39
Saturday, August 23rd
Lexi
“I’d like to propose a toast to the smartest girl in the family,” Uncle Jude says, lifting his glass of champagne in the air with a big smile. “Lexi, I know everyone in this room is incredibly proud of you and everything you’ve accomplished. And we’re all kind of hoping you’re going to carry the torch for the Winslow family and finally prove to the world that we’re not a bunch of idiots.”
“Jude!” my grandma Wendy chastises, but she also laughs, along with everyone else in the room.
My mom is rolling her eyes at her youngest brother, and my stepdad Wes is pretty much doing the same, though his face is filled with far less annoyance. And I take the time to look around the room, savoring all the faces smiling in my direction of some of the most important people in my life, all gathered here in my grandma’s brownstone to celebrate my big milestone of defending my final dissertation of my doctoral career.
I’m officially done with college, and while I feel excited, I also feel a growing sense of anxiety about all the life changes coming my way.
My schedule is going to be different. My life will be different. I’ll no longer be spending most of my days at my favorite Dickson lab, but instead, living in the fast lane of adulthood in the real world.
My uncle Remy walks over to give me a big hug, and my aunt Maria does the same. Both telling me how proud they are of me and offering big congratulations on all that I’ve achieved. And they start a sort of assembly line of family and friends doing much of the same.
My grandma and Howard. My other uncles Flynn and Ty and their wives. My mom and stepdad Wes and brother Wes Jr. My dad Nick and my stepmom Charlotte. My parents’ best friends, Thatch and Cassie and Kline and Georgia. All of my cousins—Hawk, Meadow, Emily, Izzy, Carmen, Roman, and Ryder. Even Ace and Julia—and their respective brother and sister—and Finn and Scottie are here, along with Finn’s mom Helen and his siblings Reece, Travis, Jack, and Willow.
The house is packed fuller than a can of sardines, everyone basically having to climb over one another in the dining room to get to me, but they all manage to give me big hugs and heartfelt wishes as I prepare to take my next big life journey.
It’s clear I’ve never been an emotional kind of girl, but something about this moment is urging this strange combination of happiness and something akin to melancholy. The happiness makes complete sense, but the glum shadow is something I don’t quite understand.
“So, Lex,” Ace asks with a big smile. “What’s the next big move?”
“Big move?” I question. “As in, where am I going to live?”
“No.” He chuckles. “Where does a big-brained girl like Lexi end up working?”
“Yeah, Lex.” Uncle Remy joins in. “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”
Truthfully, no. I have options. Lots of options that most men and women my age would quite literally sacrifice a lot of things to obtain. But I still haven’t decided what I want to do.
I shrug. “I’m still mulling it all over.”
“As in, my sister has created an exhaustive spreadsheet of pros and cons and statistical analysis of each job choice,” my brother chimes in with a sarcastic grin. “She’ll probably need to create a personalized app that can compute all of her data before she can come to her final decision.”
“You’re a smartass, you know that?” I toss back to him, and he just laughs.
“Does it help that Mom told me I needed to tell you I’m really proud of you?” he questions, and my mom sighs.
“Wesley, leave your sister alone.”
“Yeah,” my stepdad Wes chimes in. “With that pathetic GPA you’ve got going on right now, you should maybe consider trying to learn a thing or two from Lex.”
My brother snorts. “Whatever.”
“Lexi, honey, what are your current choices?” my grandma Wendy asks, and the pressure of having everyone’s attention on me is starting to make my skin feel a little itchy.
It’s not that I don’t like the attention or that I’m not thankful for it, but it’s just a little overwhelming. I swallow against my discomfort and start to answer my grandma’s question, but my brother starts talking before I can.
“Grandma, I think the easier question would be, what aren’t your current choices?” he says and flashes a smile toward me that looks a hell of a lot like a little brother who is actually proud of his big sister. “Pretty much everyone and everything wants Lexi. Google. Apple. Fucking NASA.”
“Wesley!” my mom exclaims and reaches out to tap him on the back of the head.
“What?” he asks, rubbing at the spot she hit. “I’m just speaking straight facts, Mom.”
“I think your mother is referring to the giant f-bomb you dropped in the middle of the dining room,” Thatcher Kelly retorts on a laugh.
