Chapter 29
RYAN
“You okay over there?” Oliver asks, glancing at me as he pulls out of the dorm parking lot. “You’re gripping that door handle as if it owes you money.”
I force my fingers to relax. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. This is Oliver. Oliver, who held my hand under the stars. Oliver, who kissed me on a Ferris wheel. Oliver, who apparently spent yesterday making sandwiches for a picnic because he wanted to do something nice for me.
I still can’t quite believe this is my life.
The afternoon sun cuts through the windshield. Oliver’s hands are steady on the wheel, his forearms tan and muscular. I catch myself staring and quickly look away, focusing on the dashboard instead.
“Hey,” Oliver says, reaching for the radio. “I’ve got something for you.”
He fiddles with the dial, bypassing pop stations and rock stations until finally landing on a frequency that crackles with static before resolving into crystal clarity. The Andrews Sisters pour through the speakers, their harmonies tight and bright, singing about boogie-woogie bugle boys.
“Oh,” I breathe, unable to stop the smile that spreads across my face. “You found an oldies station.”
“Figured you’d appreciate it.” Oliver’s voice is casual, but the corner of his mouth quirks up just enough that a dimple appears. His eyes flick toward me for a split second before returning to the road. “I remember you mentioned liking this stuff. At the diner, and before that too.”
The fact that he remembered, that he paid attention, that he cared enough to seek out a station that plays music from seven decades ago because I enjoy it, is nothing short of wonderful. “Thank you. That’s really thoughtful.”
“Yeah, well.” Oliver shrugs, but his ears have gone slightly pink. “Couldn’t have you suffering through whatever top forty garbage is playing these days.”
“You sound like an old man.”
“I’m channeling your energy. Is it working?”
“Disturbingly well.”
The music fills the space between us. The Andrews Sisters give way to Glenn Miller, trumpets swelling and making me think of dance halls and victory gardens. A world I’ve only ever experienced through records and stories.
“Can I ask you something?” Oliver says as we turn onto the main road.
“You just did.”
“Smartass.” But he’s smiling. “I mean a real question. About the music.”
“Go ahead.”
“What got you into this stuff? Most people our age probably can’t name a single song from before the eighties.”
His question shouldn’t make my throat tighten.
It’s simple, innocent, the kind of getting-to-know-you inquiry that normal people handle without emotional crisis.
But the answer leads back to the same place everything leads back to, and I’m not sure I can talk about her right now without falling apart.
Then again, I already told Oliver about Mom on the astronomy tower. He held my hand while I shared her dreams of space, her constellation lessons. If anyone can handle this, it’s him.
“My mother,” I say, and my voice only wavers a little. “She’s the one who introduced me to it. Her parents, my grandparents, were peak fifties people. Sock hops and soda fountains and all that. Mom used to say she was raised on a steady diet of Buddy Holly and Patsy Cline.”
The memory surfaces unbidden: Mom in the kitchen of whatever base housing we were occupying that month, a portable radio perched on the counter, her hips swaying as she stirred something on the stove.
She’d grab my hands and twirl me around, laughing when I stumbled, teaching me steps I was too young and too clumsy to master.
“She played this music constantly,” I continue. “In the car, in the house, while she cooked dinner or folded laundry. She said it reminded her of a simpler time. Before the world got so complicated.”
“That makes sense.”
“I think…” I pause, choosing my words carefully. “I think she felt out of place in the modern world. She was old-fashioned in many ways. Very proper, very polite. She believed in handwritten thank-you notes and holding doors and addressing people as sir and ma’am.”
Oliver’s lips twitch. “That explains a lot about you.”
“I know. I’m aware I come off as a time-traveler from the past.” I smooth my hands over my khaki shorts, suddenly self-conscious. “Jackson calls it my ‘vintage aesthetic.’ I prefer to think of it as honoring her memory.”
“I think it’s charming.”
My face heats, and I turn to look out the window, watching the trees blur past. “Anyway, the music became a connection to her. After she passed, I couldn’t stop listening to it. Every song was a piece of her I could still hold on to.”
Oliver’s hand leaves the steering wheel and finds mine, where it rests on my thigh. His fingers curl around my knuckles, and he squeezes once before returning them to the steering wheel.
