Chapter 5
Julius promised himself two things for this trip: He would bring Sadie to Berkeley, and he would refrain from making snarky remarks about how the Stanford campus is vastly superior to the Berkeley one.
Yes, they will be attending rival colleges, and there will be plenty of time to bicker with her over this—but this weekend, he will play nice and keep his mouth shut about it.
She’s already nervous enough about starting school.
That’s actually why they’re here in the first place.
Though Sadie has never voiced it aloud, he knows how anxious she gets in unfamiliar environments.
She’s the kind of person who needs to physically walk right up to a boarding gate to confirm that it does truly exist, even if the plane isn’t departing for another hour.
The kind of person who wants the full guest list for a social function so she’ll know what to expect and who’s bringing who and be able to prepare at least five different conversation starters.
The kind of person who needs to locate all her classrooms weeks in advance, and calculate the exact time it takes to walk from one lecture to another, and also where the nearest drinking fountains are.
“Oh my god, this place is massive,” Sadie says as they stroll down the footpath together.
All around them, there are students lounging on the emerald lawns, sipping on boba and sharing nachos in greasy takeout boxes; a girl sleepily holding up a faded paperback to block out the sun; visiting parents staring wide-eyed at the white pillars and orange-red roofs, no doubt imagining their own children coming here someday.
“It’s all right, I guess,” Julius says, and resists the urge to add something about how the Stanford campus is much bigger, with better facilities too.
“I can’t believe I’ll be, like, an actual student here,” Sadie says. “I mean, isn’t that wild?”
“You’ll fit right in.”
Sadie turns to him, a small crease between her brows. He wishes he could smooth it out with his thumb, make all her worries disappear with just a few words. “You really think so? But everyone’s going to be so smart—”
“Which is exactly why you’ll fit in,” he says confidently. “Come on, give yourself some credit. You managed to top a class that I was in. That automatically puts you in the top one percent of the global population.”
She nudges him in the ribs. “That’s really sweet. But I’m pretty sure it was three classes.”
“Pretty sure we tied in history, if that’s what you’re talking about.”
“There was also English—”
“That’s only because my examiner had an issue with complex vocabulary. It’s not my fault I like to use sophisticated words,” he says.
She’s grinning now, eyes glimmering with amusement. “I thought the feedback was that your writing could be convoluted—”
“Complex,” he counters. “It would only seem convoluted to those with poor reading comprehension.”
“You did have a strong thesis,” she allows.
“I did, didn’t I?” He accepts the truce and points to an empty spot under the shade of a pine tree. “Want to get lunch over there? I packed a picnic for us.”
“Hang on. Is that what you’ve been carrying around the whole day?” Sadie asks, eyeing his bag. “You planned an entire picnic for us too?”
“Don’t look so surprised.”
“I just—” She shakes her head and says, in a tone of disbelief, “What the hell, Julius? I feel … spoiled.”
“Well, good. You should be spoiled,” he says, trying not to look ridiculously pleased with himself. He used to think that there was no feeling better than beating Sadie Wen in a test, but that was before he experienced the euphoria of earning Sadie Wen’s approval.
They pick their way up the hill, the grass tickling their ankles.
He dumps his bag down first, then starts to unpack.
The plaid picnic rug he bought. The chocolate chip cookies Margaret dropped outside their door this morning, after they devoured the first batch.
Croissants from that beloved bakery down the street, with thick slices of ham and cheese he added inside.
Sushi he made himself, though they’re a little squashed from the long car ride.
An entire container of cherries. Hand sanitizer, because Sadie refuses to eat anything without washing her hands first. Black coffee for himself, and a bottle of water for her, which he twists open first.
He was concerned that he brought too much food, but soon, they finish everything. They lie there in happy silence for a while, stomachs full, a light breeze ruffling their hair, rippling the collar of his shirt.
“Not going to lie, I was a little scared of the future,” Sadie admits to him in a soft voice.
“There’s just so much change, you know? With the new school, and leaving Australia, and my mom and my brother, and just, like, starting over again …
I keep imagining worst-case scenarios. Like, what if I don’t make any friends here?
Or what if I have a meltdown during exam season?
Or what if I’m stranded here for some reason and all the flights home get canceled?
