21. Lucy #2
“No.” My voice came out thin. “No, I—”
Arlo crossed the room and handed me the envelope. The paper was heavier than I expected. Warm from his hand. Real. My name sat in the center like it belonged there, like some version of me had already left this room and made it all the way to Boston.
Dad appeared behind Arlo in the hall. He must have seen my face because he stopped immediately.
The silence stretched long enough for the house to settle around it. Sunlight through my window. The faint smell of hairspray. The curling iron clicking as it cooled on the vanity. Naomi’s hand around mine. My prom dress waiting in a green shimmer over the chair.
I looked down at the envelope and pressed my thumb over the seal.
Dad’s voice was quiet. “Sweetheart, you don’t have to open it right now.”
Arlo leaned one shoulder against the doorframe. “For the record, if they said no, I can have a strongly worded letter drafted by dinner.”
“You cannot threaten an admissions office.”
Dad’s mouth twitched, but his eyes stayed on me.
I slid one finger beneath the flap. The paper tore softly. My hands were shaking now. There was no controlling it. No hiding it. The envelope opened too slowly and too quickly at once, and when I pulled the folded letter free, the Aldenmere crest gleamed at the top in navy and gold.
For a moment, the words refused to become language.
“Dear Lucy Thomas,” I began, reading out loud.
“Thank you for—” My eyes skipped ahead. “We are pleased—” Everything inside me stopped.
Then kickstarted again so quickly it hurt.
“We are pleased to offer you admission to Aldenmere University’s incoming class,” I choked out.
My knees went weak, and tears blurred the page in my hands.
I made a sound I did not recognize. “I got in.”
Naomi screamed first. A full, sharp, delighted sound that made Dad jolt and Arlo clap both hands over his ears. “I knew it!” Naomi shouted, then grabbed me so hard the letter crumpled between us. “I knew it. I knew it. I knew it.”
“I got in,” I whispered, disbelief at my own statement whisking away. “Holy crap.”
Naomi held me tighter, laughing into my hair while I tried to breathe around the impossible size of it.
Joy opened inside me so quickly there was no containing it.
It filled my throat and my lungs and the backs of my eyes.
It made the walls of my room look brighter.
Made the afternoon feel sharper. Made every tiny ordinary thing suddenly part of the moment.
The perfume bottle on my dresser. The half-empty package of makeup wipes.
The green dress waiting in the corner. Arlo’s stunned smile. Dad’s hand covering his mouth.
I had done it.
I had wanted something impossibly far away, and it had wanted me back.
Then, just as fast, fear slipped beneath the joy.
Boston. Not St. Croix.
Not a weekend drive.
Not close enough for a casual Wednesday dinner or a quick game after class or Ty showing up outside my dorm with a grin and bad parking and some ridiculous excuse about needing to see me.
My fingers tightened around the letter.
Naomi pulled back enough to look at my face, and her smile softened around the edges. “Hey,” she said quietly. “No. Not yet.”
I swallowed. “What?”
“No future panic during victory hour.”
“I’m not panicking.”
Dad crossed the room then. He moved carefully, like I might startle if he came too quickly. When he reached me, he looked down at the letter in my hand, then at my face.
For one second, he was not the owner of anything. Not Ezra Thomas, former player, executive, man whose name changed the temperature in arenas.
He was just my dad. His eyes were wet. “Oh, sweetheart,” he said. Then he pulled me into his arms.
I closed my eyes as his hand cupped the back of my head. He smelled like cedar soap and coffee. His dress shirt was crisp against my cheek. He held me tighter than usual, tighter than he had in months, and something inside me cracked open with relief so intense it almost hurt.
“I’m proud of you,” he whispered into my hair.
My face crumpled. I tried not to let it. I failed.
Dad did not mention my mother. Neither did I. But her absence sat in the room with us anyway, quiet and shaped like the place where another pair of arms should have been.
Arlo cleared his throat loudly. When I looked over, he was blinking too much.
“Are you crying?” I asked.
“No,” he scoffed, throwing his arms across his chest in a perfect teenaged-boy tantrum.
Dad released me slowly, then touched the corner of the letter as if he needed proof too. “Aldenmere.”
I nodded.
His smile came slowly, proud and sad and trying not to be sad at all. “Boston.”
“Near Boston,” I corrected automatically.
“Right.” His voice was warm. “Near Boston.”
Naomi clapped her hands once. “Wonderful. Emotional milestone complete. Now we have fifteen minutes to get you into that dress before Ty Burns arrives and your father starts photographing everyone from fourteen angles.”
