Autumn's Wish (28 page)

…but then suddenly I'm on the balcony with Eddy again.

“You're smiling,” Eddy says. “Is it good?”

“It's good,” I say. “Really good. Everybody I love is really happy.”

Yet even as I say it, I feel my smile strain. I keep thinking about that single seat between Erick and my mom and the table of all my friends except J.J.

I can't help it. Tears well up in my eyes, and I feel like an idiot because I'm crying over something that never really happened. I never had happily-ever-after with J.J. for real. It was a possible future, that's all. A fantasy.

Is it crazy that I've never been happier than I was in a fantasy?

Eddy looks concerned. “
Querida,
what is it?”

I shake my head and blink away the tears. “I'm sorry. It's good, really. I did everything I was supposed to. Peace and happiness, done.”

“Then?”

“I think I got it right for everyone except me. I saw a future that felt so right, and I wanted it so badly…but instead I just messed it up.” I sniff and tell Eddy, “Maybe Daddy knew. Maybe he gave me these gifts so I could at least make other people happy, since I'm really bad at doing it for myself.”

Eddy rubs my arm. “No. No,
carina.
You have the power to spread happiness, yes. But you're also meant to
be
happy. I feel it, and your father felt it too.”

“But I've seen how things end up,” I say. “It doesn't work out for me. Not the way it could've.”

“It doesn't work out
yet,
” Eddy says. “Is the locket all done?”

“No. I have one more jump,” I admit. “But, Eddy, I've tried
everything.
”

“Ah!” Eddy says, her eyes lighting up. “But have you tried
nothing
?”

“Huh?”

“Sometimes you don't have to move mountains to change your future,” Eddy says. “Push too hard, and you can knock things over. Be true to yourself and follow your heart. Then things come to you.”

“Eddy, you don't understand. I
did
follow my heart—”

Eddy cuts me off with a snort. “That video? Hah! That wasn't your heart. That was your anxious brain!”

I can't believe it. “
You
saw the video?!”

“Everyone saw the video! The staff showed it to us on the big screen during movie night. You were a huge hit!”

“Fine. Then you know. J.J.'s perfect for me and I terrified him out of my life.”

“Impossible!”
Eddy bursts out. “If he's really perfect, you
can't
scare him away. If you can, then what you saw in the future was just a perfect
moment,
not a perfect life.”

“I guess,” I admit. “But how do I know for sure?”

“You follow your patient heart, not your anxious brain. What is truly meant to be will be.
Que sera sera.
”

It's the same advice I got from Amalita, but it somehow sounds wiser coming from my grandmother, even if a second later she hears the music kick up and shouts, “A rumba! We dance!”

With a surprisingly strong grip for a tiny old woman, she yanks me back inside to the dance floor, but I quickly slip away. If it were up to me, I'd go home now and think about what Eddy said, but I could never do that to Ames and Taylor. We hang out all night, and in the end I'm glad we do. With them it's easy to forget the ache in my heart and have a great time—especially when Taylor and I get the joy of watching Ames turn down an NBA star flat.

That night, after Kyler has the limo drive us all home, I promise myself I'll take Eddy's advice. Even though I've had a peek into the future, I can't live there, because it just makes me crazy. I used the locket well. I made changes in all my friends' and family members' lives. Now I just have to be patient and wait for my true future to come to me. Up in my room, I take the locket off. “Thank you, Daddy,” I say to the
zemi.
“Thanks for letting me help. I love you.”

I curl the locket into a silver heart-shaped jewelry box that sits in my bookcase. It's a gift Dad gave me when I was five and I thought it was the most special thing in the universe. It'll make a good home for the
zemi.

The next day, Erick and I both sleep in until the middle of the afternoon, when Mom and Glen burst through the door. We troop downstairs and see they're both seriously glowing with happiness.

“You think
you
had a good night?” Erick asks them. “Aaron and I danced with
supermodels
!”

Clearly, Mom wants to know everything, so we swap stories. I'm blown away by Mom and Glen's—Kyler went way beyond what he said he'd do. The two of them had some crazy oceanfront suite, with ridiculously decadent meals and spa treatments. He even arranged for a guitar player to serenade them at dinner—with a Kyler Leeds song, of course.

“It was all heavenly,” Mom finishes as we all sit together on the couch, “but the best part was just spending the time with Glen.” She looks up at him as she says it, and I'm not surprised to see that same dopey-eyed gaze between them that I've now seen at two of their weddings. Then she turns to me and Erick. “Thank you. Both of you.”

Glen gets up to go home once we've all swapped stories. Erick invites him to come back tomorrow, but Glen says he won't. He says he's taken enough of our mom's time, and we deserve to have Christmas as just the family, which I think is pretty cool of him. I still grab a Sharpie after he leaves and draw a big smiley face on a big round Christmas tree ball, then say, “Look! It's Glen!” but I'm cool with him nonetheless.

