by Dahlia Adler
I look at both him and Max, and my heart breaks at the realization that we all genuinely want each other to just be happy.
We just have to figure out how the hell that can still be possible now.
“So we’ll try this.” I give the couch cushion another stress-ball squeeze. “You boys split up in Pomona, and me up here. Are you sure you’re gonna be okay being in different houses?”
“We’ll see each other,” Ty says firmly, and it’s obvious they’ve already discussed this.
“You better. I’m gonna talk to Nancy more soon, but Ty, I expect you over there for dinner at least once a week. Assuming that’s okay with Nancy,” I add hastily.
He nods.
“Okay then.” I should probably have more words of wisdom, but I got nothin’. I’m fried. I’m sad. I’m scared. And I need to study Russian verbs like a freaking machine. “I’ll work it out with Nancy. Meanwhile”—I push myself up from the couch—“I have stuff to do.” Never mind that all I want to do right now is call up Connor and beg him to come over so I can curl up in his arms and have him convince me that they’re not leaving because I was a shitty parental substitute. Never mind that all of this feels so incredibly, infuriatingly unfair. Never mind that I would do anything—anything—to know if this is the right move, and to know if I screwed things up for Connor this morning as badly as I clearly have my guardianship.
Without another word to the boys, I walk into my bedroom and lock myself in with my books for the rest of the night.
• • •
My Byzantine History final is my very last one, which seems like a cruel joke, since all I want to do is be done with this class already. I talked to Connor first thing after his meeting on Monday, and I know he’ll be there; the board mercifully decided on probation instead of kicking his ass out of the program, thanks to his personal confession and Professor Ozgur’s support. Apparently everyone was convinced this wasn’t likely a repeat occurrence. Connor said he heard something mumbled about how they imagined I’d castrate him if it were.
I haven’t seen him since we fucked in his dorm, since neither of us wanted to give the impression he was helping me study. We’ve barely even talked, except for me filling him in on the situation with my brothers, and him telling me about the meeting. Mostly we just send cute little texts throughout the day, and I realize that despite everything, I’m actually pretty damn lucky.
It’s important to remind myself of this when I walk into the room, because holy shit is everyone staring at me when I do. And at Connor. And at the fact that we’re not even making eye contact. Because I want a good luck kiss like nothing else, and I’m pretty sure if I so much as glance at those eyes I’m not gonna be able to take this test without one.
Forcing myself to ignore all the stares and whispers—not to mention Professor Ozgur’s annoyed coughs and calls to attention—I take a seat behind a pole, obstructing my view of Connor’s head. My entire body is prickling with heat and anxiety, but Ozgur’s already been over my work; he knows I’ve earned my grades. And I know I’ve worked my ass off for this class, both with Connor and without him.
I can do this.
The guy on my right passes me a blue book with a smirk, and it takes all my restraint not to try to claw off his face. And then the test comes, and I look at it, and I smile.
Yes, I really, really can.
An hour and a half later, I file out with the rest of the class, taking care to hand my exam to Professor Ozgur and not Connor like everybody else, because I know that stupid little bit of shame is the last thing I have to endure.
And then I walk up to Connor, hand him a note that says 6:00 p.m., and I promise extra bacon, accept the little squeeze of my fingers in return while I mentally flip off everyone watching, and walk out into next semester.
“Wow. The place looks…wow.”
“Thank you,” Frankie says proudly, and I’m not actually sure whether she’s genuinely oblivious to the dryness in Connor’s tone or just chooses to ignore it. Either way, I know she loves how the apartment looks, with her art splashed all over the place, and so do I. Plus, it was by far the best financial solution for me after the boys moved out. Cait’s tied to the dorm as part of her lacrosse scholarship, but Frankie was thrilled for the opportunity to get her own room and a patio where she can put up an easel. Plus, she doesn’t mind in the slightest when Connor and I get a little…noisy. “The kitchen could still use a little more color, but we’ve got time. The semester hasn’t even started yet.”
Then she dances off to her bedroom and closes her door behind her.
