Begin Again

I’m on the quad squinting against the glare of the sun when I see a boy who looks just like Connor walking toward me.

No, scratch that—Connor is walking toward me.

I stop in my tracks, the day welling up around me like a storybook page. It’s all too perfect. The way the sun is beaming down. The smell of fresh-cut grass and the slight warmth in the breeze. The sounds of students laughing and arguing out on picnic blankets on the quad. And my boyfriend, my handsome, steady, magnetizing boyfriend in the middle of it all, like the beautiful day just conjured him here.

He’s come to surprise me. There’s this simultaneous thrill and ache that I can’t make fit in me at the same time, that freezes me in place. I want to be happy. But mostly I’m just relieved. And maybe even a little bit of something else—something that settles low in my stomach, quiet and confused.

As if he senses me watching, Connor turns his head. His sandy hair catches the light, the tousles gleaming gold, his brown eyes already wide with anticipation. I steel myself—this is the beginning of something, but the end of something else, too. The end of the future I made myself imagine without him in it, the one I’ve been easing into since it became clear that he wasn’t coming back here, and we might not last, either.

But if he’s really here, it must be to tell me he still wants to make it work. I should be happy. I should be happy. I should be—

“What the hell are you doing here?”

It’s Valeria, her dark mane of hair sweeping between me and Connor so fast that it whips behind her like a cape. I watch them the same way I’d watch something unfold in a dream—like I’ve suddenly forgotten I’m a part of the scene, so fixated on what’s happening in front of me that I’m only half in my body.

“I told you to leave me alone,” says Valeria. “You can’t just show up here in the middle of the day and try and—what is it you even want, Whit? To get me back? To have me around as some kind of backup girl?”

It’s weird enough that Valeria’s talking to Connor. It is somehow even weirder to see him talk to her right back.

“I-I’m not here for you, I swear. I thought you were at your sister’s place.”

She points an accusatory finger at him. “I was on my way, but good to know you’re still creeping on my stories even after I blocked you.”

“Look, I’m—just seeing some friends,” says Connor, holding up his hands as if in self-defense. “It has nothing to do with you. Just go to your sister’s. Pretend you didn’t see me.”

Valeria lets out a hollow laugh. “Of course you don’t want to talk. Figures, since I only hear from you when you’re lonely or drunk.”

“I’m sorry, Valeria. Okay? I’m sorry. But I’ve got to get going before—”

“Before what, Connor?”

My voice is so steely even I don’t recognize it. Connor jerks his head toward me with almost comical speed, but I’m as still as the statue at the end of the quad. My body knows something my brain hasn’t processed yet, and every bone in it is telling me to stand my ground.

“Andie. Hi.” His voice is strained, and there’s this smile I’ve never seen on his face before, something that crumbles before it fully reaches his lips. He perseveres, his eyes still wide on mine. “I was—I wanted to surprise you.”

Usually there are so many words in me that they’re threatening to spill out like a Scrabble board. Now there is just this clean, concise hum, like some other Andie has taken over.

“This is certainly a surprise,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest.

Valeria’s eyebrows fly up. “You two know each other?”

“Yeah. He’s my . . .” The word has never had a sour taste to it before. “Connor’s my boyfriend.”

“Whit’s your boyfriend?”

Whit. It didn’t occur to me that he’d use the nickname outside of the team in college, or maybe Valeria would have recognized him as the Connor I’ve talked about long before now.

This is the part where I’m supposed to say something like, Not anymore, he’s not. I’ve seen the rom-coms. I’ve given plenty of advice to people who have been cheated on. It’s just that never once in thinking about this kind of scenario did I ever put myself in it.

That’s when it really starts to sink in. Cheated. While I was working my butt off not just to get into Blue Ridge State but to keep our relationship intact last semester, Connor had already moved on from us. And instead of telling either of us the truth, he’d strung us both along—me last semester, and Valeria now.

It’s all so immediately, brutally crystal clear that it feels like walking straight into a glass wall. Something I should have seen coming. Something that’s so embarrassingly easy to process and accept that it’s probably been right there in my periphery all along.

