Begin Again(26)

I stiffen a bit. For the most part, it’s unspoken, but there’s always been a bit of a divide between Connor’s situation and mine. His family is better off than most in our small town, and between that and his boyish good looks, he’s not someone used to hearing the word “no.” I don’t think he realizes just how hard the rest of us are paddling under the surface to stay afloat with him.

Or how hard other people work to keep him afloat. Because if he’s not worried, that probably means he’ll let the worrying fall to me.

“I wish I could be there,” says Connor, his voice so earnest that I feel myself softening. “I really miss you.”

I get up from the bench, heading in the direction of the restaurant, an idea forming in my head. “You only have one class on Fridays, right? We could do something for Valentine’s Day. Shay is already going to spend the night at her sister’s, so we’d have the whole dorm room to ourselves.”

“Ah, I wish I could, but . . . I’m doing this big open house with my dad. You know how it is.”

“Of course.” I clear my throat. “Well, I’ll be back in the next few weeks.”

I’m not sure which week, though, and Connor doesn’t ask. Instead we talk about what our old high school friends are up to, and some spoiler that dropped for a show we used to watch together. The conversation falls into such a familiar, simple rhythm that if it weren’t for the bustle of Main Street jolting me back to campus, I might have thought I never left Little Fells at all.

By the time I reach Barb’s, a tiny restaurant not too far from Bagelopolis, Shay is there and waving me over to a table she secured in the back. It’s already overflowing with a mountain of cheesy nachos, a plate of mozzarella sticks, and a pile of wings with enough dipping sauce options to drown in. Connor happens to get an incoming call from one of our friends just then, so we say our goodbyes just before I get close enough to the table for my jaw to hit the floor.

“Is this all for us?”

“Barb likes me. And my good-for-nothing book club friends who just ditched for yet another Jane Austen movie marathon,” Shay grumbles, plucking a nacho off the mountain and sinking her teeth into it. “They think trivia’s going to be too loud with all the extra teams competing for the ribbon hunt, but we can’t compete unless we have four players.”

I glance around. “Maybe another team will absorb us?”

Shay narrows her eyes at the other clumps of students, and only then am I aware of the heightened tension of pre-competition in the room. It’s like the beginning of one of Connor’s soccer games, except with a lot less Gatorade and a lot more underage kids trying to pull out fake IDs for cheap beer.

“Team Bad & Bookish merges with no one.”

“Well . . .” I do another glance and spot a curtain of thick, shiny dark hair catching the light near the exit. “Val!”

She stops at the door, turning around with one of those beaming, close-lipped smiles of hers. “Andie,” she says warmly. “Good to see you outside of a library for once.”

“Are you here for trivia?”

“Oh, no, I was just finishing a tutoring session,” she says, gesturing to the back.

“Do you want to be here for trivia?”

“Oh,” says Val. “Um . . .”

“You can split the gift card to End of Story if we win,” Shay calls from the table.

Val raises her eyebrows by just small enough of a fraction that I know we’ve got her. “You have my attention,” she says, shifting her purse off her shoulder and heading over.

One down, one to go. I whip out my phone for an SOS text to the Cardinal dorm group chat I made earlier in the week. Ellie answers with no less than ten emojis that she’s visiting relatives, Harriet’s at a movie, and Tyler is finishing an out-of-class assignment in the astronomy tower.

Just when I’m about to pivot to plan C and accost strangers, my phone buzzes.

Remove me from your godforsaken group chat, Milo writes.

I roll my eyes. Only if you come to trivia.

He starts to type an answer back, then stops and starts again. Tell Shay she owes me.

I swing by the registration table to put Milo’s and Val’s names next to ours. By the time I return, Val and Shay are in such a heated conversation about the protagonist of a recent romance novel that neither of them notice me approaching.

“That’s just the thing, though, it’s the 1867 version of a Hallmark Christmas movie,” says Shay. “If she didn’t have to go back to her small town—”

“But in this case, New York really was all wrong for her,” says Val, the two of them leaning in so close that they might literally butt heads if they’re not careful.

“It’s a reverse Little Women, is what it is,” Shay insists. “Jo March is rolling in her grave.”

Val gasps. “Jo March is immortal. How dare you.”

Shay laughs so loudly she has to abandon the nacho she was aiming at her mouth. “I’ll give you that. But not much else, since it looks like we’re disqualified.”

“I texted Milo,” I say, planting myself in the seat across from them.

Shay laughs again, this time hard enough to shake the table. “Oh. Andie.”

I tilt my head at her. “What?”