I nod. I know I have a lot to work through, but I also know that anything is possible with these two at my side. They’re all I need to get by. “I have both of your backs, too,” I say, tearing up.
“We know you do,” Hannah says. “You’ve helped me more than you could ever know. This trip has meant everything to me.”
“Me too.” Tyson nods.
My heart skips a beat as I think of the intimate moments we shared. I wonder if we will ever have more of them.
“God, Lainey.” He swallows, a visible lump in his throat. “We almost lost you.”
“But you didn’t. I’m here.” I force a smile. “A bit broken and battered, but I’m still here.”
“We’ve all been through a lot. We’re all a bit broken and battered,” Hannah says. “But the important thing is that we kept our promise—”
Tyson nods. “Yes, we did.”
“Summer would be so proud of us,” Hannah says, staring up at the velvety sky.
“Yes, she would. All three of us,” Tyson says.
I take his hand in mine, then gaze up at the stars. For the first time since Summer died, I can feel her with us. I can also feel tears running down my cheeks.
I try to wipe them away, but they come too fast, and I finally just let them fall.
“It’s going to be okay,” Tyson says.
“Better than okay,” Hannah says.
I nod. Because I believe them.
One Year Later
Hannah
Tyson, Lainey, and I finally made it to Paris. It was well worth the wait. The City of Lights is everything I hoped it would be and more. We are only a few days into our trip, but we’ve already experienced so much—from the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame to the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay; to a riverboat cruise on the Seine and a stroll down the Champs-Élysées.
But so far, my favorite part of the trip has been our early morning runs around the city. It is something I never would have predicted back in January, when Summer’s brother first reached out to us about the Chicago Marathon. His email explained that he and a few family members were organizing a tribute team to run in Summer’s memory while raising money for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Several of Summer’s former high school and UVA teammates would be joining them, and he hoped that we would, too.
Tyson agreed on the spot, while I wrote back that although Lainey and I “can’t run,” we would be thrilled to help with their fundraising efforts—and of course be in Chicago that weekend to cheer everyone on.
“What do you mean you ‘can’t run’?” Tyson said a few minutes later on a three-way call.
“We literally can’t,” Lainey said.
“No, you literally can,” Tyson replied. “If your legs work, you can run.”
“Fine,” Lainey said. “Technically, we can run. But we sure as hell can’t run twenty-six point two miles.”
“Nobody can run a marathon without training.”
“I’m not even sure I could run the point two part,” I said with a laugh.
“Then just do point one,” Tyson said. “And build from there.”
“But, Tyson…Ugh. Maybe a 5K—even a 10K. But a marathon? There’s no way. It’s too hard,” Lainey said.
“C’mon, Lainey. You’ve done something way harder than a marathon,” Tyson quietly reminded her.
He was obviously referring to her sobriety journey, which began shortly after we returned from Capri. At first, Lainey pushed back on the idea of rehab. But with much encouragement, she agreed to keep an open mind. From there, we did research—a lot of it. Lainey ultimately decided on Crossroads in Antigua, joking that it might be her only way to spend a month at the beach.
During her stay, she learned to put aside the stigma of certain labels and simply acknowledge that she had a problem. From there, she focused on the issues contributing to that problem. In other words, her drinking might only be a symptom, but it still needed to be addressed.
Since returning to New York, she had been taking things one day at a time, seeing a therapist, attending AA meetings, and following their mantra “to thine own self be true.” Right before this trip, she texted us a smiling selfie with a purple medallion marking her ninth month of recovery.
In the end, Tyson convinced us to “put ourselves out there” and join #TeamSummer.
And here we were, running in Paris. Our pace was incredibly slow, but we still felt proud of our effort.
“Honestly? I don’t know what is more shocking: that I’m not drinking in Paris or that I am running in Paris,” Lainey says to me now as we finish a leisurely six-mile run along the Seine.
“I know,” I say, as we begin our cooldown. “Who would have thunk it?”
“Not me,” she says. “We’ve both come a long way.”
I nod, thinking about my own journey over the past year.
After I returned home from Capri, my mother and I quickly fell back into our old patterns. In fact, she seemed to take strange, sick pleasure in breaking the news to me: Grady and Berlin were officially together, and he had slotted her right into my old life. My high school friends pledged their undying loyalty to me, swearing that they’d never accept Berlin in their circle, but there was still inevitable social overlap. Grady was friends with their husbands, fiancés, and boyfriends, and there was nothing to be done about that.
After three miserable months, I knew it was time to make a drastic change in my life and get the hell out of Atlanta.
Fortunately, Jada agreed with my decision and made phone calls to some of her interior design friends across the country. I was open to living pretty much anywhere, but in the end, I chose Austin, Texas, in no small part because of Olivia. After finishing her training in Italy, she had returned to Dripping Springs, and we had started to spend more time together, traveling back and forth between Texas and Georgia. Although a move to her home state felt premature—and a bit presumptuous—I followed my heart, taking a job with a boutique design firm and signing a one-year lease for the cutest one-bedroom apartment in Austin’s Warehouse District. Recently, I also made the decision to start taking part-time classes at UT with the ultimate goal of earning a master’s in interior design. It was originally Olivia’s idea, as she had pointed out how amazing it would be to one day work for myself.
“You could even start your own firm,” she’d said to me one weekend on a road trip to Marfa, Texas. “That way you could have people working for you when you have a baby.”
Although we were nowhere near that stage of our relationship, she’d given me a look when she said it—and I could tell she was picturing the two of us having one together.
Deep down, I could see it, too. Being with Olivia makes less sense than anything I’ve ever done in my life, but in some ways, that’s what lets me know it’s real. For once, I’m not living my life for my mother. At the same time, I’m not rebelling against her, either. She simply doesn’t factor into my decisions. I’ve yet to introduce her to Olivia, and I’m in no hurry to do so.
The only opinions that matter to me are those of my two best friends. My chosen family. To be clear, I don’t feel like I need their approval, either, but I very much wanted it. So I was thrilled when Lainey got out of rehab and immediately suggested a “do-over,” i.e., that we all—including Olivia—meet up for a few days in New York. We ended up staying at one of Lainey’s friend’s cabins in the Catskills, and our quiet weekend of hiking and talking by the fire couldn’t have gone any better. By the end of it, Tyson and Lainey were almost as smitten with Olivia as I was.
On that same trip, Tyson and Lainey made an announcement of their own. While we were on Capri, and seemingly out of nowhere, the two had developed feelings for each other. They had put those feelings on hold while Lainey was sorting out her life, but they were now ready to explore a potential relationship.
On one level, I was shocked. On another level, I think I had seen it coming. Since Lainey’s accident, they were both talking about each other in a much different way than they ever had before. Tyson was less judgmental, and Lainey was more unguarded.
A few weeks before we left for Paris, Tyson made another big announcement. Things were getting more serious with Lainey, and he was going to move to New York and take a job teaching AP Lit at a high school in Brooklyn.
I still can’t believe the good fortune of it all. I found the person who could be my soul mate; Lainey found her sister; and Tyson and Lainey found each other. Sometimes it almost seems too good to be true—which scares me. The stakes feel so high, and I can’t bear the thought of a breakup causing any sort of rift in the bedrock of our friendship.
But I have come to learn that we can’t live our lives in a small, fear-based way. We have to take risks. We have to love big. And we have to have faith in our friendships. They’ve gotten us this far.
