Begin Again(82)

Just in time for Milo to transfer, and me to be stuck in the kind of limbo with Connor that my brain is unhelpfully refusing to process right now. Cherry chocolate jam, am I done for.

It doesn’t help that Milo’s in top form during the broadcast, even while Shay and I are blinking our post-rosé selves awake. Whatever it is that happened with Harley, it looks like some kind of weight has been lifted off his shoulders. I don’t know if anyone else would notice, but it seems like he laughs a little more readily. Like his wry remarks are 10 percent less grim. Like he’s more excited for the day and less bracing himself for it.

Because the universe has decided to show me one mercy in this very confusing time, Milo immediately has to duck out for a shift at Bagelopolis, leaving me and Shay to deal with packaging the radio show into podcast form before we start our shift an hour later.

“So,” I say, sidling up to Shay at the computer. “How was Valeria’s cat?”

I don’t miss the dimple puckering on Shay’s cheek as she tries to bite down a smile. “Darcy’s a brat. I’m gonna cat-nap him.”

I twist a strand of my hair innocently. “Before or after you change out of yesterday’s clothes?”

Shay swats at my shoulder. “Andie Rose,” she scolds me with a grin. “It wasn’t like that. It just got late, is all.”

“Yeah, well. With her ex extremely out of the picture . . .” I shudder, an image of her and Connor arguing in the quad still just as jarring in my mind as it was in real life. “Eh. Sorry. Too soon for jokes.”

Shay focuses back on typing and I assume the subject is dropped. That is, until she stares at the screen for a few moments and says, “I think . . . I mean, last night was really fun. It’s like I said. I’m glad we can just be friends.” Her lips pucker thoughtfully. “Actually, I think after yesterday, I kind of . . .”

The drop in her tone is uncharacteristically self-conscious, even cautious. Like she wants to say it, but doesn’t want to put whatever it is on me.

“Kind of what?” I press, making it clear I don’t mind.

Shay shakes her head. “I mean, no offense, since he’s your ex and all. But Connor’s a tool. That’s the guy she was so hung up on that she didn’t know whether or not to date me?”

I bite down the reflex to defend him, embarrassed at how readily it comes. “I don’t know if I’d look at it that way,” I say, both for Valeria’s sake and for mine. I hate to admit it, but Connor has always had a magnetism to him. The confidence, the small-town charm, the way he makes me—well, makes people feel special when he takes the time for them. When you know everyone in the room wants to be at his side, but he only has eyes for you.

I will the two pangs in my heart to just go away, but they don’t. One of them is aching from losing Connor; the other may be tiny, but it’s still wild and desperate, reminding me that technically it isn’t over, that I don’t have to let this go.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t even be—I mean, I can’t even imagine how you’re feeling about the whole thing right now,” says Shay. “Breaking up with him after all this time.”

I let out a weird hiccupping laugh. “Well.”

“Anyway. I know what’ll take our minds off all the bullshit,” says Shay, tapping the notes Milo was using as a script for today’s broadcast. “The dance party in the quad.”

I tilt my head at the screen. It’s a dance party, sure, but also billed as a surefire way to get ribbons—the upperclassmen organizers legitimately throw every color of them into the crowd. The whole thing is perfectly timed out, too. I know the exact playlist for the event, because one of the organizers set it up to play from our station and taped it up on the booth for everyone’s reference. It’s one of the rare times anyone who isn’t one of the three of us ever comes in here, but the dance party being broadcast from here instead of someone’s playlist on a loudspeaker is a nod to the ribbon hunt’s roots.

I wait for the clench of my stomach, the same one I’ve felt worrying before every ribbon event. Instead there’s just a flood of relief. An anticipation that isn’t dread, but excitement—the idea of going out with my friends and dancing for the fun of it, without any other goals or plans in mind.

“It starts at three,” Shay reminds me.

That’s just in time to get back from our shift, if we go straight there from Bagelopolis. Plus it ends at five, which gives me plenty of time to get to the statistics exam I spent all the time at Milo’s studying for.

“Do you think it’s okay if I just leave my stuff here for the day?” I ask, knowing full well that a shoulder bag will only hinder my ability to jump up and down while shouting lyrics at the top of my lungs.

Shay glances over at the mound of stuff the sound engineer and DJs left in the corner. “Knock yourself out.”

“Given my dance skills, that’s a real possibility today.”

Shay pats me on the arm. “We’ll protect you from yourself.”

I’m expecting the rest of the day to grind as painfully as the day before did, for the shadow of what Connor did to cast everything in ugly colors. I ready my syndicated-talk-show smile and throw myself into work, hoping if I keep moving fast enough, I won’t have to think.

But at some point I stop willfully forgetting what happened; I just forget. It’s a busy day at Bagelopolis, the kind that marks a difference between who I was in January and who I’m becoming now. The Andie who isn’t just tethered by the idea of this place, but the people in it. By Shay, who spends the entirety of our shift making me giggle by inventing horrific bagel combinations for famous book characters (Peeta Mellark’s won with “a bagel inside of a bagel with bagel-flavored cream cheese, because bread”). By Valeria, who shows up during our lunch break to bring Shay a book and drill me on a few extra stats questions before the test. By Milo, who is in the back for most of his shift, but still manages to make me laugh out loud with a new name tag that reads andie rosé in deference to our mild hangovers.