Begin Again(5)

Shay’s eyes widen. “Um, yeah, always.”

I toss one over to her and she catches it with ease, tearing open the wrapper. I grab one of my own, then walk over to cheers it with her.

“To new roomies.”

My phone buzzes on top of my mattress. I apologize quickly before turning around to answer it.

“Hey, Andie. Sorry I missed your call.”

Just hearing Connor’s voice makes the world feel a little smaller again, a little easier to manage. We’ve known each other since kindergarten. Sometimes his voice sounds just as familiar to me as my own.

“No problem. Um, are you at your apartment? Or on your way to class?”

Connor lets out that easy laugh of his, the one I can feel in his whole body when my hand is pressed against his chest. “Funny you should ask . . .”

“Tell me where you are,” I say, grabbing my key off the mattress. “And stay put.”

“I’m outside your psych building.”

I stop at the door. I can feel Shay’s eyes on me. “Like, the psych building at Blue Ridge State?”

“No, Andie, your psych building.”

The key suddenly feels so heavy and bulky in my hand that I nearly drop it on the dorm room’s linoleum floor. “Why would you be . . .”

“I transferred to Little Fells Community College. To be with you.”

My eyes sweep up to Shay’s, knowing she just heard every word through my old tinny phone. My jaw drops, and so does hers, just before she lets out a low, sympathetic “Holy guacamole.”





Chapter Three


When you’re a teenager and you tell people one day in the nearish future you’re going to write a book that’s part self-help, part memoir, you’re bound to get more than a few laughs. But that’s never made my vision of the book any less clear: Through Rose-Colored Glasses, it’ll be called. A little on the nose, given my last name and my reading glasses, but relentless optimism is kind of my brand, and I’ve never been one to apologize for it.

The thing is, though, if you’re going to sell a book on how to find happiness, you need to be an authority in it. You can’t just sell people on a happy ending based on your advice; you need to be the happy ending. You have to earn it.

And I intend to. I’m nowhere near the brightest person I know, but I am one of the hardest-working. I’ll get my bachelor’s and do whatever it takes to earn my way into a program for my master’s. I’ll find mentors in the field, and then strike out on my own, and become a mentor myself. And I’ll tie up all that success with the sweetest, most beautiful bow: the proof that love really can conquer all.

“Connor . . .”

“Yeah?”

I purse my lips, pressing the phone closer to my cheek. “I transferred to Blue Ridge.”

Shay’s wincing again, and I don’t blame her. I know what this sounds like: some lovesick girl who upended her whole life, Elle Woods–style, for the sake of some boy. But it isn’t like that. This school has been my plan since I was basically in utero. My mom always talked about this campus like there was magic in it. Other kids dreamed about Narnia or Middle Earth or mythical worlds, but I was staring at maps of Blue Ridge’s campus on my dad’s mug and curled up on the couch in my mom’s Blue Ridge scarf.

And even if it were like that—Connor isn’t just some boy. He’s the thread that has run through every part of my life. The kid who took me to the school nurse when I skinned my knee playing lava on the playground. The boy I swapped ghost stories with at the town’s annual s’mores cookout in Little Fells Park. The crush so in sync with mine that when we were fifteen, we both asked each other to Homecoming at the exact same time, in equally cheesy, public ways. The boyfriend who’s invited me and my grandmas to all of his family’s events, from birthdays to Thanksgivings to Christmases. After my mom died it felt like there was a strange distance separating me from a lot of our old friends, but Connor always made sure I was part of his world.

Even now, all these miles from him, I can see Connor closing his eyes and breathing the impossibility of this out like he’s two feet in front of me.

“You did?” Connor asks, his voice low.

I turn my back on Shay, just in case my eyes prick with tears. Usually I’ve got myself on lock, but this situation is a decidedly unprecedented one.

“Yeah,” I say miserably. “Are you . . .”

“There’s no way for you to transfer back?” he asks.

Something seizes in my stomach. “I . . .”

“No. Sorry. Of course not,” he says quickly, apologetically. “Plus—you probably just used all your savings, didn’t you?” He may not be paying his own tuition, but he knows from all the part-time jobs I saved money from that I am. “I don’t deserve you.”

I shake my head, the pit in my stomach still clenched. It wasn’t just for you, I want to say, but I’m too busy trying to blink myself out of this absurd dream to really latch on to the thought.

“I can’t believe—if I’d known you were . . .”

“Shh, Andie, don’t. If anything, it just shows how much we love each other.”

Love. That’s a word I haven’t heard from him in the past few months. I’m not proud of myself for knowing that, because I don’t believe that love is about keeping score. But there’s such an immediate relief at hearing him say it again that I can’t pretend it hasn’t worried me.