Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mom knocks. I can sense the hesitation through the door as if she’s worried I won’t want to see her.
“Yes?”
“Can I come in?” she asks.
I don’t want to talk about last night. If anything, I want to pretend like it never happened. That way I can go back to being the daughter who never shares her feelings, and Mom can go back to pretending like everything's okay.
“What do you need? I’m kind of busy,” I say as I pause the show I’m watching.
“Anne just called and told me Caleb got accepted into Stanford. I was just curious if you’ve heard back from any of the colleges you applied to?”
He did? Why hasn’t he told me yet?
To be honest, I’ve been so distracted lately I haven’t checked my own submissions. “I haven’t heard back yet.”
Mom cracks the door open and peeks in. “Are you sure?”
I groan, standing to walk over to the laptop on my desk. I sit with a huff and log into my email. It’s flooded with spam, so I do a quick search at the top. Two emails filter through.
I catch my breath, and my fingers go numb. I can’t bring myself to click on them. What if I’m rejected? What if my one hope of getting out of here is lost?
Mom stands next to me. “What do they say?”
“I’m too scared to look,” I say.
“You’re smart and talented. There’s no way they’ll say no.” She puts her hand over mine and forces me to click on the first email. It’s for the college in New York.
I squeeze my eyes shut and hold my breath.
Mom begins to read, “I’m pleased to inform—” She squeals.
My eyes fly open, rereading the words to make sure I wasn’t hearing things. I cover my gaping mouth. She’s right. I got it in. I’m one step closer to getting away from here. One step closer to being able to breathe.
“Wait, let’s look at the other email,” she says, clicking on the second one.
It’s one of my backups, the college here. I don’t even care though. I’ve already been accepted to my first choice.
The email pops up.
Mom covers her mouth. “You’re accepted.” She quiets down. I can tell which college she wants me to pick. She wants the one closest to her—where I can live at home while going to school.
I shut the laptop and shoot her a timid smile. “I’m going to New York.”
“Don’t you want to think about it? There’s a lot of pros and cons to both.”
I shrug. “I don’t need to do that. I’ve already made up my mind.”
She shakes her apprehension away and smiles back. “My baby’s going to New York.”
I’m going to New York.
It’s what I’ve wanted for months. I should be jumping up and down. I should be bubbling up with joy. I should be happy. But something about this doesn’t feel right. There’s a small voice in the back of my head that’s second-guessing my choice.
My phone buzzes with a message from Caleb, and for some reason, my heart stings at the thought of him. More correctly, the thought of leaving him.
Since when did it matter if we were together or apart? We aren’t really dating, and even calling us friends is a stretch. I don’t know how to label us. Our relationship is messy and nontraditional. It doesn’t fit any one specific mold.
Still, my stomach flips.
How am I going to tell him about New York?
We’ve been driving for a while, and now we’re on the outskirts of the city where buildings are smaller and more run down.
“How much farther is it?” I ask, looking down at the headphones on my lap. He told me to bring them.
“We’re getting close,” he replies, flashing a smile in my direction.
I side-eye him, my lips pinching together to form a hard line.
After how much he helped me yesterday, I couldn’t say no when he asked me to go to his band’s practice today.
That doesn’t mean I’m excited to face a bunch of new people that will probably assume I’m a jerk based off my cold personality.
He pulls into a big empty parking lot and parks the car in the dead center of it.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re taking a detour.”
“Why?”
He leans over the console, closer to me.
I catch my breath, unable to move. I find myself fixating on his lashes, then his dimples, and then his smile. Why is he so close?
“Don’t kiss me,” I whisper.
“What?” He backs away, puzzled.
“I just mean . . . uh—”
“You thought that’s what I was trying to do? Man, Bec, what kind of guy do you think I am? Besides, if I tried that, it would scare you away for good.”
I burn red. “But you—I thought—why did you drive into the middle of a parking lot?”
He laughs. “I figured this would be the perfect place for you to try driving,” he says, hopping out of the car. He walks around to my door and tugs it open.
I scoot away. “No, I’m not driving.”
“Look, there’s no one else around,” he says, gesturing to either side of him. “I’m not always going to be able to drive you, you know.”
That’s true, but New York has subways . . .
“Why now?”
“Because the longer you put it off, the harder it’ll be to do it again.”
I chew my lip. “I don’t know.”
“I’m not going to move the car until you at least sit in the driver’s seat,” he says, leaning on the doorframe. “If you still don’t feel like driving, we’ll switch again. I promise.”
“I just have to sit there?”
“Yup.”
“What do I get if I do?”
“You get your chauffeur back.” He winks. “And I’ll buy you dinner on the way back. You can pick where.”
My stomach turns, but it isn’t as overwhelming as it usually is because the thought of Caleb sitting next to me calms my nerves. Instead of a torrential downpour, they’re a subtle storm.
“I can pick anything?”
“Anything.”
I gulp my fear down. “Okay.”
He steps away from the door, letting me stand. He takes my spot while I walk around to the other seat.
My feet don’t reach the pedals, and the seat is so low that the sun blinds me. I pull up on the button to raise the seat, which moves comically slow. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, I have to move it forward, which somehow takes twice as long.
“Any day now,” he says, laughing.
“Oh, be quiet. If you didn’t have stilts for legs, this would be done by now.”
“It’s not my fault you’re fun-sized.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not even that short.”
“Compared to me, you are,” he says.
“Everyone is short compared to you. Have you noticed the height difference between you and Sadie? It makes her look like a sardine.”
