Everybody’s Favorite Guy

Chapter 1 Everybody’s Favorite Guy

My mom called with bad news just after I landed in Denver.

Except, of course, she thought it was good news.

“We got lucky!” she declared as I picked up. “Walker can join us, after all.”

I’d just reached baggage claim. I stopped walking. “What?”

“He just landed, too,” my mom went on, “according to Taffy.”

“You said he wasn’t coming!” I protested. “You said he couldn’t walk!”

It had been a glorious, golden relief to hear—just a few days ago—that he’d torn the meniscus in his knee playing pickup basketball and couldn’t make the trip.

“The trip” was a weekend in the Rockies, in the cabin where our two families had vacationed every summer my whole childhood.

Our dads had both died—years apart, but still—and since they’d always joked they wanted to be scattered off the top of Turnaround Pass, our moms had decided to make it happen. This spring break. At last.

They kept calling it a “get-together,” like it would be something fun. They’d even bought matching group T-shirts.

But getting together had been harder than they expected.

Our moms were empty-nester widows who had worked hard to make friends, pursue hobbies, and dive into “the wisdom of midlife,” as Taffy liked to say, and they had all the time in the world for getaways.

But I was well out of college now and working nine to five plus weekends and nights as a graphic designer.

And Walker was even worse: He’d joined the navy straight out of high school, prowled the seas in a submarine for years, and now that his service was up, he was back—doing nonstop prerequisites before starting an undergrad feeder program for med school in the fall.

Tricky for scheduling.

But no matter. The moms were determined to make it happen. They texted us relentlessly until we all had plane tickets—and my monthslong countdown of seeing-Walker-again dread began.

Days before the trip, when Taffy called to say Walker was out, my mother wanted to reschedule.

“Let’s just go next year,” she said, holding out the phone with Taffy on speaker.

“Another year could turn into a decade,” I argued—utterly unwilling to let this chance to avoid Walker go. “Don’t you think Dad has waited long enough?”

Was I protesting too much?

But Walker had made the same argument. The logistics were settled. Everything was planned. We should just go ahead without him.

In the end, our moms agreed.

“But what about the ashes?” my mom asked. “Walker was supposed to take Steve’s up the pass.”

Ever practical, Taffy said, “We can save some for him in a sandwich bag.”

Beautiful. Perfect. It was settled.

If we played it right, I thought, we might never have to see each other again.

It felt like the luckiest near miss in the world.

But now, after all that . . . here he was.

Looking unhurt. Looking fine, in fact—better than fine. Looking, to be honest, like some kind of peak representation of the human form. All the schlumpy people milling around the carousel blurred into the background, and for a second, Walker was all I could see.

Walker, who I hadn’t talked to since he enlisted. Walker, who had turned into a grown-up man. I took it all in: The way his T-shirt sleeves squeezed just above his biceps. The way his pants hugged his hips. The way the tendons in his neck curved down toward his collarbones.

His shoulders.

Good god.

I spun around at the sight of him—and seriously considered walking right out of the airport and leaving my bag unclaimed at the carousel.

But my mom was still talking. “So you should drive ahead together and get everything opened up. Don’t forget to flip the switch for the hot water. Maybe you could stop at the grocery on the way into town? Taffy says there’s no coffee.”

I didn’t respond.

How could I talk about coffee when Walker Shaw was at baggage claim?

My mom, knowing nothing about anything, yammered chipperly on. “And pick up some flowers for the table, honey. Let’s make it nice.” Then she added, “This weekend’ll be harder for them than for us. Since they never had a funeral.”

True. Walker’s dad hadn’t wanted one.

It was a good reminder. We weren’t here for ourselves, really. We were here for our dads. And our moms. And, in theory at least . . . each other.

Anyway, it was happening. Time to face it.

Slowly, like if I played my cards right, he might’ve politely disappeared, I turned back around.

No luck. There he was—suddenly—right there. Not a hundred respectful feet away, where he’d started, but one audacious foot from my face. Staring right down at me with those sweet-looking eyes that had started all this trouble in the first place.

What was he seeing in this moment? I got a flash of the most airport-bedraggled possible version of me: my darker-since-high-school hair in a disheveled bun, my sweatshirt strings all lopsided, my lips a little chapped.

To be fair, in general I was probably better since high school, too.

