Page 27 of This Changes Everything

“There’s a whole world inside my head that now only you know.”

Ben’s eyes flicked back up to mine from over the diary, and he let out a long, measured exhale. “I wish I knew you when you were a kid.” He tapped the diary’s cover with his finger. “I wish I knew you like this.”

“Yeah, but you know me like this.” I smiled softly.

“You’re right. This Ellie is a little nutbar. My Ellie is better.”

“Your Ellie has leveled the fuck out.” I took a sip of my wine.

“Tell that to the magician in my bathtub,” Ben quipped, and I spat out my wine into my glass. “Do you want to go golfing together sometime soon?” Ben asked, surprising me.

“Oh man.” Another sigh escaped me. “I don’t know.”

“Why? I’m pretty good, and I want to see you play. I want to know how you’re going to hit the ball in front of me. Rory made you nervous. Do I?” Ben asked, and my stomach turned over. “The way you talk about him in here . . . It’s pretty wild. It all feels really real, and you were just a kid.”

“I have big feelings,” I admitted.

“No kidding,” Ben said quietly. “Do you still love him?” He brought his eyes back to my diary.

My heart fell through my chest. I could answer that question with anyone and everyone, but I didn’t know how I felt about Ben being the one to ask it.

“Never mind. Don’t answer that.” Ben swallowed, clearly reading my mind. “Anyway, I want to go golfing with you. We can trade off. I can teach you how to hit a baseball. Or we should go to a game.”

Ben moved our nightstand back between the heads of our two beds, placed the lamp in the center, and turned it on. He then climbed into his bed and leaned against the headboard, cracking open the next diary in my collection.

“I’ve been to a baseball game before.”

“Yeah, but you’ve never been with me.” Ben looked down at my diary, and his eyes went wide. He closed them again, tipped his head back, and tightened his mouth, and his shoulders shook.

“Do I even want to know?” My voice dropped.

He turned the open diary around to show me what he was looking at. It was an enlarged photo taped to the back of a page, taking up the entire space.

“Elijah Wood as Frodo?” Ben wheezed, and tears sprang from his eyes.

“I AM NOT ASHAMED OF THIS!”

Ben shook his head and looked back down at the diary, flipping to another page. “I love this so much.” He let out a massive happy sigh before asking, “So, why did you stop playing golf ?” His question was seemingly innocuous.

“I’m sure you’ll get to that part. Give yourself a couple more diaries.” I exhaled, unsure if I wanted to get into it. “How did it feel when you stopped playing baseball?”

Ben had told me about the shoulder injury that sent him into early retirement on our way to Connecticut when Zoë’s family opened their house up to us for Thanksgiving.

“It felt like I didn’t know who I was anymore, and I didn’t know if I liked myself without it. What did I have to offer without baseball, you know? I wished for things to be different for so long even though I knew I could never get it back. I still wished.”

“I’m a dreamer, too. I wish for the impossible all the time.”

Ben leaned his head against his bed’s headboard. “I lost a lot of myself, but then I found acting. Then I found Bronwyn . . . And then I found you.” Ben held my eyes with his own, and my heart thunked. Just . . . thunk.

I let out a heavy exhale before saying, “I didn’t stop playing golf. I went to the driving range all the time, just a public one. But I stopped going to Juniper when I was sixteen.”

Chapter 10

VANCOUVER 16 years old

I LOOKED OVER AT THE OTHER END OF THE COUCH AND HOPED to hell that Rory didn’t notice every time I caught myself staring at him sitting there, watching a movie, leaning against the sofa’s arm. It was rare for us to be alone together.

Over the past year, Rory and I had spent a lot of time together, but we weren’t actually a couple, and I often wondered if we would ever become one. We went to Juniper almost every weekend, even during fall and winter. I was convinced that the only reason we endured the rain and snow was to find an excuse to spend time together. We hardly played golf in the cold; instead, we played cards in the games room and argued over which movies to watch. Eventually, we would leave the club and grab lunch or hang out at each other’s house. But since we always met up first at the golf club, I worried that Juniper was what kept us connected. Without it, what would we be?