Begin Again

There he is, like some kind of golden-haired, broad-smiled apparition, stepping out of his car in his Little Fells varsity soccer jacket with a handful of pink roses, my absolute favorite. He turns to set them on the seat of his car before I even start to run, knowing full well I am coming at him like a small projectile.Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

“Oof,” he jokes when I slam into him, easily absorbing the impact and sweeping my feet off the ground. “Hey, you.”

“Hi hi hi hi hi,” I say into his ear, so giddy I feel like someone just injected a Fourth of July fireworks show straight into my veins. I squeeze him hard and he squeezes back, and for a moment time is at a total standstill. There’s just me and the crush of Connor’s body against mine and the steady, thrilling thump thump thump of our hearts beating in rhythm.

“How are you here?”

“My dad gave me the day off. And I just got in the car, and . . .” We pull apart, arms still intertwined, his eyes shining. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

I knock my head into his chest, breathing in the grassy, familiar scent of him. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“I missed you more.”

I doubt that, but right now it doesn’t matter. I can’t see anything beyond the familiar shape of him, the overwhelming rush of relief.

He presses his thumb just under my eye. “But what’s wrong, Andie?” he asks, the rumble of his voice pressing into my chest. “You looked upset.”

“I . . .”

His eyes edge toward Milo, who already has his back turned to us and is walking into Cardinal.

“Who is that?” Connor asks.

“Just my RA,” I say. It’s easier than explaining that we weren’t just in an argument between friends, but one Connor made a cameo in not five minutes ago. “It’s been a long day, is all.”

“Did something happen with your dad?” says Connor lowly.

I hesitate. Technically yes, even if it’s not what has me worked up right now.

Connor doesn’t wait for my answer, pressing a kiss into my temple. I melt into it, feeling the weight of too many weeks apart lift off my shoulders and into the cool winter mist.

“C’mon,” I say, tugging him by the sleeve. “I’ll show you my dorm.”

Once we’re up there, I show him everything—the books Shay is letting me borrow, my new course curriculum and the wild amount of homework that comes with it. And, of course, the ribbons I’ve collected so far—half of them for me, half for him.

“I don’t even know what to say,” says Connor, palming all the ribbons one by one.

I try not to feel possessive of them as he sets them across my comforter, out of the box I carefully stash them away in with my mom’s ribbons. But there is still some reflexive part of my brain that wants to pull them back, like he’s trying to steal some piece of my mom away.

“How did you manage to get all these?”

“I’ve been going to every event,” I say proudly.

“Aren’t they every single weekend?” Connor asks.

I nod. “But I haven’t missed one yet.”

Connor laughs. “Wow, your classes must be a hell of a lot easier than the ones I was taking here, if you can swing that.”

My smile falters, something crackling quick and sharp under my ribs. “Well. Sometimes I miss some studying time.” And writing time. And time seeing him and my grandmas. I keep my voice even as I push the thoughts away and add, “But it’s just one semester.”

“Yeah,” says Connor, nodding. “Just one semester, and then . . .”

I push the smile back into place. “And then you’ll be back, and we’ll both be in one of the secret societies, and it will all be worth it.”

Connor reaches out and strokes my cheek. “It’s hard enough getting by at Blue Ridge. And you’d still give up all this time to make this happen for me?”

When he puts it that way, the next breath I take feels tight in my chest. It’s not like that, I want to tell him. It isn’t just for his sake. I’ve got way more on the line than he does.

“Of course,” I say emphatically. I’m not being fair. He has no idea what the ribbons mean to me, and that’s my fault, not his. “You’ll come back,” I add, the words earnest, but my jaw tight. “And everything will be fine.”

Connor leans in and presses a gentle kiss to my lips, the kind we both sink into, gripping each other’s arms as we lean into the mattress. “Everything will be fine,” he repeats with the kind of ease he always does. With that same quiet confidence that comes with being Connor Whit and knowing that, most of the time, what he wants is what he’ll get.

He reaches out and tucks a loose strand of my hair behind my ear, securing it there. “But tell me. What happened? With your dad, I mean?”

I close my eyes, resting my forehead on his shoulder. “Nothing.”

“Hmm.” The hum of his voice is quiet and sure, but his expression doesn’t settle. He knows me well enough to know what I mean by “nothing.”

“Nothing I should be surprised by, at least,” I amend. “He . . . his new girlfriend has a daughter. Seems like he wasn’t allergic to fatherhood after all.”

“Andie,” says Connor lowly.

I’d hate it coming from anyone else—this part of me laid bare, this part of my life that I feel a strange kind of shame for, even knowing it’s not my fault. But with Connor it just feels like talking to an extension of my own self.

Even then, my voice sounds small. “I’ve just felt for so long like I must have done something wrong. Like I wasn’t enough. But it feels like some other kid is, and he must have known I’d be upset, because he didn’t even bother to tell me about her.”

“Shh, Andie.” Connor presses my face into his shoulder, ready to absorb tears that just don’t come. There’s something about this moment—the strangeness of Connor colliding with this new world of mine—that has knocked me too far off course to feel much beyond it. “He’s . . . he’s a lot of things. But he should have told you. Shouldn’t have left you in the first place. You deserve to be loved. You deserve people who stay.”

There’s this distant voice in my head that slithers back in, reminding me that Connor may not be one of those people. That last semester he was close to giving up on us. But maybe that’s just it—we persevered through that, the way we always will.

I chase it out of my mind. I’m in his arms, and there are so many ribbons gleaming on my desk, waiting for the two of us to use them to stake our claim here; waiting for me to unravel my mom’s mystery, and for the two of us to stand at each other’s sides on the other side of it.

“I’ll always be here, Andie. You know I will.”

“I know you will,” I repeat, burrowing my head into his shoulder. It feels good to say. Feels better to let myself believe.

“My parents think my transfer essay could use a bit of work, though.” I hear the knowing smile in his voice. “Probably needs a good, thorough reading from a girl who’s not afraid to tell it like it is.”

I laugh into his shirt sleeve. “Who might that be?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the same one who saved this dumbass’s GPA time and time again.”

I feel an unexpected, but no less familiar, twinge at that. The same one I felt sophomore year of high school, the year Connor’s grades started to dip and I focused so much of my energy trying to help him that mine dipped, too. Dipped enough that I never really recovered. That even with all my other grades and extracurriculars and decent test scores I didn’t get into Blue Ridge State on the first try.

My eyes skim the ribbons laid out on the bed, Valeria’s warning about my study habits pushing back into my brain. I push right back. I’m here now. And soon Connor will be, too. We’ll make it where we need to be the same way we always do, taking turns pulling each other up along the way.

“I helped, is all,” I deflect. “You’re plenty smart.”

“And you’re plenty kind to put up with me.” Connor kisses the top of my head. “I love you.”

The words hover in my chest before they reach my throat. “I love you, too.”