Joey texted Alex a screenshot from the group chat, and there was absolutely no use in arguing any more. There it was, in black-and-white, right on her phone screen.
You’re welcome, Oliver had texted all the guys as he took credit for his photo editing skills, like the cocky asshole he was.
“Stop the car,” Alex said.
“Excuse me?”
“Stop. The. Car.” Alex’s words were calm and measured, but they were also unwavering. “I’m getting out.”
“We’re, like, two miles from school.”
“I’m not asking you.”
Oliver pulled up to a red light and was forced to stop, which gave Alex just enough time to hop out of the car. “What are you doing?” Oliver yelled at her through the open window.
All Alex knew for sure was that she couldn’t sit next to him anymore. She hadn’t really thought about anything else. Alex took off, running toward school. Fortunately it was a flat, easy jog along Ventura Boulevard. Once the stoplight turned green, Oliver had no choice but to drive off without Alex. He couldn’t stop traffic, and Alex refused to get back into the car.
About fifteen minutes later, by the time Alex got to school, a bit sweaty from the run, Oliver was standing at the entrance, waiting for her. “What is your problem?”
Alex didn’t have a problem.
Not anymore.
She bent down and untied her shoelace, all slowly and deliberately.
“What are you doing?” Oliver asked, getting more and more agitated and flustered with each passing moment, which made Alex want to move even slower. She knew she was driving Oliver absolutely crazy. It was an empowering feeling. She slid the star charm off her shoelace and held it up for Oliver to see before dropping it in a nearby trash can.
“You’re actually crazy,” Oliver said when Alex still hadn’t spoken to him.
“And you’re actually an asshole,” she finally replied. “You’re welcome,” she added, echoing the text message he’d sent the boys. “For the Photoshop skills.”
Oliver’s face turned instantly pale. He was so cocky and stupid; he thought he was actually going to get away with the whole thing. Not just the picture. Not just the embarrassment and all the ache he’d caused Alex. But the bragging, too. He thought he could get away with that. And that was the worst part, Alex decided. Oliver asked her if she was going to tell on him. He sounded like a small, sad, sniffling child.
“No,” Alex said, making the decision as the word came out of her mouth. “What’s that going to do? Make your life miserable? Maybe, but I don’t need that. You know what you did. And I know who you are. So. As far as I’m concerned I’ve already won. Forever, I get to be me—and you have to be you—and I feel incredibly good about both of those things.” Before Oliver could respond, she added, “And I’m glad you had so much fun jacking off to my knees . . .”
Alex turned triumphantly and walked away with her head held high.
59 days until graduation . . .
EMMA drove to Savannah’s house without wearing any underwear.
She wasn’t expecting to make that sort of bold move at 11:00 p.m. on a Friday night, but she wasn’t expecting a lot of the things that had happened to her over the past few months. Recently, her older sister Heather told her that the secret to being an adult and knowing what you were doing just meant Googling the answer without asking anyone else first. So, mostly as a joke, she Googled: What should I do with my life? And it led her to a website about taking a gap year. Emma had never considered that option before. The only option that seemed to be on the table for the following year was her freshman year of college, but now, she realized that simply wasn’t true. Emma spent some more time Googling—and exploring the real possibility of a gap year. It was an exciting prospect. But not nearly as exciting as spending more alone time with Savannah.
Can I come over? Emma had texted.
PLEASE, Savannah texted back almost immediately.
Emma was already wearing her pajamas, so she got up and got re-dressed.
Or undressed.
Or both.
Either way, she decided she needed to be only minimally dressed for what was going to happen next. She put on a pleated jean skirt. And her favorite purple zip-up hoodie. And a pair of flip-flops. And that was it. No underwear whatsoever . . .
Emma’s parents were already sleeping, so she slipped out the front door as quietly as she could. And she snuck into Savannah’s house too, making sure not to wake up her parents. And then, as soon as Emma stepped into Savannah’s bedroom, the girls picked up right where they’d left off after their date night . . . all kissing and touching and fingertips . . . and Savannah reached for the zipper on Emma’s hoodie . . . and the moment she realized Emma wasn’t wearing a bra was absolutely priceless. It felt like an instant, immediate memory. The kind of thing you can remember in real time, long before before the actual moment even ends.
Savannah’s face and eyes and everything . . . it all just lit up.
“Oh, if you think that’s fun . . .” Emma smirked.
And Savannah seemed to know exactly what she was getting at, because she wasted absolutely no time slipping her hands under Emma’s skirt . . . and confirmed her happy suspicion that Emma didn’t have any underwear on down there, either.
“You. Are. The coolest . . . ,” Savannah said as the kisses continued.
They pulled off the rest of their clothes, and moved over to Savannah’s bed and soon Emma found herself on top of Savannah . . . Savannah started to slide her fingers between Emma’s legs, but Emma grabbed her hand, stopping her . . .
“This first,” Emma said, pinning Savannah’s hands up above her head.
