Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Peter
My parents have done a lot since I was last home.
I barely recognize the place. The entryway is lined with boxes, the pictures are off the walls, and it looks like they’re repainting the living room. All the furniture is covered with plastic, and cans of paint are stacked under the window.
I stand in the entryway, eyes surveying the scene, heart somewhere on the floor. I love my apartment at The Serendipity, but this house was home for so long, and now it isn’t anymore. At least, it won’t be in a couple of weeks.
Sophie steps up beside me and slips her arm through mine, giving it a little squeeze. “This is pretty wild.”
Despite our slightly tense conversation on Monday morning, things were fine for the rest of the week. Though I did notice Sophie didn’t schedule any more dates. I won’t ask her if it’s because of anything I said, but I won’t deny how much I enjoyed having her around without having to worry about playing chaperone.
It’s a selfish thought, but I like having Sophie all to myself.
I’m also glad she’s here with me today. She’s maybe the only person who understands what this feels like for me.
I take a steadying breath. “Yeah. I didn’t expect it to hit me so hard.”
“You lived here your entire life, Peter,” she says gently. “It’s a big deal.”
Mom appears on the opposite side of the living room, and she smiles wide. “If it isn’t two of my favorite people.” She walks toward us, pulling both of us into a crushing group hug, one arm looped around each of our necks.
“Oof,” Sophie says, her face smooshed into my ribcage. “So good to see you, Mrs. Stone.”
“Stop calling me that,” she says to Sophie. “Once you’re out of college, you get to call me Evelyn. How are you? How’s life?”
“Good. Lots of the same. Work. Work. A little more work.”
“How’s your mother?” Mom asks.
Sophie’s eyes shift to mine for the briefest second. “On a cruise, actually. With Pierre. Or, wait. I think it’s Jean-Luc, now.”
“Jean-Luc?” I say, looking at Sophie. “What happened to Pierre?”
“Good question,” she says.
“Someone new?” Mom asks.
Sophie grimaces. “It’s always someone new, Evelyn.”
Mom takes Sophie’s hand, patting it gently. “Well, if she’s happy, that’s all that matters, right?”
It’s hard to guess what my mom really thinks about Isabella Stewart’s dating habits. My parents have been married for twenty-seven years, and they’ve never seemed happier. When Allison and I were teenagers, we decided it was pointless to ever hope we’d find a love as good as what our parents have. They’re that perfect for each other.
“What about you?” Mom says, turning to face me. She reaches up and cups a hand around my cheek. “What’s new with you?” I sense a level of worry in her voice, and I don’t like it. I know she’s stressed about leaving me, so even though I’m gutted by the sight of their house all packed up, I force myself to smile.
“Since I was here last week?” I ask.
“A week is a long time,” she says.
“I’m good, Mom,” I tell her. “Everything is good.”
Mom smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. I’m not sure she believes me.
“Actually, Peter might be getting a promotion,” Sophie says, and I shoot her a surprised look. Her eyes widen the slightest bit, like she’s begging me to just go along with it. “A management position,” she adds. “Corner office, a pay raise, it’s a pretty big deal.”
There is no corner office connected to the job offer I’m still waiting to hear about, but I understand what Sophie is trying to do. As much as Mom worries about me, it will be a lot easier for her to leave me behind if she thinks great things are happening for me in Serendipity Springs.
“Oh, Peter, I’m so proud of you,” Mom says.
“I am too,” Sophie says. “I’m planning a big party to celebrate as soon as we get the news.” A party is the last thing I’d want, and Sophie knows it, but she has my mother eating out of her hand right now, so I don’t protest.
“See?” Mom says, looking at Sophie. “This is the main reason I feel okay about moving and leaving Peter here all alone. Whenever I think about it, and I start to worry, I just think to myself: he’ll still have Sophie. Sophie has always taken care of him.”
“And you know I always will,” Sophie says, then she gives my mom another hug.
Will she, though? If Sophie’s dating plan works and she falls in love with someone else, our relationship will have to change. I wonder if that thought keeps her up at night like it does me.
Mom leads us into the kitchen, where lunch is already waiting for us. Homemade chicken salad, fresh croissants, fruit. And Allison’s favorite brownies. In preparation for the move, Allison already moved out of her apartment, and she’s been living with Mom and Dad ever since.
