Page 88 of It’s All in How You Fall
“I thought about it for a hot minute, not going to lie.”
Alex scoops me close again, and his smile is just a breath away as he laughs with me, never at me. “Of course you did.”
He closes the distance between us, and in that moment my new beginning feels exactly like a beginning for both of us.
40
Sunny’s lakeside birthday bash is already in full swing whenwe pull up and spill out of Alex’s Challenger. I elected to wait and head up to the cabin with Alex after his Saturday tennis training—Coach Bev modified his schedule to elongate the weekend sessions to make up for the time lost because of his soccer two-a-day preseason schedule. I actually think she likes torturing him for hours on end better than consistently over several days in a row.
“So, I guess the entire cheer squad and football team decided to take Sunny up on the offer she extended to Lily Jane?” I say, gaping—the number of cars is staggering.
Alex laughs, palming the volleyball his sister frantically asked him to bring via text. “It would appear so. Hope you’re ready for some unfiltered hormones.”
“Good practice for the return to school,” I admit, and pointedly thread my fingers through his, balancing my potluck offering on my hip.
Following elaborately perfect directional signs set up to keep guests from tromping through the cabin itself, we use the easement path and walk around the side. And as we do, the scene below unfolds like any of a number of OG teen comedies from the 1990s.
At least fifty kids mill around the green below the house, the dock, the water. Pairs, trios, and groups pan out across the acreage, from hidden snatches of color among the sunflower garden to the shade under the deck to the water itself, where every canoe and stand-up paddleboard is either in use or at the ready.
There’s a cornhole game going on with burly boys in Northland orange, girls curled up on lawn chairs set out in terraced rows on the shallowest part of the hill, and a couple of tables clustered with a smorgasbord of homemade goodies, sweating coolers shoved under them for relative shade. The sounds of laughter and Taylor Swift rising above the din, announcing that “You Belong with Me.”
Over on the flattest part of the property, near the sunflower garden, is the Zavala-Mack family’s volleyball net, woefully unused because Lily Jane forgot the ball.
After a few Where’s Waldo attempts, I spot Nat and Artemis tossing horseshoes with Lily Jane and Topps, and Peregrine sticking her toes in the water with Ryan plus the current and former Balan’s trio of Jada, Avalon, and Kashvi. Can’t wait for Peregrine’s debrief on howthatwent.
Birthday girl Sunny is mixed in on the cornhole game, standing next to Liv and her just-graduated Captain America stand-in boyfriend, Grey Worthington, laughing heartily with Nick Cleary, a really beautiful Black girl I’ve never seen, and some other football player I don’t recognize, who totally just put an arm around Sunny. I mean, I assume he’s a football player given the company and the fact that he looks like he could easily javelin Sunny into the lake. I’m going to have to interrogate her about that later…
“Where do we start?” Alex asks, clearly as overwhelmed as I am.
I nearly say, “By turning around,” because this is our first official outing as a couple and these people are mostly much older and completely intimidating. But I’m no coward and it’s Sunny’s birthday, so I say, “Food?”
“Always an excellent decision.”
We march over to the potluck spread and find a home for my offering among the other desserts already there, protected by thick trappings of cling wrap and toothpick tentpoles. Sunny’s laid out little place cards and a Sharpie, and it’s clear from her “example” desserts that each dish is to be labeled.
I set down the brownies and grab a notecard and pen… and pause.
I can’t actually call them “black bean” brownies or no one will eat them. But I promised Alex I’d finally make some for him, and Sunny is a fan—I’m just not exactly sure how all that extra fiber will go over with this much cooler, much older crowd.
“Brain fart?” Alex is smirking at me as I hover over my obvious pan of brownies with an uncapped Sharpie and notecard.
My eyes snap to his. “Was that a bean joke?”
“Maybe.” And by that he means definitely.
Alex unseals the clear lid. The distinctly thick smell of cocoa and sugar rises into the air between us as the cracked, fudgy top of the dessert is exposed. He pointedly takes a plastic knife from a utensil lineup of marked Solo cups and cuts himself off a little square of corner.
“They’re chewy,” I blurt out. “They’re meant to be that way.”
Alex swallows and cocks an eyebrow, giving no other indication of what he’s thinking. Rather, he steals the Sharpie and the little card straight out of my grip and begins to write. When he’s finished, there’s not a shred of misunderstanding in what he thinks. There, in his neat, squared-off handwriting is a single word, and it’s not “brownies.”
DELICIOUS.
He slices himself another piece that’s at least half of the first row and says, “Come on, that volleyball net’s looking pretty lonely.”
Then, just like that day on the basketball court, he tosses the ball at me. This time, I don’t dodge it, but I don’t catch it either. Instead, I simply bump it overhead straight back at him, an all-out grin on my face.
“Good thing someone taught me how to play.”