“Thank you for telling me that,” he says quietly.
“Thank you for asking.”
The station transitions to a new song, and I recognize the opening bars immediately—the gentle guitar strum, the lilting melody that builds into something both jaunty and wistful.
“Oh,” I say, sitting up straighter. “Mom loved this one.”
It’s “Waltzing Matilda” by Jimmie Rodgers. It’s an Australian folk song about a wandering swagman and his jolly jumbuck, a song that makes absolutely no sense unless you know the Australian slang, which Mom painstakingly explained to me when I was six.
The melody washes over me, and before I can stop myself, before I can remember to be self-conscious, I’m singing along.
The words flow out of me automatically, muscle memory encoded deep in my bones from a thousand repetitions. I know every syllable, every rise and fall of the melody. My voice isn’t remarkable—I’ve never claimed to be a singer—but it’s in tune, and it carries the emotion that the song demands.
I’m halfway through the second verse when I realize Oliver has gone very quiet. I glance over, expecting to find him focused on the road, maybe mildly tolerating my impromptu performance.
He’s watching me.
Not glancing. Watching. His green eyes are fixed on my face with an intensity that makes my voice falter. A flush creeps up his neck, and his grip on the steering wheel has tightened. “Sorry. I—you have a really nice voice.”
“It’s nothing special.”
“Ryan.” His voice is firm. “It’s special. You’re special.”
The declaration is too sincere to deflect with self-deprecation.
“You should watch the road,” I say weakly.
“Probably. Keep singing if you want. I’ll try to maintain vehicular control.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“Best I can offer.”
I hesitate, then pick up the song where I left off. Oliver’s smile widens, and he reaches over to turn up the volume a little, letting Jimmie Rodgers’s voice blend with mine.
The park is nothing but waning light, green shrubbery, and dappled shadows.
It’s the kind of scene that makes you believe the universe occasionally gets things right.
Oliver pulls the Jeep into a gravel lot bordered by ancient oaks, their branches heavy with summer leaves that rustle in the warm breeze.
“This is it,” he says, cutting the engine. “Best spot on campus. Well, near campus. Close enough.”
I step out onto the gravel, and the crunch beneath my loafers is oddly satisfying.
The air smells different here—cleaner, greener, tinged with the sweet decay of fallen leaves and the distant perfume of wildflowers.
Somewhere nearby, a creek babbles over stones, providing a gentle soundtrack to the evening.
Oliver retrieves a wicker picnic basket from the back seat along with a plaid blanket that’s seen better days but looks impossibly soft.
“You really went all out,” I observe.
“Go big or go home.” He grins, slinging the blanket over his shoulder.
We walk along a dirt path that winds through the trees, stepping over exposed roots and ducking under low-hanging branches. The sunlight filters through the canopy in scattered beams, and I swear this has to be a dream. It’s too perfect. Too…right.
Oliver leads us to a clearing I’ve never seen before, though I’ve walked through this park dozens of times when I first started at BSU.
It’s tucked away from the main trails, bordered by purple coneflowers and black-eyed Susans nodding in the breeze.
There’s a perfect view of the western sky where the sun is beginning its descent.
“How did you find this place?” I ask as he spreads the blanket over the grass.
“Alex, actually. He and Kyle come here sometimes.” Oliver smooths out the corners, then settles onto the fabric.
I lower myself onto the blanket beside him, close enough that our shoulders almost touch. Around us, crickets begin their evening symphony.
Oliver opens the basket and begins laying out the spread. Sandwiches wrapped in parchment paper, a container of sliced fruit, cheese cubes, and two bottles of sparkling water.
“This looks amazing.” The sandwiches are neatly assembled, the bread is fresh, and the layers are visible through the parchment. “Did you really make all of this yourself?”
“I did.” Oliver hands me a sandwich—turkey and Swiss, with lettuce and tomato, and what looks like fancy mustard. “Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I’m not surprised. I’m impressed.” I unwrap the parchment carefully, treating it like the gift it is. “Most of the hockey players I know subsist on protein shakes and whatever Gerard hasn’t eaten first.”
Oliver laughs boisterously. “Fair point. But I actually like cooking. It’s relaxing.”