I hold up a brownie. “Where’s Allison?” I ask before taking a bite.
“She and your father went to the hardware store to get some putty to patch the walls. They should be back any minute.”
“How’s she doing?” Sophie asks.
“Better every day,” Mom says. “She hasn’t mentioned Chase in a week, at least.”
I grumble at the thought of my little sister’s ex-fiancé. He’s the one reason I’m glad Allison is moving to South Carolina. She needs a fresh start where there’s no risk of her ever running into his sorry, cheating?—
“That makes me really happy,” Sophie says, cutting off my wayward thoughts. “She deserves so much better.”
“I do, don’t I?”
We all turn to see Allison coming in the door from the garage. Sophie squeals and stands up, rushing over to give Allison an enormous hug. Only a year younger than us, Allison always looked up to Sophie. By the time we graduated from high school, the two of them were almost as close as Sophie and me.
“You deserve the world,” Sophie says. “I hope I run into that pig of a man just so I can kick him in the shins for you.”
“Don’t do it,” Allison says. “He’s not worth the bruised toe.”
When Sophie finally lets her go, I stand and pull my little sister into an embrace. “Hey, Allie,” I say. “Good to see you. How’s the South Carolina job hunt going?”
“I have a virtual interview on Monday,” she says, “and it’s the final one. Seems like a good firm.”
“That’s good news,” I say.
“Yeah, I think so. How about you?” She looks over at Sophie with a smirk. “Have you two fallen in love yet?”
My gut tightens, but Sophie only rolls her eyes and laughs. This has been a running joke for years now. Growing up, Allison always talked about wanting Sophie as an actual, for real sister, and the two of us getting married was the obvious way for that to happen. Every time she saw us together, she’d make some kind of joke, suggesting we try different romantic dates to take our relationship to the next level. Stargazing. Ice-skating. Horse-drawn carriage rides. The longer the joke went on, the more elaborate her suggestions became.
“Sorry, Allison,” Sophie says. “Your parents are just going to have to adopt me the old-fashioned way.”
“You’re already one of us,” Mom says, raising her glass to Sophie. “You know that.”
Dad steps into the kitchen next, and we go through the same thing. Hugs all around. Greetings and questions for Sophie that are just as thorough as the ones asked of me.
She really is a part of us.
More than anyone else who isn’t us.
After lunch, Sophie and I head up to my room. It’s mostly packed up, but the closet is still full of LEGO bricks, enormous bins sorted by size, shape, and color stacked from the floor to the ceiling.
“Wow,” Sophie says. “You really don’t have room for all these.”
“Do I even need to keep them?” I say. “I have the assembled sets. What do I need these for?”
“They’re probably worth something,” Sophie says. “And you might have kids one day. What kid wouldn’t love this collection?”
I tug open the top drawer of one of the plastic storage units on the left side of the closet. It’s filled with instruction manuals for unbuilt models, the ones I didn’t have space to display in my room.
It’s stupid to feel emotional over LEGO bricks. They’re just toys. Building blocks. But when I was a kid, they got me through a lot of lonely years. The thing is, I didn’t really know I was lonely until Sophie blasted her way into my life and showed me what it feels like to have a friend.
She’s the one who taught me that just because I’m happy keeping my own company, I don’t have to always be that way. I resisted for a long time, mostly because she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, and I had no idea how to talk to her. But she didn’t give up.
She asked and she asked and she laughed at my rejections and joked about how many times it would take before I finally said yes.
Fourteen.
That’s how many times it took. Once I said yes, everything changed for the better.
“Hey, what’s with the face?” Sophie asks from beside me, her voice gentle. “What are you thinking?”
I look over at her. “Nothing. Just…I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
“No feeling is stupid, Peter. Talk to me.”
I run a hand down my face. “Just memories,” I say.
She nods, but I’m not sure she’s convinced that’s all that’s going on.
Needing a distraction, I dig through the drawer of instructions, looking for one booklet in particular. As soon as I find it, I tug it out and hand it to Sophie. “Here. Build this with me.”
“Really? Right now?”
“I don’t want to do this yet,” I say, motioning my head toward the closet behind me. “And this one won’t take long. It’s an easy one.”
