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Page 25 of You Started It

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

For so long, all I wanted was my dad back in my life. And now he is.

For the last few years, my relationship with Mom has been super strained, to the point where there were times, especially lately, when I didn’t think there was any hope left for us. And now, we’re slowly building to something that feels nice and comfortable.

When Ben dumped me, the only thing I wanted was to get him back in time for winter formal. And then I did. Except I didn’t want it anymore. Because I don’t want Ben. I don’t want the life we planned out together. I don’t want any of it.

So here I am, seemingly with everything I thought I wanted, and somehow the dopamine rush I expected got lost in the mail.

I’ve tried to focus on being independent, and sure, that’s been good for me. But it’s not enough. On some level, I’ve always been pretty independent. I’m an only child. We don’t have relationships with much of our extended family. I’ve never had a big group of friends. So I’m well-versed in what it’s like to be alone, and I’ve been okay with it most of my life.

Checking some items off my bucket list by myself was a good reminder that I could spend time alone and enjoy it, but it also showed me that sharing experiences with someone by my side was just as great.

I want a partner. A best friend. Someone who makes me laugh. Someone who makes me think. Someone who challenges me to step outside my bubble and live in the moment.

I had this person.

Someone who was all those things and more. And I let him go.

But Axel made mistakes too.

“What’s on tap today?” Eli asks from the kitchen sink. He’s wearing bright yellow rubber gloves while scrubbing the soap dispenser clean.

“Not cleaning cleaning products,” I say, waiting for my uncle to shoot me one of his unimpressed looks.

He pauses and looks down at what he’s doing. “I deserve that. Anyway, I thought you turned a new leaf,” he says, looking back at me. “With the clean room and all.”

“Oh, yeah,” I say, bringing a spoonful of cereal to my mouth. “It’s not that clean anymore.”

“Good.” He shuts off the water and peels off his gloves.

“Good?” I ask, setting down my spoon.

“Yeah, good. I found the whole thing kind of…disconcerting.”

“You found my having a clean room disconcerting?”

He pulls out a chair and sits across from me. “Are we just going to continue repeating each other or will we actually move toward having a real conversation at some point?”

“A real conversation about what?” Mom asks, entering the kitchen. Amo Eli and I both bang our heads down on the table. “What did I interrupt?”

“Nothing,” I say, sitting up. “Nothing at all.”

“I was just asking Jamie what she had planned today. What are the remaining items on your bucket list?”

“Just one item left,” I say, “and it will probably remain unchecked forever.”

“Which one?” Mom asks.

“The CN Tower.”

“Isn’t your formal being held there next weekend?” Eli asks, studying the soggy bowl of cereal in front of me. His face scrunches up in disgust as I ingest another spoonful of it.

“Yep. But I’m not going.”

“You’re not going?” Mom asks. And we’re back to the echoes.

“I know you want me to be independent, and I get that, but I also really don’t want to go to the winter formal alone.”

“That might be for the best,” Eli says, straightening the napkins. “Since Axel will be there.”

“He will?” Axel is in eleventh grade, so the only reason he’d be at the formal is if he were someone else’s date. Probably Olivia’s. Maybe that’s why he was so cold to me at Shawarma Sitty. Why he barely responded when I stood there opening my heart up to him.

And just like that, I’ve lost my appetite. “I’ve got to go,” I say, pushing out my chair and rising.

“Where to?” Mom asks, looking up at me.

“I…I don’t know. Out.” I bring my bowl and glass to the sink.

“Will you be back for dinner?” Mom asks, glancing between me and Eli.

“I think so.”

“Okay good.” She nods.

“Why? Is Dad coming over again?”

“No. But we are having guests.”

“Who?” I ask. Please don’t say it’s Ben and his parents.

Mom swallows before stealing another glance at Eli. He reaches across the table and squeezes her arm. The room is quiet as they continue to exchange glances. “Your grandparents are coming over for dinner.”

“My grandparents, as in, your parents?” I ask, standing frozen by the sink. They both nod. “Since when?”

“Seeing you and your father rebuild your relationship inspired me to reach out. So did Eli’s constant nagging.” She smiles and her eyes crinkle. “I don’t want to pressure you or anything, but I’m sure they’d love it if…”

“I’ll be there. I can’t wait,” I say, hugging my mom, then my uncle. “I’m proud of you two. You’re finally growing up.”

They laugh before taking turns pinching my cheeks.

“Make sure to be back by six,” Mom says.

“Will do.”

If Mom in all her stubborn glory can take the big step of reaching out to her parents after years of silence, then I can cross the finish line on my bucket list by checking off the final item: riding the elevator up the CN Tower at the winter formal.

