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?”
She glanced over at him. He was sprawled in his own chair, chatting easily with Matt and Lara, who were set up on the ground on a beanbag chair Matt had insisted on bringing along. I’d argued it’d get covered in mud and grass, but apparently it’d been a lifelong dream of Matt’s to watch a drive-in movie from a beanbag chair, so who was I to crush it? “Darnell’s supportive. He still doesn’t want to move there, but he said he’s happy to try long distance while we figure it out. So, I guess we’ll see.” Niamh gave a happy giggle, then wandered back over to join Darnell.
Who knew if they’d manage to make it work? But that wasn’t the point, was it? We had no way of knowing what the future held. People changed their minds, people passed away, people moved unexpectedly. The only thing we could ever really do was play it by ear. And if this was what Darnell and Niamh wanted right now, then I was totally on their team.
Back by my car, Will focused on trying to push our chairs closer together while I stood by with our blankets.
“Wait, are you two together?” asked an unfamiliar voice.
I thought the question was being directed at me, and I instinctively took a step closer to Will while I looked up. But the speaker was a blond guy I didn’t recognize, standing in front of Lara and Matt, who were technically sitting in the beanbag chair together, but really enough of Lara’s legs were over Matt’s that you could say she was using him for a chair.
“Yeah, we are,” Matt said. “Couple weeks.”
“I thought you were into girls now?” the guy asked Lara. He wasn’t giving her a hard time, exactly; he looked genuinely confused.
“I’m bi,” Lara said, before elegantly giving him both a sweet smile and the finger. “Not that it’s any of your business, is it, Xavier?”
Matt shrugged, beaming. “You heard the lady. Move along.”
The guy looked between Lara and Matt, and then his gaze trailed over the rest of the group, who were all watching h
im pointedly. He rolled his eyes. “I was just asking, chill. No need to be so sensitive.”
“Good-bye, Xavier,” Lara said firmly, and this time he walked off.
“Go Lara,” I said under my breath, and Will and I shared a secret smile while he took a blanket from me.
We tried a few different setups, but settled on loading both blankets on top of us, holding hands under them. Then, as the movie started playing, Will shifted and put his arm around my shoulders.
It was, I realized, the first time we’d sat like this in public since the lake.
So maybe I owed Disney an apology.
Maybe our Happily Ever After hadn’t worked on the first shot. And maybe Happily Ever Afters weren’t a singular event. Maybe they were something you had to work at, and build, and never give up on, as long as they were something you still wanted.
And, maybe they weren’t perfect. It wasn’t like having Will right here and right now somehow erased all of the terrible things that had happened this year. And it didn’t prevent terrible things from happening in the future. Sometimes in life, terrible things happened. And sometimes really, really amazing things happened. And sometimes, those things all kind of happened at once.
But screw tomorrow.
Even if no one could promise that everything would work out perfectly, right here and now, in this exact moment, it was perfect.
And right here and now was the only thing that ever mattered anyway.
Acknowledgments
This, my second book, is different from my debut novel in a lot of ways. In other ways, it’s similar. The most notable of which being that this book, like my first, didn’t happen by itself. It may take a village to raise a child, but to birth a book baby? That takes multiple friends, family members, publishing professionals, and readers, spanning three continents!
To Moe Ferrara, my agent. For being the first person to get my words, for always being there for emotional support, and for helping me make good books great. I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t met you. Thank you as well to James McGowan and the rest of the Bookends team for their advice and support!
Thank you to Sylvan Creekmore, my super-awesome-amazing editor, who totally got what I was trying to do, remained completely unflappable even when I went into high-anxiety mode ten or twenty times in a row, and who wasn’t afraid to tell me if a joke that was hilarious to me made absolutely no sense. This has been the most amazing experience, and I’m forever grateful to have you as my editor.
To the entire team at Wednesday Books: Good God, you’re all superstars. I wish I had a recording of every time I’ve gushed to a friend about the professionalism, passion, and expertise within the Wednesday Books office. I can’t express how grateful I am to be able to call myself a part of the Wednesday Books family. Every one of you has made this experience everything I could have ever hoped for. Special thanks to DJ DeSmyter, Dana Aprigliano, Alexis Neuville, Jessica Preeg, Sarah Schoof, Sara Goodman, Anne Marie Tallberg, NaNá V. Stoelzle, and Caitlyn Averett!
Thank you to Kerri Resnick, my cover designer, and Jim Tierney, who illustrated. Thank you for giving me a cover that made me cry.
To the earliest readers of Only Mostly Devastated, who responded to my emergency call for a lightning-fast turnaround time to beat the Thanksgiving publishing break; Lee Kelsall, Ash Ledger, Sophie Cameron, Julie Tuovi, and Tere Kirkland. Thank you all for reading this book at its roughest, and for giving me the frank feedback it needed at the time.
To Ash and Julia Lynn Rubin: Our near-daily chats kept me from unspooling. Thank you both for being a safe space to rehash the same conversations over and over and over again when I needed it the most.
Thank you to The Lobster Garden girls Hannah Capin and Bibi Cooper, and to Cass Frances, Sadie Blach, and everyone else who allows me to scream into their Twitter DMs when it’s midday for me and bedtime for them. Love you.
Thank you to my Melbourne writer crew, Katya De Becerra, Ella Dyson, Astrid Scholte, and Claire Donnelly, for always being there for a coffee or stronger beverage, depending on how intense edits were that week.
Special thanks to Sandhya Menon, Angelo Surmelis, Jenn Bennett, Kayla Ancrum, Cale Dietrich, Hannah Capin, and Mason Deaver: Your early support of this book meant the world to me, and I’m still pinching myself that authors as unbelievably talented as yourselves took the time to read the words I wrote.
To Mum, Dad, and Sarah: Thank you for being the best family in the world. For reading to me as a baby, for the library trips, for the encouragement. Shout-out to Mum for letting me hog the dial-up internet so I could publish my fanfiction when you needed to make phone calls, to Dad for reading The Faraway Tree series to me until your throat must have felt raw, and to Sarah for listening to every wild story plot I ever ran by you.
Cameron, thank you for giving me your patience, your silence when I needed it, your support when I needed that, and your ears when I demanded them. Thank you for letting me neglect the dishes when I have deadlines due, and for buying me surprise Nutella when it gets too much for me. Most of all, thank you for making home a safe haven.
To everyone who was on the bus the morning Moe called me to say we had an offer on this book: I’m sorry for startling you. I know that 7:30 A.M. is too loud to start screaming on public transport. I was very excited, and I hope you all forgive me.
And finally, to everyone who ever showed me what a broken heart felt like: What doesn’t kill a writer gives her plenty to write about.
HODDER CHILDREN’S BOOKS
First published in the United States in 2020 by Wednesday Books,
an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group
First published in Great Britain in 2020
by Hodder and Stoughton
This eBook edition published in 2020
Text copyright © Sophie Gonzales, 2020
Cover illustration © Jim Tierney, 2020
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
In order to create a sense of setting, some names of real places have been included in the book. However, the events depicted in this book are imaginary and the real places used fictitiously.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
eBook conversion by PDQ Digital Media Solutions Ltd.
ISBN 978 1 44495 649 8
Hodder Children’s Books
An imprint of
Hachette Children’s Group
Part of Hodder and Stoughton
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