Connor lowers his voice, using the tone he only ever uses when we’re alone. Gentle. Intimate. Like there’s a secret we’ve known our whole lives that most people never figure out.

It used to make me feel so special. Right now it makes me feel anything but.

“Andie, let’s just—let me take you to lunch,” he pleads. “I can explain.”

“Oh, I’d love to see you try,” says Valeria, putting a foot between the two of us like a bodyguard. It is clear to me in that moment that her anger for me is bigger than her anger for herself, and I’ve never been more grateful for her friendship than I am right now.

Even so, I want him to explain. I need him to explain, because I need a way to forgive him for it. I’m scrambling for some way to make this okay, for some solution that’ll fix this the way I’ve fixed so many things between us before.

But at the crux of it is a question that can’t do anything but break. I don’t want to ask it, but I don’t have any other choice.

“Why did you transfer back to Little Fells for me, if you’d already found someone else?”

Connor reaches for my hands. I snatch mine back before he can reach them, and the hurt in his eyes is so immediate that it feels like it ricochets right back at me. I’m so used to feeling what he feels that even in this moment I can’t stop myself.

His eyes briefly dart to Valeria’s like he wishes she’d disappear. Valeria straightens her spine, cutting an intimidating figure in her ruby-red coat and unyielding gaze.

“I didn’t find someone else,” says Connor, shaking his head. “It was just a confusing time, and I’m so grateful to you for—”

“You miserable jerk. Tell her the truth.” Valeria’s so riled that there’s a vein popping in her forehead I’ve never seen before. “You ditched half your classes and got academic probation. And I—I felt so sorry for you. I let you cry on my shoulder about it for weeks. And this whole time you were lying to Andie about it and making her feel worse?”

My ears are ringing. It’s not hurt. It’s not sadness. It’s something I’m not used to feeling, something that curls in my fists and burns from my chest all the way to my cheeks.

“You ditched your classes,” I repeat.

Connor’s brows knit in desperation, like he’s trying to meet my eyes even though we’re already looking at each other. “I was overwhelmed. You know the kind of pressure I’m under—”

“And you lied to me, and—and to your parents. To everybody.” I finally take a step forward, and he doesn’t dare move to meet me. “Do you have any idea how guilty I’ve felt? I thought I’d messed with your entire future. You watched your mom come down on me. Your mom, who’s the closest thing to a mom I’ve had for years.”

And then the rage simmers out so fast I can feel myself reaching for it again, trying to use it to tether me. It’s too late. The tears are already streaming down my cheeks, putting the fire out.

Connor stops trying to talk. Even Valeria’s anger seems to be stunned right off her face.

It’s not just that I’ve lost Connor. It’s that he’s been gone for longer than I knew. At some point, without knowing it, it all slipped away: being in love with my best friend. The future we had planned together. A set of parents who loved me like I was their own—who took care of me when my mom couldn’t, and my dad wasn’t around nearly enough to try.

I can’t move, but I don’t have to. The ground already slipped out from under me before I had the chance to fall.

Connor says my name like a lifeline. “Andie.”

I ignore it. It’s Valeria I turn to, grabbing her hand and squeezing it. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

There’s a quiet nod of understanding, one that speaks to something we both already know: Whatever we find out today, we trust each other. This isn’t going to rock our friendship. It’s enough of a comfort for me to take a breath and temporarily stanch the tears as I turn to go.

“I’ll come with you,” Connor offers.

The words form tethers in the air, try to wrap around and soften me. His voice is as familiar to me as my own; the first sound I want to hear when I have news, good or bad or anything in between. Right now it can’t even skim the surface of me.

“Don’t.”

I point myself toward the psychology building, on autopilot until I’m finally standing in the dimly lit studio, face-to-face with the picture of my mother. Staring at her earnest, cheeky smile, at the gleam in her eye, at the determination in her posture. A ghost of a ghost—a version of her I never met, who in the last few months might have become more familiar to me than the one I knew.