If I’m going to the formal, I need a dress. A really great dress that will make me feel super confident. Maybe then I won’t care so much about seeing Axel and Olivia there together. And if I focus instead on all the things I need to do in order to get to the formal, I’ll spend less time freaking out about the other big thing I need to do…or ride.

Look at me, practicing mindfulness. Both Mom and Dr. Mueller would be so proud.

First stop: the Eaton Centre. If I can’t find a dress there, then I’m more hopeless than I thought. I take the streetcar downtown, trying in earnest to stop thinking about Axel. I imagine him giving Olivia a corsage. Riding in Olivia’s BMW to the formal. Holding her hand in the elevator. Dancing with Olivia all night while everyone takes pictures of them.

Even though thinking of Axel with another girl hurts more than words can express, I don’t regret letting him into my life. I’ll take the pain of losing Axel over never having known him.

I walk into the first store. It’s loud. And bright. This is when having a friend who is into fashion would help. Or a friend at all. I don’t even know what’s “in” or “out,” or if we’ve all just given up on the rules of fashion and see it more as a construct, choosing to wear what we want. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking, since I have zero personal style.

I must be really pathetic, because none of the salespeople will even look at me. I’ll just grab a few dresses off the rack and try them on. It’s not rocket science. But it kind of feels like it is.

If I were to describe Axel’s style, I’d call it loud (and sometimes kind of hot). Ben is definitely preppy (with a side of asshole). Olivia, hmm. What is Olivia’s style? I know! Princess Insta-Ho…ly shit. Olivia. She’s here because of course she is. And I can’t exactly hide. My arms full of bright dresses attached to my five-foot-ten frame make that kind of hard to do.

“Jamie?” she says, turning from the mirror. She’s standing on a round pedestal and her eyes move up and down my body, stopping at my arms. She stifles a laugh. “That’s a lot of dresses.”

“I haven’t decided what look I’m going for,” I say, feigning confidence. What I really want to say is, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and you look perfect standing there in that tight, baby-blue dress . Another image of Axel and Olivia together at the formal flashes before my eyes, and my stomach sinks.

A salesperson grabs the dresses from my arms and counts them before hanging them up inside a changeroom. I wince every time I hear the plastic hanger clang against the metal hook.

I stuff myself inside the changeroom once they’re done and pull the curtain closed. Maybe if I wait here long enough, Olivia will be gone by the time I come out and I can just forget all about this stupid idea. Feeling the nerves starting to take over, I sit and practice my breathing exercises, but the changeroom starts to close in on me. The wall span is so narrow and the dresses hung on the two hooks to both my left and right feel as if they’re going to suffocate me. Why do they make the lights so bright? Why is it so hot in here? I stand quickly and rip open the curtain. I bend over, hands on my knees, trying to breathe.

Olivia steps off the pedestal, eyes wide. “Jamie.” She approaches me slowly, bending to meet my eyes. “Are you okay?”

I shake my head.

Olivia leads me to a chair and sits next to me, taking my hand in hers. “Breathe, okay? It’s all good. Just breathe.”

I nod and try to follow her lead, breathing in and out as my free hand runs up and down my thigh. In…and…out. A salesperson comes to the back and before they can speak, Olivia demands they bring me water. A moment later, Olivia is twisting off the cap on the bottle delivered by the nervous salesperson and lifting it to my mouth. I take a sip of the lukewarm water.

“See? If the water goes in, that means the air can come out. You’re fine,” she reassures me.

She strokes my back, and my breathing begins to return to its normal rhythm. I open my eyes, my cheeks completely flushed as I realize what just happened. Olivia Chen witnessed me having a full-blown panic attack.

“Feeling better?” she asks, her big brown eyes on me.

“Yeah. Thanks,” I say, wiping away the tears. “How did you know what to do?”

She smiles as she takes the bottle of water from my shaky hand. “My mom suffers from pretty debilitating panic attacks. She got into a bad car accident when I was a baby. I was in the car with her and got trapped in my car seat. It took a while for the rescue team to release me. It was pretty traumatic obviously. She’ll be fine for months and then out of nowhere something will trigger the memory and it’s like the entire world stops spinning.”

“I’m sorry. That must be really scary.”

She offers me a kind smile, but then it falls. “Did I trigger this panic attack?”

I shake my head. “Not entirely. I just…I’ve made such a mess out of things, and I came here thinking if I found a dress that I felt good in, then maybe I could go to the formal, but then I saw you looking perfect and I got into the changeroom and just got hot and overwhelmed and…”

“Hey. It’s fine. Let me help you.”

“You already did,” I remind her.

“No.” She smiles. “With finding a dress. I’m good at shopping. It’s my special talent.” She laughs. “So…you needing a dress for the formal.” Olivia pauses, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “Does that mean you’re going with Ben?”

