Chapter 153: Jessica, Meet Mateo! [FIXED!]
Mateo walked through the halls that morning feeling like an entirely different person, and it wasn’t just in his head. Cody and his crew had gone suspiciously invisible since the drop-off, not even attempting their usual lineup near the gym entrance, clearly having gotten the message loud and clear from whatever Darren had said to them behind the building days ago. Every time Mateo caught a glimpse of them in the hallway, their eyes dropped or slid elsewhere, refusing to hold contact for more than half a second.
That alone would’ve made for a good day. But it wasn’t even the part he cared about most.
Jessica. That was the actual goal, the thing sitting at the center of everything since last night’s conversation with Liam.
The new haircut had done more than he expected, honestly. Girls he’d never so much as registered him before were glancing his way in the hallway, a couple of them actually offering small smiles as he passed, something that had simply never happened to him in the entirety of his time at this school. His confidence climbed with every glance, each one feeding into the next until he was walking taller than he had in years, shoulders back, head up, none of the usual instinct to shrink himself down and disappear into the crowd.
"Yo!"
An arm looped around his shoulder from the side, and Mateo turned to find Owen grinning at him, doing a visible double-take.
"Damn, buddy. You look good."
Mateo couldn’t fully suppress the grin spreading across his face. "Cut it out, man."
"No, seriously." Owen stepped back, looking him over properly. "What happened? You get a whole makeover or something?"
"Something like that." Mateo tried to play it casual, but the pride bleeding through his voice gave him away instantly.
"It’s working. Girls have been staring at you all morning, dude. You clocked that?"
"...Maybe."
Owen laughed, clapping him on the back. "Don’t play dumb. I saw at least three of them looking twice."
Mateo felt something warm settle in his chest at the confirmation, even though he’d already suspected it himself. Having someone else notice it too, say it out loud, made it feel real in a way his own observations hadn’t quite managed.
They kept walking, and that was when Mateo spotted her — Jessica, standing near her locker a little further down the hall, laughing at something one of her friends had said, hair catching the overhead light in a way that made his stomach do the familiar, nervous flip it always did whenever she was in view.
Except today the flip felt different. Less dread, more anticipation.
He caught himself staring a beat too long, and Owen noticed immediately, following his gaze straight to the source.
"Ohh." Owen’s grin widened. "Still on Jessica, huh?"
"Shut up."
"I’m just saying." Owen elbowed him lightly. "You’ve got a real shot now, man. Different energy today. She might actually notice you."
Mateo felt the familiar spike of nerves threaten to undercut the confidence he’d been riding all morning, but something about the way Owen said it — casual, certain, like it was simply a fact rather than wishful thinking — steadied him instead.
He thought about it for a second, an idea forming.
Owen ran with the athletic crowd. Not the same tier as Cody and his group exactly, but close enough, adjacent enough, that he had actual proximity to Jessica’s social circle in a way Mateo never had on his own. If anyone had a realistic shot at bridging that gap for him, it was probably Owen.
"Hey," Mateo said slowly, testing the idea out loud, "you know her at all? Like, actually talked to her before?"
Owen shrugged. "A little. We’ve got a couple classes together. Why?"
Mateo hesitated, feeling the nerves creep back in slightly, but pushed through anyway. "Could you maybe— I don’t know. Put in a word or something? Nothing crazy, just—"
"Say no more." Owen grinned, already looking pleased with himself for being asked. "I got you, man."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously. What are friends for?"
Mateo felt something loosen in his chest, gratitude mixing with the nervous excitement already sitting there. He glanced back toward Jessica one more time as they continued down the hall, and for the first time in longer than he could remember, the distance between where he currently stood and where he actually wanted to be didn’t feel quite as impossible as it always had before.
Mateo’s eyes met Jessica’s for a fraction of a second — barely anything, really, just a flicker of contact across the hallway — and his instinct screamed at him to look away immediately, to not risk making it weird by holding it too long.
She didn’t pull away first, though.
Jessica lifted a hand and waved.
