“I know it’s tonight, but when tonight?”
I blew my bangs out of my face and shrugged. Honestly, did it matter when? “I don’t know. I’ll wing it.”
“Don’t do it in front of everyone,” Mom said.
“Uh … why?”
“Because. He should get the chance to react in private before everyone else jumps in, okay?”
Dad tapped the neck of his beer against his chin. “Clearly, your mother has never forgiven me for proposing in front of a crowd of strangers,” he said.
“Well, all I’m saying is you’re very lucky I was going to say yes, anyway,” Mom shot back.
“Good thing I’m not proposing,” I said. “All right. I’ve got to go, so—”
“Ollie, can I play your guitar while you’re gone?” Crista asked.
I hesitated in the entryway.
“I’ll supervise,” Uncle Roy promised. “Only very gentle guitar playing tonight, all right, Crista? We aren’t in a rock band. If Ollie comes back to find another scratch on that thing he might lock you up and throw away the key.”
He pulled Crista into his lap and tickled her while she shrieked with laughter.
“Fine.” I smiled. “Supervised rocking out only. Deal. But if it’s scratched, you’ll have to take her place in the dungeons.”
“Duly noted.”
With that, I sprinted to my car, and practically broke the time and space barrier on the way to Will’s. Why was it that I managed to be late for everything?
“What took you so long?” Will asked as he climbed into the passenger seat.
“Hey, count yourself lucky I’m here at all. Napier is a hell of a long way to go for a drive-in movie.”
“It’s worth it, I promise. Where are the others?”
“They all went in Matt’s car in the end. I totally missed out on the road trip.”
“Those motherfuckers.” Will grinned.
“But it kind of works out, because I have to talk to you about something,” I said. I put the car into Park and flipped around in my seat. Mom did say to do this in private. And this was the only moment of privacy we’d be getting, so.
Will looked wary. “Oh no, what?”
There was no point dragging it out. “I got into the University of Southern California.”
“Oh,” Will said. He cleared his throat and gave me a forced-looking smile. “Wow, Ollie, amazing. That’s really great. When did you find out?”
“A couple of weeks ago.”
He drew his brows together. “What, and you just kept it a secret this whole time?”
“Well, I wanted to wait and see, first.”
“For what?”
“If I got into NC State.”
He waited, shrugging to tell me to go on.
“And I did,” I finished.
“… And which one are you going to pick?”
“What would happen if I picked USC?”
He swallowed, looking hurt. He’d gotten into the nursing program at the University of North Carolina not long ago. An amazing school, but it couldn’t have been any farther away from California. “Well, we’ll figure it out. It’s far away, but it’s not impossible. We can keep an eye out for cheap flights and do weekend visits whenever we can. I’ll come up and stay for breaks, if you’re happy to let me crash with you—obviously, you can stay at mine whenever you want, but LA is more exciting than Chapel Hill, so—”
“So you wouldn’t want to break up?” I asked.
“What? No.” Will’s eyes went wide, and he reeled back a little. “Do you?”
“No, not at all. Plus, it wouldn’t be necessary, because I’m going to NC State.”
“What? Wait, seriously? You’re not joking?”
“Not joking. I just wanted to make sure that was still what you wanted.”
“Are you trying to kill me? You’re so ridiculous, why wouldn’t I want that?”
I shrugged like I didn’t know, but I did. Because after a year of everything being uprooted again, and again, and again, I was constantly bracing myself for something else to fall apart so I could somehow preempt it.
But Will didn’t fall apart, or reject me. Instead, he grabbed both of my hands and grinned so wide he could’ve auditioned to be a suitcase model on Deal or No Deal. “So, we’re going to be, like, a thirty-minute drive from each other next year?”
I nodded, and he threw his arms around me and hugged me so tightly he nearly squeezed my lungs out of my mouth.
“Thank God,” he whispered.
Picking NC State hadn’t exactly been a no-brainer—I still missed California, and the people, and the culture. Not to mention the weather. But I couldn’t deny that the day I’d gotten my offer letter for NC, I’d felt like a set of fifty-ton weights I’d been lugging around since I got the USC offer had been lifted. Partly because of Will, for sure. But not just for Will. My parents had decided to stay here for at least another year to keep an eye on Roy and the kids, for a start. And even though I missed Ryan and Hayley, they weren’t really my group anymore. They didn’t know what I did with my days, and I knew barely anything about theirs. We’d kind of grown apart. And maybe that was okay.
Sayid, Emerson, and Izzy had been offered places at Duke, NC State, and UNC. Juliette and Lara were both going to NC State. And for all I’d sulked and cried when I found out I was moving here, North Carolina had grown on me.
My friends had grown on me.
Living near my cousins, uncle, and parents suddenly seemed more important than living near the beach. Aunt Linda might be gone, but I still had everyone else. And I’d come to realize I wasn’t guaranteed a lifetime with any of them.
Funny how much seven months could change.
As soon as we pulled into the parking spot next to Matt’s car, Will launched himself out and ran over to the others. “Ollie’s going to NC State!” he shouted, so loudly that a few families looked over at us from the hoods of their cars.
“Hey, that was supposed to be my news.” I grinned as the girls let out a chorus of squeals and screams. Even Matt and Darnell cheered, as Niamh threw her arms around Darnell in celebration, rocking him from side to side.
Will dug through the trunk of my car and started pulling out the collapsible chairs we’d shoved in there. “Nah. It’s my news, too.”
Niamh let go of Darnell as Will joined the guys, then she came over to dig around in the trunk of Matt’s car. She was dressed in her usual workout gear, and had her hair pulled away from her face by a fabric headband, presumably left over from an afternoon gym session. “So,” she said, passing me some blankets. “I have something to say as well.”
“You do?”
“Yup. I got cast in a mascara ad in New York. I’m going up to do a photoshoot for it over a weekend, soon.”
I gaped. “Oh, my God, Niamh, that’s amazing. Congratulations.”
“Thank you.” She wrapped her blanket around her shoulders and pulled it tight. “I put it down to the photos I took a few weeks back. It’s amazing how much having some energy again improved my pictures.”
“Freaking awesome. What does Darnell think?”