Maybe Meant to Be, page 21
CHAPTER 29
SAGE
“I think Luke has a boyfriend,” Reese declared one night, beaming confidence. The four of us were in her room getting ready for Brooks’ seniors-only “Wild West” mixer. I stopped braiding Jennie’s hair, hoping I’d heard her wrong, because if not…
“Wait, what?” I said.
“I think LM has found himself a boyfriend,” she repeated. “Kinda obvious, isn’t it?”
“What’s obvious?” Nina asked, walking into the room with her phone charger. She hopped up onto Reese’s bed and plugged it into the nearby outlet, looking perfect in her orange flannel and brown fringy skirt.
“Luke has a boyfriend,” Reese said for the third time.
“Oh my god.” Nina nodded quickly. “He totally does! All the texting!”
“And he cuts out early,” Jennie chimed in. “He hasn’t watched a movie with us in forever.”
I wanted to groan. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” was Luke’s signature exit line. “My bed won’t stop calling me.” And then he’d try not hard enough to hide his smile as he left to go meet up with Charlie.
“Exactly,” Reese agreed. “Don’t you think, Sage?”
You have to weigh in, I told myself. If you don’t, they’ll think you know something.
“Sage?”
“I guess it’s possible,” I finally said, starting over on one of Jennie’s braids.
“Okay great.” Reese clapped her hands together, and then with a twisted smile, said, “Now who do we think it is?”
* * *
“I have to tell you something,” I said when Charlie and I reemerged from tonight’s “saloon.” The kitchen island had been transformed into a bar, with a card game going on at the table and people mingling all around. We’d gone in for a couple of root beers, and now we retreated to a quiet-ish corner of the common room. The girls and Luke were on the far side, caught up in the madness of the mechanical bull. So far Nick had the record for longest ride, but Charlie had made a PSA that he planned on topping it later. (“I thought you were working on his ego,” I’d whispered to Luke, who’d sighed and whispered back, “It’s been a process.”)
Charlie twisted off his bottle cap and took a slug of his soda. I reached up and adjusted his cowboy hat. Tonight he belonged in a John Wayne movie. “What is it?” he asked.
“Okay, so…” I took a deep breath. “The girls are pretty sure that Luke has a boyfriend…and are, um, trying to figure out who it is.” And they’d been warmer rather than colder, suspecting it was someone in the closet since Luke told us last month that Tristan Andrews wasn’t his type.
I wasn’t sure how I expected Charlie to react, but he rolled his eyes à la his better half. “Of course they are,” he said. “Can’t anyone mind their own freaking business at this school?”
I didn’t answer, thinking, Why can’t you tell them? They’re your friends.
“I can’t wait for this weekend,” he added under his breath. “To just get out of here.”
My ears pricked up at that. “Where’re you going?” Bexley was giving us a long weekend in honor of MLK Day. My mom was picking me up tomorrow so we could go skiing in the Pocono Mountains. Mr. and Mrs. Carmichael were away right now, so the twins were staying on campus.
Charlie glanced around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “Charlottesville, Virginia.”
“Charlottesville?” I asked. “What’s in Charlottesville?”
“UVA.”
I raised an eyebrow. “UVA?”
Charlie shrugged. “Luke wants to visit.”
I smiled, and launched into my version of the Gilmore Girls theme song: “And where Luke leads, you will follow…”
“Dear god, Sage…”
“…anywhere…”
Charlie groaned and pulled down the brim of his cowboy hat. I resisted the urge to ask him about college, assuming he was still choosing a school. He’d mentioned nothing about his ED choice, so something told me it hadn’t worked out. I didn’t want to rub salt in the wound.
“How do you plan on pulling this off?” I asked, since leaving campus was far from a piece of cake. If we weren’t just going into town, Bexley housemasters required permission from parents before allowing us to go anywhere.
“Simple,” Charlie replied. “JCarmichael@gmail.com.”