Emma kissed her way down from Savannah’s lips, past her neck and her boobs and her stomach, until she found herself between Savannah’s legs . . . and the truth was she didn’t know what she was supposed to do—at all—but she knew what she liked . . . and she remembered the last time she was in the darkroom with Nick and how worried she’d been about where his face had to be, and now that her face was there, she realized she had wasted way too much time worrying about that. Even though she certainly enjoyed the, um, process with Nick she knew now that she could’ve been and should’ve been just enjoying it so much more . . .
Savannah didn’t seem to have any of those same fears—or if she did, Emma couldn’t tell. . . . Especially since Savannah was too busy telling Emma how much she liked what she was doing with her tongue and her lips and her fingers. . . and then, just as Emma felt like she was really getting started . . .
Savannah finished.
Fireworks.
Everywhere.
This, Emma thought.
And then Savannah flipped over, on top of Emma, and it only took a few more minutes of Savannah’s lips and fingertips before Emma set off her very own display . . .
Afterward, Savannah curled into Emma’s arms.
“So. This is good,” Emma managed to say with a bit of a laugh.
“Yeah, it is . . .” Savannah laughed back. “Ineffable,” she added as if she’d been waiting for the right moment to say that.
“Ineffable?”
“That’s the word for when something’s too great to be described in words.”
Exactly, Emma thought.
Ineffable.
That’s exactly what this was.
58 days until graduation . . .
ZOE knew what she had to do as soon as she saw Emma’s new sexie.
Emma and Savannah had “officially” had sex last night, and Zoe could see the glow on Emma’s face and feel the “rightness” of it all even just by looking at the picture on the phone screen, and it helped confirm what she’d known was true for a few weeks now . . .
Zoe didn’t want to be Austin’s girlfriend anymore.
And not just because she didn’t want to have sex with him anymore, even though, truthfully, she didn’t, but mostly because he didn’t make her feel the way Emma looked in her sexie. She didn
’t have any bad feelings toward Austin, but there just weren’t enough good feelings left to force it anymore.
Zoe knew it was time to break up with Austin.
But it was still easier said than done.
Finally, after stressing about it all day, she worked up the courage to call him just before dinnertime. She kept the conversation short and mostly sweet. She explained that she simply didn’t like him like that anymore. And that she wanted to break up. He didn’t argue with her. Maybe he felt like it had been building to this, too. Regardless, it was done.
Zoe realized she probably should’ve driven over to his house and told him in person, but she couldn’t. At least she didn’t text it to him.
Even though Zoe caused the breakup, she was still upset about it. She’d never had a boyfriend before Austin. He’d always be her first. And now he was her first ex-boyfriend too.
She texted The Chat.
And everyone texted back quickly. They all loved her very much. And they were all there for her. But of course she knew all that already. And the girls made her feel like the luckiest, as always, but then she also felt like crying too.
And so she did.
And she felt worse for a while but then also better, too.
Alex was right.
Tears were so underrated.
50 days until graduation . . .
ZOE could not bring herself to order vanilla frozen yogurt again.
Layla ordered “The Layla.”
Emma ordered cake batter.
Alex ordered Graham Cracker Caramel.
But, for Zoe, today was the time for something different.
She ordered strawberry.
“You reached maximum vanilla capacity?” Layla teased as the girls settled around their table.
“Yeah something like that. Maximum vanilla capacity. Maximum Austin capacity . . . I just had to get all of this out of my room.” Zoe gestured to the shoe box she’d brought with her. It was full of little memories she’d collected over the past couple of months. Each item on its own felt small, but it all reminded her of Austin and all piled together they were more than Zoe needed.
The dried carnation from Valentine’s Day sat on the top.
“Is it lame that I want to keep this? Not ’cause of Austin, but just . . . it dried so perfectly.”
“Well. It’s not from Austin,” Layla said, treading carefully.
“What?”
“Dylan bought it for you.”
Zoe laughed until she realized that Layla was serious, then suddenly she got serious too. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t he tell me?”
“He said all he wanted was for you to be happy. That was his ‘mission accomplished.’”
Zoe had been so happy that she hadn’t even thought to press Austin about the flower. She just assumed it was from him because that’s what she’d wanted at the time. Now, looking backward, she would’ve been even happier to know that it was from Dylan . . .
But that’s not how life worked.
Life had to be lived forward. And it all had to happen exactly the way that it did or she may not have found herself here, in this moment, with her best friends and a brand-new frozen yogurt flavor. After the girls finished, Zoe threw the Austin shoe box in the trash can in the parking lot of The Bigg Chill, but she made sure to hold on to the red carnation. She put it on the passenger seat next to her and drove toward Dylan’s house. She blasted his mix CD as loud as she could and turned what might’ve been a twenty minute ride across the city of Los Angeles and into the valley into a two hour drive. There was still so much that Zoe didn’t know, but right now she knew she needed this time and this space and most of all she needed this music.
She pulled up in front of Dylan’s house and turned off the car’s engine, but she left the key in the ignition so she could listen to the end of the last song on the mix: Jimmy Eat World’s “Sweetness.” It was Dylan’s all-time favorite song, and one of Zoe’s, too. Even after the song ended, the last lyric—“with a little sweet and simple numbing me”—still continued to ring in her head as she sat in the front seat, trying to build up the courage to get out and go talk to Dylan . . .
