Page 9 of This Changes Everything

“Football or hockey?”

“I don’t like this,” he paused, then narrowed his eyes at me. “D-1 baseball. Pitcher. Torn labrum.”

I nodded, somewhat proud of myself, taking a sip of water and watching Lucas and Zoë scurry across the street, heading toward the pizza place to join us.

“Anyway, yeah. Take a guess as to whether or not my girlfriend and I decided to stay together and do long distance,” he said sarcastically, with his mouth full of food. With his low register, it sounded a lot like garbled gibberish.

I snorted out some water from my nose and grabbed a napkin, muttering, “Jesus Christ.”

Ben smirked at my reaction. He shook his head again as he dipped his pizza in some ranch dressing. “What’s his name?”

“Rory,” I grumbled. “You?”

“Sasha,” he groaned.

“Is that the girl or the dog?” I asked, and he laughed. Ben lifted his slice of pizza in my direction for a cheers, and I reciprocated by tapping it with my own.

“Where are you living?”

“In a studio on the Upper West Side. Looking for a roommate, so if you know anyone . . .”

“Yeah.” Ben laughed again, with his mouth full of ranch dressing this time. “Me. I’m staying on a family friend’s couch in Dobbs Ferry until I get my shit together.”

I scoffed. “Okay, Stranger Danger, you can’t live with me.” My mouth was jam-packed with pineapple.

“Why not?”

“Because you heard the worst version of what I said earlier instead of assuming the best. You saw that guy finger me!” Ben choked on his pizza. “You went negative. Now I can only assume that there’s a ten percent chance that you might murder me. My parents would be so annoying if I picked a murderer to live with. They think I’m going to, and I can’t prove them right. I just can’t. I’m too stubborn. If you don’t kill me, that would.”

Ben turned to me, analyzing me. “Fair enough.”

Two minutes later, Lucas and Zoë pulled up a seat next to us. My dad joined us an hour later. And Ben was my roommate by the end of the week.

Chapter 4

VANCOUVER 14 years old

IT WAS OFFICIALLY THE LAST DAY OF SUMMER, AND RORY AND I had been spending almost every day together. It would have been unusual if a day had gone by at Juniper and the regular junior golfers weren’t all there. When it was sunny, we were golfing. When it was raining, we were in the clubhouse eating, playing games, or watching movies in the small games room. Rory and I would fight over which movie to watch, and our squabbles had become so common that we were often overruled.

Whenever Rory looked at me and asked, “Do you wanna watch a movie?” I would look back at him and scowl, knowing he would never agree to my movie choice no matter what I suggested. Those spirited debates lit me on fire.

I was looking in the woods for my lost ball, which happened to be the very last ball in my bag. There was a coyote den between the sixteenth and seventeenth holes, so Rory left his ball, perfectly placed in the center of the sixteenth fairway, and came to help me look for mine. His brother Blair and the club’s newest junior, Jacob Griffin, were already ahead of us, making their way to their own balls. Everyone was smack dab in the center of the fairway, and I was hacking at the brush, sidestepping tree roots, and making shrill ca-caw sounds to ward off hungry wild animals looking for a feast. Rory chuckled when my last ca-caw caught in my throat and turned into a cough.

Rory never made me feel bad for hitting a terrible shot. It was probably because it happened so frequently in front of him. Aside from the driving range debacle two years earlier, I’d had one other horrifying display of terrible golf that I was certain would be etched into my tombstone.

I had signed up for the Women’s Long Drive competition at the beginning of the summer after my dad and Rory spent two weeks convincing me that I would place. I had no hope in the junior category when people like Rory, his brother Blair, and another junior named Caleb Davis, the rich kid, were competing. But when it came to the ladies, I was okay. I constantly had older men at the driving range commenting to my dad (never to me) about how impressive my swing was.

I had five chances. I just had to hit it far and within bounds. Rory volunteered to be the person who’d stake where my ball landed. About a hundred people showed up to watch the competition, including my mom. My sister and my best friend, Kara, Jacob’s sister, were sitting on top of golf carts with some other juniors, lining the rough. Competitors gathered around the first tee.

I had auditioned for a bunch of commercials, was a body double for a lead in a made-for-TV movie, and had been the lead in two school plays, but the Long Drive competition felt like I was in a pressure cooker. I had the nervous poops for thirty minutes before they called my name.

“Let’s go, Cainey!” Cameron Campbell shouted as he climbed onto the hood of Kara’s golf cart. The Campbell brothers had started calling me Cainey, sometimes Cains, two years earlier, after I trounced them in a hot-dog-eating contest. Only my sister knew how violently ill I was after that exhibition of competitive assholery.

“Come on, Hollywood!” Orson Whitlock, another junior, the same age as me, called out—yet another nickname he started after learning that I liked to act. I turned around to smile at Orson. He was standing behind me with Blair, Jacob, and Caleb. They were ready to compete.

Rory jogged up to me at the tee box, his brownish curly hair swooped along the sides of his black Titleist hat, which he had flipped backward. His dark-brown eyes sparkled with excitement, and his dimple dipped into his cheek. He handed me five balls.

“You got this, Ellie.” Rory said my name. He never said my real name. My throat closed. He tossed me a wink and ran down the fairway to capture my drives.