Happily Ever Afters

by Elise Bryant

  “I hope you guys don’t mind if I work a little bit. There’s something I want to try out today. Got the idea last night. . . .” He’s already turning to the cabinets, ready to sort out his ingredients, as if drawn by a magnet.

  “No worries. We’ve got some Nico business to handle,” Caroline says. “I heard you know about the happily ever after plan.”

  “Yep,” Sam says, but he doesn’t turn around.

  “Have you texted him yet, Tessa? See what he’s doing tonight!”

  “I don’t know. . . .”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?” Caroline yelps, nudging me with her elbow. “I am here, and I’m pretty much your fairy godmother. You’ve got to give me a chance to see you two together and work my magic!”

  “I just feel like . . . I don’t know. Maybe it’s time to call it.”

  On the Monday after Halloween, I went back to school certain that Nico and Poppy would be done, and we would skip off happily into our new life of coupledom together. Or that we would at least talk about what happened, or almost happened, that night in the rain. But at lunch, Poppy gave me an even more aggressive silent treatment than usual. And Nico acted like nothing had ever happened. It’s been almost two weeks, with no signs that anything will change.

  “We are not calling anything!” Caroline insists, slamming her hands on the counter. She’s dramatic like that, and I’ve missed it. “Have you tried talking to him at all?”

  “No.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because I don’t need him to tell me that he regrets what happened. Maybe he wasn’t thinking—”

  “Wait. What are you talking about?” Sam’s busy hands are now still as he stares at us.

  “It’s nothing. Can we just— What are you making, Sam?”

  “NICO AND HER WERE CAUGHT IN THE RAIN AND HE TOLD HER IT LOOKED LIKE THERE WERE DIAMONDS IN HER HAIR AND THEN HE TRIED TO KISS HER!”

  “Caroline!” I snap, swatting her with my hand.

  “Hey, he’s your friend and therefore fellow endorser of Tessa’s Happily Ever After. He deserves to know.”

  Sam is my friend, but he’s definitely not that second part. Which is why, outside of a brief explanation of the security car, I haven’t told him anything about what happened on Halloween. Mostly because I knew that he would look at me just like he is now. Cold and judgy.

  “Poppy and Nico are still together,” Sam says.

  “I know.”

  “He told her they’re not exclusive,” Caroline chimes in.

  “And he said your hair looks like there are diamonds in it?” Sam scoffs, scrunching his nose. “Sounds like a stupid line to me.”

  “Yeah, well, who cares? Maybe I want to be someone who guys say lines to. Is there anything wrong with that?” It comes out harsher than I intend.

  Sam just presses his lips together and doesn’t say anything more, even though I can see him itching to.

  “Oooo-kay,” Caroline says, making a face like Chrissy Teigen in that one meme. Then she says, quieter, to me, “Just text him. We’re not throwing the towel in yet, girlfriend.”

  I pull out my phone, and type out:

  Hey, are you around this weekend?

  I send it before I can think about it too much, and Caroline gives me an approving nod.

  “So what you making, Sam? Anything as good as this?” She takes a big bite of one of the mini ube cheesecakes, and adds with a mouthful, “It looks like you’re setting up a science experiment.”

  “I mean, baking is a science,” Sam says, unwrapping a stick of butter. “I’m trying out this new recipe for a pâte à choux, and I have to get it just right. If there’s even a drop too much water or not enough butter or the eggs are the wrong temperature, then the whole thing will be destroyed. I’ll have to throw it all out and start again.”

  His eyes get wide and serious, like he’s talking about throwing out a baby.

  “Is this recipe particularly dire for any reason?” I ask.

  “The gala,” he says, turning around to preheat the oven. “I’m making éclairs for the final judging, to, uh . . . decide if I get to do the pastries for it. Or whatever.”