And then . . .
After two minutes of sitting in silence.
After two full minutes of getting lost in her thoughts and her feelings and holding out hope that Dylan might just telepathically realize she was sitting outside and come open the front door.
. . . another song started to play.
Zoe had been listening to Dylan’s mix CD on repeat for weeks. She had heard every song on it at least a hundred times. But, up until this moment, she’d always started the CD over again immediately once it ended. She’d never thought to wait for something more—why would she? There was no way she could’ve known there was a secret song, but then again, maybe she didn’t need to know about this song until this very moment. It was a “God Bless the Broken Road” cover by Rascal Flatts. Zoe had heard the song so many times before but never quite like this.
Now it all made sense.
And now, as the song ended, Zoe knew that the timing was finally right.
She’d had feelings for Dylan since that first day they got paired up in Chem class. But those original emotions—that first crush or attraction or whatever it was—couldn’t even begin to compete with the layered and complex love she felt for him now. Her feelings were real . . . but she needed the whole entire broken road to get here.
Now all Zoe had to do was get out of the car. And ring Dylan’s doorbell.
So she did.
And he answered and invited her inside. He wasn’t expecting her, but he wasn’t all that surprised to see her either. They made their way down the hallway into his room. It was all dark blue and plaid. Lots of trophies and sports memorabilia on the walls. She looked at Dylan’s bed and tried to count how many times she might’ve heard his voice from it.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the carnation?” Zoe asked.
“Why did you pick up the phone that night?” Dylan smirked.
“Ohmigod . . .” Zoe rolled her eyes. “‘God bless the broken road,’ I guess,” she added with a bit of a laugh, which felt like it answered both of their questions at the same time.
“You found it.”
“Took me long enough.”
“I wanted to tell you, but then that ruins the secret.”
“It’s not really a secret anymore,” Zoe said, talking about so much more than the song.
And then finally—finally—after all their phonefalls, after all the thousands or maybe even millions of words they’d exchanged . . . there were only four more that Zoe wanted to say:
“I love you, too.”
Dylan pulled Zoe in close for the kind of first kiss she’d (literally) been dreaming about for oh-so-long. Then they moved to Dylan’s bed and kept kissing and kissing and kissing until Dylan finally found the courage to move his hands from Zoe’s back . . . and onto her boobs.
Zoe laughed.
It wasn’t a nervous giggle.
It was a big, rich, full body kind of laugh that made her boobs jiggle in Dylan’s hands.
“Ohmigod,” he said through kisses, the way Zoe always did. “I’ve wanted to do that for-ever.”
“Okay, but I’ve only had them for like four months,” she teased.
“What. Ever. Feels like forever,” he teased back.
For the first time, their “for real” in person conversation felt like it did when they spoke on the phone. Zoe kissed Dylan again. And again and again. And even though they’d only been doing that for about four minutes it felt like forever, too, but in the best possible way. They spent the next couple of hours rolling around on his bed, laughing and teasing and talking and kissing some more. . . until Zoe had to leave so she wouldn’t be late for curfew.
She sang along to “Sweetness,” on repeat, all the way home.
She got ready for bed as quickly as she could and then called Dylan like he made her promise sh
e would before she left his house. And he picked up on the first ring. And they talked for another hour or two—or tonight it might’ve even been three—until they both managed to fall asleep . . . together.
47 days until graduation . . .
EMMA had taken more pictures in her lifetime than she could count.
She couldn’t even count how many she’d taken in the last five months, which was proving to be a bit of a problem, as she’d gotten the idea in her head that it was time to develop all of them. She needed them. But right now, staring at the filmstrips in the darkroom, it seemed like an overwhelming task.
Thankfully, there was a knock on the door.
“Em?” Nick asked. “You in there?”
Emma’s lips curled into a smile as she was transported back to the memory of the last time she had heard Nick knock on the door of the darkroom . . . and all the fireworks that followed. She opened the door, still smiling. She knew she didn’t have to explain why. She could tell by the look on his face that he remembered too.
“Thank you for agreeing to help me . . .”
“You. Are. Welcome.” Nick laughed. “Last time you asked me for help, I offered you my penis, so I figured it couldn’t be any more awkward than that.”
“Hopefully this won’t be awkward at all,” Emma said as Nick walked across the small room and slid up next to her. “But I have the strongest sense of déjà vu.”
“My mom says that having a feeling of déjà vu means you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be,” Nick explained.
“I love that,” Emma said, feeling the truth in Nick’s words. They were so simple and also so profound. Emma’s thoughts drifted back to the very first time she met Savannah in the yearbook room, and she remembered the sense of déjà vu that had washed over her then. Of course, at the time, things were just starting to fall into place, but they were clearly already aligning themselves in the right direction. Now Emma was more clearly rooted in this time and place—but all of it just felt right. Weirdly right. Emma was so present and so in the moment. Thankfully the “right now” was all she could think about . . . but she did her best not to overthink it for once.
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