1
Rachel
“CANDICE, YOU NEED to focus. You have got to pass this final or they aren’t going to let you coach this summer.”
She snorted and her eyes went wide as she leaned even closer to the mirror and tried to re-create her snort. “Oh my God! Why didn’t you tell me how ugly I look when I do that!?”
I face-planted into the pillow and mumbled, “Oh dear Lord, this isn’t happening.” Lifting my head, I sent her a weak glare. “Snorts aren’t meant to be cute. Otherwise they wouldn’t be called something as awkward as ‘snort.’ ”
“But my—”
“Final, Candice. You need to study for your final.”
“I’m waiting on you,” she said in a singsong voice. “You’re supposed to be quizzing me.”
I loved Candice. I really did. Even though I currently wanted to wring her neck. She wasn’t just my best friend; she was like a sister to me and was the closest thing to family I had left. On the first day of kindergarten, a boy with glasses pushed me down on the playground. While he was still laughing at me, Candice grabbed his glasses and smashed them on the ground. That’s playground love. And since then we’ve never spent more than a handful of days apart.
By the time we started thinking about college, it was just assumed we would go away together. But then my parents died right before my senior year of high school started, and nothing seemed to matter anymore. They had gone on a weekend getaway with two partners from my dad’s law firm and their wives and were on their way home when the company jet’s engine failed and went down near Shaver Lake.
Candice’s family took me in without a second thought since the only relatives I had lived across the country and I hardly knew them; if it weren’t for them I don’t know how I would have made it through that time. They made sure I continued going to school, kept my grades up, and attempted to live as normal a life as possible. I no longer cared about graduating or going away to college, but because of them, I followed through with my plans of getting away and making my own life. I would forever be grateful to the Jenkins family.
I applied to every college Candice did and let her decide where we were going. She’d been a cheerleader for as long as I could remember, so it shouldn’t have surprised me when she decided on a university based on the football team and school spirit. And granted, she was given an amazing scholarship. But Texas? Really? She chose the University of Texas at Austin and started buying everything she found in that god-awful burnt-orange color. I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be a “Longhorn,” but whatever got me away from my hometown was fine by me . . . and I guess the University of Texas accomplished that.
When we first arrived I remember it felt like walking into a sauna, it was so hot and humid; of course the first thing Candice said was, “What am I going to do with my hair?!” Her hair had already begun frizzing, and not more than five minutes later she was rocking a fro. We got used to the humidity and crazy weather changes soon enough though, and to my surprise, I loved Texas. I had been expecting dirt roads, tumbleweeds, and cowboys—let me tell you, I had never been so happy to be wrong. Downtown Austin’s buildings reminded me of Los Angeles, and the city was unbelievably green everywhere and had lakes and rivers perfect for hanging out with friends. Oh, and I’d only seen a couple of cowboys in the almost three years we’d been there, not that I was complaining when I did. I had also worried when we arrived that with Candice’s new burnt-orange fetish, people were going to be able to spot us like Asian tourists at Disneyland. Thankfully, the majority of Austin was packed with UT Longhorn gear, and it was common to see a burnt-orange truck on the road.
Now we were a little less than two weeks away from finishing our junior year and I couldn’t wait for the time off. Normally we went to California to see Candice’s family during the winter and summer breaks, but she was working at a cheer camp for elementary-school girls that summer, so we were getting an apartment that we planned to keep as we finished our senior year.
That is, if we ever got Candice to pass this damn final.
Before I could even ask my first question, Candice gasped loudly. “Oh my God, the pores on my nose are huge.”
Grabbing the pillow under me, I launched it at her and failed miserably at hitting anything, including her. At least it got her attention. Her mouth snapped shut, she turned to look at the pillow lying a few feet from her, then she turned around with a huff to walk back to her desk.
Finally. “Okay, what is—”
“So are you ever going to go on a date with Blake?”
“Candice!”
“What?” She shot me an innocent look. “He’s been asking you out for a year!”
“This—you need—forget it.” I slammed the book shut and rolled off my bed, stretching quickly before going to drop the heavy book on my desk. “Forget it, we’ll just see if we can get our deposit on the apartment back. I swear to God, it’s like trying to study with a five-year-old.”
“You never answered my question.”
“What question?”
“Are you going to go on a date with Blake?”
I sighed and fell into the chair at my desk. “One, he’s your cousin. Two, he works for UT now; that’s just . . . kinda weird. Three, no.”
“It’s not like he’s your professor! He isn’t even a professor, period. And do you realize that if you marry him, we’ll actually be family?”