“It is.” I smile. “I actually have a few to look up tonight. I should get back to it.” I’m not hungry anymore, so I get up, put the bowl in the sink, and kiss my mom on the top of her head to let her know I didn’t take what she said personally.
She smiles relief and rubs a hand on my back. “Don’t let this project take over everything else. Your number one priority right now should be your speech. It’s coming along?” I nod and she pats me on the back. “Good. I can’t wait to read it when you’re ready. I love you, Parker.”
“Love you too, Mom.” I give her shoulder an extra squeeze, then leave her at the table with her sales figures, cabernet, and all the things she would have done differently.
Upstairs in my room I bring my mind back to the day’s adventure and the feeling of freedom that came along with doing something risky. Ditching class is not a big deal to probably 99 percent of people. It was a little thing, deciding to do it. But it felt big at the same time, and between that and what my mom just said, I’ve got this tiny pang of regret when I think of how much I have probably missed out on in the last few years because I was too scared to take a risk, or too shy to speak up, or too worried to be bold. It is my one wild and precious life, after all.
And Shane and Julianna are proof that it could end at any moment. I know it was silly to go looking for their initials today, and I didn’t really expect to find them, but I wanted to see them, not just read about them. I wanted proof that Shane and Julianna had been there, together and in love from the start. It doesn’t matter that I know how it ends. My favorite part of any love story is the beginning. Like Romeo convincing Juliet to kiss him, a perfect stranger, at the ball. Or Noah climbing up the Ferris wheel to ask Allie out in The Notebook. Beginnings are magical.
And in books and movies they’re magical in a way real life never is. So for the third night in a row, I don’t do what I should. I don’t sit down at my desk and start my speech. Instead, I open the window to let the cool night air in, light my candles, and get Julianna’s journal out.
May 24
“One often meets her destiny on the road
she takes to avoid it.”
—Fortune cookie wisdom
It’s such a tiny thing, a glance. That half second when eyes meet, lock, and before you can look away, there’s something. A spark, a flash, I don’t know what to call it. But it happened tonight when I walked through Shane’s front door and into the party he wasn’t supposed to be throwing. The usual mix of people from school and workers from the mountain filled all three floors of his house, but I saw someone new right away, standing alone in the middle of them all. He was tall, with wavy brown hair and eyes that stopped mine and held them there in the middle of a sea of familiar faces and shifting glances. And it was there. A pull, like gravity.
I looked away, and before I could look back, Shane was stumbling over to me in full life-of-the-party mode, beyond drunk and already apologizing for inviting half the town over when it was supposed to be just the two of us. And that’s when it happened again, right over his shoulder, and for a second I lost what he was saying to me in the space between the unfamiliar brown eyes across the room and my own. And then they looked away again. And I was back.
Back to Shane’s apologies and back to being disappointed because the night wasn’t what I expected and I knew how it would go from there. He would drink more, talk louder, make jokes, and everyone would love it but me. I didn’t say much, which only made him apologize more. Beg me to stay. Pull me in close, slide a hand around my waist, and kiss me with a mouth that tasted like beer and pot. And all of a sudden, I was done.
“Why do you want me to stay so bad?” I asked. “You have a whole houseful of people here to adore you.”
“For later. When they’re all gone.” He winked, and tried to kiss me again, but I stepped back. If I’d been as drunk as he was, maybe I would’ve kissed him back, but I spun around to leave right then.
He caught my wrist, face pleading. “Wait, wait. I’m sorry. That was a joke. It was an asshole thing to say. I’m sorry. Just stay . . . please?”
I don’t know why I didn’t leave. I wanted to. I probably should’ve. But I didn’t, and now a tiny part of me is glad. Because after I promised I’d stay, and Shane went back to the party, I stepped though the sliding glass door onto the balcony, and the guy with those eyes was out there, elbows leaned against the railing, staring up at the moonless sky.
It startled me, to see him there, but he just turned to me and smiled. “You know . . . sometimes we meet our destiny on the road we take to avoid it.”
“Excuse me?”
“It was in my fortune cookie today.” He took a step toward me, then motioned at the party inside. At Shane in the center of it. “You looked like you were trying to avoid that whole scene in there, and here I am, and—I’m Orion—your destiny according to the saying.” He offered a paint-speckled hand, which I didn’t take.
“Fair enough,” he said after a second. “I thought it was a pretty good line, but I guess not.”
I let myself smile. “It’s only bad if you pair it with a cheesy fake name.”
“Ouch,” he said, bringing a hand to his chest. “I don’t have a choice about that part.”
“Your name is really Orion? Like the constellation?”
“It’s what people call me.”