The week after Christmas is pretty hectic. I finish up all my college applications. Erick, Mom, and I also prep for our second annual New Year's Eve party, only this year we're holding it at the new Catches Falls location, since it's finally ready to open. My heart aches when I remember the party last year. How J.J. showed up at my door in a tux and looked so broken but hopeful at the same time, and all because he loved me. I'd give anything to see that look on his face again. This time, though, I'd throw myself into his arms and kiss him and let him know he didn't have to worry about me hurting him ever again.

This year I don't even invite him. He told me he didn't want to see me anymore, so I'll listen. I'll come at life from my patient heart and not my anxious brain. I don't invite him…but I do send him an email. It's short. Just a picture of the two of us from back when he was tutoring me in history. It's a selfie I took when we were goofing around, and we both look awful. We're way too close to the lens, and he's at this weird angle where he looks like a sunken-cheeked zombie and I'm making a face that mushes my chin deep back into my neck. It's truly a hideous picture…but I love it because it's what we're all about. Or what we
were
all about. Just being ourselves and having fun because the two of us together
meant
fun, no matter what was going on.

Under the picture I write:

If what we had is all we'll have, I'm still so grateful for the ride.

Before I hit send, I check myself. Is this another desperate ploy to get him back?

No. It's not. It's me being honest. This is how I want him to remember me, not the moment in the football stadium.

I hit send.

That's two days before New Year's. I don't hear a reply, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't check my email a million times a day just to be sure, but I don't actually expect to hear anything, and I don't.

The party itself is really beautiful. The dogs haven't been brought into the new Catches Falls location yet, so it's just this giant wide-open space perfect for an event. Our guests are a lot of the same people from last year, only now they include some of Mom's deep-pocket investors and potential investors. Them and, of course, Glen. Reenzie comes with Sean, who apologizes for staying mad at me so long. He's really excited about UNH and says the truth is I did him a huge favor when I accidentally locked him in my attic. Jack and Tom show up separately, and I dutifully pretend I invited Tom on my own. Personally, I still think Jack should just come out and everyone would be fine with it, but
que sera sera—
he'll do it when he's ready. Taylor comes with Drew and Ames arrives solo, so I declare her my date for the evening. We hang and mingle with everyone else at the party, and we clap and cheer when Mom makes her announcements, thanking everyone for their help in getting this place off the ground.

At a certain point, we all end up drifting outside. The dog-bone-shaped wading pool hasn't been filled yet, and it's way too tempting to resist. Even though we're majorly decked out, we all climb in and sit inside, our backs against the cement curve of the bone end and all our legs stretching out toward one another.

“So this is it,” Jack says. “All our applications are in. The rest is out of our hands.”

“Out of
your
hands,” Reenzie says. “Sean and I know where we're going.”

“Nowhere near each other,” Taylor says, cuddling closer to Drew. “Doesn't it freak you out?”

“Nope,” Reenzie says. “We agreed to break up after graduation.”

“Because I'm going to be a big football star and I can't possibly resist all the women throwing themselves at me,” Sean says playfully.

Reenzie swats him. “You're the one who wants to stay together!”

“We'll
all
stay together,” Ames says. “No matter where we go or what we do after this year. Swear it, right now.”

I feel a pang in my stomach because we're
not
all together; there's one of us missing even now. I don't want to think about that, though. I love everyone with me in this dog pool, and I want to concentrate on them. “I swear,” I say; then I flinch as I think of the future. “Just…um…Drew?” I add. “Be careful with yourself.”

“What?” he asks.

I don't elaborate, and luckily I don't have to because Amalita distracts everyone by trying to make us repeat a ridiculous friendship oath, but we all laugh so hard we can't even get through it.

“Yo! Dog pool people!” Erick calls while we're still laughing. “It's almost midnight! Mom wants everyone inside!”

We pile in and take a spot as Mom grabs her standing microphone once more. She's smiling giddily and her face is flushed, like she's had a little too much champagne. “And now,” she says, “as we get ready to count down to a brand-new year, I give you a special treat. A musical interlude, if you will.”

She waggles her eyebrows and I laugh out loud. My mom does
not
get tipsy, so this is hysterical to me.

Then I hear the opening guitar chords of Kyler Leeds's “As You Wish.” A murmur of appreciation runs through the crowd. I'm amazed. “Kyler's here???” I mouth across the room to my mom.

She just smiles and gives an exaggerated shrug. Clearly tipsy.

Or maybe not. Just then, a guy strolls out from the staff area in back. He wears jeans, sunglasses, a leather jacket, and strums a guitar slung over his shoulder. He
could
be Kyler Leeds…if you had no idea in the universe what Kyler Leeds looked like and imagined him longer, lankier, paler, and with much darker hair.

It's J.J.

My skin prickles all over and my heart leaps against my chest. I turn to look at my friends, and they're all grinning like my apparently-not-so-tipsy mom. I even see Erick looking at me with a loopy smile on his face. He gives me a double thumbs-up.

They all knew.

J.J.'s at the mic now. He stops strumming, but the music keeps going. “It's a backing track,” he admits. “I don't know how to play guitar.” He yanks off the sunglasses. “Can't really see in here with these things, either.”

He takes off the guitar and gently puts it and the sunglasses on the floor, then quickly stands up and stammers, “I, um, I do have a song for you, though. Here goes.”