say that, you’re my boyfriend,” I tease, trying to keep things light despite the heaviness of the conversation, the weight crushing my chest.

“I don’t have to say shit,” Jack replies, refusing to let me shift the conversation in another direction. “Kick, baby, I knew you were special the moment we met. I didn’t realize how clueless you were about it until later, but I’m not the only one who sees it.”

Right. The night we met. When I wore the leather pants and red lipstick and within an hour of meeting, I was in my underpants. Of course I made an impression. That was the point.

“Kick, I don’t know that me telling you is going to change anything if you aren’t already convinced by the teammates who worship you and your sister, aunt, Beatrice, all your friends who adore you. Not to mention the hundred thousand fans who follow you,” he adds, looking me right in the eye. As I struggle to keep up, he says, “But if you don’t know it by now, I’ll tell you this much: I am so far gone for you.”

Jack leans down, running his nose the length of mine, our lips nearly touching when he tells me, “I love you, Kick Spark. I’m going to keep lovin’ you, even when it hurts to know you don’t love yourself. Even when, despite how much it doesn’t make any sense, I actually understand why you struggle to love yourself the way the rest of us love you. Someday you’ll see yourself the way I see you. The way Shay sees you. The way you really are. And I’ll keep right on lovin’ you.”

“Jack,” I whisper, my throat tight with emotion. He doesn’t let me wonder how the hell I’m going to respond to that. Instead, he kisses me, slipping his tongue inside, clasping his hands around my neck as he controls the swing with his feet, swaying us back and forth slowly.

He’s been taking pieces of me, peeling away the layers, and I had no idea he’d gotten so far in. I’ve never felt as naked and exposed as I do with Jack. How can he do that? Strip me bare and then tell me he’s gone for me the way he does all in one moment? Why does it hurt so much that he thinks I don’t love myself?

I don’t even realize I’m shaking until Jack pulls his lips away and hushes me. Not that I’m making noise, but he’s talking to my body, I guess. Jack takes my hand and leads me inside, to his bedroom, and again, he doesn’t allow time or space for me to internalize this, twist his words, make it something ugly. Instead, he then strips me physically too, laying me bare on his bed and making love to me the way only Jack Kingston can.

“That was weird,” I tell Shay as we pull out of our parents’ driveway a few days later. We made the obligatory trip home for a few days before classes started, and our parents weren’t too thrilled the trip was so short, but it’s time to get back to the pool. And we both wanted time with our boyfriends, who live near campus, more than we wanted to spend time at home this summer.

“I know. It’s like Mom is finally accepting that we aren’t going to do life her way.”

“Accepting defeat, maybe.”

“Defeat?”

“Yeah, I think she gave up on me.”

“She didn’t give up on you, Kick.” Shay glances over at me before returning her eyes to the road.

“She’s stopped mentioning jobs I should apply for or people I need to be networking with. She actually asks about my blog as if she’s legit interested. I think she might even read it.”

Shay laughs. “I heard her talking to people about it, Kick. She’s proud of you. She brags about you. Her friends follow your blog.”

“What?” I practically shriek.

Shay laughs again. “You know Mom will never say it to your face, but she thinks it’s cool, what you’re doing.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

“Yeah. She does. She even tried to tell me I need to learn how to build followers like you, that I should start a blog if I want more reliable income and sponsors.”

“What?” I shriek again.

“Don’t act so surprised. Kick, you made more money this summer than I’ll probably make in a year as a full-time professional swimmer. Even Mom can’t deny that’s a huge accomplishment.”

“It was the dance videos. People love that shit,” I say, trying for humor, but still in shocked mode. I posted a video of myself dancing, and it got more attention than any of my previous posts, so I’ve posted a few more. With the blog and website now established, real money started flowing. It gave me more legitimacy, an easy way to contact me. In addition to sponsorships and advertisements, I also started selling some items like tee shirts, bracelets, and hats with a “Kick Spark” logo.

“Wait until you go public with your relationship with Jack.”

Yeah, it’s taken some effort to keep that private, but with Jack’s growing fame, it won’t last much longer. He and the band have been somewhat out of the public eye this summer, recording the new album, mostly off the stage, but he’s back on the road again.

I’m silent for a few minutes, trying to process the idea that Mom might actually think what I’ve built is cool, that she might be proud of me. I don’t know what to do with that.

“I’ll tell you what else was weird,” Shay interrupts my thoughts. “You, waking up at five AM to go to swim practice with me every morning we were home. You, not staying out late partying with our high school friends. You, being packed and ready to go before me this morning.”

I turn my head from the window and Shay gives me a look before turning her eyes back to the road, a little smiling dancing on her lips.

Sighing, I give her honesty. “I didn’t realize how much I’d changed until I was out with everyone from high school.” And by everyone, Shay knows I mean the ones who party. None swim in college, even though a lot of them swam in high school. “Everyone looked to me like I was the one who would take the night from mellow to crazy. I used to be the one to do that, come up with some outrageous idea to turn a regular night of drinking into a night to remember. Or just do something stupid that made everyone laugh.”

I don’t need to tell Shay what she knows already. She might not have been at many of the parties, but she knows me, and she heard about enough of them from others. But I never really stopped to realize how I was, that I had to be the life of the party, had to make myself the center of attention somehow. Craved feeling special. No matter the cost. Cliff jumping into the creek in the dark, breaking into a fancy hotel and skinny dipping, crashing a wedding, running up on stage in the middle of a concert to kiss a cute drummer, and lots and lots of dancing on tables with minimal clothing. Those kinds of things were standard fare, but I didn’t have the urge to do anything wild this visit, and that was weird.

“I didn’t even feel like drinking. I just wanted to say hi, catch up for a few minutes, and go to bed so I’d be rested for practice. What’s wrong with me? I’m only twenty-one and I’m starting to act like…” I pause, then grin, finishing with, “You. I’m turning into you.”

Shay pats my knee reassuringly. “Don’t worry, Kick, you’ll always have a wild side.”

Will I? “You don’t think I’m changing because of Jack, do you?” I know it’s a stupid question the second I ask it.

“No. Well, if you are, it’s not in a bad way. I mean, you started partying less before you got together with him at StageFest. Before that weekend though, it was different.” Shay’s voice turns contemplative, and her brow furrows as she grips the steering wheel tighter. “I was worried about you, actually.”

“You were?”

“Yeah, you weren’t yourself. You liked partying, drinking, falling for guys, going out with the girls, music. All that stuff. And when you stopped doing it as much, it didn’t seem like it was because you had some goal, like you do now. Now, you’re going for it in the pool, with your blog and the brand and everything, and you’re energized and excited. Before StageFest, it was like you were ashamed or sad or, I don’t know, like you felt like you didn’t deserve to have fun anymore. Now you don’t party because you have dreams, in the pool and with your brand. The old Kick is back, but it’s like Kick 2.0. A new kind of wild.”

When Shay glances over at me, a little smirk lifting one side of her mouth, my jaw is hanging open. It continues to hang open for a long while, as her eyes darts back and forth between me and the road.

“Sorry, I got a little carried away. Are you mad?”

“Shay, do you know how much I love you?”

She grins. “Yeah, Kick, I do.”