“She is a sardine. I’m surprised she can reach the pedals at all.”
I chuckle.
Sadie stands proudly at five feet, but if anyone asks her how tall she is, she’ll add an inch or two. I’ve always been the tall friend when it was just us, so this whole Caleb-is-way-taller-thing is really throwing me off.
I grip the steering wheel, focusing on the parking lot ahead. I wait half a moment. Then I turn to Caleb. “Okay, I did it. I sat in the chair.” I reach for the door handle.
“Hold your horses,” he says.
I cringe. “You said all I needed to do was sit in the chair.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to drive? Not even a little bit?”
“You don’t get it. It’s not like I don’t want to drive. I do. I hate relying on everyone else to take me places, but I can’t.”
“When was the last time you tried? Really tried.”
It’s been a while. I tried right after it happened, and the panic was so intense that I’ve avoided it ever since. The idea of driving has turned into a mountain so tall I don’t even want to attempt to climb it.
Caleb turns down the music so his voice is the only thing I hear. “When something’s hard for me, I try to work on it a little at a time. When I do that, it doesn’t seem so daunting.”
“I don’t know how to do that. Especially not with driving. It’s an all-or-nothing type of thing.”
He takes a deep breath, gazing into my eyes. He thinks for a moment, then nods. “Five feet.”
“What?”
His soft smile steadies me. “Just five-feet today, ten feet tomorrow.”
Five feet.
A small distance. So small I’d barely have to touch the gas pedal.
I bite my lip, closing my eyes as I lift my hands to the steering wheel again. My fingers wrap around it so tight that my knuckles go white. My heart speeds up at the thought of moving forward, but it doesn’t stop me from hovering my foot above the gas pedal.
“Whoa, wait a sec.”
“What?”
“I’d suggest opening your eyes,” he says.
I pry my eyes open. “Right.”
I take a deep breath and push my foot down. The car lurches forward, and I slam on the brakes with my elbows locking my arms straight in front of me. My curls bounce, falling into my face.
Caleb thrusts his hand out to stop himself from colliding into the dash. “You took the five feet suggestion very seriously.”
Heat rises to my face, and blood pumps through my body like lightning. “Yes, yes I did.”
He chuckles. “Do you want to switch now?”
I nod stiffly. My eyes are still forward, and my arms are still stretched out, keeping me as far from the steering wheel as possible.
“Are you going to get out?”
“Yes.”
“Then you might need to move your arms,” he half laughs.
I have to force my arms to relax, bending them as if they were made out of steel pipe. I turn to him slowly—only just now processing what I did. A smile cracks across my face. “I drove.”
His grin is huge. “You did.”
“This is Jimmy’s house,” he says as we walk through the front door. There’s soft music coming up through the floorboards.
“Shouldn’t we knock and wait?”
Caleb shakes his head and slips off his shoes. “They wouldn’t hear us. It’s fine, I promise.”
I follow Caleb through the hallway toward the stairs leading to the basement. As we descend, the music grows louder. There’s a glow of orange light that seeps up the stairs. With each step, the light becomes brighter.
I’m tempted to put my headphones on now to muffle the sound, but I wait, knowing I’m going to have to introduce myself. As soon as Caleb’s foot hits the ground, the music stops, and a guy comes running up to him from across the room.
“Hey man!” he says, wrapping one arm around Caleb’s neck, forcing his head down enough to mess up Caleb’s hair.
Caleb elbows the guy. “So, this is Jimmy.”
Jimmy lets him go and straightens, wide-eyed, looking directly at me. “Since when do you bring girls to practice?”
“I didn’t bring girls,” he says with a laugh. “I brought a girl.”
I wave. “Hi, I’m Becca.”
Jimmy’s mouth drops open, and he turns to Caleb. “Becca? Like the Becca?”
Caleb nods, and his cheeks turn pink.
Jimmy shoots a glance over his shoulder toward the other boy sitting across the room at the drums. “Caleb brought Becca. The Becca.” He says it like I’m famous.
“Chill, man,” Caleb says.
Jimmy covers his mouth, but I can still hear him clear as day. “You didn’t tell me you scored your dream girl.”
“We’re just friends,” Caleb says.
“Well, in that case,” Jimmy says, taking a step toward me. “Let me properly introduce myself.”
Caleb blocks him. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
Jimmy spins on his heels. “Jokes,” he says, walking away.
“That’s what I thought,” Caleb says.
I step closer to Caleb, chewing my bottom lip to keep myself from smiling.
“So as you know, that was Jimmy. Over there in the back, that’s Sean. Sean, say hi,” Caleb says.
Sean waves.
I wave back.
“I thought you were the drummer,” I whisper.
“I mess around with them at home. They’re a good stress reliever, but I usually play guitar and sing with these guys.”
My toes curl as excitement flows through me.
I’m going to hear his voice again.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Caleb says, pointing at the sofa pushed into the opposite corner from the instruments. “We take breaks a lot, but if it’s ever too much, just tell me. I won’t be mad if we have to leave early.”
“Sounds good,” I say.
I sit as he gives Sean a high five before picking up his guitar. He brings the strap over his head, letting the guitar rest on his shoulders. His eyes meet mine, catching me staring at him, and he smiles.
My gaze drops to the floor momentarily, but at soon as he strums the first chord, I’m hooked. He’s about to play, and I can’t look away. I’m mesmerized. By him. His voice. The way his bangs sway to the music. By the way he’s consumed by the melody.
Every time he steals a glance in my direction, my heart speeds up. I find myself wishing he was sitting next to me.
I want him closer.