The Girl Most Likely To

Chapter Twenty-Four

If movies had taught me anything, it was that grand gestures usually involve a lot of running. I tried to circumvent that by calling for a ride, but it seemed like everyone at South by Southwest was trying to get home. I jogged back to my hotel in heels, which had given me blisters by the time I made it to my room. If running was supposedly good for me, why did I feel like a chewed-up paper straw?

I searched for flights out of Austin, but nothing was available until the next morning. Which meant I ran all that fucking way for nothing. I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t without having some sort of game plan. So I stayed up rehearsing what I would say when I saw Danny. It was hard to condense years of feelings into a meaningful summary. I wrote messy notes into my planner to try to form something cohesive, then edited it down to a nice paragraph that told a story about how I felt about him.

There was one problem with cramming the night before an early flight: it was completely erased from my memory once my alarm went off for the third time.

“Fucking shit!”

I scolded myself, stuffing my clothes into my luggage. Nat was out cold since she’d returned to the hotel room only a few hours ago. So, being a considerate roommate, I kept my swearing to a low volume as I scrambled to pack my things.

I made it to the airport and by some miracle got on the next flight to LAX. Finally, something worked out for once. But as the plane took off, my body felt heavy. All that running that was supposedly good for my health, combined with the late nights I’d been pulling, had me falling asleep before snacks came around.

When my eyes opened, I was back in California, walking through LAX like a zombie. I was wearing an old pair of leggings and an oversized sweatshirt that I wore only to sleep. My hair was half curly from the night before and half flat where I’d slept on it. It was useless to fix it, so I left it alone. I spent the long Uber ride to Alhambra reviewing what I wrote in my planner. I couldn’t decipher my own writing. Words trailed all over the page, crossing over lines like they were a mere suggestion. A sentence starting with “I loved you before I knew who you were”

was immediately followed by an unfinished “your fine ass is . . .”

These notes read like the unfinished thoughts of a stalker-y teenage girl writing in a fever dream.

I crossed everything out. No one could ever see this.

I arrived at my parents’ house and dropped off my luggage in my room. “Ba, can I borrow your car?”

I ran my fingers through my raggedy hair, trying to get it to behave. I gave up when my fingers got stuck in a web of knots. “Can I borrow the shower too?”

Both of my parents stood at my doorway, arms crossed like a human barricade.

“Don’t you think you have something to say to us first?”

Ma asked. She might have been small, but she was scrappy. She unapologetically threw those sharp elbows of hers at restaurants whenever we fought over the bill.

“I’m sorry for dropping big news on you and then skipping town.”

I tried to go in for a hug, but my parents didn’t budge.

“No, that wasn’t good”—Ma’s face crumbled with disappointment—“but I mean about Josh. You knew about his girlfriend?”

Ah. She finally found out.

“I did kind of tell you,”

I said, though I was making it up at the time. “It’s been three years, Ma. It’s time to move on.”

She tsked. “It’s not that. I lent Josh’s mom my big pot. How am I going to get it back?”

“You two can still be friends,”

I assured her. “Josh and I don’t care.”

Ma considered this for a while, but then shook her head. “No. Her new daughter-in-law probably won’t like that.”

I wanted to tell Ma it was too early to refer to Josh’s new girlfriend as a daughter-in-law, but she was distracted. Using the fingers on her hand, she mumbled to herself as she took inventory of the things Josh’s mom had borrowed over the years.

Ba kept up his tough exterior. “Where are you going, looking like that?”

I gathered a clean pair of jeans and a nice top. “I’m going to see Danny.”

“Is that the boy who picked you up last week?”

“Yes.”

“Does he have a job?”

“Yes.”

“Is he nice?”

“Yes.”

“Is he nice to you?”

“Yes.”

I didn’t have time for this, and I was too tired to go through more rounds of rapid-fire questions.

Ba tossed his car keys to me. “Don’t get in an accident.”

That’s it? That was easier than I thought. “That’s all you want to know about Danny?”

“Dāngránle.”

He shrugged in a “What are you gonna do about it?”

kind of way. “If you like him, then okay.”

“Really?”

This was unlike him, so I had a right to be suspicious.

“You don’t listen to me anyway. If I said no, it makes no difference.”

So Ba was surrendering to my stubbornness. I’d finally worn him down. “Next time, introduce him properly. Your mom was upset for days that he saw her in her pajamas.”

That I could do. “Thanks, Ba.”

“Not a scratch on the car,”

he reminded me.

That was the least of my worries.

I stood in front of Danny’s house with nothing but thoughts and prayers. I should’ve texted first, but of all things, I’d forgotten my phone charger in Austin. I worked up the nerve to press the Ring doorbell when it spoke to me.

“No solicitors,”

Danny called out.

“It’s me.”

I knelt down until I was eye level with the camera. I thought I heard a snicker, but I could have been wrong. All that traveling and lack of sleep had me feeling delirious.

“You could’ve called.”

I held up my phone. “It’s out of battery.”

“How convenient.”

