9.35: Just Another Year

Note: One sexy shot in this one

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Sixteen months later

Okay, I’m hoping this whole ‘journaling’ thing is kinda like riding a bike, because I am majorly out of practice. To be honest, I kinda forgot I used to sit here and spill my soul to my computer like this.

I was transferring some old files over to my new laptop a little while ago, and that’s when I found it — that stupid folder I made called “Random Shit” with a bunch of rambling Word files full of… things I really try not to think about much anymore.

I made the mistake of re-reading some of them, of course and, well… Here we are.

It’s not like I’m writing TO anybody, but it felt wrong to leave things hanging the way I did. The last time I wrote anything, I hadn’t even had the guts to talk to Ollie yet. I was still this whiny little chickenshit complaining about how my life was never gonna have a happy ending.

But see, that’s the thing I’ve learned over this past year. Life never has a happy ending. There’s no such thing as ‘happily ever after’. Maybe growing up in Hollywood poisoned my brain or something. Or maybe I just listened to Lily too much. I dunno.

But last year helped me figure out a lot of things, and the most important one is this — There’s no use in worrying about things going to shit. Because guess what? They’re always going to. It’s just a matter of when. So… enjoy the good stuff while it lasts, and don’t be surprised when your life ends up a steaming pile of crap later (man, I should’ve picked THAT as my Senior quote for the yearbook…)

Anyway, let me back up… Like I said, a lot’s happened since the last time I wrote anything. 

It all started on prom night last May. I took some time to let myself get over Landon (or at least, as much as I could get over him), then I finally worked up the guts to go for it with Ollie… all it took was a little alcohol and a well-timed push from Lily.

And you know what? Turns out I was right. He felt it too. All that time I’d spent worrying and wondering was for nothing. So we decided to finally give it a try.

We kept things really low-key… Even more low-key than when I was with Landon. Lily was the only one who ever knew there was anything going on between us. And in a weird way, I kinda liked it. It felt like there wasn’t as much pressure on us, or anything. We could just… enjoy each other, if that makes any sense.

Being with him was so different than being with Landon. Not better or worse, just… different. It felt a lot like when we used to hang out as friends, really. Just more ‘connected’, or something? That sounds so fucking stupid, but I don’t really know how to explain it. But it was amazing.

Plus, uh, as an added bonus, spending the night at each other’s houses got a lot more interesting (including the ‘almost getting walked in on by my family WAY too many times’ part, but the key word there is almost).

Looking back now, it was kind of weird, being the one who knew what he was doing. Ollie’s been with girls before, but I was leading him into uncharted territory. Fortunately I had a pretty awesome tutor who showed me the ropes… And Ollie turned out to be an excellent student.

Landon and I only had about three months together, and I used to think THAT was bad. I mean, I still do, really. Looking back, I wish I’d taken more time to really appreciate what we had before it was gone.

But me and Ollie? We had two months. Two! And even knowing it was gonna end… God, it just never felt like enough. I used to wish I could hold onto him forever… That somehow, I could find a way to make him stay. Stupid, right? But that never stopped me from hoping.

Fuck. Writing about this is a lot harder than I thought it was gonna be. I’ve spent the past year keeping myself distracted the best I can. It’s been a long time since I’ve really sat down and thought about all this stuff. It’s easier not to.

It was one year ago in July that Ollie left for NYC with his mom for her stupid TV show (which, for the record, turned out to be cringe-y and awful and was totally not worth taking Ollie away from me). And a week after that was when Landon left for OSU. So, yeah… July is a pretty sucky month for me.

I guess the one thing I’m grateful for is that I was able to get ‘closure’ with both of them, or whatever you wanna call it. With Ollie, it was easy. He spent his last night in LA over at my place. And as much as it fucking sucked, it was also the perfect way to say goodbye.

I never thought I was gonna get that with Landon. I mean, we’d already been broken up for longer than we were even together by then. But he surprised me by showing up at my front door a few days before he left for Ohio. I really wasn’t expecting him to come say goodbye. But he said he ‘had to’. And I’m really glad he did.

We went up to my room and talked for a few minutes about the stupidest shit. I wished him luck in college, he told me he hoped I had a great Senior year, and that maybe when things settled down we could play Bloodwatch online together again (which, for the record, never happened)…

It was awkward and felt kinda forced, can’t lie. But right when he was about to leave… I kissed him. I know I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help myself. I needed it. And I think he did too.

