Where We Left Off (Middle of Somewhere 3)

I tried to cheer myself up by texting my sister Janie, In NYC, sucker! with a picture of the soaring stone arch, and watched for the screen to light up in my hand, but she must’ve been busy because she didn’t write back.

I dozed off for a few minutes, unable to look away from the arch until my eyes closed, curtains coming down on the movie going on around me. A wet nose in the neck woke me, followed by a paw in the stomach. The puppy’s owner came running over and apologized, but the golden retriever puppy was adorable, rooting around next to me and throwing itself on the ground. We chatted for a few minutes. The puppy belonged to his boss at the internship he’d just started the week before, and he was terrified of anything happening to it because he was convinced he’d somehow managed to incur his boss’ wrath on his first day and didn’t want to give the guy any more reasons to hate him.

I found myself telling him about my roommate situation, and he gave me a sweet smile and said, “Well, maybe the new roommate will be even better.” I grasped at it desperately—this benediction from a stranger—in an attempt to renew my excitement. He was right! I was here, in New York City, starting over. Starting from scratch. And maybe that included a new roommate I hadn’t planned for.

So I didn’t know anyone in the city—that was okay. I’d meet people, surely.

Well, I knew one person.

Will Highland. It was Will I hadn’t let myself think of on the trip from Michigan. But, honestly? That had just been a stubborn game to prove to myself that I had other reasons for coming to the city.

Will was always lingering in the back of my mind. He was a shadow in my periphery. An unopened gift that might be the thing I had most wished for, or the disappointment of that wish.

There should’ve been a term for the moments that, when you look back on them, preceded your whole life changing. There probably was one in German—some twisty compound word I didn’t know. In a movie, there would’ve at least been a musical cue. Swooping strings that suddenly gave way to velvet quiet studded with the tinkle of bells as sharp as diamonds. Something that said Pay attention: this next bit’s important.

But there hadn’t even been any kind of bodily early-warning system when I met Will—no skipped heartbeat or light-headedness to indicate that something was about to happen. Nope. I had just fallen off my skateboard when I saw him, like an idiot.

I’d only known him for a few weeks. He had been in Holiday visiting his sister and I’d met him because he was Rex’s ex. And, yes, maybe the first thing I’d noticed about him was that he was, hands-down, the most beautiful person I’d ever seen in my life. But it wasn’t just that.

He had this… presence. This way of owning every inch of space around him as if he had a right to it. It was the kind of self-possession that can make a tyrant or a prince and Will was a fucking prince. You just got the sense that he knew exactly who he was and he’d never apologize for it. And, okay, I was pretty sure I had no hope of that rubbing off on me. But being around him made me feel like everything was right in my little world. I felt alive in a way I never had. In a colors-look-brighter, food-tastes-better, every-song-is-about-him way.

Though he never would have admitted it, we had… fit together in a way I’d never fit with anyone else. It wasn’t that we were similar—we weren’t. For every ounce of confidence Will possessed, I had an equal measure of dorkiness. But somehow it just worked. I felt different with him than I had with anyone else. Everything felt different with him.

If Daniel had been a tornado that promised me there was another world out there, Will’s arrival in Michigan had been a blizzard—the cold snow and ice that snapped me back to reality, made me take a hard look at my life and what it was likely to become and feel the true terror of it. And if dreamy, distracted Daniel had offered escape, Will had been as sharply present as a pebble in my shoe, making me aware of every moment we spent together.

But that had been almost two years ago. When I’d gotten my letter of acceptance to NYU my heart had begun racing in my chest like a wild thing, as if a part of me was already surging full-speed ahead into the life I could have at an amazing college, in an amazing city.

The life I could have with Will.