Page 34 of This Changes Everything

“I’m okay. Today was really hard. Like, really hard. But I got through it. I did it.” I turned my head to the side, resting it on his collarbone.

“I know you did. You’re Ellie Fucking McCain.” He repeated his words from the night before. I hummed softly and found myself quietly breathing him in. After a long moment of just holding each other, he cleared his throat and let out a long, slow breath. “What are we doing? Are we friends? Are we more? What’s going on?”

My throat went dry. “Of all my friends, I like you the most.”

“Is this how you are with all your friends?” Ben placed his chin on the top of my head. Cars whizzed past us, horns were blaring, but we stood on the sidewalk as still as the trees in Central Park.

Did he mean, do I secretly fall in love with my friends and suffer through intense feelings twisting me in knots, torturing me until the end of time? Then do I eventually mess everything up by holding on to something that wasn’t real? Or maybe it was real, and I was too terrified to do anything about it because of how real it really was? I mean . . . Maybe? I feared that I was running directly toward a record-breaking two for two here.

“Somehow, in six months, you’ve become the most important person in my life. If we got together and it got bad, I’d lose you. And I can’t lose you, Ben. I don’t want you to wake up one day and . . . not choose me . . .” My voice wavered. Everything felt a little too familiar.

“I’ve already chosen you, Ellie. It’s already happened. Now you have to choose me.” Ben tipped his head down and brushed his lips against my temple. “Which is what I thought was happening this morning before you freaked out.”

I pulled myself away from Ben’s embrace but left my hands on his chest. “I did not freak out.”

“You freaked the fuck out.” He couldn’t help but laugh.

“I don’t want a day to come when you’re not in my life anymore.”

“I’m not Rory, Ellie.” He said it. He went there. And by the crack in his voice, I would swear he sounded jealous. He took a deep breath. “I’m always going to be your friend.”

Ben left for Boston the next day. I looked over at his empty bed, then out to the busy streets of New York. It was the first time I had ever been entirely and completely alone.

Chapter 12

VANCOUVER 18 years old

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?”