  “Sam, that’s awesome!” I say. He just shrugs his shoulders like it’s nothing, but there’s a little smile on his face, his dimple showing itself. “I had no idea you were in the running. That’s a huge deal, especially for a first-year student.”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “Oh, man, yes it is!”

  Thanks to Theodore’s rants, I’m well aware that the winter gala is the big event at Chrysalis Academy, where the school gets a chance to show off its talented students and raise a bunch of money from the loaded parents and alumni. I mean, it’s black tie and the tickets start at a hundred bucks—that kind of big deal. The creative writing teachers have been talking up the gala and the final selection of students who are going to read too, but I’ve mostly just tuned them out. It’s not like I’m going to be one of them.

  “What is a gala anyway?” Caroline asks. “That’s one of those fancy words that I know but don’t really know.”

  “It’s like a big party that our school has, a fundraiser basically,” Sam explains, taking a roll of parchment paper out of a drawer. “I’ve been going to them every year with my mom. She was, um, a donor before she joined the board. But this will be the first time that . . . well, that I’ll be there for me, you know?”

  I get the strongest urge to jump up and give him a hug.

  “Will there be dancing?” Caroline asks, her eyebrows waggling. “That’s on the list,” she mimes whispering to me, but she is anything but discreet.

  Sam looks between us, confused, but then I see his face change when he puts it together. Why does she keep bringing this up in front of him? And why does it bother him anyway?

  “I don’t dance,” I say quickly, hoping to stop this train of thought.

  “Girl, that’s just what you think now, but when Nico takes you in his arms at this gala, you—”

  “You dance, Tessa.” Sam cuts her off.

  “Oh yeah?” Caroline asks. “What have you seen our girl do, Sam? Fill me in, stat!”

  “He hasn’t seen anything—”

  “You know, just a little . . .” He snaps as he does three jumps to the right and then thrusts. Caroline explodes with laughter.

  “You. Showed. Him. TOGETHER! TONIGHT!” Caroline chokes out between her giggles.

  “Come on, Tessa,” Sam says, adding a spin and then jumping forward, a mischievous smile on his face. “You gotta, like, join me with this. These dances aren’t meant to be done alone.”

  “No way.” And I mean it. But then Sam comes around the counter, snap-jumping some more and doing this little arm-wave thing that I definitely did not teach him. And then Caroline plays the song on her phone, waving it in the air like she’s at a concert. And somehow, for the second time, I’m dancing to Dream Zone with Sam—who, for the record, has gotten much better at the dance than me. Almost as if he’s been practicing.

  When we finish, I’m practically hyperventilating with laughter, and Sam is standing with his arms crossed, looking all pleased with himself. Caroline has this big smile on her face as she studies both of us, and it feels full of meaning—I’m just not sure exactly what.

  “Okay, you guys have to do that again, but I’m gonna film it this time.”

  “Nope!” Sam says, returning to his place in the kitchen. He starts to heat something in a saucepan like nothing even happened.

  My phone pings, and I grab for it. It’s Nico.

  Sorry, it’s poppy’s birthday and she has the whole weekend planned. See you at school?

  I can feel Caroline looking over my shoulder, but I don’t even look to see if her face is as disappointed as my own. Or even worse—if there’s pity there.

  Okay. So that’s that.

  I fill the rest of the weekend showing Caroline what have become my favorite Long Beach things: potato tacos from Hole M
ole and marscapone-stuffed French toast from Starling Diner, piled high with berries. People watching and exploring the cute boutiques on Atlantic. And because the weather is back to seventy-five even though it’s November, we spend most of Sunday at the beach, reading (Christina Lauren for her, On Writing for me . . . until I give up on that and take her backup Christina Lauren). The warm sun bakes our brown skin a few shades browner.

  I’m surprised by how much it feels like old times, how quickly we fall into our rhythm—the buzzy staccato of our conversations, our footsteps always at exactly the same beat.

