The-Lucky-List-Rachael-Lippincott

thoughts. “I like you, Emily. I really like you. To be honest with you, I was pretty scared to move to
Huckabee. But then I sat down next to you at that bingo fundraiser, and you smiled at me, and I knew
almost instantly everything was going to be okay.” e corner of her mouth ticks up into a smile as she
talks. “I’ve loved every minute of this summer with you. I’ve loved planning with you, and listening to
you talk about your mom, and how brave you’ve been when you have to jump o a cli and you really
don’t want to. I love how you tell jokes when you get nervous, and the way you smile when you talk
about baking, and how it feels when you look at me. And I love all the things about you that you’re
scared to show people. Your sadness, and your pain, and your fear, because without it, you wouldn’t be
you.”
All at once I’m hit with two overwhelming emotions.
e first dances around my chest in a way I have never experienced with anyone, the stars above us
shining brighter than ever. It feels real, and overwhelming, and so dizzying, my entire world shifts.
e other is an overpowering dread that sits heavy in my stomach, the feeling the same as when I
stepped off the Misty Oasis bus that summer and saw that something was wrong with my mom.
I never got to tell her what I felt, and who I felt it for. Never got to know what she would have said.
What she would have wanted for me.
So I shoved it down so deep, I could pretend it never happened. If I was with Matt, though, I could
know. I could know she would’ve been happy.
And I could pretend I was fine with her never knowing, because maybe there was nothing to know
in the first place.
But there was.
There is.
I stare at Blake, words escaping me. Both sides fighting within me.
“I know,” she says, when it’s clear I can’t form a sentence. “I know you think your mom wanted you
to be with Matt. I know you think that finishing the list and being with him is how you can keep her
with you and live your life the way she wanted you to live it. I can understand that. But—” Her grip
tightens on my hand and she takes a step closer. “But, Emily… from everything you and my dad have
told me about her, from everything this list has taught me about her, what she would have wanted,
more than any fairy tale, is for you to be happy. For real. She would have wanted you to try your luck
on something real.”
I pull my hand from hers, taking a step back.
It’s not that simple, Blake, I want to shout. But… she can’t possibly understand. She didn’t grow up in
Huckabee, where this is still pretty far from the norm. More important, though, she didn’t have her
dying mom tell her how right things could be if she gave this one specific boy a chance, like she’d given
my dad a chance all those years ago. A boy that was pretty close to perfect, bringing flowers to the
hospital and being there for me during the hardest moment of my life.
But not perfect for you.
e thought comes to me like a traitor, from the part of me that wants nothing more than to kiss
her right now. The part of me my mom never knew. Can never know.
The part that for all those reasons… I can never be.
“Blake, I… I can try my luck a hundred times, but I can never bring her back. I’ll never know what she