“But of course!” I exclaimed. JCarmichael@gmail.com was Mr. Carmichael’s secondary email account. Apparently, he’d created it a few years ago, saying that he wanted to “separate” work stuff from home stuff, but ended up neglecting it completely. However, it took less than three seconds for Charlie to hack into the account—Mr. Carmichael was notorious for using the same password for everything—and he proceeded to take full advantage of it whenever a situation arose. He’d given himself countless permissions.
“So basically, the school thinks I’m going home for the weekend, and that…” He trailed off, plastering on a smile. “Oh hey, you two.”
I turned to see Nick and Emma—in their own flannels and cowboy hats, with Nick also wearing a gold sheriff’s badge—approaching us. Emma was smiling brightly, but Nick looked stressed, rubbing his forehead.
“Do you want to get a drink, Emma?” Charlie asked after a few minutes of mechanical bull chitchat. He gestured his empty root beer toward the saloon. Once they were gone, Nick’s tense shoulders unwound.
“So…” he said. “Skiing this weekend, right?”
“Yup.” I nodded. “Cross your fingers it doesn’t rain.”
Nick chuckled and held up a finger-crossed hand.
“What are you doing this weekend?” I asked, even though I already knew. Staying here.
“Oh.” He rolled his eyes, but I detected a slight smile. “Charlie’s put me on dispatch. I’m fielding any parental calls while he and Morrissey go off the grid.”
I laughed. “You’re a wonderful brother.”
Nick reached up and ran his fingers through his hair. “I almost wish I could go with them, though.” He coughed. “I mean, not really. Because obviously they’ll be…uh…”
“You’d be third-wheeling so hard.” I smiled.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “I just don’t want to be here.”
“So come skiing,” I blurted, heart suddenly fluttering. “Come to the Poconos. My mom won’t mind. She has your garage code, to get your stuff…”
Nick shook his head. “Sage, I can’t,” he whispered, stepping closer. “I have to stay here.” He nodded at Charlie and Emma, returning with sodas. “I need to do something here.” He glanced at the floor, then looked back up so we made eye contact. His were so very blue.
Hope sparked. He was going to do it; he was going to break up with Emma. I reached for his hand. Not to hold, but to squeeze in support. My feelings aside, I would always support Nick.
“Okay, guys,” Emma said as I snatched my hand away from her boyfriend. “Charlie has officially challenged the bull. He’s up in a couple of rounds.”
“She speaks the truth,” Charlie confirmed. He began rolling up his sleeves. “Wish me luck.”
“I hope you get knocked all the way into next week,” Nick said blankly.
I nodded, a swirling in my stomach. “Or the week after.”
“Oh, come on.” Charlie flashed us a smile. “That’s poor sportsmanship.”
We both gave him middle fingers.
He rolled his eyes.
Emma laughed.
CHAPTER 30
CHARLIE
The train Luke and I caught wasn’t as early as I would’ve liked, but we found an empty section and stuffed our duffels in the overhead compartment before flopping down into our seats. The plan was to do homework on the ride, so I was surprised when Luke unzipped his backpack and pulled out his Ray-Bans. He silently offered them to me.
“What’re those for?” I asked.
“To complete the disguise,” he replied drily, gesturing to my outfit: my wool coat overtop his Adidas sweatshirt. Its hood was pulled up over a black hat Mrs. Morgan had knitted me.
“Oh,” I said, biting the inside of my cheek. Our train had a changeover in DC, and a bunch of Bexley kids lived there. We hadn’t been the only ones waiting on the station platform. “Sorry.”
Luke gave me a long look. “Is it going to be like this the whole weekend?”
“No.” I shook my head. “No, I promise.”
Then I tugged down the hood.
* * *
We got to Charlottesville after dark, and took an Uber to our Airbnb. It was an apartment just a few streets over from UVA’s campus, courtesy of Luke’s Keiko Morrissey–tracked American Express card. Unlike me, Luke had real parental permission to leave school. “Does she know I’m with you?” I asked, to which he responded, “You mean with me here? Or with me, with me?”
Both, I guessed. She knew both.
That rattled me a little. What if she told my aunt and uncle?