“Really?” I take a bite of the sandwich, and the flavors hit me all at once—the savory turkey, the sharp cheese, the bright pop of mustard. It’s simple but perfect. “This is delicious, by the way.”
“Thanks.” There’s a pleased flush creeping up his neck again. “I took a cooking class in high school. Elective credit, mostly because I thought it’d be an easy A. But I ended up loving it.”
“What did you love about it?”
Oliver considers the question, chewing thoughtfully on his own sandwich.
“The exactness, I think. Following a recipe, measuring ingredients, knowing that if you do everything right, you’ll get something good at the end.
” He shrugs, but there’s something vulnerable in the gesture.
“Hockey’s like that, too, in a way. Practice, repetition, execution.
But cooking has immediate results. You can eat your success. ”
“Or your failure.”
“True. I’ve had some spectacular failures. There was a soufflé incident sophomore year that we don’t talk about.”
“Now I need to hear about the soufflé incident.”
“Absolutely not. Some trauma is too fresh.”
I smile, taking another bite of my sandwich. The breeze picks up, carrying pleasing scents, and I let myself sink into the moment. This is nice. No, this is more than nice. This is everything I didn’t know I was missing.
“So if hockey doesn’t work out,” I venture, “do you have a backup plan?”
A shadow crosses Oliver’s face, his smile faltering for a heartbeat before steadying itself again. “Yeah. I mean, sports management is the official plan. But if all else fails, at least I can feed myself. Maybe open a little café somewhere. Nothing fancy. Just good food and good coffee.”
“Oliver’s Eatery,” I suggest. “Or Jacoby’s Joint.”
He chokes on his sandwich. “Please never say ‘Jacoby’s Joint’ again.”
“The Hungry Hockey Player?”
“That’s so much worse.”
“I’m trying to help.”
“You’re really not.”
We finish our sandwiches between bouts of terrible restaurant name suggestions, working our way through the fruit and cheese as the sky deepens from orange to rose to violet. The first fireflies emerge from the grass around us, blinking silent signals in the gathering dusk.
Oliver lies back on the blanket, folding his arms behind his head. After a moment’s hesitation, I do the same, positioning myself beside him so that our bodies brush with every breath. Soon, the last traces of sunset bleed into the horizon.
“This is nice,” he says softly.
“It is.”
“I could stay here forever.”
“The mosquitoes might have something to say about that.”
“Way to kill the mood, Abrams.”
Somewhere in the trees, an owl calls out, low and mournful, and another answers from across the park. Oliver’s hand brushes against mine, tentative and questioning. I turn my palm upward, and his fingers thread through in a move we both know by heart.
“There,” I whisper, pointing with my free hand. “First star.”
It hangs low in the western sky, bright and unwavering—Venus, technically a planet, but tradition is tradition.
“Make a wish,” I tell him.
The blanket rustles as Oliver shifts beside me, his profile silhouetted against the darkening sky. His eyes find mine, reflecting the starlight. “What if I already have everything I want?”
My heart threatens to explode from my chest. “Then wish for it to last.”
He’s quiet for a moment, his thumb tracing circles on the back of my hand. Then he closes his eyes, and I watch his lips move silently, forming words I’ll never hear.
I close my eyes and make my wish too.
I wish that this thing with Oliver—whatever it is, whatever it’s becoming—isn’t fleeting.
I wish that it’s real and lasting, the kind of thing that survives beyond summer nights and Ferris wheel kisses and picnics in hidden clearings.
I wish that when the final school year ends, and we’re both standing on the precipice of whatever comes next, he’ll still be beside me. That I’ll still be beside him.
I wish, for the first time in my life, not to be left behind.
When I open my eyes, Oliver is watching me again. The stars have multiplied above us, scattered across the velvet dark like diamonds.
“What did you wish for?” he asks.
“Can’t tell you. It won’t come true.”
“That’s a cop-out.”
“That’s the rule.”
A laugh escapes him, barely more than a vibration I feel as he moves nearer, the length of his body finding mine in the growing darkness. “Ryan?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m really glad you said yes to this.”
I think about all the times I’ve said no. All the years I spent building walls, keeping people at arm’s length, convincing myself that distance was the same as safety. I think about how close I came to missing this—missing him—because I was too afraid.
“Me too,” I say. “I’m really glad I said yes.”