  But as much as we are who we used to be, there are also hints of how we’ve changed. Like when she’s trying to tell me about something funny that happened at a party, and I get confused by all the unfamiliar names. And when I’m responding to a few texts from Lenore, and Caroline makes a joke about putting away my phone that doesn’t really sound like a joke.

  On Sunday night, though, when we’re lying in my room ready to go to sleep, it’s almost like a merging of the old and the new. Lying there in the dark, squeezed into my twin bed even though my mom put out the blow-up mattress, I’m reminded of the countless sleepovers we had growing up—eating Swedish Fish until our stomachs were sick and pretending not to be scared by the creaks we would hear in the hallway. But our voices going back and forth in my pitch-black room also reminds me of all the conversations we’ve had late into the night on our phones, ever since I moved away and everything changed.

  “Okay, Tess, can I tell you something without you getting mad?” Caroline asks, her voice raspy like it always gets when she’s tired.

  “Sure.”

  “Actually, it’s more of a question, I guess.”

  “Just tell me already.”

  “What if . . .” She starts slowly, and I feel a little bit nervous. Usually she’s a straight shooter. “Have you ever thought . . .” She tries again. “Have you thought about maybe having the wrong leading man?”

  “What?”

  “For your happily ever after, your love story—what if the love interest is all wrong? And that’s why it’s not working? Like in that movie you told me to watch, Pretty in Pink? The whole time you’re rooting for Duckie and you just know they’d be perfect together, but then Andie ends up with that bland Blaine instead. And, like, that’s cute or whatever, but it doesn’t have the intended emotional impact, because you know it’ll never work out between them, not like it would obviously work out with Duckie.” She huffs as if she just got something big off her chest.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Nico is Blaine.”

  “Okay.”

  “And Sam . . . is Duckie.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you get what I’m trying to say?”

  I know exactly what she’s trying to say. She feels sorry for me. It’s so clear. Because this weekend showed her I have absolutely no chance with Nico, and now she’s trying to lead me in a more reasonable direction. So I don’t get all caught up in something that’s never going to happen.

  “But I . . . I like Nico.” It sounds so feeble and silly coming out of my mouth.

  “I know. I know, Tess. And you could have any guy you wanted.” I wonder if she thinks that sounds believable. “But you and Sam—I saw something with him. Something real, and I don’t want you to ignore that because you’re zeroed in on someone else. Sam is a really good guy.”

  “I know.”

  “And he’s not as much of a goober as I thought he’d be! You didn’t give him credit! Have you paid attention to those cheekbones? And he wasn’t even wearing a Hawaiian shirt.”

  “I told you he doesn’t every day!”

  “Okay, okay, but main point here: I think that Sam could be the one. Your one. I really think there could be something special between you two, and we should just . . . change the focus of the plan!”

  She sounds so excited and eager, just as convincing as she was when she first came up with the list. And it would be so easy to go along with her, except:

  “Me and Sam . . . we’re not like that.”

  “Yeah, I know you think that now, but maybe you just need to open your eyes a little. I see it so much more with him than Nico, and—”

  “Except you don’t really know either of them. You’ve been here for, what, two days, and this is my life. I think I know better what’s right for me.” The words come out all sharp and cold, and I can’t see Caroline’s face in the dark, but I feel her recoil. I don’t want to be mad, but just because she has a boyfriend doesn’t mean she’s the expert on all this stuff. She doesn’t know what things are like between me and Nico—the spark that has been there since the very first day. And she doesn’t know Sam. He’s an amazing friend, but he’s not that.

  “Okay,” Caroline says, sounding weary. “It’s just, I thought that . . . I’m sorry if—”

  “You don’t have to be sorry. I’m . . . Can we just not talk about it anymore? I appreciate all you’re doing for me, really I do. And as we’ve thoroughly established, you’re a genius.” I reach for her hand and squeeze it. “But that’s just . . . not what I want.”

  “Yeah, right. Of course.”