Connor shakes his head, laughing, and wraps his arms around my waist to pull me in for a kiss. It’s been a long winter break, and after spending Christmas—aka my birthday—apart, so he could be with his mother, it was nice to have him visit for a little while before coming back here. “Your roommate’s really into nudes, huh?”
“Hey, they’re classier than the nudes your friend had up in here,” I remind him. “I have to admit, though, I kinda miss having Max’s toys and books everywhere.”
“I know.” He kisses the top of my head, then leads me to the couch. “But he seemed happy to be with Nancy, and Pete. Didn’t he?”
“He did,” I grudgingly acknowledge. “And the fact that Ty and Amy are now ‘official’ probably means moving back was the right move for him too. I’m just…I don’t know. It’s not like I’m lonely, exactly—they weren’t supposed to be up here in the first place. But—”
“You feel like you failed,” Connor says gently, which isn’t so much brilliant wisdom as the fact that I’ve said it a bajillion times and he actually listens. “You didn’t, Lizzie. At all. The only reason they got through the past few months is because of you. They needed to get away from there for a while. This all helps acknowledge that it’s a new reality—for all of you.”
“And you’re still cool being part of that weird new reality?” I ask wryly. “Dating the slutty orphan girl?”
He snorts. “The disgraced TA who’s still getting a combo of dirty looks and high fives all around is opting not to call the kettle black, here.” He laces his fingers through mine. “Anyway, I’d prefer if you didn’t refer to my girlfriend that way. I’m pretty serious about her, so.”
“Serious, huh?” I bring our hands to my mouth and nip his thumb. “How serious?”
“Thinking about asking her to go down to New York City with me for a couple of days over Spring Break to meet my mother and sister serious,” he says without missing a beat.
“Your sister?”
“I called her,” he admits. “Obviously I couldn’t make her wedding, but she said she’d hit the states on their whirlwind honeymoon and schedule it around my break. So. Up for it?”
Spring Break feels like forever from now, but I can’t imagine a way I’d rather spend it. “Definitely up for it. Especially since I imagine I’ll be asking you to log a little more sibling time during Spring Break too.”
“You don’t even need to ask.”
I know he means it, which blows my mind every time, and I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him into a long, slow kiss. Or it would’ve been long if a knock hadn’t sounded at the door.
I instinctively leap out of his arms as Frankie’s door comes flying open. “It’s just Cait!” she calls back over her shoulder, not even glancing at us as she lets her in.
“Jumpy much?” Connor murmurs in my ear, laughing.
I stick my tongue out at him, but settle back into his embrace as Cait steps in and proceeds to remove the four hundred layers of clothing necessary to brave the brutal snowstorm outside. The truth is, since that night at Trevor’s, the knock of an unexpected visitor always makes me jumpy.
I miss the boys. And I miss my parents. And I can’t help wondering how they’d feel about how we ended up, all split apart. But I think they’d be happy, knowing we’re all happy. I think that’s what they’d want for us more than anything. It’s the most bitter irony that I’m
only figuring out the whole adulthood thing they wanted for me because they’re gone, but at least I did it, and I’m here, and I love and am loved.
I can’t think of anything better to give them—and anything better they could’ve given me—than that.
As I wave hi to Cait and direct her toward the mugs and hot cocoa powder in the kitchen, Connor squeezes me around the waist and kisses the top of my head. I may not have my brothers, or parents, or a house up here, but I do have family, and I do have a home, and I think I might even have a handle on this “adult” thing.
Maybe.
Eventually.
Whatever—I’m getting there.
It feels ironic that a book that started so defiantly as a solo project ended up with such a village behind it, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Endless thanks first and foremost to the fabulous readers whose copious notes helped shape this book into what it is—Maggie Hall, Sara Taylor Woods, Gina Ciocca, Rebecca Coffindaffer, Katie Locke, and Lana Popovic. Much love and thanks as well to Marieke Nijkamp, Cait Greer, Candice Montgomery, Patricia Riley, and Michelle Smith for reading and supporting it along the way. In case you didn’t all know from me telling you pretty much every day, you are the most wonderful, thoughtful, insightful, inspiring, kind (but not in a boring way), and talented women on the planet, and I’m lucky to call you friends, betas, CPs, the world’s greatest houseguests, drinking buddies past and present, doppelgangers with benefits, and other things that aren’t really acceptable for public consumption.