The tears start streaming again. “I messed up,” I tell her, touching the frame. “I messed up.”

I don’t even know what part I’m referring to—this thing with Connor might be a grenade thrown into my life, but it was already plenty messed up before then, wasn’t it? My own grades. My own fear. My own fixations on other people’s problems, instead of facing my own. My own way of holding myself back, time and time again, and telling myself I’m not worth the chances people have taken on me. Blue Ridge State for letting me in; my professor for giving me a second chance; Milo for letting me on the show.

“Andie. Shit. Are you okay?”

I’m too stunned by the sound of Milo himself to stop myself from turning around, ginormous, embarrassing tears and all.

“Oh, hi,” I say, and whatever else I was about to attempt is swallowed by an embarrassing hiccup. I open my mouth, trying to collect myself, but it doesn’t end up mattering. Milo has already crossed the small room and wrapped his arms around me so fast that I instinctively crush my eyes shut right into his chest, so grateful for the presence and the pressure of him that I can’t do anything else.

I spend the next minute scrambling for something to say, some way to recover. Some way to laugh this off and walk away—he may have seen me at my worst, but he doesn’t have to continue seeing me at it. But at some point it becomes very clear that he’s just going to hold me like this for as long as I need it, that he’s just going to let me muck up his jacket with my tears, that’s he’s just going to ride out this storm with me the same way he did back in that little shed in the woods.

And so I let myself cry. I don’t know how long, but long enough that it feels like I’m empty of something, something that needed to leave. Something that’s been weighing me down so much that it feels like it had its own gravity, and now without it I might float away.Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

“Valeria told us what happened,” Milo says quietly, once most of the tears have stopped. “We were looking for you. I don’t know why, but I just . . . had a feeling.”

When we pull away the room feels a little colder. Milo’s eyes search mine with this careful concern that makes me feel more raw than I’ve ever been; like he’s not just seeing me on the surface with my puffy eyes and red nose and hurt, but all the way down to whatever just left me. His eyes only stray for one moment to the photo behind me, so quick I almost miss it. He must have seen me staring at it when he walked in.

It feels important to tell him then. Like we’ve seen so much of each other that it’s only right he knows. Maybe even long overdue.

“The original Knight,” I say, turning to face her again. “Amy Janson. She’s, um. My mom.”

“Oh.” Milo may be caught off guard, but it doesn’t take him long to recover. “Is that why you’ve been here all this time?”

I shake my head. “Well, maybe—maybe a little, at first. But then I was just . . . I fit here. With you and Shay.”

Milo gently knocks his shoulder into mine, a quiet way of saying he feels that way, too.

“Your mom was Amy Rose, huh?” He looks between the photo and me, registering the slight surprise on my face. “I should have made the connection. I listened to her show every morning for years.”

“You did?” I feel the sting of tears again, but this time I don’t shy away from them. They’re not the happy kind, but they’re still the good kind. It hurts to hear, but it also means more than I can possibly ever say.

“Yeah.” Milo looks away, giving me some space to react. “She was amazing.”

I nod.

“I didn’t get enough years with her, but I . . .” I swipe at my eyes with the heel of my hand. “I know people romanticize the past. That things are always sweeter when you look back. But my mom, she was kind of just magic, you know? Always wanted to go on adventures, whether it was driving all the way up a mountain to see the stars at midnight or check out an ice cream store three towns away.”

The tears feel like a relief now, like a way of letting my love for her out into the world; like maybe the energy of it is bigger than I am, even though I’ve spent so many years trying to hold it in for myself. “She could set anyone at ease. Make anyone laugh. Turn any dull thing into a game.”

“I remember,” says Milo quietly, his eyes trained just as carefully on the frame as mine are.

I tear my eyes from it, looking up at him meaningfully. “So you get it. I can do my best with all this, but I’m never going to be like she was—she just made everything shine.”

Milo lifts his hand toward my face like he’s going to hold my cheek in it, like he might brush away the tears. He stops and shakes his head, something more urgent pressing in him, something that roots me to the spot as he says it loud.