Mateo’s heart practically stopped. He started to raise his own hand, already mentally rehearsing how the return wave should look — casual, cool, not too eager — when a girl stepped out from behind him, waving back at Jessica with a bright, easy grin.
Right. Not him.
Mateo’s hand dropped halfway up, and he felt his face go hot, grateful beyond words that he’d caught himself before actually completing the gesture. That would’ve been catastrophic. Waving enthusiastically at someone who was clearly waving at the person standing behind you was the kind of thing that followed a person around for the rest of high school.
Owen, walking beside him, had caught the entire near-miss and let out a short, exasperated breath.
"Man, screw this," he muttered, and before Mateo could process what that meant, Owen was already walking straight toward Jessica’s little cluster near the lockers.
Mateo froze in place, watching. This was the first time he’d actually seen Owen and Jessica interact directly, and the ease of it hit him immediately — the way her face lit up the second she registered who was approaching, the casual, familiar dap Owen offered that only happened between people who already had some existing rapport.
They knew each other. Actually knew each other.
The other girls standing near Jessica visibly straightened up too, a couple of them exchanging quick, nervous glances, clearly not immune to Owen’s general presence. And Mateo couldn’t exactly blame them — Owen carried himself with an effortless kind of confidence that made the whole exchange look easy in a way Mateo knew he couldn’t replicate even with his new haircut and slightly elevated social standing.
A cold, familiar doubt crept back in.
If Owen already had this level of access to her, what shot did Mateo realistically have standing next to that?
He watched the conversation continue for a few more seconds, close enough to catch fragments but not the full exchange, when he noticed Jessica’s eyes flick briefly in his direction. Then back to Owen. Then back to him again.
"What is he telling her," Mateo muttered under his breath, panic flickering through his chest.
Before he could spiral further, Owen turned and waved him over.
Mateo’s stomach dropped.
This was it. Whatever conversation had just happened, whatever Owen had said, the moment had arrived, and there was no version of backing out now without it looking exactly as obvious as it would be.
He told himself, quickly, silently, that he couldn’t choke. Not now. Not after everything — the haircut, the confidence Liam had spent an entire evening trying to instill in him, the reminder that his worth wasn’t tied to whatever hierarchy this hallway had assigned him years ago.
His legs moved before his brain finished processing the decision, carrying him forward with a kind of momentum he hadn’t consciously authorized.
As he approached, he ran the last twenty-four hours through his head in flashes — Darren crashing into him on the bed, Liam buying him snacks he’d never finish, the two of them treating him like he actually mattered without ever making it weird. He pictured them somewhere, invisibly watching this exact moment, and for whatever irrational reason, the thought steadied him completely.
He arrived beside Owen with his shoulders squared, doing his best impression of someone who belonged there.
"Jessica, this is Mateo," Owen said easily, gesturing between them.
Jessica’s eyes settled on him fully now, and something in her expression shifted — recognition, immediate and genuine.
"Oh, we have bio together," she said. "Right?"
Mateo blinked, momentarily thrown. "...Yeah. We do."
"You sit like two rows back from me," she continued, a small smile forming. "I didn’t know you knew Owen."
"We’ve been friends a while," Mateo said, finding his voice steadier than he expected.
The fact that she’d registered him at all — knew his seat, knew the class, despite the two of them never once exchanging a word beyond that one pencil — sent something warm and disbelieving through his chest. He’d assumed, for as long as he could remember, that he existed entirely outside her awareness. Apparently not.
He noticed something else, too, something small but significant, sitting quietly beneath the surface of the conversation.
The way Jessica looked at Owen wasn’t the way the other girls standing nearby looked at him — that slightly starstruck, overly attentive energy most people seemed to default to around him. Her expression toward Owen stayed level, friendly, entirely uncomplicated.
And when her eyes shifted back to Mateo, that same level, unremarkable warmth carried over.
She wasn’t looking at him any differently than she looked at Owen.
Mateo turned that over quietly, unsure yet what exactly it meant, but something about it settled a small, hopeful weight in his chest regardless.