The door opened. Danny leaned in the doorway, arms crossed. The top half of his body read C-suite executive, with his crisp, white dress shirt and gray tie, while his bottom half had gone on vacation in pink board shorts decorated with hibiscus flowers.

“Were you working?”

I asked. He wasn’t looking too pleased. “Did I interrupt something?”

“I wrapped up early,”

he said. That must be nice. It wasn’t even noon. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in Austin?”

He sounded more curious than mad, so I kept rolling with my plan, even though I wished he was a little happier to see me. Then again, I did drop by unannounced. “Can I come in?”

Danny made space for me to pass through, so I hurried in before I made a declaration on the lawn. I wasn’t trying to be Lloyd Dobler. I didn’t have a stereo or a trench coat. I didn’t try to sit down and risk tarnishing the nice memories we had on his couch, but paced around his living room instead.

“I have something to tell you, and I had to tell you in person.”

I swallowed and fished out my planner from my purse and shoved it in Danny’s face, flipping the ink-stained pages so he could see. “I wrote everything down, but it’s such a mess, like me.”

Danny pressed a finger in my planner and smoothed down the page. His eyebrows shot straight up his forehead. “You put me on your to-do list?”

“That’s irrelevant!”

I shut my planner. “That’s not why I showed you. You know I don’t handle change well. I plan things out. I like to be in control, and when I’m not, I can’t function. But you were there for me when I was clueless and I had no idea where to turn. I’ll always be grateful that you messaged me online, even if it was out of boredom.”

I gulped for air. I was talking too fast. “But when things changed between us, I didn’t know what to do, so I ran away. But I’m here now because I don’t want to run away anymore. I don’t know what’s ahead of me, but I do know one thing and that’s you. I want you with me.”

Danny’s eyes widened ever so slightly, whether from shock or fear I couldn’t tell. Trepidation flooded my veins, and the desire to run out of the door was at an all-time high. But I dug in my heels and let the words tumble out of my mouth before I lost the courage.

“At fourteen, you were the one I wanted to talk to about my day. The small everyday things that I found exciting. At eighteen, you knocked me off my feet, literally. You helped me look up from my books once in a while, showed me what I was missing out on. I wished it didn’t take me so long to tell you how amazing you are. And I’m not saying that because you have a career and a house and that damn good head of hair. I mean”—indulging myself, I gently brushed his hair back—“it’s pretty great, but that’s not why. I love the way you remember random things and call me out on my shit, but in a caring way. I want you so much, but I’m so afraid that I’ll fuck things up again.”

“You will,”

Danny said matter-of-factly. “You have.”

“I have?”

He nodded, smiling slyly as he wrapped his fingers around the handle of a carry-on that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. I pointed at it. “What’s that?”

“This?”

Danny glanced down as he gave his suitcase a twirl. “I was going to go see you in Austin.”

“Shut up.”

I couldn’t help it. First I was seeing things. Now my heart was going haywire. “Why?”

“You said you wished I was there, so”—he shrugged—“I bought a ticket.”

“You were going to see me?”

“Yeah, but you ruined my plans. I have things to say to you too.”

Danny folded me into his arms and dropped two light kisses on my forehead. It was like he was tapping on the window to my brain, telling my thoughts to calm down in there. “Ever since I drove you home last week, I’ve been kicking myself for letting you go like that. I wish I’d said more.”

“What are you talking about? It was perfect.”

“Maybe,”

he said, brushing my hair behind my ear. “But I wasn’t completely honest. If I had been, I would’ve asked you to stay.”

He held my face, sure and steady. “Rachel. You and I have both had long-term relationships. We know there’s always going to be ups and downs. There’s no rule that says we have to be in a good place in our lives to be together. Things will get messy. We will make mistakes. It’s inevitable, but making it work is not impossible.”

“That sounds great, but actually, I’m glad I went.”

Danny’s face fell. “Oh?”

I nodded as I hugged him tighter. “Because I got myself a meeting with a big producer and I quit being Nat’s assistant.”

Danny’s face lit up with a contagious excitement. “Rachel.”

He kissed me, leaving me a little breathless. “That’s great. Does that mean—”

“Yup. I’m staying and my schedule’s completely open.”

“Well, what do you know?”

Danny’s hands gripped my hips and turned me around for a back hug. “So is mine. I cleared the rest of the week to go to Austin.”

“What shall we do?”

I asked innocently, though Danny was already walking us toward his bedroom.

Danny kissed my neck, sending a shiver down my spine. “Oh, I have a few ideas.”

“I bet you do.”

I let him help me out of my shirt. His joined mine on the floor soon after.

“There’s one other thing I’ve been meaning to run by you.”

Danny’s arms tightened around my waist. “Rachel Dang. Will you go out with me?”

“Like on a date?”

I turned around to see if he was serious. We were literally half-naked. “I think we’re past that.”

“So we’re doing things out of order. Who cares? I don’t want to miss out on anything. So what do you say? Dinner and a movie?”

With Danny? That sounded perfect. “Okay, but my pick.”