“You’re right. You’re not like her, Andie,” he says, with a certainty that cuts right past his usual bluntness. “Your mom was an entertainer. She knew what people needed to hear, whether she was cracking jokes or giving their problems a voice. She helped people get through their shit, and so will you—in your own way. By helping them face it head-on.”

For a moment I’m too stunned to answer, not sure which is more overwhelming: how well Milo understood my mom, a person I never even imagined in the same world as his, or how well he understands me.

“I think I’m always going to worry I’m riding her coattails,” I admit. “I don’t think I even got in here on my own merit. I was the only transfer in my class. I’m worried they just realized who my mom was and let me in because of that.”

Milo dismisses this so easily I almost envy him. “Well, I know that’s not true. I mean, look at this place.”

“Exactly,” I say miserably. “I’m a pity admission.”

This time Milo does reach out, putting a hand on my shoulder. “There is no such thing.”

There is a quiet part of me that has trusted Milo since long before either of us earned it from each other, a trust I feel in the warm pressure of his hand. A trust that makes me want to believe those words are true, and understands, objectively, that they must be.

But as the words settle in me, a sad, but strangely comforting understanding comes right along with them. It isn’t just about the school; this feeling is tangled in so much else. In everything that I do, every moment I won’t be able to turn over my shoulder and ask my mom what she thinks, or feel her pride.

Whether or not I belonged here has felt like a thing I could measure. I’d be worthy of her legacy, or not. But the truth is that moments I’ve lost with her are immeasurable, and no amount of wondering about admissions or how well I do on the show or any other measuring stick I can hold to her legacy is going to bring them back.

This feels like one of those moments right now. The kind where I’d be able to call her or come home to her. Maybe even a moment that would never have happened if she’d been around, because Connor wouldn’t have had to fill a space she left behind.

The whole mess comes crushing back then, heavy in my chest.

“And on top of that . . . this thing with Connor,” I say.

I grit my teeth. It’s the hurt. The humiliation. It’s too much to process right now, or maybe even forever; there are pieces of myself starting to unravel right now that I’ve known my entire life. I think of that stupid memoir I’ve been planning to write for half my life, all these chapters I tried to fit neatly into place.

Now the pages are all at my feet, scattered before I could even put them together. I can’t believe I was naive enough to think I could write them in the first place. I can’t believe I let Connor be one of the strings that tied them together. Only now do I understand it’s because I just plain didn’t have enough faith in myself to begin with, and that’s maybe the most brutal realization I’ve made in this whole mess.

“I feel so stupid,” I admit. “I really thought . . . I really thought I could make this work. I love him.”

Love. Not loved. I can’t make it go away, can’t shake an entire lifetime of love from under my skin; even trying to see as far into the future as I can let myself in this moment, I’m not sure if I ever will.

But I don’t have to explain it to Milo. He’s spent months with the same hurt in his heart. With the strange way you have to rearrange yourself when you can’t make the love you have for someone go away, but have to wait for it to take a new shape. Connor will always be my childhood best friend and my first love, the same way Nora was his.

“Well, it’s like my dad always said,” says Milo, squeezing my shoulder gently. “Anything worth doing starts with a mess. Maybe . . . this one is yours.”

It’s not the first time I’ve thought of those words since Milo said them to me all those weeks ago, but it’s the first time I can fully appreciate them. I’ve spent my whole life with a plan. Neat, tidy, organized. Fitting myself like a key into other people’s locks just so I could call their homes my own.

But just because Connor’s family won’t be mine anymore doesn’t mean I’m on my own. Maybe I’m a mess now, but I’m in the middle of everyone else’s mess, too. Milo’s and Shay’s and Val’s. We might not know where we fit yet, but we’ve got a strong grip on one another, and maybe that’s all you get to ask for at this point in your life. Maybe it’s the only thing you really need.

