Chapter 1 Everybody’s Favorite Guy #2
That’s true. Through much of sixth grade I had to wear an eye patch on the better eye to help strengthen the vision in the weaker one.
It worked—but I got teased so bad at school that I finally started faking illnesses so I could stay home.
Until Walker—class president that year—put a stop to all the trouble by drawing a pirate anchor on the patch with a paint pen and somehow making it cool.
How could I not have loved him?
I had no choice.
But we were friends by circumstance. We were friends by proximity.
We were friends because we had to be—because life, and school, and our parents, put us together and kept us there.
Walker also had a million other friends, of course, like extroverts do.
Most notably his buddy Ryan—his other lifelong pal—who was my biggest competition for his time.
All to say, maybe the Shaws didn’t mean to, but they really got my hopes up.
And then, inevitably, when Walker broke my heart . . . it wasn’t just a heartbreak.
It was kind of my whole universe collapsing into rubble.
And now, all these years later, in the wake of that devastation, Walker wanted to fondly reminisce?
Nope. I wasn’t reminiscing. Not with him. And it sure as hell wouldn’t be fondly. And I almost told him so.
But that’s when it started snowing.
Does it snow in the Rocky Mountains in March?
Of course.
People go skiing for spring break all the time.
But our little town of Fort Dunraven wasn’t a ski town. It was at a lower elevation. And even though Turnaround Pass, which was hiking distance from the cabin, had a peak-like quality . . . it was a rocky peak, not a snowy peak.
Plus the weather forecast had been for the mid-80s. “Unseasonably warm,” my mom kept pointing out. The warmest thing I’d brought was a sweater.
“Is that snow?” I demanded, peering through the windshield as Walker turned on the wipers.
“I guess it must be.”
“Is it supposed to snow today?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Because we checked the weather like ten times and it was supposed to be”—and here I quoted my mom—“unseasonably warm.”
“And I bet there’s no snow gear in that tiny little suitcase of yours.”
“Are you kidding? I brought a bathing suit! I was gonna go tubing.”
“Not today,” Walker said, squinting into the flurry.
“No joke.”
The drive from the foothills snaked around quite a bit before you reached the cabin. As a kid, I used to routinely get so nauseated with all the switchbacks that I threw up. The last mile or so was just a bumpy dirt road, adding insult to injury.
“Do you think this rental car has snow tires?”
“Nope.”
“It won’t accumulate, right?” I asked, frowning at the sky.
“Definitely not,” Walker said.
But it did.
By the time we turned off the highway for the final mile, we couldn’t even see the dirt road.
Walker navigated by judging the distance between the trees—and they were getting harder and harder to see in the gray air.
Between the turns, and the bumps, and the whole being-strapped-into-whatever-journey-fate-needed-to-take-you-on thing, it felt a bit like a roller coaster.
A very slow roller coaster.
I swear we were going maybe three miles an hour.
“Maybe we should get there?” I suggested. “At some point?”
“I don’t want to hydroplane on the snow.”
“I think you can only hydroplane on water.”
“You can hydroplane on anything between your tires and the road.”
“Fine. You can be right.”
“You’re not letting me be right. I just am right.”
“The point is, if you keep going at this pace, we’ll never get there.”
“If we slide off the side of this road, we’ll never get there, either.”
“You realize we’re going three,” I said.
Walker ignored me.
“How about maybe ramping it up to four?” I suggested.
“How about you let me focus?”
I watched the speedometer. Now we were at two. “Can I drive?” I asked.
“No.”
“You said I could drive before.”
“That was before.”
“Driving a submarine,” I declared, “and driving a car are not the same thing.”
Walker took his eyes off the flurry for a millisecond to give me a glance. “You don’t know that.”
Fair enough. “Fine,” I said. “Two miles an hour it is. Wake me tomorrow when we get there.”
I might have faked a nap, too, just to make my point.
But that’s when I got a text from my mom.
Made it to Denver! Looks like it’s snowing at Fort D tonight. Taffy and I will stay at the airport hotel and drive up in the morning.
“My mom says they’ll wait out the weather in Denver.”
“Good,” Walker said.
Then another text came in from my mom:
You two have a cozy night.
As I read it, I made an involuntary noise of disgust. “Ughhh.”
“What?” Walker asked.
“Nothing.”
“It had to be something.”
I considered how long he might pester me about it and decided to come out with it. “She says for us to have a ‘cozy night.’”
“What is she implying?”
