Chapter 6
CHAPTER 6
THEN, October: three years and five months ago
It took me a while to come to terms with the fact a business admin degree just wasn’t for me.
Despite Henry’s vigorous efforts, despite his impromptu flashcard business-vocabulary tests during my shifts at Daisy’s, and despite diving headfirst into assigned and unassigned reading about concepts I couldn’t care less about every afternoon: my heart was not in it. My brain clearly wasn’t either.
And I should’ve called my parents to tell them. Discuss the opportunity of changing majors to something that was a little more creativity and a little less numbers.
English, perhaps. Or literature. Journalism. Something I could actually see myself doing for the rest of my life after graduation.
Instead, I was staring at my screen. Had been for the past ten minutes, unable to move. The fan of my laptop was getting louder with every second my mail app was opened, and although I was concerned about the possibility of explosion, I still did not move.
I was physically unable to stop rereading that email.
Congratulations! You’ve successfully transferred from HBU Business School to HBU’s Fine Arts & Communications Campus.
Old: Bachelor of Arts—Business Administration
New: Bachelor of Arts—Journalism
Please talk to your assigned advisor as stated in the next email to get settled as soon as possible. We wish you the very best and cannot wait to see what you might accomplish one day!
– Hall Beck University
The exact reason why I did not trust myself to make decisions was staring right back at me. Impulsive, stupid, and irreversible.
Like the one time I’d went skinny dipping back in high school and I’d decided to try and fit in with the cool kids. Those “friends” had run off with my clothes in the middle of the night. Then, too scared and embarrassed and self-conscious about the curves no one else had developed yet, I’d refused to get out of the water and had almost been eaten by a shark.
Okay, maybe not eaten, but its fin definitely grazed me. In dark, open water, it was almost the same thing.
Then , like two stupid and irreversible consequences to an impulsive decision hadn’t been enough, I’d stepped on an urchin and had to ask the nearest stranger on a beach in Puerto Plata to call an ambulance. They’d taken me to the hospital in nothing but an abandoned towel, barely reaching past my thigh.
So, I was no stranger to impulsively stupid decisions with irreversible consequences. And I’d promptly made one last decision that night. To avoid making any others.
I was also a Libra.
My parents had decided I’d go to college in the United States. My parents had decided I’d study business. My parents had decided living in a shared house was cheaper and safer than sharing a room with a stranger.
Then, I started rolling with my housemates’ dinner plans (“Whatever is fine, really”). My housemates had quickly decided we’d all be best friends, and I’d gone along with that, too. Was really, really happy with it, even.
They’d become friends with the neighbors, on the soccer team like Henry, and so I did, too.
I’d started going to my best friends when I needed help with an outfit, when I knew Henry would stop by Daisy’s, and I couldn’t decide what to do with my hair (“Do I straighten it or keep it natural, girls? I’m not sure!”).
Really, not making any decisions had been quite easy. Like I drew strong-willed, decisive people to me like moths to a flame. Maeve was that way. Henry was, too.
And yet.
I read through that cursed email one last time, then forced my laptop shut. The silence of the missing sound of its fan was eerie, though it only lingered for a second. I’d only spent about two months in this house, and I could already tell by the sound of her footsteps, Maeve was the one who’d burst into my room before I’d even looked up to check.
Sitting crosslegged in my unmade bed, my eyes batted open to meet hers in the doorway. She assessed me, gaze narrowed. Probably noticed the way I slumped against the wall my bed stood against, and the way my breathing was labored, and that Pip was not calmly napping on my pillow, but pacing the room like she always did when I was on edge.
I was sure Maeve could read me like an open book in the same way I could discern the pattern of her footsteps on our carpeted floors. So, I was sure she picked up on the signs, too. But instead of pointing any of them out, and then taking a guess at the cause of them with scary accuracy, she looked at the wall behind me and said, “We should really paint that in the orange you liked so much.”
I blinked at her, threw a glance at the white behind me. “What orange?”
Maeve’s eyes rolled, and she leaned into the doorframe, arms crossing in front of her chest. “When we went to pick out a rug last month, we walked past the paints. You pointed to an orange and said this would look nice on a wall .”
I did not remember that. At all. But then again, I had just officially changed majors and there wasn’t enough space in my head to remember much else.
With a groan, I fell into my white sheets. “I did something,” I confessed, voice whiny. I might cry.
I could hear Maeve shift around the room, but I could not see her. My eyes were squeezed shut tightly.
“I know, honey,” she cooed, previous amusement blown out of her voice. Gentle concern had replaced it, matched the way she scooted onto the bed beside me. “What is it?”
My head only shook, burying myself deeper into the mattress. I blindly pointed to the laptop at the foot of the bed. In the silence that followed, she probably read the email.