“You’re right. He’s right,” I amend. I take in a shaky breath, trying to explain—not to excuse the time it’s going to take for me to get past this, but so he’ll get it. “I think for a while, I was just . . . I mean, my parents met here. They were best friends first, and then they fell in love. And they were happy.” I tilt my head as if the world is tilting with me, as if I’m trying to understand the new view. “I just thought—that I could try to have that, too. I could re-create the same magic my mom made. Have her same shine. It felt like the universe wanted me to—I mean, Connor and I have known each other for practically our entire lives. Our moms were best friends. And his mom was like . . .”

Milo nods in understanding. Doesn’t try to tell me I’m wrong to think of her that way. Doesn’t try to talk me down from the importance of it all, or the magnitude of what just happened.

“I gotta pull an Andie Rose right now. So forgive me for asking.” Milo’s teeth graze his lower lip in a moment of hesitation, and I know what the question is before he even asks it. “Have you talked to your dad about these feelings?”

I lean forward, gently knocking my forehead into his chest. “No,” I tell him. “But I did get in touch.”

Milo lifts his hand from my shoulder and presses it to the back of my head, holding me steady. “Good.”

“Seems like you made some headway with Harley last night, too.”

He takes his hand off and we separate again, Milo looking sheepish like he’d forgotten all about it until now. “Yeah, well.”

“Where did you leave it?”

Milo rolls his eyes affectionately. “Can we please have five whole minutes where you’re not worried about anyone else’s shit?”

But that’s just it. Somewhere along the way, his issues started feeling like mine, too. Not the way they were at the beginning of the semester, when I wanted to fix things for the sake of fixing them. But because I want to be with him through it, the same way he has been for me. The same way I sense we will be far beyond this.

“Milo,” I say quietly, imploringly.

His gaze is utterly still on mine for a moment, a hush in the air between us. Then he blinks a few times like he’s pulling himself out of something. “Well. You were—I mean, I’m glad you told me what you thought about the whole thing. Because you were right. About where Harley was coming from. And about . . . how the stuff with our dad played into it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Milo clears his throat. “It turns out they fell for each other before our dad’s accident. She was always going to break up with me, then she and Harley were going to wait for a while to actually do anything. But after what happened to our dad, there just wasn’t a moment that felt right for any of it. And everything just kind of—escalated, after that.”

I nod. We both know by now that grief doesn’t play by anybody’s rules.

Milo lowers his head, his shoulders easing with it. “I’ll always be hurt about how it happened. But I can understand more of it now. Mostly because I could tell they meant it. The last thing they wanted to do was hurt me. But they were both hurting too much to be apart from each other, and I—I guess I get it. Now that I’m actually trying to.”

“That must be a relief,” I say softly.

Milo lets loose a heavy breath, reaching a hand for the back of his neck. “I mean. We’ve got a long way to go. But I’ve—missed him. And Nora.” His voice is tight when he adds, “And talking to them—they said they’ve missed me, too.”

There’s something uncertain, almost boyish in his expression. Some side of him that I’ve always known was there just under the surface, but he’s letting me see for the first time. Something cautious. Something searching. Like he’s only letting this part of himself go in this moment because he knows I’m a safe place to land.

“I hope it works out,” I tell him.

Even with his overly tall height our faces are inches apart, so close it feels like we’re not just separate from the people beyond the door, but everything else.

“Me too,” he says. “And I do feel a lot more clearheaded about this transfer thing. I might not know what I’m doing yet, but . . . at least I’ll feel good about it when I do.”

My throat is tight, but I still manage to say, “Good.” I may have to look down for a beat when I say it, but we both know I mean it.

“Hey, Andie.”

I glance back up at him, into the depths of those mossy eyes.

“I know you want to be like your mom. Trust me, I do.” Milo’s voice takes on this rasp to it, like he’s on the edge of something he usually tries not to touch. “Even forgiving Harley . . . part of me was open to it because I know it’s what my dad would do. I want to be like him, too.”

His head ducks down, curls almost covering his eyes. I want to reach up and brush them out of his face, want to silently let him know he doesn’t have to hide from me. But he knows that. By now, we both do.

“I wish I could have met him,” I say quietly. “But I don’t have to have known him to know he’s proud of you.”