But today, I was definitely worse.

My mom was still talking. She wasn’t on speaker, but she had the kind of voice that carried.

My eyes adjusted to the sight of him at close range—and it felt physical, like my pupils had to contract against the brilliance of his gaze.

It almost stung a little. But I refused to be cowed.

If anyone should look away, it was Walker.

My phone still to my ear, I deliberately, defiantly, pulled in a breath to help puff up my posture. And then I looked up into his eyes just exactly as my mom said: “And, sweetheart, be careful with that tender heart of yours. Taffy says he just keeps getting handsomer and handsomer.”

The breath I’d just taken rushed back out.

Dammit, she was right.

This was going to be the worst birthday of my life.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” I said to Walker as we looked for the rental car. “You broke your leg.”

“I tore the meniscus in my knee.”

“You’re not even limping,” I said.

“I’m hiding it.”

“You said you couldn’t make it,” I insisted, like he’d tricked us all.

“I’m rallying for my mom,” he said, like I couldn’t begrudge that. Then he added, “And my dad.”

You know what really bothered me? How nice he was being.

In the brief minutes between baggage claim and this garage, he’d tried to carry my suitcase for me. He’d let me go first through doorways. He’d told me it was “good to see me.”

Unacceptable. He didn’t get to just show up in Denver and pretend to be a sweetheart.

He might always and eternally be everybody everywhere’s favorite guy, but the last thing he was . . . was a sweetheart.

Nobody knew that better than me.

And now we had a two-hour drive up into the mountains. Alone. Together.

I tried to strategize. Should I shift gears and be friendly? Act like I barely remembered what he’d done to me in high school? Pretend he was a long-forgotten and deeply irrelevant person from the past who I could be completely pleasant with—like a stranger?

Or should I be mean and snippy and hold him accountable for what he’d done?

Mean and snippy was more appealing—but acting like I’d forgotten all about him was probably the power move.

Too bad I’d never been very good at acting.

Maybe we could just ride in silence.

But we’d barely hit the highway before he lowered his voice into real-talk mode and said, “How’ve you been, Lily?”

How dare he? “How have I been? Since high school?”

Walker shrugged. “Yeah.”

“I’ve been great, Walker—thank you for asking. I am absolutely thriving.”

“I’m glad,” he said, his voice gravelly, like he meant it.

In response, like I didn’t mean it, I said, “How have you been?”

Walker thought about it. “I’ve been okay, I think. I’m taking prerequisites for school. I’m working a lot. I miss my dad sometimes.”

Oh, god. He wanted to have a real conversation.

“I miss your dad, too,” I said. That wasn’t untrue. I could admit to that.

“And I bet you miss your dad.”

“I do,” I said. “But I’ve had a lot longer to get used to life without him.”

In high school, I’d been the only one who was fatherless.

That was the beginning of the end, in fact.

Because after my dad died, when we were both in tenth grade, Walker and his parents closed ranks around me and my mom.

Our dads had been best friends from childhood, and then the couples had become friends.

We grew up with the four of them—Kristie and Big John (my mom and dad) and Taffy and Steve (Walker’s)—always hosting parties and taking us to the beach and grilling burgers.

We spent weeks every summer at the Shaws’ ramshackle cabin in the Rockies.

We’d always been close is what I’m saying. But after my dad died, we got closer.

After my dad died, my mom went back to work as a nurse, and the Shaws insisted that Walker drive me to their house after practice in the afternoons—we’d do homework, and then all eat dinner together when my mom came to pick me up after her shift.

It was a good thing. It was a generous, kind, brilliant way to help ease our grief. But here was the problem: I had always, always had the most terrible, aching, agonizing crush on Walker.

And spending every day with him only made it worse.

We did our homework at their kitchen table, and his mom sang along to the radio while she sautéed onions for dinner, and when we finished working, we’d hang out in Walker’s room, or watch TV in sock feet, or throw the frisbee for their dog, Lola.

Walker was the person I saw the most of on almost any given day. But by any objective high school measure, he was fully and completely out of my league.

He was a golden boy—a straight A athlete who won the citizenship award twice.

I . . . was a classic nerd.

A bookish, bespectacled, somewhat introverted nerd who’d spent the better part of my childhood self-consciously working to correct an eye that kept wanting to drift out of place.