Chapter 12
ONCE I STOPPED GOING TO JUNIPER, I STOPPED SEEING RORY.
IT was exactly as I feared. The club was the thread that held us together.
I had a difficult time thinking about what everyone thought of me at the golf club after it all went up in flames.
The idea of the people I loved laughing at me absolutely terrified me, and facing the shame that I had placed on myself felt insurmountable.
I was scared to call Rory, and eventually, too much time had passed.
It didn’t matter anyway; it’s not like he called me.
Hannah stopped going to the club, too, and with me and Hannah not there, Kara was out. Any conversation involving Rory or Juniper had become off-limits. I declared that shoving my head in the sand was my only line of defense and my only chance at self-preservation.
I grew up a lot in two years. I even had a boyfriend named Matt. He was nice and sweet, and my parents liked him. It was with Matt that I lost my virginity, in my twin-size bed during one of my sister’s house parties.
I was forced to choose between swimming and acting, and I decided to dedicate myself to the latter.
Without hours at Juniper distracting me, I was reconnecting with that little girl who believed in big dreams and had made up her mind about herself a long time ago.
My only problem was that no one else believed in my dreams, and it had started to feel like I couldn’t get an audition if my life depended on it.
I would spend hours staring at the course descriptions for UCLA and daydreaming about what it would be like to sit in a lecture hall for Introduction to Musical Literacy for Singing Actors.
I wrote three different personal essays to apply to the school, but leaving the shadow of Vancouver’s mountains wasn’t something my friends were doing.
So I kept my dreams close and told myself, “Maybe not today, but one day.”
Matt and I were very different. He wanted a beautiful, uncomplicated life.
He wanted to go to school, get a job, get married, have kids, get a cabin, retire early, have grandkids, and .
. . I guess die? The life Matt wanted sounded ideal, and I wished I wanted it, too.
I just wasn’t built that way. My parents worried I would spend my life chasing dragons.
I guess I had always hoped that I would find someone who, instead of telling me that the dragon was a fairy tale, or asking me to slow down, or change directions, or stop altogether, would throw me a sword and fight by my side.
Matt was watching TV in the living room with a bowl of popcorn in his lap and my mom sitting next to him when the phone call came through the house’s landline. No one called the landline except my dad, and even then, the ring startled us all.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Hi. Is Ellie there?” Rory’s voice rocked through me, knocking me on my ass. It was deeper, but I knew it was him. I quickly walked into my dad’s office, sat in his swivel chair, and turned my back on Matt and my mom.
“This is Ellie,” I said, my eyes wide. I focused on a framed photo of me, Hannah, and my dad at Juniper from when I was twelve. My sister had a hole in one that day, and we celebrated with hamburgers and milkshakes.
Rory waited an agonizing few seconds before speaking again. “Hey, it’s Rory.”
“Hey.” I pitched my voice up, trying to sound casual.
“Hi,” he said again. I kept my mouth shut, so he continued. “How are you?”
“Ummm . . .”
After two years? How do I answer this?
“Good. How are you?”
“Good.” He laughed nervously. I released an ocean’s worth of tension with my exhale, joining him in the awkwardness.
“Hi, Cainey!” I heard Blair call from the background and started to tear up. He was twenty-one now. So much time had passed. I wasn’t going to be able to get through this call. I heard Rory shut the door to whatever room he was in.
“Sorry,” he said. “Umm . . . so, I know this is unexpected, and it’s been a long time.
But ummm . . . Okay, here we go.” Rory struggled to find the words, and then finally, they all strung together.
“My prom is coming up, and there has never been anyone in my life who’s meant as much to me as you, so I was wondering if you’d go with me? ”
I was speechless. My mouth dropped so far open that my jaw may as well have fallen off its hinges. Two years had come and gone. Two. Years. I hadn’t known my heart had been sitting dormant, waiting for him to wake me up again, but here we were. I was awake.
“I heard you have a boyfriend, so just friends and all that, but what do you think?” Rory pressed on through my silence. I could hear his voice waver through his nerves.
I spun around in my chair slowly, like I was moving in molasses, and looked over my shoulder to see Matt zoned out on the TV. My eyes plummeted to the ground. All my blood rushed to my head. “Of course,” I whispered with my eyes closed. “Yes, I’ll go with you.”
“Okay.” I could hear the relief in his voice. “Great. We’ll just stay in touch to figure it all out. But yeah. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome? Thank you?”
Ellie, don’t you dare start crying.