The apartment was a studio, with hardwood floors and each corner serving as a different room. The kitchenette was against the far brick wall, complete with a tiny Ikea table and two aluminum chairs. Taller than the fridge, Luke opened it to find only a bottle of ketchup.
A small sectional couch sat atop a cool ropey rug and faced a flat-screen, and I checked out the bathroom only to almost walk into the sink. Very compact.
“Should we flip a coin?” Luke joked as we eyed the bed. “To see who has to rough it?”
“No way,” I said, falling back against the mattress. After a long day on the train, it was the most comfortable thing ever—a queen with a soft striped bedspread and simple white pillows. “I will happily rough it here,” I told him. “You can have the couch.”
Luke laughed, and then he was on top of me and kissing me. “Such a gentleman,” he whispered. “Thank you for coming.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I asked, a hand now in his hair. “I mean, I’m also—”
Luke’s stomach rumbled.
I tipped my head back and laughed. “Should we go find dinner?”
“Eh, not yet,” Luke said. “Maybe later. Right now I just want to…”
I didn’t let him finish the sentence.
* * *
Both our stomachs were grumbling by morning, since maybe later never came to fruition. So we walked over to The Corner, one of UVA’s main social hubs, a street lined with everything from Starbucks to a student center and plenty of stores and restaurants. Pretty much postcard-worthy. There were also a handful of side streets that I knew Luke and I would explore at some point. But first was a trip to Bodo’s Bagels before a campus tour. “I did some research,” Luke admitted as we pushed through the doors. “And this is the place to come for breakfast.”
“Sounds about right.” I nodded. “If this…” I gestured to the winding line of students, most of them looking pretty hungover from a wild Friday night. “Is any indication.”
Luke smirked and pressed closer to me, and two cups of coffee and sausage-egg-and-cheeses later, we crossed the street to the school. I’d downloaded a map, but Luke already seemed to know his way around. “My dad took me to one of his reunions,” I remembered him once saying, but it was still hard to believe. He’d been so young then.
We started with The Lawn. “Good, similar jargon,” I joked, but unlike Bexley’s circular Meadow, UVA’s lawn was rectangular and rambling, a historical court outlined with neoclassical brick pavilions and rows of individual rooms. “Our founder Thomas Jefferson called this the ‘Academical Village,’” I overheard a nearby tour guide saying, a group of parents and prospective students trailing behind him. “It’s the symbolic center of campus, and for their final year, forty-seven students are selected to live in its dorm rooms—a true honor.”
“Follow me,” my own personal tour guide then said, leading me off the grass and onto the stone walkway. Luke stopped in front of a black door whose gold placard read: SYDNEY BLAIR. Outside sat a rocking chair, along with a small trough full of wood. I too had done some research, learning that each lawn room had a fireplace. “This is it,” Luke said. “This was my dad’s room.” His throat bobbed. “He was a Jefferson Scholar.”
GRAHAM MORRISSEY, I imagined embossed on the nameplate, and four years from now: LUKE MORRISSEY. It seemed inevitable.
We stood there in silence for a minute. “How do you remember this?” I asked eventually. “Weren’t you only ten the last time you were here?”
One side of Luke’s mouth quirked up. “Charlie, I remember everything,” he said, knocking his hip against mine. “Everything.”
I waited a second, but then leaned over to quickly kiss his cheek, not bothering to check if people were watching. You can do it, I’d realized earlier, at breakfast surrounded by strangers. You can be anyone here, nobody knows you here. You can be you here. This is what college is for, and you can start right now.
I wanted to start right now.
So I took Luke’s hand and threaded our fingers together.
Luke grinned. “Let’s go,” he said, tugging me. “Plenty to see.”
And he was right—there was plenty to see, and we somehow saw it all. We roamed through the various buildings, ran whooping through the outdoor amphitheater (the students passing by looked at us like we were nuts), found the football stadium, and spiraled down the library steps to see the school’s Hogwarts-esque reading room. Lights dimmed, it looked exactly like the Gryffindor common room, with its warm oriental rugs and furniture, old-fashioned lamps and bookcases everywhere. Some students were studying, some stretched out and sleeping.