Or what if my brain simply refuses to convert to the Fahrenheit system?
Or what if my professor is a major asshole, and then I try to switch classes, but my next professor is a major asshole too and I’m stuck with him?
Or what if I get homesick, or I come down with a fever and I can’t just call my mom like I used to? ”
“I know,” he says quietly. “It’s okay to be scared. I’m scared too.”
She rolls over to gaze at him, and she looks so beautiful—her glossy hair let down over her shoulders, light freckles scattered like constellations on her cheeks, her lips stained red from the cherry juice, bare legs stretched across the grass—he actually feels his heart seize. “You are?”
“Yes, but if you ask again, I’m going to adamantly deny it. Can’t let it damage my reputation,” he says.
She lets out a snort of laughter. “I’m sure your reputation will survive.”
“Well, reputations are fragile things.”
“Is that a quote?”
“Probably. Anything could be a quote, if you think about it.”
“Yeah, literally the other day, I saw someone selling a poster with the quote, Water your cactus with laughter. Like, what does that even mean? Anyway,” she says, rolling onto her back again, and he mirrors her movement, gazing up at the treetops, the cerulean sky expanding above them.
A leaf breaks away from a twig and flutters down almost in slow motion, in no hurry to fall.
“Not to say that I’m, like, no longer scared of the future, but if this is what the future looks like …
” She makes a vague gesture to them, the picnic, the distant sound of laughter from students lower on the hill.
“It really can’t be that bad, right? It’s scary, but it’s exciting too. ”
“I’m glad,” he says. He doesn’t say that his future has always been exciting because of her.
Not just now, but before too. The thrill that would race through him at the prospect of seeing her again in the halls, of being near her, not even doing anything in particular.
She made the very idea of tomorrow exhilarating, as long as tomorrow involved her.
He lets himself lie in the moment for a while longer, simply enjoying her closeness. Then he drags himself up, dusting off his shirt, cleans up all the plastic wrap and empty containers, and heads back down the hill to throw their trash away.
When he returns, Sadie is … preoccupied.
A guy around their age is in his spot, talking to her.
A tall guy with thick brown hair and unnaturally white teeth and the sort of defined features that align with the general population’s standards for attractiveness—fine, a good-looking guy.
A good-looking guy who’s hitting on her.
Even before Julius comes within earshot of their conversation, this is obvious to him.
The guy is leaning way too far forward, smiling too wide.
“… should definitely come and check it out,” he’s telling Sadie. “We’re a newer club, but I promise it’ll be super fun—you can meet some really great people. Like me,” he says with a wink that makes Julius’s insides clench.
Of course, Sadie doesn’t seem to realize she’s being hit on. She’s always underestimated her own power. Her effect on other people. “What do you guys do, exactly?” she asks, so polite, so friendly, so oblivious.
“It’s essentially like a big brainstorming session. Whether you’re seeking out opinions for your start-up or you’re working on a film script or you’re developing an app, we all get together—with free pizza, by the way, pineapple totally optional, we don’t judge around here—”
Good god. This guy is flirting with Sadie Wen by making the most disgustingly bland, unskilled jokes about pineapple on pizza.
Julius bets he has that written as one of his prompts on his dating apps, under equally unoriginal prompts about letting his future girlfriend steal his hoodie or wanting travel tips for Japan.
He’s almost insulted. Pineapple Guy means to win over someone as impressive as Sadie Wen with that?
“… and we just throw ideas around and help each other. That’s how the magic happens, you feel?” Pineapple Guy is saying.
“Yeah, that sounds kind of cool,” Sadie says, and Julius can tell that she means it, because she’s not using her super strained, high-pitched voice to conceal a lack of real enthusiasm.
And so while he wants nothing more than to march straight over and break the conversation up, he clenches his jaw.
Stays put. This could be an opportunity for Sadie, and he doesn’t want to ruin her relations with other people on campus before she’s even officially started class here.
“So you’ll come to our meeting?” Pineapple Guy asks, sounding way more excited than anyone should ever be about any kind of meeting.
“Uh, why not?” Sadie says. “I can—”
“If you give me your Instagram handle, I’ll message you the details,” Pineapple Guy says. “I can even bring you to the meeting myself, if you want; it’s a big campus, and I know how easy it is to get lost around here.”
