Begin Again(78)

But as the words settle in me, a sad, but strangely comforting understanding comes right along with them. It isn’t just about the school; this feeling is tangled in so much else. In everything that I do, every moment I won’t be able to turn over my shoulder and ask my mom what she thinks, or feel her pride.

Whether or not I belonged here has felt like a thing I could measure. I’d be worthy of her legacy, or not. But the truth is that moments I’ve lost with her are immeasurable, and no amount of wondering about admissions or how well I do on the show or any other measuring stick I can hold to her legacy is going to bring them back.

This feels like one of those moments right now. The kind where I’d be able to call her or come home to her. Maybe even a moment that would never have happened if she’d been around, because Connor wouldn’t have had to fill a space she left behind.

The whole mess comes crushing back then, heavy in my chest.

“And on top of that . . . this thing with Connor,” I say.

I grit my teeth. It’s the hurt. The humiliation. It’s too much to process right now, or maybe even forever; there are pieces of myself starting to unravel right now that I’ve known my entire life. I think of that stupid memoir I’ve been planning to write for half my life, all these chapters I tried to fit neatly into place.

Now the pages are all at my feet, scattered before I could even put them together. I can’t believe I was naive enough to think I could write them in the first place. I can’t believe I let Connor be one of the strings that tied them together. Only now do I understand it’s because I just plain didn’t have enough faith in myself to begin with, and that’s maybe the most brutal realization I’ve made in this whole mess.

“I feel so stupid,” I admit. “I really thought . . . I really thought I could make this work. I love him.”

Love. Not loved. I can’t make it go away, can’t shake an entire lifetime of love from under my skin; even trying to see as far into the future as I can let myself in this moment, I’m not sure if I ever will.

But I don’t have to explain it to Milo. He’s spent months with the same hurt in his heart. With the strange way you have to rearrange yourself when you can’t make the love you have for someone go away, but have to wait for it to take a new shape. Connor will always be my childhood best friend and my first love, the same way Nora was his.

“Well, it’s like my dad always said,” says Milo, squeezing my shoulder gently. “Anything worth doing starts with a mess. Maybe . . . this one is yours.”

It’s not the first time I’ve thought of those words since Milo said them to me all those weeks ago, but it’s the first time I can fully appreciate them. I’ve spent my whole life with a plan. Neat, tidy, organized. Fitting myself like a key into other people’s locks just so I could call their homes my own.

But just because Connor’s family won’t be mine anymore doesn’t mean I’m on my own. Maybe I’m a mess now, but I’m in the middle of everyone else’s mess, too. Milo’s and Shay’s and Val’s. We might not know where we fit yet, but we’ve got a strong grip on one another, and maybe that’s all you get to ask for at this point in your life. Maybe it’s the only thing you really need.

“You’re right. He’s right,” I amend. I take in a shaky breath, trying to explain—not to excuse the time it’s going to take for me to get past this, but so he’ll get it. “I think for a while, I was just . . . I mean, my parents met here. They were best friends first, and then they fell in love. And they were happy.” I tilt my head as if the world is tilting with me, as if I’m trying to understand the new view. “I just thought—that I could try to have that, too. I could re-create the same magic my mom made. Have her same shine. It felt like the universe wanted me to—I mean, Connor and I have known each other for practically our entire lives. Our moms were best friends. And his mom was like . . .”

Milo nods in understanding. Doesn’t try to tell me I’m wrong to think of her that way. Doesn’t try to talk me down from the importance of it all, or the magnitude of what just happened.

“I gotta pull an Andie Rose right now. So forgive me for asking.” Milo’s teeth graze his lower lip in a moment of hesitation, and I know what the question is before he even asks it. “Have you talked to your dad about these feelings?”

I lean forward, gently knocking my forehead into his chest. “No,” I tell him. “But I did get in touch.”

Milo lifts his hand from my shoulder and presses it to the back of my head, holding me steady. “Good.”

“Seems like you made some headway with Harley last night, too.”

He takes his hand off and we separate again, Milo looking sheepish like he’d forgotten all about it until now. “Yeah, well.”

“Where did you leave it?”

Milo rolls his eyes affectionately. “Can we please have five whole minutes where you’re not worried about anyone else’s shit?”

But that’s just it. Somewhere along the way, his issues started feeling like mine, too. Not the way they were at the beginning of the semester, when I wanted to fix things for the sake of fixing them. But because I want to be with him through it, the same way he has been for me. The same way I sense we will be far beyond this.