“Alright, I’ll talk to you later, Cainey,” Rory said quietly.
I hung up the phone, and I saw stars.
“Who was that?” Matt called out, and I fell into a black hole.
Rory pulled into my parents’ driveway to pick me up in his new-to-him, old-to-everyone-else Jeep Cherokee.
Hannah, my mom, and I were hiding beneath my sister’s bedroom bay window, secretly watching Rory step out of his Jeep.
When he got out of the truck in his fitted black suit, crisp white shirt, thin dark-gray wool tie, and Ray-Ban sunglasses, I almost threw up.
He pushed his hand into his loose curls, which were styled and off his forehead.
“Oh . . . Yikes. Has he always been that pretty?” Hannah asked.
“Yup.” I gulped.
Utter delight penetrated Hannah’s stare as she grinned at me like a lunatic. “This isn’t good.” She giggled like a goddamn monster.
“It’s going to be fine. Don’t scare your sister.” My mom rubbed the back of my cream-colored, lacy, but structured dress, which I was starting to worry looked a lot like a wedding dress.
“I wonder what Blair looks like these days,” Hannah mused, just as Rory looked up to the window we were peeking out from. The three of us dropped to the floor with a thud.
“Oh, Jesus. Did he see us?!” my mom said in a harsh whisper.
“I don’t know. I have to crawl now. This is a nightmare.” I slumped. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”
“Don’t barf. Get it together.” Hannah crawled toward me and kissed me on the head. “Have fun.” Her devilishness was disturbing. “We’re going to be right here waiting for you when you get back, and you better remember every last detail. It’s Rory, Ellie! Rory! This is huge!”
“Stop it!” I hissed. “I have a boyfriend.”
“I know, you stupid idiot.” My sister shook her head at me.
“No licky-dicky.” My mom smiled, looking exactly like my sister.
I contorted my face. “I. Have. A. Boyfriend!” I growled, refusing to admit that I was reminding myself of that fact just as much as I was reminding my sister and mom.
“IT’S. RORY!” my sister exclaimed through gritted teeth.
What is wrong with these people?!
I awkwardly crawled out of the bedroom in my fancy dress on my hands and knees so Rory wouldn’t know we had all been spying on him.
I opened the door to Rory, and the air was sucked out of my lungs.
He looked at me standing in the doorway and appeared stunned for a moment, frozen in place.
I must have looked different to him. I didn’t have my hair in a ponytail.
It was in loose waves down my back. It was also longer and darker than he was used to, making my blue eyes stand out a little more.
I wasn’t wearing a polo or the khaki pants that he had seen me in for all those years, and he had never seen me dressed up before.
Not really. My lips were red, and my closed-mouth smile was instant.
Rory pushed his sunglasses back into his hair like a headband.
He looked like he couldn’t form thoughts, so I formed mine instead.
“I made you a boutonniere.” I reached over to the side table by the front door and pulled out a little box.
I lifted out the boutonniere that I had made the day before.
It was small, natural, and green. It had two sprigs of eucalyptus, a pop of baby’s breath, and was wrapped in twine.
He still hadn’t said anything when I pulled it out of the box and got the pin.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m just assuming. Do you even want this? ”
“Yes,” he said quietly.
Hearing his deep, grounded voice, even though it was still barely a whisper, made my hands tremble. I pinned the boutonniere to his lapel and pressed it down afterward. My eyes flicked up to his.
“You made this for me?” he asked, not looking away from me.
I nodded. “Yeah, it just . . . I wanted, umm . . . They just reminded me of you, or of . . . you know, what I used to know and all that,” I breathed.
That was weird. I shouldn’t have done that.
He cleared his throat and gave himself a couple of seconds before saying, “I didn’t get you a corsage, but I did get you this.
” He pulled out a delicate rose gold bracelet.
“Can I?” he asked. I had to center myself before holding out my hand to him.
He barely touched me as he clasped the bracelet together. “I hope this isn’t weird.”
A smile spread across my face. “It’s not weird. I was worried the boutonniere was weird.”
He relaxed. “It’s not weird.”
He carefully watched me wrap my hand around my bracelet, fiddling nervously. “Come on, Cainey. Let’s go.” He tilted his head, calling me away from the front door, then thrust his hands deep into his pockets. He spun around toward the Jeep.
Just as I went to close the front door, my sister screamed from upstairs, “BYE, RORY!”
Without turning around, he tossed his head back and laughed.
“Wow. I’m sorry.” I was burning bright red.