“A greenhouse,” she says as she looks at the booklet. She flips through the pages while I pull out the bins I’m pretty sure hold most of the pieces we need. “Oh, my gosh. And the inside is full of flowers.”
“I thought you’d like it.” I set the bin down in the center of my mostly empty childhood bedroom and sit down beside it, holding a hand up and offering it to Sophie.
She shakes her head, chuckling as she lets me tug her onto the floor. “Hey, so sorry about spilling the beans about your promotion,” she says as she tucks her feet under her. “I don’t know what I was thinking, just blurting it out like that. I could see the worry in your mom’s eyes, and I thought it might make her feel better.”
“I didn’t mind you saying something,” I say as I riffle through the pieces, pulling out the ones we need. “It was a good idea.”
She smiles. “Good. I worried you still might not get it, and then you’d be mad that we gave your mom false hope,” she says. “When will you find out for sure?”
“Any day now,” I say. “Actually, I expected a call yesterday, but it never came.”
“Does that worry you?” Sophie asks, and I scoff, breathing out a little chuckle.
“Oh, I see how it is,” she says, her tone playful. “The master data scientist is very confident.”
My cheeks heat the slightest bit. I am confident, but my boss also told me I’d all but gotten the job. He’s waiting for our corporate offices down in Charlotte to make things official, but that’s more a formality than anything else.
“They pretty much told me the job is mine,” I say. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“You don’t have to justify it to me,” she says. “I already think you’re fabulous. You deserve all the promotions.”
I set a thin green plate on the carpet to act as our base, then give Sophie several pieces we’ll need to assemble the foundation of the greenhouse.
“How long has it been since you’ve done this?” she asks, lining the pieces up in front of her.
“Years,” I say. “This one is actually the last one I built. During our senior year of high school. I built it for you.”
Her gaze jumps to mine. “What?”
I shrug. “You’d just gotten into UMass, and you were so excited about the botany program. I bought it for you, built it thinking I would give it to you, but then…”
“Why didn’t you?” she asks. “Peter, I would have loved it.”
I reach up and adjust my glasses. A part of me wants to just tell her everything. How I felt about her then. How I still feel about her now.
But I told myself I wouldn’t risk it until I’m sure she feels the same way.
For a split-second last Monday, when I admitted I thought Sophie was beautiful, I wondered if she might. I saw a spark in her eyes, and the way her breath hitched—I did that to her. I know I did.
But then we argued about Operation Soulmate, and she insisted she believes it’s going to work—that her soulmate is out there somewhere.
I’m sure it’s fear holding me back. But how can I not be scared?
I’m right here. Around Sophie all the time. And she still feels the need to orchestrate an elaborate scheme to find someone else. It isn’t exactly a confidence booster.
“I don’t know why I didn’t,” I finally answer. “I maybe thought it would give you the wrong impression.”
“Whatever. It absolutely wouldn’t have.”
I snap a few pieces onto the LEGO plate, then nudge it toward Sophie, turning the instruction booklet so she can see where her pieces go. “Maybe not,” I concede, “but I wasn’t good at stuff like this, especially not back then.”
“At LEGO sets?” she teases. “Pretty sure you were an expert.”
“At people,” I say. “At friendships.”
“What are you talking about?” Sophie clicks her pieces in, then slides the plate back to me. “You were a great friend.”
“Because you made me one,” I say. “You have to admit, Sophie, we never would have been friends had you not tried so hard to wear me down.”
She huffs out a little chuckle. “True. You were one tough nut to crack.”
“Why did you try so hard?” I ask. “What did you see in me?”
“What didn’t I see in you?” she answers, the words coming so quickly I know she has to mean them. “You were smart and confident, and you didn’t care what anyone else thought. High school was silly in so many ways, but you never were. You were serious and studious and so mature. Like you were completely ready for the world.” She shrugs. “I envied you, really. I think I thought if we hung out together, you might help me feel less lost.”
It’s weird to hear her talk about how she perceived me in high school because it’s so far from how I truly felt. “I was the one who was lost,” I say. “I had no friends. I had no idea how to relate to people.” I add another piece to the model, and my hand collides with Sophie’s. But instead of pulling back, I grab her hand, holding it in mine. “Not until I met you.” My heart climbs into my throat as I slowly rub my thumb across the back of her hand.
