Adding to the nausea, I had to pass the torch to her as the next cheer captain.
“Sweet, dude,” Damon says. “I’ll be styling at school this year. For sure.”
“What about you, Chase?” I ask him. “You ready for school to start?”
He holds my gaze and then shakes his head. At least, I think he does. It’s more what his eyes say than his body. And I know, even though we aren’t friends, he’s not excited about my leaving for college.
And when he looks at me like this, neither am I.
Because somewhere deep in those eyes, it seems like he still might care about me.
I’ve done everything to move on. Dated other people. Avoided him. But I’m still hung up on him. Some almost-magnetic force always seems to pull me toward him.
Chase’s phone buzzes, and he says to my brother, “Go get your suit on. Everyone is waiting for us at the dock.”
Damon smirks. “Of course they are. The party doesn’t start until we walk in.”
“It’s outside,” I tease.
“Whatever,” he says, running toward the stairs. “I’ll be right back.”
Which means, now, I’m awkwardly standing alone with Chase.
Thankfully, baby sis breaks the ice. “Pony!” she says.
Chase gives her a big grin, puts her on his back, and gallops around the room with her.
“I wish I could still ride you,” I blurt out, referring to how we used to give each other piggyback rides when we were kids.
Chase sucks in his breath so hard that he starts coughing.
“Oh. I mean … I meant, like, when we were kids, you know? I don’t … I didn’t. Um, I wasn’t referring to riding the pony. I mean, I would but—”
Chase stops galloping and looks at me again. “You would?”
“Yeah, I mean—”
“Oh no, you don’t mean,” Damon says, shaking a finger in my direction as he strides across the room, takes Weston off Chase’s back, and sets her on the couch while speaking to me. “No more pony rides for you. At least, not with Chase. We still haven’t recovered from the last one.” He turns to Chase. “Come on, dude. Let’s roll.”
And they are out the door.
Weston brings me the unicorn and dances it across my lap, babbling about its pretty mane and soft fur, but I’m stuck back in the moment.
You would?
“Earth to Dani,” my dad says.
When he came into the room, I literally have no idea.
“How was shopping with your mother?”
“Oh, great,” I say. “I’m, uh, gonna go put everything away. Do some more packing.”
“When you’re done, stop by the Mackenzie house. Jadyn said you still had some questions about rush.”
“Yeah. I’m freaking out a little, honestly.”
My dad sits down next to me and pulls me into a hug. “You have nothing to freak out about. You’re smart and a good conversationalist, and everyone will think you are amazing. You’d get my vote.”
I can’t help but smile. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Did that help?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Good.”
Jennifer and Easton rejoin us, and my dad picks up Easton, giving her a kiss on the cheek and then tossing her up in the air and catching her, to her delight. She definitely loves her daddy.
I decide to go talk to Jadyn now instead of dealing with the new purchases. Mom is sending me a list of what I’m supposed to wear for each day of rush, and I’ll tackle putting that together tonight. I’m told that I won’t have much time to unpack or get settled before rush starts, so having everything all together and ready to go will supposedly help me be less frantic during the week.
Plus, I know Chase isn’t home right now, which makes it less awkward. I can’t believe I basically said I wanted to have sex with him again. I mean, I do. I would. But it’s complicated. Way, way too complicated to even consider.
The Mackenzie house is surprisingly quiet when I get there.
“Where is everyone?” I ask Jadyn. I call her Auntie Jay, although technically, she’s not my aunt; we just call her that because she and my dad are best friends.
“Phillip and all the kids are out in the boat. Well, except for Chase. He and Damon were meeting some friends at the public dock to swim. That means, we can actually talk and not be interrupted.”
She leads me through the kitchen. “You hungry? I made some chocolate avocado mousse.”
I grin. “I would love some.”
Once she gets us each a bowl, we take a seat at the kitchen table.
“Are you nervous about rush?”
“Yes. I’m not sure if I will pledge or even enjoy it, but I’m going to give it a shot.”
“If nothing else, you’ll meet a lot of new people. Do you have specific questions about anything?”
“I think I’ve read every article online regarding the process,” I say. And I have. “Do you think I made the right decision, going to Nebraska?”
“I don’t know,” she fires back. “Why did you choose it? Because you wanted to go or because you wanted to piss off your mom?”
“Out of all the colleges I got into, she seemed most excited about Georgetown. It just didn’t feel right to me when we visited.”
“At some point in your life, you have to stop pleasing your parents and worrying about what everyone else wants and decide what you want. What’s your dream, Devaney?”
I look up at her. “You called me Devaney.”
“This is a serious conversation,” she says with a grin.
“Or I’m in trouble,” I reply with a laugh.
“Definitely not,” she says. “So, what is your big dream?”
The cupcake I made Chase that summer at the lake immediately pops into my mind. When our individual dreams became a combined dream.
“I suppose since I decided to major in broadcasting—you probably already figured out that’s what I’d like to do—I specifically want to be a football sideline reporter. College or pro, either one.”
“I think that’s wonderful. You certainly know the game well.”
“I do. Not sure my mom will approve of that career choice either. She’s always wanted me to model or go the debutante route to try to marry me off.”
“You might be surprised what your mom would say,” Jadyn says, which shocks me.
She and my mom were close in college. Jadyn even set my parents up. They get along, but they aren’t BFFs anymore.
“If she supported me fully, that would be a surprise. Although maybe there’s hope. She seemed a little different today when we were shopping. Happier maybe. Van seems to make her happy.”
“He does,” she says. “And I hope that if you choose to pledge a sorority, you’ll choose it because it feels right. You’ve always had a good head on your shoulders, Dani, and you’re more intuitive than you give yourself credit for. Follow your heart, always.”
I glance down at the table, my hand immediately sliding across where Chase and I wrote our names on it when we were old enough to do so.
She narrows her eyes slightly, sees where I’m looking, and says, “Are you two ever going to make up? I’ve never really understood why you haven’t. You were best friends your whole life.”