“Wait…NASA?” Ace questions with wide eyes. “Fucking NASA wants you, Lex? Holy shit!”
His mom Cassie sighs. “Sometimes I wonder if it was a good idea to combine and unleash our genes into the world,” she mutters to her husband Thatch.
But Ace ignores his parents completely and stays focused on me. “Are you seriously going to work for NASA, Lex? Like, am I actually going to be able to tell people I know a rocket scientist?”
“Doubtful.” I shake my head. “NASA isn’t at the top of my list.”
“NASA offered you a job, and they’re not at the top of your list?” Ace retorts on a laugh. “What else you got going on?”
Julia laughs at his joke and shoves his shoulder—a normal interaction for the two—but Ace’s gaze jerks to her hand, lingering long after it leaves. Blake was right about him spiraling over his newfound discovery that he’s been obsessed with Julia Brooks his whole life. I’ve known him since I was a kid, and I’ve never seen him like this.
I shrug. “A few things.”
“Technically, it’s a fucking ton of things,” my brother corrects, and everyone in the room chuckles. Well, everyone besides our mom.
Frankly, he’s not wrong. I mean, besides the offers from major corporations to be on their payroll, I have a big medical company that’s offered me eight figures to sell them an app I created that utilizes AI to analyze patient medical data to generate potential health risks, along with important proactive measures that can be taken to improve overall well-being outcomes.
Though, I don’t know if I want to sell it to them. My fear is that they’ll end up employing it in other ways that might include increasing financial strain on patients. Which is the last thing I want to occur.
I’d like to make the world a better place, thank you very much. And in order to do that, I need to help people, not hurt them.
And what about Blake? Was he just collateral damage?
The fact that his name pops into my brain makes my chest grow tight with discomfort. I don’t know why I’m thinking about him, but it’s like my mind hasn’t fully moved on from him. I chalk it up to just needing to adjust to not having his presence in my life.
Surely that takes a little time.
“Okay, that’s enough badgering Lexi,” my grandma announces as she carries a giant buffet-sized tray of spaghetti into the dining room. “It’s time to eat!”
Everyone listens to her demands, most of the women heading into the kitchen to help carry more of the food out into the dining room.
But just before I can sit down at the table, Ace pats my shoulder, a sneaky smile on his lips.
“You’re coming out with us tonight.”
I quirk a brow. “What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I said, Lex. You’re coming out with us tonight to enjoy your last college party.”
I sigh. “I don’t know, Ace. I—”
“Uh-uh,” he cuts me off. “Consider this a metaphor for you passing the torch to me.” He waggles his brows, and I roll my eyes at how he might think he’s being discreet. In fact, he’s so obvious, if anyone in the room were paying attention to us instead of filling their plates with food, they might start asking questions.
“Fine,” I answer, mostly focused on just shutting him up rather than asking him the most likely important questions of what going out entails. For all I know, he’s taking me to some illegal party in someone’s dorm.
Surprise dorm pizza is risky enough, let alone some party with mystery punch in the communal bathroom.
As fast as that thought comes in, I shove it right back out of my head, focusing on Ace instead. “I’ll go, but you have to stop talking about anything related to parties for the rest of the night.”
“You got it.” He pretends to lock his lips and throw away the key.
And I work to mentally prepare myself to let Ace Kelly take me to my last college party.
Pray for me.
“You want anything to drink, babe?” Finn asks Scottie, his voice just barely rising above the din of laughter and music and boozed-up college co-eds who litter the frat house Ace dragged us all to.
“Just a water,” Scottie says with a smile.
Finn presses a kiss to her forehead and meets my eyes for a brief moment.
“I’ll stay here,” I tell him, and he nods, clearly grateful, and pushes his way through a crowd of twerking girls to head toward the back of the house where the kitchen is located.
It’s taken me a long time to be able to pick up on social cues or unspoken words, but the quiet exchange with my technical half uncle makes me feel confident in the progress I’ve made. I still have a lot of work to do and I know I’ll never be perfect, but my evolution is certainly trending upward.
“Do you think I should be scared?” Scottie asks, and I look down to where she sits in her wheelchair, her eyes solely fixated on my face.
“Scared?” I question as I kneel down to get closer to her. “Of what exactly?”
“The surgery.”