For all the times I’ve touched Sophie, hugged her, sat with my arm around her, nothing has ever felt so charged as this. Even that moment in Sophie’s kitchen doesn’t quite compare. Maybe because nothing has ever been so intentional.
Sophie lifts her gaze to meet mine, a question clear in her eyes.
I turn her palm, pressing it flat against mine and thread our fingers together.
It could be a friendly gesture. Friends hold hands all the time.
But I hope she senses that I don’t want it to be.
Behind us, the bedroom door flies open and Allison steps inside.
Sophie yanks her hand away and scoots several feet away from me, like we’re teenagers who just got caught making out.
Allison’s eyes go wide. “Uh, sorry, I…I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“You weren’t interrupting anything,” Sophie says, the words a little too rushed.
“Right,” Allison says, her eyes darting from me, to Sophie, then back again. “I was just wondering if Sophie wants to run down to Cookie’s with me to get a latte. Mom has me packing dishes, and it’s totally boring, and I could really use a pick-me-up.”
“Yes! Definitely!” Sophie says, jumping up with a ridiculous amount of enthusiasm. “Let me just run to the bathroom really quick.”
As soon as she’s out of the room, Allison closes the door and kicks the side of my leg. “Oh my gosh! Were you seriously just holding her hand right then? Is something happening? Please tell me something is happening!”
“Chill, please,” I say. “And lower your voice. Nothing is happening.”
“Um, then why were you holding her hand?”
“Allison, please don’t,” I say. “There’s nothing going on. There is never going to be anything going on.”
“I don’t understand,” Allison says. “It really looked like something was happening.”
“It doesn’t mean anything to her, ” I say. “It’s just friendly. It has to be, because she’s right in the middle of this big dating experiment thing, and I’m not a part of it.”
“A dating experiment?” Allison asks.
I glance at the door behind her. Sophie will probably be back any minute. “It’s a long story that I’m sure she’ll tell you if you ask. The point is, she isn’t interested in me like that. She never has been.”
“But you still are, aren’t you?”
My jaw tightens. Still. Allison is the only person in the entire world who knows exactly how I feel about Sophie. My senior year, when Allison was a junior, I decided it was time to finally shoot my shot. I had no idea what to do or how to do it, so I went to my sister for help, and together, we came up with a plan. I ordered a cake from a local bakery decorated with the words “ Will you go to prom with me?” then spent three hours making a simple cypher out of letters and numbers, explaining to Sophie how I felt about her. How I’d always felt.
I had never done anything so bold, and I was sick for days leading up to the Saturday when I was finally going to ask her.
But then, Friday night, while the cake was already in my refrigerator, Sophie texted and said she was coming over to tell me the “best news ever.”
She’d been asked to prom.
By Jack Larson, the captain of the swim team and the one guy in the entire county who could beat me in the two-hundred-meter freestyle.
I pasted a smile on my face and told her how happy I was for her, then, once she left, I threw the entire cake in the trash.
Sophie and Jack went to prom together and dated through the end of high school, but they broke up not long after.
Allison pushed me to try again, but I’d already decided it wasn’t worth the risk. Even though Sophie never knew I planned to ask, and it was probably my fault for waiting so long, prom still felt like a rejection, and it wasn’t one I wanted to repeat. Our friendship was good. Great, even. Why screw it up? So I boxed up my feelings and tucked them away and left them alone until I moved into The Serendipity.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “She doesn’t see me that way, and she never will.”
Allison scoffs. “She definitely won’t if you never tell her how you feel. It’s not fair to her, Peter. You can’t be mad that she isn’t reciprocating if you aren’t being honest with her.”
Down the hallway, the toilet flushes, and I shoot Allison one final warning look. “Please don’t say anything to her,” I say, and Allison rolls her eyes.
“Who do you take me for? But I still think you’re being dumb.”
Sophie doesn’t even come back into the room before she and Allison leave to get coffee, and I try not to read into it. Was she freaked out by what happened? When she jumped away, she seemed like she didn’t want Allison to get the wrong impression.
And then she practically ran to get out of here.
Was she running from me?
And if Allison hadn’t come in when she did, what would have happened next?