“I don’t want to know.”
“You never told your mom about—what happened—with us, did you?”
“Never. And I never will. It would ruin their friendship.”
“I never told my mom, either.”
“Of course you didn’t. She might not love you anymore.”
Another ding on my phone, and when I looked down, I sighed.
“What?”
“She just sent a winky face.”
“A winky face?”
Before I could think better of it, I wondered out loud, “Are they hoping to matchmake us?”
At the question, a laugh kind of burst out of Walker.
“What?” I asked.
“Just—” Walker said, like it should be obvious. “Just. You know. I am the last guy on earth they should ever matchmake you with.”
Wow—okay. That stung.
But: Good reminder, good reminder. Despite all appearances, and his attempts to carry my suitcase, and the way his hands kept caressing the steering wheel . . .
Walker was, and always would be, an asshole.
Why did I find it so endlessly impossible to remember that? What was wrong with me?
I turned to stare out the window, even though there was nothing to see but snow flurries, and decided to give him a little silent treatment.
But I hadn’t even begun when we rounded a tight switchback that led into a steep dip . . . and the rental car started sliding.
Sideways.
“Shiiiiiitt,” Walker said, cutting the wheel back the other way and braking. To absolutely no avail.
I guess we were suddenly having a car accident?
But it was so different from a normal car accident, where losing control of a car means screeching rubber on concrete.
Losing control in the snow was like floating, like drifting.
I knew that to the left was an uphill incline and to the right—notably the direction we were drifting—was a downhill slope .
. . but through the snow I couldn’t see how steep of a slope. It was all theoretical.
I lost my grip on time, too, surrounded by all that cloudlike whiteness. Walker, still working the wheel, seemed to be moving in slow motion. And then he started shouting instructions, but it took a few seconds for me to grasp what he was saying.
“Lily!” he shouted, while we were still drifting, which seemed so odd, because there was no one else in the car. Who else would he be talking to? “Open your door!”
Open my door? My car door?
“Open your door,” he shouted again, “and jump out!”
“What about you?”
“Just go!”
Ever the damned gentleman. But there was no time to argue.
I opened my door, just as I was told, and I tried to throw myself out.
But in all the strangeness, I’d forgotten my seat belt.
Which turned out to be a good thing. Because no sooner had my seat belt clamped me back into place than my car door slammed itself shut and then crunched inward as we crashed sideways into the trunk of a tree.
Wow. Where had that tree come from?
I hadn’t even registered it all before Walker had lunged across the seat to work my seat belt to get me out. “You’re fine, right? You’re not hurt?”
“I’m fine,” I repeated. “I’m not hurt.”
As Walker worked his hand under the crumpled door to find the seat belt release, his face was very close to mine. Closer than it had been since . . . well, since the crazy night all those years ago when he’d kissed me . . . and kissed me . . . and kissed me.
To be clear: He wasn’t kissing me now. Different vibes.
As soon as the seat belt popped, he was manhandling me and twisting me, anchoring his arm around my rib cage, and then yanking us both backward out the driver’s side door—with a force so hard we wound up tumbling into the fresh snow—landing on our backs, side by side, like we were about to make snow angels in the powder.
We took a second to process. And breathe.
“That was close,” I said, meeting his eyes.
“I almost killed you just now,” Walker said, standing up, dusting off, and reaching down to help me do the same.
“The storm almost killed me,” I corrected as he pulled me up in front of him. “Or maybe the car. Or the tree.”
“But you’re okay, right?” Walker needed to confirm again, brushing me off and holding me in place by the shoulders to inspect me. “You’re not hurt?”
Oh, this was mean. He was doing it again—taking in the sight of my face like he cared. And for a second, I swear, as his eyes lingered over my mouth, he seemed like he might, impossibly, against all reason and laws of physics, be thinking about kissing me.
Guess I wasn’t the only one who remembered.
But I scolded myself for that thought.
This was exactly the problem with me. This was what I’d stupidly done our whole lives: crafted a one-sided love story for us out of pure wish fulfillment into a tale so irresistible that even I believed it.
This kind of nonsense, right here, was exactly how I’d spent my whole childhood imagining that he loved me back.
Hadn’t he just said he was the last person on earth I could date?
And, more importantly, hadn’t he also said it—loudly, cruelly, in no uncertain terms—in front of our whole high school class?
Madness.
I must have a head injury or something.
I was just a delusional nerd standing in a freak spring snowstorm with the boy who’d never loved her.