Now it’s Milo’s eyes that mist up, so fast that I catch him trying to laugh at himself to cover it up. In the end, though, he just stares back at me and lets the words sink in before hitting me with a few choice words of his own.

“Well. Same to you,” he says. “And you know, you don’t need to re-create your mom’s shine. You’ve got that all on your own.”

It feels kind of wobbly, and another tear threatens to fall in the process, but I can’t help the smile blooming on my face.

I want to tell him he’s wrong. Want to brush it off before it can sink in some place where it doesn’t feel deserved. But then there’s this moment—this hypnotizing, heart-stalling moment where his warm palm is cupping my cheek and my own hand is bracing against his forearm and our eyes are locked, and it all falls away. The self-doubt. The hurt. The impossibility of everything that just happened today, and all the ways it will impact every corner of my life.

My calves burn and my legs quiver with anticipation as I lift myself up to my toes, Milo already leaning in to meet me. Our foreheads touch. I feel his breath on mine, coffee and mint and Milo.

“I . . . want to kiss you,” he says quietly.

The words reach something deep in the core of me before they reach my ears, making my limbs feel weak in a way they never have before. My eyes slide closed. It isn’t a feeling I recognize—it’s not desperate, it’s not pining, it’s not scrambling to keep up. But it still burns. It burns in a way I never thought something could.

“But . . .”

And then something shifts. Some piece of reality edges its way back in, slices us both down the middle. He presses his forehead into mine even further, but with the pressure of an apology, not a release.

“Shit. I’m—I’m your RA.”

I let out a strangled laugh. “Milo.” I don’t bother pointing out that so long as we let the housing committee know, it doesn’t really matter. I can’t point out anything just about now, because I’m reeling from the shock of it all. The immensity of these feelings that are swimming their way up into the surface of me like they’ve been there for longer than I was ever able to admit.

I look up at Milo with a hesitancy that feels intimate, like I am less scared of what I’ll see in his face and more scared of what I’ll feel when I see it. But Milo’s eyes are trained on the floor.

“And I . . . I don’t even know what I’m doing next year,” he mutters.

There it is. The truth that I wasn’t ignoring, but in the heat of the moment, I forgot. It isn’t one I can resent him for in the slightest—the truth is, I’m proud of him. Proud that he put himself out there. That he might take a chance across the country. And more important, that he’s working to resolve everything with Harley first.

So this tumult of emotion I’m feeling. This pull, this burn—it’s reactionary. My life has just spiraled out of control, and now I’m spiraling even more. Spiraling straight into Milo, who is too important to drag down with me.

“And I guess—well,” I say, my voice flimsy even in my own ears. “I’d say I just broke up with Connor, but we didn’t even get to that part.”

It’s weird to think he might still be here somewhere. That this world we built together could just implode and we could be closer to each other than we’ve ever been. I feel this wave of nausea and dread, the reality of it sinking back under my skin.

Milo looks uncertain about what to say next, so instead I try to lighten the mood, teasing him. “And you don’t believe in love anymore anyway,” I say lightly. “What is it you said at the beginning of the semester? ‘Love is a scam’?”

I’m expecting him to laugh, but Milo’s eyes darken, sweeping to the floor. “Well. I think . . .” He swallows hard. “You’re right. This is just—it’s been a weird day.”

I’m not sure whether to press the point. Of all the day’s surprises, this might be the strangest of all—the way my heart isn’t just slamming in my chest, but seizing, pieces of Milo suddenly so woven into it that it must have changed its shape.

As I’m trying to decide, my phone vibrates in my pocket. I pull it out, unsurprised to see Connor’s name lighting up the screen.

Before I answer, I feel the weight of Milo’s eyes on mine. It’s not a look that says, Are you going to answer? Or What are you going to do? It’s a clear Do you need me? And it lands somewhere soft.

“Thank you for . . . for everything,” I tell him. Then I nod, more to myself than to him. “I’m gonna finish this.”

Milo nods back, reaching out to squeeze my shoulder one last time. “You got this, new kid.”

The warmth of it lingers long after Milo is gone.