Page 95 of The Do-Over

“Oh.” He looked surprised. “Well.”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to force my lips into a smile as my heart ached inside my chest.

That made him get out of the car. “Come here.”

Josh wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. It wasn’t a casual hug, but a tight, all-encompassing embrace that felt like a goodbye to us, to Josh and Emilie. The smell of his familiar cologne comforted me, but in a friend way.

“You okay?” he said into my hair, and I just nodded and swallowed.

Somehow, over the course of many February fourteenths, one DONC, and multiple days of fallout, everything had changed.

I was emotional, yet again, by the time I got inside. As someone who rarely got feelsy, it was beginning to get ridiculous. I threw my keys on the table just inside the door, but stopped short when I looked to my left and saw that my mom and Todd were already home.

“Hey.” I slipped off my shoes. “How come you’re home already?”

“I want to talk to you,” my mom said. “Sit down, Em.”

I went into the room and sat down on the love seat across from them. “Time for an impromptu family meeting?”

Todd said, “In a way.”

“Your dad and I had lunch today,” my mom said, steepling her fingers together like she was in a boardroom, not a living room. “To discuss our situation.”

I glanced at Todd, and he gave me a reassuring closed-mouth smile.

“He is still taking the job in Houston, but his company is allowing him to work remotely until August. That way you can finish your junior year, and then decide if you want to move with him or stay here.”

I blinked. Did she mean—

“After much discussion, we’ve decided that as long as your grades stay up and you stay out of trouble, you can make the call on whether you want to finish with your friends at Hazelwood, or start over with your dad in Texas.” She gave me a smile and said, “We will respect your wishes, no hard feelings.”

“Are you serious?”

My mom nodded but her brow was wrinkled, like she was unsure about the whole niceness thing. I looked at Todd and he smiled.

“Oh, thank you!” I got up and ran over to my mom, hugging her even though we didn’t really do that very often. I breathed in Chanel and hairspray as I said, “Thank you so much!”

My mom smiled when I pulled back and she pushed my hair off my face. “It was Todd’s idea, and your dad was the one who had to renegotiate his new job.”

“Still,” I said, my heart nearly bursting with love for theconfusing woman whom I both loved and was terrified of, “I know how hard it is for you to, um—”

“Give in?” Todd laughed and said, “Yeah, she’s growing.”

My mom smiled at him like he was her whole world, and for once, it didn’t piss me off. Then I hugged him, too, feeling guilty for the thousands of unkind thoughts I’d had about him over the years.

Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.

CONFESSION #21

I knocked down a mailbox with my car last month and didn’t even stop.

“You guys are ridiculous.” I pushed the pile of balloons into my locker before slamming it shut. “This is horrifying.”

“Horrifyingly fantastic.” Chris laughed and Rox straightened one of the streamers on the outside of my locker. It was March 4, my birthday, and instead of being subtle, they’d decorated my locker and filled it with balloons.

Which, I had to admit, was nice. I’d been bummed for the past couple of weeks, but now I was able to make it through an entire period of Chemistry without looking at Nick Stark once.

I was a damn hero.

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