I’m extremely grateful to have friends who helped with the finer points of the procedural aspects along the way—thank you to Tamar Warburg Gross, Yael Schlenger, Yael Merkin, and Andrea Hannah for sharing your knowledge and experiences. Anything amiss in these areas is definitely my error, not theirs. And thank you to Cait Greer and Frankie Brown for lending me your names; I had no idea who Cait and Frankie would become when I asked for them, but I like to think they’re awesome in large part because of their namesakes.
Huge thanks to my copy editor, Sarah Henning; my cover designer, Maggie Hall; my proofreader, Sara Taylor Woods; and my formatter, Cait Greer, for turning this manuscript into a book, with style, attentiveness, and endless patience for my stupid questions. And speaking of stupid questions, big, grateful hugs to Liz Briggs and Riley Edgewood for answering about a billion of them, to KK Hendin for talking things out with me in the early days, and to Lindsay Lewis for helpful notes. Thanks also to Meagan Rivers, Stephanie Kuehn, and Whitney Fletcher for their help with the cover copy, and to Christina Franke for her last-minute eagle eye.
To Lindsay Smith, thank you for spending months kicking my butt into gear, and pushing me to go above and beyond what I thought I could. I am absurdly lucky to have an accountabilibuddy in my corner, and even luckier that it’s you. To Rick Lipman and Kelly Fiore, thank you for being the kinds of sounding boards that make me laugh on days I wouldn’t think it possible; it would be my secret dream to see a gif war between you two, if I didn’t think it would make the world implode.
I have so much appreciation for all the amazing work that bloggers do, and want to express my gratitude to all the amazing ones who helped me promote this book leading up to its release. Thank you so much for all the support you’ve shown me and this book, and for being such such great encouragement along the way.
To my family, for everything, always. I cannot imagine a more supportive group in my corner, no matter what I’m writing, no matter how I put it out into the world. As much as I hope you’ve all listened to me when I said not to read this book, if you didn’t, I hope it comes through that I was only able to write a book so heavily about family because of how much I love and appreciate mine.
To Yoni, the Connor to my Lizzie. (Except we’re totally not like them, obviously.) I hope they’re as happy eleven years from now as you’ve made me for the last eleven, and since I created them, that feels like a pretty safe bet. I’m a big fan of Happily Ever Afters, and I love you more every day for giving me mine.
Finally, to the NA authors out there who made this category a Thing years ago, who took chances on self-publishing when it didn’t even occur to me to try—thank you for refusing to give up, so the rest of us could know we didn’t have to.
Dahlia Adler is an Associate Editor of Mathematics by day, a Copy Editor by night, and an author and blogger of YA and NA at every spare moment in between. She lives in New York City with her husband and their overstuffed bookshelves. If you give her a macaron, she just might fall in love with you.
More often than not, you can find her on Twitter as @MissDahlELama, and on her blog, The Daily Dahlia: http://dailydahlia.wordpress.com.
Turn the page for a sneak peek at the first chapter of book #2 in the Radleigh University series,
The stream of profanity that rings through my dorm room is made a thousand times funnier by the fact that it’s in French. Inexplicably so, since my Filipina-American former roommate is the one yelping it. It’s hard to run and help her when all I wanna do is laugh, but, it is my stuff I’m pretty sure she just dropped on her foot, so.
“You all right there, Queen B?” I slide off my bed, where I got distracted trying to decide where to store my shin guards now that I have to go back to taking up only half my room. Not sure how I used to do this back when Lizzie and I were cohabitating, but right now, it seems impossible to store my stuff in the allotted space.
