Page 80 of One Day

Mom’s laugh fills the room. “Imagine being in a gallery every single day. I spend so much time around these incredible artists, who have more talent in their little pinky fingers than I do in my whole body. The way people can just take something from their brain and make it reality? It is an amazing thing to witness.”

“I can only imagine,” Flynn says. “I mean, it’s not even Devon that is the artist. It’s her best friend, but I’m amazed by her. The things she’s able to do with clay? It blows my mind.”

“What about you?” I nudge Sonya’s side. “You take something and turn it into a reality all the time. Take your app for example. You took this jotted-out idea and turned it into something incredible, and beautiful, and usable.”

“It’s not usable yet,” she argues. “It will be, but not yet.”

“App?” Mom asks.

Sonya’s face lights up as she sits up a little straighter, her fingers curling into my thigh in excitement. “Yeah, I’m a computer science major,” she shares and falls into explaining the project that’s taken over her whole semester. Watching her talk about the thing she is so passionate about makes me fall a little more in love with her.

She lights up talking about the app, this thing she took from nothing and turned into something to help her friends, and it overwhelms me. I’ve adored her since the moment I met her, but this is different. It’s all-consuming getting to see her like this, see her love something so much that it makes up who she is.

“You’ll have an internship this summer, too, then?” Flynn asks.

Sonya shakes her head. “No, I kind of went against the project brief and essentially gave up my shot at it. I have some friends on the hockey team and see their struggle with the lack of consistency in their communication with the coaching staff, and decided to use this as a time to show them where the real issue lies. I thought maybe down the line, I was going to regret it, but I can’t. I want to help people and I’m hoping that if I can show them something that will streamline everything, it’ll open their eyes to it. That means more to me than an internship.”

“You don’t peg me as the type not to get what they want.” My mom is grinning at her in the way I’ve only ever seen her grin at me. She’s proud of the girl I love, and that wraps around my chest in a tight grip. “That’s amazing, Sonya. I hope you’ll let me know how it goes.”

She smiles, her cheeks warming under my mom’s gaze. “I can do that if you really want to know. Be prepared to hear me ramble on and on again about usability, CSS, and HTML, among other things.”

“I will happily listen to your ramble.”

“Seconded,” I say, leaning over to press my lips to the side of her head. “I love you.”

Her hand returns to my thigh, squeezing tenderly. She turns her head and smiles at me, and it’s at this moment that I truly realize there is no one else. Nobody compares to her. She overwhelms me with her love and warmth.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

SONYA

“Sunny, your shoulders are all the way up by your ears. Take a deep breath,” Walker orders, smoothing his hands over the silk fabric of the dress shirt I’m currently trying—and failing—to button up. He gently forces my shoulders down, and the nerves running down my spine out. “You’re going to crush your presentation. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

I clear my throat and meet his warm gaze in the mirror, leaning back into his chest as I give up completely on getting the buttons in the right holes. “I don’t know about that, but a little bit of nerves never killed anyone, right?”

“No, they didn’t,” he hums against my skin, gathering my hair to move it to the side. He presses his lips to my neck, his hand trailing around my hip and rests on my waist. It only lasts a second before his hands travel up to my waistband, his fingertips grazing my bare skin on their way between the open buttons. “Did you want some help with this?”

Nodding my head, I turn to face him and watch as he slowly does up the buttons on my shirt. “Thank you,” I say, tucking some hair behind my ear. “Do you think I made the wrong decision? Professor Andrews really thought I had a chance, and I just threw away this amazing opportunity to do something really exciting, but it would have looked amazing on my resume.”

He takes my face between his hands. “You didn’t throw anything away, Sunny. You chose to do what you were passionate about and what you thought could help the people you care about. That’s not something a lot of people would do. You’re going to blow this out of the water and show them exactly what you can do.”

“But—”

“You’ve got two more summers to stress yourself out about an internship. How about, instead of worrying about that right now, you focus on your presentation and put all your energy towards that? We’ll figure everything else out after.”

Chewing my bottom lip, I nod my head. I knew what I was giving up by going against what Professor Andrews said, but my nerves are getting the better of me. This app is the right decision. I feel it in my bones and yet, I feel as though I’ve somehow lost control of something I never had control of to begin with.

“I don’t remember ever being this afraid of failing before,” I mutter, shaking out my arms when I turn back to the mirror and reach for the button of my jeans. I’ve always been sure of myself. It’s something I pride myself on. My ability to push through the frustration of self-doubt, but this fear is new. It’s hard to swallow.

“Sunny, you’re going to be fantastic. You’ve worked so hard to build something you're proud of, and they’re going to see that,” he says, watching me as I readjust my clothes and tuck the ends of my shirt into my waistband.

“Yeah.” I nod my head, taking a slow breath. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” He rests his hands on my hips, turning me around slowly to slide his hands into my back pockets. “You have this.”

“You sound so sure.”

“It’s because you’re a sure thing.” He leans down, his lips just brushing mine as he lifts his hand up to tangle in my hair. His thumb trails down my jaw, and the moment he tips my chin up, he kisses me firmly. “I adore you, you know that?”

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