Guess I just wanted one last good memory with him.

Man, that was a year ago now… Can you believe it?

I’ve seen each of them exactly once since they left. Ollie and his mom came back to visit around Christmas, and I ran into Landon about a month ago when he was back visiting his parents for the summer.

And they both looked amazing, but it just felt… weird. And it hurt. Like hell. I could tell it hurt both of them too. Guess we should feel lucky we can stay friends after everything that happened… But it’s so different than what we had before. There’s this heavy cloud of super-awkward tension just looming now. And now we’ve just gotta deal with it.

But that’s all part of ‘moving on’ or whatever you wanna call it, right? Doesn’t make it much easier though.

What’s that stupid thing people always say? About how you ‘never forget your first love’? Yeah, well what if you had two at the same time? Does that mean you get double the heartache? Does it mean it takes the pain twice as long to finally go away?

Either way, it doesn’t matter now anyway. Because it’s all over now. For good.

Anyway, besides all that stuff with Landon and Ollie, Senior year was pretty uneventful. After all the hype, it was… just another year, really.

Lily got a new boyfriend for a while, but he totally fucking sucked. They didn’t last long, but she was pretty messed up about it. I keep telling her there are no guys around here who deserve her, and I think she finally realized I was right. 

I have a feeling she’ll have better luck at Stanford.

I was so fucking proud of her when she told me she got in. Stanford is literally the most difficult college in the entire country to get into, and she fucking nailed it!

It’s got everything she wants, too. Once she gets her Bachelors, she can stay there all the way through her PhD if she wants to (unless she somehow fucks her grades up between now and then, but I mean, this is Lily we’re talking about so… Fat chance.)

Of course, there’s a catch to all this too (there always is, right?). She’s gonna be like five hours away from LA, which is gonna majorly suck (better than being on the other side of the country, but still…). She’ll be back to visit her parents for the holidays and summer though, so I’ll at least get to see her then. But still… I’m gonna miss her so much. Ugh. 

I got accepted to a few different places, but I decided to stick around here and do all my undergrad stuff at UCLA (still gonna live on campus though… Anything to get away from Penny). It’s just a lot easier if I stay in LA for now. Plus, it’s what comes next that really matters anyway. UCLA’s got a pretty awesome medical program, but honestly, I’ve already got my sights set on San Francisco. One of the most prestigious medical programs in the country and less than an hour from Lil? It’s fucking perfect!

I’m gonna have to work my ass off for the next four years if I wanna qualify. And knowing how my life tends to go, something’s probably gonna happen to fuck up my plans… but like I said before, it’s not worth it to worry about that kind of thing. Because it WILL go to shit, eventually. I’ve just gotta hope I can get accepted to med school before it happens.

So yeah… I guess the bottom line is I’m doing pretty okay now. We all are.

Landon’s still kicking ass at OSU — all the sports networks were raving that he had one of the best freshman seasons of any college quarterback ever. It’s a pretty fucking big deal.

Ollie’s going to NYU in the fall for his Bachelors… Guess he fell in love with the city more than any of us thought he would. He still hasn’t settled on a major yet, but he sounded all excited about law school the last time I talked to him. I always figured he’d follow in his mom’s footsteps, but if you think about it, lawyer is just one step away from ‘actor’, isn’t it?

And then of course, there’s me and Lily… But I already bored you with all those details.

We’ll see what happens, I guess. We all have these big dreams right now, but a lot can change in the next few years. You never know where the hell you’re gonna end up. 

And in my experience, things almost never go the way you thought they were going to.

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And, believe it or not… that’s the end of the teen arc! 😮  I know we didn’t get to see much of Ollie and Asher together, but it would have been filler-y fluff and, fun as that would have been, we needed to move on… (Plus, much to Landon’s dismay, Asher was pretty Ollie-focused this arc, I’d say, even if Landon got to have most of the fun 😉 )

And now, brace yourself for our biggest-ever A2A timejump! 😮 That’s right, folks. We are mixing it up! My YA arcs have always focused on my Rosebrooks when they are in their early 20s… But this time, I wanted to get into the mindset of an age range I can identify with a little better…

And so, the next chapter will jump us forward a little over twelve years into the future, where we will catch up with a 30-year-old Dr. Rosebrook fresh out of his residency 😉 See you there (next Wednesday!)!