“How do you have so much crap, Cait?” Lizzie calls back from where she’s buried in what used to be her closet. As of today, that closet now belongs to one Andrea Nelson, a girl I’ve never met but who’s apparently a sophomore—same as me and Lizzie—who was thrilled to get in off the Radleigh University housing waitlist. My suite was a no-brainer, given it had not one but two open spots, since Lizzie not only ditched me for an off-campus apartment, but took our best friend and suitemate, Frankie Bellisario, with her.
“I know, right?” As if on cue, Frankie pops up in the doorway, cracking a piece of gum so huge I can smell the artificial watermelon flavor from here. “You’d think I’d be the mess around here, but my room’s alllll clean and ready for Samantha What’s-her-face.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s Samara,” says Lizzie, climbing over the heap of clothing she dropped and hopping onto her old bed to nurse her foot. Such a drama queen. “But sounds like you’ll be making a great first impression.”
“Hey, I have no impression to make,” Frankie reminds us, perching on Lizzie’s old desk, which is unfortunately still piled high with my old notebooks and test papers from last semester. “These newbies are Cait’s problem.”
She grins, flipping her long, dark, purple-tipped hair, and I glare at her. “Sure. Make light of the fact that you two ditched me. Bitches.”
“You were invited to join us,” says Lizzie, picking up a pair of gym shorts between her fingers and wrinkling her nose. “Though I don’t know how the hell we thought we were ever gonna have room for your stuff.”
“Ha ha.” There’s no point in rehashing the conversation. Lizzie only got the new apartment in the first place because she’d gotten custody of her little brothers when her parents were killed in an accident a few weeks into the school year. She’d relinquished custody to her godmother after a few months, but that didn’t relieve her of the apartment. Her brothers leaving meant the room they'd shared was now free, but my lacrosse scholarship requires me to stay in campus housing. Frankie, on the other hand, had no such ties, and is a total whore for a little outdoor space.
That leaves me, my generally absentee suitemate—a pre-med named Stamatina—and two new strangers who are likely arriving today, given classes start tomorrow and neither’s shown up yet.
God, I hope they don’t suck.
“You need to either throw some of this shit out,” says Lizzie, holding up a handful of…I’m actually not sure what, “or ship it back to your Mom’s, because that new girl is gonna drown in here.”
I sigh and join Lizzie in the closet, and
we spend the next half hour splitting my stuff up by playing “Fuck/Marry/Kill.”
“Definitely marry that sequin top,” Frankie says authoritatively, blowing a bubble. “I love that thing.”
“That’s because it’s yours.” Lizzie plucks it off the pile and tosses it at her. “Guess you were only actually fucking it.”
I snort with laughter at that, at least until both Lizzie and Frankie declare that I need to Kill my favorite Celtics T-shirt.
“Are you kidding me?” I hug it to my chest and inhale, somehow expecting it to carry the scent of the games I used to go to with my dad and older brother, a billion years pre-divorce. But it doesn’t smell like hot dogs or beer; just the dust it’s been gathering for months. “No. This stays.”
“There is no way that thing fits you, you Amazon,” says Lizzie. “It’s at least two sizes too small. How many years pre-growth spurt is that thing, anyway?”
“The shirt stays!”
“I think she wants to fuck the shirt,” Frankie stage-whispers to Lizzie.
“Are you kidding? Did you hear that determination in her voice? That’s marriage, Frank. Cait is going to marry that shirt. And we are going to wear some hot-as-fuck co-maid of honor dresses. It’ll be glorious.”
“Does this mean she’s gonna finally get some ass?” Frankie gasps. “Hell, I’ll wear a gown made out of that nasty-ass shirt if it does.”
“Fuck you both,” I sing-song, snapping the shirt at Frankie’s ass. She cracks up and whips me back with the sequined thing, and in no more than ten seconds, we’ve spread out in an all-out war, with my clothing as the weapons. I nearly twist my ankle on my desk chair dodging the wrath of the button-down Lizzie’s wielding—a shirt I’m pretty sure I’ve worn exactly zero times in the year and a half I’ve been at Radleigh—but quickly recover and nail her on the leg with my Celtic Pride.