“You go ahead,” Luke whispered, the two of us standing in the doorway. “I don’t think I should.” He shrugged. “Being a Ravenclaw and all.”
“Well then, Nick’s the only one allowed in,” I whispered back. “Because Sage is a Hufflepuff, and I’m pretty sure I’m a Slytherin.”
“What?” Luke shook his head. “C, no.” He reached to ruffle my hair. “Both Weasley twins are Gryffindors, remember?”
I rolled my eyes, and he cracked up. A few people looked up from their laptops to shoot us glares. Which only made Luke laugh harder, so I crooked my arm around his neck to hide his face in my shoulder. “Stay cool, Ravenclaw,” I whispered. “Or else we can’t trespass…”
Our final campus destination was the famous rotunda, The Lawn’s beacon of light. It was modeled after Rome’s Pantheon, standing strong with its brick exterior, white Corinthian columns, and domed roof. “Will you take a picture of me?” Luke asked. “I promised my mom.”
He handed over his phone, but after snapping the shot, I pulled mine from my back pocket and took another one. Here we are, UVA, I captioned the photo and Snapchatted it to Sage…and, after some hesitation, also Nick.
He was the first to respond, Sage probably still on the slopes. There was no picture, only a message: Shouldn’t you be in that picture too?
* * *
Dinner was downtown, at an upscale steakhouse in the open-air mall. “We should go on a date,” I hadn’t forgotten Luke saying that night on FaceTime, right before Paddy and Nick had barged into the business center. “A real date.”
But instead of it being funded by his poker winnings, this dinner was all me. He had the Airbnb, I had the food. “Carmichael,” I told the hostess. “It’s under ‘Carmichael,’ for two.”
This is better than Bistro, I knew as soon as we were seated. And the Bluebird, no question. So much better.
Luke looked so handsome in dark jeans and a forest-green sweater, with the collar of his white T-shirt peeking out, and his hair perfectly imperfect. “What?” he said when he noticed me staring, glancing up from his menu. “You good?”
“Yeah, yeah.” I nodded, feeling my face warm. I took a sip from my water glass. “It’s just not fair how handsome you are.”
“Thanks,” Luke said, and tilted his head with a half-smile. “You’re not so bad yourself.” He laughed. “Even if I’ve seen a version of this look hyaku times already.”
I sighed. I didn’t know Japanese, but my guess was hyaku translated to something like a hundred. Since I was wearing my usual: blue blazer and striped tie. “Well, sorry,” I said. “Not my fault that I was raised in America’s preppiest state.”
Luke smirked and stretched out his hand, palm faceup.
I met him halfway, putting mine on top of his for a second before shifting so that our fingers could lock together.
“I like this,” he whispered.
“Me too,” I whispered back.
We didn’t let go until our food came.
* * *
“Okay, okay,” Luke said into the darkness. We were back in the apartment, under the covers in bed. “First crush, go.”
“First crush?” I asked, sort of smiling. We did this most nights—told each other things or stories about ourselves, sometimes from when we were kids, and sometimes from only a few years ago. “Really?”
“Mm-hmm,” he said. “I wanna know.”
“Well, you,” I told him. “You, of course.”
Luke snorted. “Liar.”
“What?” I said, and stopped tracing figure eights on his shoulder blades.
“I know it was your sister’s boyfriend,” he said. “Cal, right? The guy in that photo on your wall?”
I was quiet for a second. The picture of Cal and me, licking ice cream cones together on the Vineyard. “Yeah,” I murmured. “It was him. He was pretty cool.”
“Good-looking too,” Luke added. “Very good-looking.”
I shrugged. “I guess.”
“You guess?” Luke nestled in closer, tangled our legs together. I felt him kiss my neck. Everything went hazy.
“Your turn,” I said when I could speak again. “Who was your first crush?”
He didn’t hesitate. “You.”
This time it was me who snorted. “Very funny.”
“I was ten,” Luke went on as I resumed the figure eights. “It was at this neighborhood party, during a game of hide-and-seek. We hid together, then hung out the rest of the time. He had these great blue eyes, and my face got really hot when he laughed…”