  The silence that fills the room is big and oppressive. I can feel it sitting heavy on my chest, and I know she feels it too by her slow, purposeful breathing. I want to say something to bridge the gap that’s growing between us, anything to keep this conversation from spreading like a stain and tinting our entire happy weekend. But I don’t know what to say. And that’s unsettling because I always know what to say to Caroline.

  Finally she breaks the silence though.

  “So . . . I have something else to tell you. I’ve been waiting for this trip to talk about it because it just felt like too much over the phone. It’s about me. If that’s okay.”

  “What do you mean? I always want to hear about you.”

  “Well, sometimes . . . it— Never mind.” She takes a deep breath. “Okay, so Brandon and I have been together for a few months now.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “And I really like him. I love him, actually. We said it to each other last week.”

  “Caroline, that’s huge! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was planning on telling you. I’m telling you now.”

  “Who said it first?”

  “He did. But that’s not what I was going to tell you.”

  “Oh?”

  “With just, with everything . . . with how good it’s been between us. We’ve been talking about taking the next step. You know . . . going a little further in our relationship.”

  “Like, you want him to meet your parents?” Except I know that’s not it. If that was it, she wouldn’t be nervously playing with her hair—I can feel her next to me. If that was it, she wouldn’t be dancing around the point instead of getting straight to it.

  “No, Tess, we . . . Brandon and I, we’re thinking about, um, doing it. Having sex.”

  “Oh.”

  There’s a few beats while she waits for me to finish a sentence that’s not coming.

  “That’s all you have to say?”

  “No, it’s just . . . I . . .” All the things I want to say run through my head.

  I feel like I might not know you anymore.

  I felt like we were okay, but now this is completely blindsiding me and making me realize how much else I’m missing.

  I’m worried that you’ll change so much that I’ll get left behind.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Well, what do you think I should do?”

  I’m still reeling from what she’s already told me, how Sam is my Duckie and Nico is Blaine, and now she drops this. This big thing. This really big thing that I didn’t even really think of as a possible thing, but of course it is. Of course she’s thinking about that when she has a perfect boyfriend who loves her. All I have is a crush that’s so unrealistic even my best friend isn’t encouraging it anymore. What advice could I possibly give her?


  “You should do whatever you want. What makes you happy.”

  It feels like the thread that’s between us, unconscious but constant until now, snaps.

  “That’s it?”

  I yawn. I hope she can’t hear how fake it is. “I’m sorry. I just . . . I’m tired.”

  There’s a long pause, and I want to turn the light on to see what her face looks like. But I also like that it’s dark. That I can hide.

  “Yeah, right, right . . . we’ve had a long day. We can talk about it later.” I feel relieved, even though I can hear the strain in her voice. “We should go to sleep. My flight’s early.”

  “Okay.”

  I slow my breath, pretending to be asleep, until eventually it’s real.

  Chapter Thirty

  The next morning we wake up and act like everything’s normal, and I almost convince myself that it is. But when we hug and say goodbye, it feels like something more.

  I push it out of my mind and convince myself that Caroline and I just need some time. Once she gets home, things will go back to the way they were.

  I end up not seeing Nico all week. But it’s not like I go looking for him or anything. In fact, I make a point of not sitting with him and his friends at lunch, so I don’t have to torture myself by seeing him and Poppy together.

  And maybe it’s just because my brain isn’t consumed with overanalyzing every interaction with Nico, but what Caroline said about Sam keeps circling back in my mind. I know it was just a pity suggestion and all, but I can’t help but start to see him that way. As a love interest. I mean, not my love interest, of course, but some girl’s. With his sharp jaw that looks like it was chiseled by some sculptor. And his arms, covered with a fine layer of light blond hair, that always look so strong and capable as he’s carrying a tower of Tupperware or securing an attachment on his stand mixer. And he always smells like butter and sugar, which is probably why when I’m around him I feel like I just crawled under a big pile of blankets on a cold night. And his lips . . . well, yeah, I could see how it would all work.