“ If I go to the formal, I’ll be going alone.” I exhale and lift my head to meet Olivia’s gaze. “It’s completely over with Ben. I’m completely over Ben.”

“Wish I could say the same thing,” she says, placing my water bottle on the empty chair next to her.

“So then you and Axel aren’t…?”

“Axel?” She lets out a soft laugh. “No. Axel and I are nothing. He did apologize, though, for using me. But I guess we were both using each other to get back at you and Ben. People act in strange ways when they’re hurting.”

“I guess it didn’t help that Ben and I made it look like we were back together.”

She offers me a small smile. “I don’t blame you for putting up walls around me. I’d do the same if I were in your place. But I’m not who you think I am. I’m just a girl who connected with a guy who happened to already have a girlfriend. For what it’s worth, Ben was honest with me from the beginning about you. We tried to keep our distance, but it wasn’t easy since we worked side by side.” She sighs and looks down before her eyes lock with mine. “Did you mean it when you said you and Ben hadn’t done anything after he and I broke up?”

“We didn’t even kiss. I didn’t want to.”

“But he tried?” she asks.

I bite down on my lip before exhaling a breath. “Ben probably believed if we got back together it would somehow erase all the pain he’d caused me and maybe also help him forget about you. But if we had kissed, he would have realized right away that our story is over. It’s been over. I just wish he hadn’t lied to me about what happened between you two at camp.”

Olivia nods. Her eyes meet with mine in a sincere way. “It was a moment of weakness, for both of us, and after it happened, he felt really bad. So did I.”

“Not bad enough to be honest with me about it,” I say.

“I think he thought he was protecting you. And maybe part of him was in denial and ashamed that he of all people let that happen. I love him, but he can be pretty dense.”

“You love him?” I never really considered if Olivia’s feelings for Ben were real, and that’s probably because I never really considered Olivia’s feelings. Like, at all.

“Unfortunately, yes,” she deadpans. “And for what it’s worth, I’m really sorry I kissed him while he was still your boyfriend. It was wrong. No excuses.”

“I appreciate that. So,” I say, breathing out a sigh, “are you going to the formal alone?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” she says again, looking down at the floor.

“I see no reason why you should. If you love Ben, you should tell him. He was furious when he saw you with Axel. He wouldn’t have acted that way if he stopped caring about you.” She shrugs as a small smile sneaks onto her face. “Wait,” I say. “My uncle told me Axel was going to the formal. If he’s not going with you then who’s he going with?”

“As far as I know, he’s not going with anyone. He’s performing.”

“Performing?”

“Yeah. The social committee asked if he’d kick off the formal by doing a few dances. Do you, like, pay any attention at all to what’s going on outside the classroom?”

I shake my head. “No.”

Olivia laughs and it makes me laugh a bit in return. “Do you want my help?” she asks, her eyes on the dresses hanging in the changeroom behind me.

“Maybe,” I say, sucking in my cheeks.

“Okay. Let me change back into my clothes and we’ll find you something that’ll wow Axel.” She pauses. “That’s what you want, right? To get him back?”

“I don’t know what I want, to be honest.”

“I’ll tell you a secret,” she says, her lips curved upward. “Most of us don’t. We fake it. And half of faking it successfully is looking the part. Speaking of looking the part,” she begins. “Were you and Axel really just fake-dating?”

“At first. But then…”

“You caught feels?” She smiles.

I nod. “I caught feels.”

“Do you love him?” she asks.

I think about her question.

“You don’t have to answer me. Let’s start with finding you a dress, and maybe after some forced time together, you’ll see that I’m really not so bad.”

“Thanks,” I respond, and because I’m nervous and need to say something to fill the silence, I go on. “Did you know Webster’s Dictionary has ten different definitions for ‘bad’ as an adjective, and the tenth includes the slang version? It dates back to the nineteenth century, and no, I don’t mean the 1900s and Michael Jackson’s Bad album, because first of all the nineteenth century began January 1, 1801, I mean…”

“Jamie.” Olivia cuts me off. “You’re rambling.”

“My bad,” I say. After a moment of silence, we both break into laughter.

“Wait here,” she says. “I’ll be right back. Just going to change.”

I check my phone. No messages from anyone. “Hey, Olivia?” I call from my seat outside her changeroom. “Do you have any fears?”

“Sure. Who doesn’t?”

“I’m claustrophobic,” I say. “Mostly when it comes to elevators. And the thing is, I’m not sure if I can actually attend the formal because of the elevator ride up the CN Tower.”

Olivia slides open the curtain and appears in front of me in her street clothes, holding onto her dress. A salesperson approaches as if out of nowhere and takes it from her, saying they’ll hold it at the cash register. Clearly, we’re not all treated as equals in the world of retail.

“It’s a one-minute ride,” she says with a casual shrug.