Dad frowned. “I am not that bad.”
“You bought a tripod,” Arlo pointed out with a giggle.
Dad’s posture stiffened with dignity. “Prom is important.”
My chest squeezed so hard I had to look down at the letter again.
Prom was important. Aldenmere was important. Ty was important.
Everything was important all at once, and I had no idea how to hold all of it without dropping something.
Naomi took the letter from me carefully and set it on my desk, smoothing the crumpled edge with her palm. “Dress,” she demanded.
The next fifteen minutes dissolved into fabric, laughter, and crisis.
My dress tried to murder me twice. Naomi insisted the zipper had “personal issues.” Arlo shouted through the closed door that if anyone needed help, he was emotionally unavailable but mechanically useful.
I told him to go away. Dad asked from the hallway whether we needed anything.
Naomi told him we needed a government-level investigation into formalwear sizing.
Dad went quiet long enough that I suspected he had taken her seriously.
Finally, the zipper slid into place. The dress settled around me. Naomi stepped back. Her expression changed.
“What?” I asked, immediately reaching toward my hair.
“No.” Her voice went soft. “Don’t touch anything.”
I turned toward the mirror. For a second, I did not recognize myself.
The green made my hair look darker, warmer where the curls had been pinned half up and left loose around my shoulders.
The bodice fit closely, delicate embroidery sweeping across my chest before the chiffon skirt fell in soft layers around my legs.
I looked taller somehow. Softer. Like the version of myself I usually only imagined in the pages of old books and quiet daydreams.
Not Ezra Thomas’s daughter.
Not the girl whose mother left.
Not the girl waiting for someone to decide whether she was worth staying for.
Just Lucy.
Naomi came to stand beside me in the mirror, pink and floral and glowing. “We look disgusting.”
I laughed, wiping carefully beneath one eye before I could ruin anything. “Tragic.”
“People will suffer.”
“Mostly from your shoes.”
“My shoes are adorable.”
“They are bright pink.”
The doorbell rang again. Every nerve in my body went bright.
Naomi’s grin spread slowly. “I am thinking that your boyfriend is about to experience a medical event.”
“He is not.”
From downstairs, Arlo called, “Burns is here.” There was a pause. Then Arlo added, “Unfortunately.”
Ty’s voice floated up the stairs. “Missed you too, Thomas.”
My mouth curved before I could stop it.
Naomi made a small pleased sound. “That smile is embarrassing.”
“It is a normal smile.”
“It is a my-boyfriend-is-downstairs smile.”
I tried to smooth the front of my dress even though nothing needed smoothing. My palms were damp. My pulse had moved into my throat again, but differently this time.
Naomi stepped in front of me and placed both hands on my shoulders. “Breathe.”
“I’m breathing.”
“Good.” She squeezed once. “You look beautiful. He is going to be ridiculous about it.”
Dad stood at the bottom of the stairs with his camera already in hand.
Arlo leaned against the wall beside him, arms crossed, expression arranged into something deeply unimpressed.
Ty stood in the entryway beneath the soft light from the chandelier, one hand tucked into the pocket of a gray plaid suit that should have looked absurd.
On Ty, it was devastatingly perfect. The suit fit him almost unfairly well.
The jacket pulled across his shoulders, the pattern subtle but bold enough to be entirely Ty.
His shirt was buttoned all the way to the collar, no tie, because of course he had found the line between formal and trouble and planted himself directly on it.
His blond hair was neater than usual, though one piece had already fallen forward like it had rebelled on principle.
He looked older and eighteen at the same time.
Handsome in a way that made my steps slow without permission.
When he saw me, Ty went completely still. His mouth parted slightly. He forgot, as far as I could tell, how to operate his face.
Heat rose up my neck and into my cheeks.
Arlo looked between us, then sighed. “I hate this.”
Dad took a picture. The flash startled all of us.
“Dad.”
“It’s called candid.”
Naomi came down behind me and stopped on the last stair. “Medical event,” she whispered.
I elbowed her gently without looking away from him.
Ty blinked once. Then again. His gaze moved over me with such open, helpless wonder that my entire body seemed to forget it was supposed to be guarded. “Shortcake,” he said finally.
My heart turned over.
“That is not a sentence,” Arlo said.
Ty ignored him. “You look…” He stopped.
I swallowed, suddenly aware of every inch of the dress, every curl brushing my bare shoulders, every place his eyes landed and softened.
“You look really nice too,” I managed.
Naomi made a sound suspiciously close to a snort.
Ty’s mouth curved then, slow and dazed. “Really nice?”