Sadie blinks up at him for a delayed beat, and Julius can see it slowly dawning on her that Pineapple Guy isn’t simply interested in her participation in his club.
“Oh, um, I don’t really use Instagram,” she says with an apologetic grimace.
“Do you have, like, an official website or something? You’ll post updates there, right? ”
“Yeah … Yeah, sure.” Pineapple Guy falters for a beat, then recovers just as fast. “Here, I’ll write it down for you—” He retrieves a pen and crumpled receipt from his pocket and scribbles something down on it. “The website is right here, and I’ve added my number below.”
“Right.” Sadie cranes her neck, distracted, as if searching for someone—for him, Julius realizes, with a rush of warmth.
He is all too glad to be walking up to her, to slide his hand around her waist, pull her closer to his side, well aware that Pineapple Guy is tracking every movement.
“This is my boyfriend, Julius,” Sadie introduces him loudly.
“Hey, man,” Pineapple Guy says.
Julius offers him the most perfunctory of nods. “Hey.”
But Pineapple Guy doesn’t seem entirely discouraged by his presence. He seems more like he’s making an assessment, sniffing out any openings like a dog behind a closed door. “You guys are cute together. Did you meet here, or—”
“High school,” Sadie says.
“Over ten years ago, actually,” Julius adds.
“Ten years?” Pineapple Guy blinks. “That’s like—damn, that’s a really long time.”
“A very long time to be obsessed with someone,” Sadie says, with a private smile just for him, and Pineapple Guy seems to reach the conclusion, at last, that the door is firmly locked.
“Happy for you two,” Pineapple Guy says. “Listen, I need to run off to the gym. But see you at the meeting, yeah?”
“Sounds good,” Sadie tells him. “See you there.”
Pineapple Guy steps back from them, but Julius can still feel him watching, and there’s still an unpleasant tension banding around his ribs when he imagines Sadie and the guy laughing together over free pizza.
Without another word, he cups Sadie’s face and kisses her, longer and deeper than he normally would somewhere so public.
He can taste the sweetness of cherries on her lips, feel her sharp inhale of surprise, then her smile, as if she knows what he’s thinking—which, to be fair, isn’t much at all right now.
Only her. Impossible to think clearly when she’s touching the nape of his neck, kissing him back just as hard.
Her teeth nip his bottom lip and for a second his mind goes perfectly blank.
“If you’re going to kiss me like that whenever you’re jealous, I’ll have to make you jealous more often,” Sadie says when she pulls away to look at him.
“I’m not jealous,” Julius says automatically.
She makes a small sound, like a suppressed hum of laughter. “Okay, sure.”
He draws her toward him again, keeps her there.
“I mean, he should be jealous of me,” Julius murmurs against the curve of her neck.
“But if he bothers you—if anyone bothers you when classes begin, call me, okay? Actually, that goes for everything. If you’re overwhelmed or lonely or sad, or you’re stressed about a group project, or if there’s a spider on your wall, or the window in your dorm room won’t shut properly, or you’re working late and craving ramen, or you simply want someone to come and hold you.
Anytime. Doesn’t matter if it’s three in the morning. Just call me.”
“What are you going to do? Drive all the way up here?”
“Yes,” he says without hesitation. “I would. As long as you want me here.”
“And what if I want you here constantly?”
“Well, I’m already planning on seeing you as often as I can,” he says, and takes out his phone to show her his calendar.
He’s marked every public holiday, every weekend, every spare afternoon he might have for the entire academic year.
“We can meet in the city on weekdays, and I’ll drive up to visit you on the weekends. ”
“But that’s, like, a one-hour drive,” Sadie points out. “Are you sure—”
“Sadie, I’d hop on a sixteen-hour plane ride to see you,” he tells her, and he hopes she knows how much he means it. “An hour is nothing.”
She stares up at him, stunned, visibly moved.
“What?” he asks, teasing. “Too mesmerized by how good I look?”
Her features twist into a half-hearted scowl.
Laughing, he picks her purse up from the grass and slings it over his shoulder, then reaches for her with his other hand. “Come on. Want to go check out the library next?”