“But what if we get stuck? Like, halfway up? How do you get out? Will it take hours to get rescued? And what if it’s crowded and hard to breathe? What if I have to pee?” Or worse.

“A meteor could hit Earth right now and wipe us all out.”

I squint my eyes at her. “What’s your point?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” She lifts her shoulders, and I respond with a slight head shake. “Stop asking yourself what if something bad happens because…what if something great happens? Not to mention, it feels pretty kick-ass when you face a fear. There’s no better elevator to challenge your claustrophobia in than the one at the CN Tower. And all it takes is sixty seconds. In sixty seconds, your life could change—for the better!”

“You’re right,” I say, thinking about how many times in these last few months my life has changed in sixty seconds or less. Usually when I was least expecting it. I know there’s no cure for anxiety, but sometimes I get so frustrated by how unpredictable it is. I’ve been trying to practice mindfulness. I do my breathing exercises. I journal. I’m seeing my therapist again. And still, the panic attacks can come out of nowhere and the catastrophic thinking rears its head at the worst times, often resulting in painful stomachaches. Dr. Mueller tells me to be patient with myself, and that it is possible for me to live a full, balanced life.

“Ready?” Olivia asks.

I take in a deep breath and let it out slowly before standing. Olivia reviews my choices and shakes her head at the dresses I haphazardly selected. She walks back into the store and examines the options. Moments later, she’s smiling as she shows me the dress in her hands.

“This,” she says, holding it out, “is the dress.”

The gold sequined dress in Olivia’s hands is beautiful. A sure-fire knockout, but I’m not as confident I can pull it off as she seems to be. “It looks expensive.”

“It’s half off. Under a hundred bucks. You can’t go wrong. Just try it on,” she says, handing it to me.

I take the dress and force a smile. Behind the curtain, I begin to undress. As I’m slipping it on, it occurs to me that I am not wearing the right kind of bra for this neckline. “Um, Olivia. I don’t have on the right undergarments.”

She laughs. “You’re seventeen. Go braless.”

“I will not,” I say.

“Just do it now so we can see how it fits. If you need chicken cutlets, we’ll buy some.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about but I follow her orders and remove my bra. “I need help,” I say, backing out of the changeroom, my hands cupping my chest. Olivia zips me in and then forces me to turn around.

“Do I have taste or do I have taste?” she says, nodding approvingly. “See for yourself.”

I step onto the pedestal and face the mirror. The crisscross straps and pleated skirt look perfect for dancing in all night, but it’s not quite me. As I try to find a way to break it to Olivia, a familiar song comes out over the speakers. It’s the Dua Lipa song Axel played in my room when he tried to teach me how to dance. The memory brings a smile to my face.

“Thinking about Axel?” Olivia asks. “And how he’ll twirl you around in that fierce dress? To be honest, I don’t know why I’m encouraging you to buy it. I think I’m in love with it myself.”

As Olivia goes on about cut and fit, I focus my attention on the lyrics of the song and they make me laugh. And smile again. They also make me want to dance. Right here. In front of Olivia and everyone else. Something I never thought I’d be able to do or want to do. But Axel changed all that.

He changed so many things. He showed me the world through his eyes. He taught me to stop taking myself so seriously. He encouraged me to embrace who I am and dared me to take risks. And he showed me how to love again.

Axel made me feel like I was the main character in his life.

For a time, he was mine.

I love him.

I love Axel Dahini.

And I know exactly how I’m going to show him. Because words aren’t enough.

“Then you buy it,” I say, nodding enthusiastically. “I’m going to need something shorter. And easier to move in. Also something I can wear with a normal bra.”

“What? Why?”

“I’ll tell you over hot chocolate. But first, get me something short, that’ll work with Converse sneakers,” I say as I step off the pedestal.

“Okay,” she says, eyeing me up and down. “Whatever you say. You don’t mind if I try that on, do you? In my size of course. Not all of us were born with legs up to our necks.”

“Go ahead. And thanks,” I say. “Not for the leg compliment—I have nothing to do with my genetics—but for helping.”

“Confession,” she says, her cheeks pink and rosy. “I texted Ben when you were changing. You were right. He still loves me. Never stopped. We’re going to the formal together.”

“Hashtag-bolivia lives to see another day,” I say with a grin.

“It’s so terrible, isn’t it?” She laughs.

“The worst.”

Olivia helps me find a perfect dress for winter formal: a long-sleeve crushed velvet mini. I charge it to my credit card, which I only use in case of emergencies, but this feels like an emergency. Afterward, I treat her to hot chocolate while telling her about my big plan, and I can’t tell who’s more excited about it—me, or her. She even has a few ideas of her own.

I love a good plan, but sometimes going off-script can result in pleasant surprises and, dare I say, new friendships?

Or at the very least, one less nemesis.