Oh. The surgery. As in, Scottie has decided to move forward with the surgical and medical treatment plan my father wants to do. It’s a complicated surgery that involves nerve grafting, and the follow-up medication will require months of treatments.
“Are you scared?” I ask her, and she shrugs.
“Sometimes I am,” she answers and shrugs again. “And sometimes I’m excited for what this could all mean for me. But then, having that kind of excitement and knowing that nothing is a certainty scares me too. Would you be scared?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “It’s hard for me to place myself in your shoes and know exactly how I’d feel, but I think I’d probably be feeling like you are. A mix of lots of things.”
“Really?” she questions, her eyes going wide and a smile cresting her lips.
“You’re surprised by that?”
“Um, yeah.” She nods several times. “You’re Lexi Winslow. You’re, like, the strongest, most brilliant, powerful girl I know.”
My head jerks back at her words. “Well, thanks, I guess?”
“It’s definitely an accomplishment,” she adds and reaches out to touch my forearm. “I wish I had your poker face.”
My poker face. As in, my face that almost never shows emotion, even though, on the inside, I have plenty of emotions rolling through me. I know she also means that as a compliment, but it makes me feel this strange sense of vulnerability. Like I’m in the middle of one of those dreams where I forgot to put on clothes and I’m stuck in a public place.
Finn appears through the crowd, a bottle of water in one hand and a red Solo cup in another. He hands the bottle to Scottie. “People are fucking insane,” he mutters, and Scottie just laughs.
“Holy shit!” a boisterous voice exclaims, and I know without even turning around the culprit is the guy who dragged us here. Ace barrels into our little group, wraps his arm around Finn’s shoulders, and tugs him to his side. “Is Finnley Hayes enjoying an alcoholic beverage tonight?” he asks, looking down at Finn’s red Solo cup.
Finn rolls his eyes. “It’s Mountain Dew.”
“Fuck me.” Ace groans. “And I thought you weren’t going to be lame for once.”
“Stop being a dick, Acer.” Julia shoves Ace in the chest on a laugh. “You’re like one of those bullies on an afterschool special, trying to get everyone to drink his parents’ booze.”
Ace cracks up. “Damn, Jules. Don’t hold back.”
She just offers him a sweet smile, and he proceeds to let go of Finn’s shoulders and take hold of Julia’s, his arm comfortably wrapped around her. She rolls her eyes like she’s annoyed, but her body easily falls into place against his side. And I don’t miss the way Ace’s mouth morphs into this soft, gentle smile as he gazes down at her.
Ace is in love with Julia. It’s quite literally written all over his face. But Julia still appears oblivious to the way he’s looking at her or the way he always seems to find a way to touch her, hug her, hold her.
Ace starts to regale us with a story about how he and Julia got drunk off her dad’s favorite scotch when they were sophomores in high school, and since I’ve already heard this story, I let myself look around the room, taking in all the partygoers who are celebrating the start of another college year.
Some of the faces, I recognize as people who are in Double C, but most, I don’t know at all. I can imagine some of the kids here are a new generation of freshmen, just starting their college journey at Dickson.
But my gaze comes to a screeching halt when I spot the familiar strawberry-blond hair of a guy I’ve thought about way too often since I made the decision that we needed to move on from each other. Blake stands in the middle of a small group, his face etched into a smile as he chats with another guy I know is a running back on the football team. He has a bottle of water in his hand, and he’s dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt.
I can’t stop myself from wondering how everything is going for him. Wondering what football training has been like and if he thinks the team is ready for their first big game against Georgia next Saturday.
But all of my wondering stops abruptly when a girl with red hair and a flirty smile sidles up beside him and wraps her arm around his waist. He smiles down at her, and a shock of excruciating pain rolls through my chest so intensely that I look down to make sure a knife isn’t actually lodged in it.
The girl is laughing at something he says, and not once does he try to remove her arm from his waist. Is he with her?
Of course he’s with her. You told him to move on. So that’s what he’s doing…moving on.
Obviously, Blake is a popular guy on campus, and there’s a whole slew of girls who are desperate to have his attention. Moving on to someone new wouldn’t be a hard thing for him to achieve.
A rock of something I don’t understand forms at the base of my throat, and I swallow several times to try to clear it. But when my bottom lip starts to tremble and a sheen of tears coats my eyes, my vision goes hazy.
And I realize that all I want to do right now is cry.