The email that had literally changed the course of my entire life. A reply to a form I’d desperately filled out the week before when it had been midnight and I’d been struggling with programming languages I had not expected to be on the syllabus. After our first test, on which I’d gotten a C-.
The first C- in my entire life.
Which was when I’d realized I was struggling. Very clearly.
I had not struggled to write that Change of Major essay. At one in the morning, I’d sent it off and expected to never hear from them again.
I’d applied to the college paper about a month ago, as some kind of balance for the endless numbers I’d been dealing with in most of my classes. Also because I’d missed writing. I hadn’t realized how much I would, but after doing it almost every single day when I was in high school, it had been missing. Helping out at the Hall Beck Post fixed that. Writing about the weather and taking a stab at horoscopes had been so much fun, the only reason I went back to the library to study was for the evenings on which Henry would join me.
Fast forward to now, where I majored in journalism.
I groaned once more.
“Paula!” Maeve gasped, and I think for the first time, I’d taken her by surprise. “Holy shit. I’m so proud of you.”
Not the words I’d expected from her.
Slowly, my head emerged from the depths of pillow and blanket and whatever else I’d buried myself in to look at her. Really look at her. Hoping, or expecting, to find a trace of humor or ridicule in her expression, but I came up empty. Her pink lips pulled up, and her freckled arms were around me before I could try to find anything that was suspicious about her reaction.
Then, I almost smiled myself because Holy Shit, I did that! but then she asked, still giddy, “What did your parents say?”
I stiffened. And she understood immediately.
“Oh my God. You didn’t tell them.”
Henry insisted that he was not surprised. Not about what I thought had been my spur-of-the-moment decision to change majors. Not about the fact I hadn’t told my parents, either.
When I’d gone to see him after their home game the next day, I’d gotten there just as Dylan McCarthy Williams delivered HBU’s winning shot into the other net.
I’d like to say I’d watched the rest of the game intently, but really, I was watching Henry. My eyes followed him when he had possession, and probably more so when he did not. Because it meant he might look back at me, too.
Twenty minutes later, when I surprised him outside their locker room and told him about what I’d done in a fit of rambling and excitement and fear, he only smiled.
The corner of his lip curled just slightly, and his gaze flicked down and back up my frame in what could’ve been silent praise. Not for my outfit—wide blue jeans, graphic tee, a black oversized leather jacket… definitely nothing to write home about—but perhaps for me?
Which was when he’d said it. “I’m not surprised.”
I couldn’t help the amused snort, head shaking as I walked beside him, honestly not quite sure where we were going. “Are you not?” I asked teasingly at how sure he sounded.
I could feel his green eyes on me, the way he studied my profile without a sense of shame in it. Like I might be the world cup final in the second half, and he couldn’t bear the thought of accidentally missing something.
A hint of citrus and pinewood I’d come to know as Henry’s cologne lingered among the smell of rain from last night. The sky looked like it might again today—so dark and stormy, I was glad to spot Henry’s car in the lot behind the soccer field.
“Not even the tiniest bit, Paula. When you’re confused, you scrunch your nose and it’s basically scrunched for however long we study for. When you’re frustrated, there’s this sound you make. Something between a huff and a groan and a sigh, and I’ve heard you make it so many times, I dream of it sometimes.”
I didn’t know why that confession brought heat to my cheeks. Or why I couldn’t keep my lips from pulling up.
I was smiling, I think. At the floor. Looking anywhere but him, because God forbid he found out I’d dreamed about the sounds he might make, too.
“You were confused and frustrated, and you’re not used to that. So if anything, I’m surprised you lasted as long as you did.” Henry shrugged, unlocked his car and held the passenger door open before he’d even asked if he should give me a ride home. I got in with a glare, finally looking at him.
“I dare you to call me too dumb for your major again, Henry Parker Pressley,” I muttered when he got behind the wheel, trying hard to keep my amusement at bay, and hoping it wasn’t audible in my tone at all.
But Henry and I both knew my accusation wasn’t at all what he’d said. Really, he hit the nail on the head. Read me like he’d known me for years.
“Or what?” he asked.
I snorted, finally breaking the facade when I could tell we were way past the point of believing it was real. I wasn’t mad at his accusation, and he wasn’t trying to find out what I might do to him if I were.
Still, I said, “Or I might just change back to business admin specifically to ruin your life.”
He shook his head. “You couldn’t ruin my life, even if you wanted to.”
“I’ll egg your apartment. Your car.” I thought for a moment. “I’ll egg you .”
His head finally rolled in my direction, hair wet from the quick shower after the game. Our gazes held for one, two, three seconds, and I think I might’ve been holding my breath. “You’re vegan.”
My eyes narrowed. “You might just be worth breaking my morals for.”
His nose scrunched in a smile, then the hint of a chuckle filled his car before he said, between one laugh and the next, “Charming, Paula. You’re a charm.”