Page 35 of The One

I glanced up, the screen of my laptop hiding my smile, but it was there, bigger than ever.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

His hands went behind his head as he leaned back in his chair. “Staring at you.”

Noises outside drew my attention to the window, where I could see Penelope, Ridge, Rowan, and several of Rhett’s teammates splashing around in the pool. We should technically be out there with them. Rhett’s dad was out of town this weekend, and since his parents were divorced, he’d opted to stay here with no supervision rather than go to his mom’s place. And since he’d had a game last night, he had today and tomorrow off from football. So, his house was now a free-for-all until we had school on Monday.

“But by staring at me, you’re not getting anything done. We promised we’d finish up these college apps and then shut off our computers and have fun.”

We were going into the third week of our senior year, and it was already hitting hard. I had more homework than I knew what to do with, which was why I wanted to attack the college stuff on the weekend, wrap it all up, and get it submitted.

The glimmer in Rhett’s eyes told me his plan was much different from mine, regardless of what he’d agreed to.

“I should be doing that, yes. I’d much rather be looking at you.”

I wiggled in my chair. I couldn’t help it. “Have you finished any of the applications?” I checked my watch. “We’ve been at it for over an hour.”

“Nah.” He grinned. “But we really only need to complete one. We’re going to USC. We decided that over summer break.” He licked his lips. “So, there’s no need to apply to Stanford or the University of California, Berkeley.”

Aside from having an epic summer that had been spent at the beach, in his pool, and with all our friends, we’d narrowed down our top school choice.

“Except what if we don’t get in?” The worry was in my chest, beating away, keeping my hands on the keyboard of my laptop, refusing to lift until I was done. I couldn’t imagine what wouldhappen if one of us got in and the other didn’t. That thought had been haunting me. “It’s a tough school, Rhett.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get accepted.”

“But what if we don’t?” I looked at my screen, the cursor blinking on the third paragraph of my college essay, which I’d already rewritten a handful of times, each draft continuing to get worse. I shut the screen and rested my hands on the back of it, the metal cold against my skin. “We need to apply to each of the schools, Rhett. Because I don’t care what you say, there’s always a chance.”

“False.”

I let out a short laugh. “How is that false?”

“We get good grades, and we have high SAT scores. You’re involved in extracurricular activities, and I’m on the football team. On paper, we look sick. We’re a shoo-in, baby.”

“Same for almost everyone else at our school.”

“But they don’t have my dad. He’ll pull strings if he has to—and I’m not saying it’ll even get to that, but he has the power to make it happen. All it’ll take is a phone call. I’ve already talked to him about it.”

“You have?”

He nodded.

The thought of Rhett sitting down with his dad, talking about our future plans and how we wanted to go to college together, had me asking, “What did you say to him?”

“I told him I was going to college with my girl. That I don’t want to be apart from you and that I had no doubt we would get in, but if we needed some extra help, I’d let him know.”

“He was cool with that?”

“Sure was.”

When I’d had the same conversation with my parents, they hadn’t been surprised to hear I wanted to attend college with Rhett, considering he was the reason I’d pushed so hard to moveback to LA. But they didn’t want him to be the reason I attended a certain college over the other. They’d reiterated multiple times that their biggest concern was my education and they wanted that to be my top focus.

Dad was a graduate of Stanford. He preferred I go there instead of USC. Rhett’s father, Ray, was a huge fan of USC football and donated to the team, which probably had something to do with Rhett wanting to go there.

“What about your parents?” he asked. “You never told me what they said when you talked to them about it.”

I slowly filled my lungs.

“Shit,” he groaned as he studied my face. “It went bad?”