Nothing Like the Movies
: Chapter 1

Wes

I shut off my alarm—six a.m.—and sat up in the dark.

AJ, my roommate, muttered, “Sadistic assbag,” and rolled over in his bed while I climbed out of mine and got dressed. We’d been sent to the same Canadian summer baseball league and stayed with the same host family, so even though it was only the first day of fall classes, it felt like we’d lived together for years. I knew he’d sleep in until five minutes before we had to leave for lifting, but I wanted to be wide awake and ready to go hard when we hit Acosta in a couple of hours.

I put in my AirPods and cranked “Trouble’s Coming” as I took off down the hill, making my way past dorms whose names I’d yet to learn. I’d run every morning since move-in, and there was just something about campus in the early hours, before it came alive, that I loved. Seeing the sun rise, listening to the birds (between songs), running past the green trees on the hill that somehow felt different from the green trees back home; I was smitten with California.

I was smitten with UCLA, to be precise.

And honestly—my smittenhood probably had more to do with the fact that it was where my second chance was happening than the location itself. Yes, it was a gorgeous setting, but it was the setting where my dreams were taking place.

That was the sappy shit that I felt in my bones as I slowed to let a scooter zip past me. Because I was obsessed with the possibilities of this place. The baseball potential (both college and fingers-crossed MLB), the educational potential, the other potential; this spot on the map, Westwood, was like the starting point of my everything.

I kind of wanted to break into song as I jogged around a dude with a hose who was washing out a trash can; I was that big of a sap.

Instead, I gave him a chin-nod and kept running.

Good morning, my dude.

AJ might’ve thought I was out of my mind for running so early every day, but he was just a baby, an eighteen-year-old who’d barely had time to shed the title of prom king before reporting to school.

I, on the other hand, was a twenty-year-old freshman with a lot to prove.

Because two years ago, I’d had everything.

Then I lost it all.

So now that I had a second chance to grab on to that everything, you could bet your ass I wasn’t casually reaching.

No, sir, I was greedily grabbing with both hands and never letting go.

I was carpe diem–ing the crap out of my life, throwing myself into every single moment because I knew firsthand how fleeting those moments could be. I mean, if I was being honest, I was absurdly giddy about my first day of school. Like, I didn’t want to spew bullshit like today’s the first day of the rest of my life (that was tragically close to live, laugh, love, right?), but it kind of felt like it was.

And I was so ready.

I ran my three-mile loop, showered, then grabbed a breakfast burrito with AJ at Ackerman before we took scooters over to Acosta.

I fucking loved the scooters.

Since I hadn’t brought a car to college and didn’t own a bike, the Bird scooters that could be found all over campus were the stuff of my dreams.

Wes + scooters = HEA

God, I really am an overexcited kindergartener on my first day of school, aren’t I?

I was still nerding out when I got to my first class—lifting had done nothing to hack my buzz.

“Welcome to Civil Engineering and Infrastructure.”

I entered the lecture hall the second the professor started speaking, which meant that all hundredish students in the enormous classroom turned their eyes away from him to witness my entrance.

Way to go, dipshit.

I’d completely underestimated the amount of time it took to get from Acosta to Boetler Hall, so my decision to grab a protein smoothie with AJ after lifting had been a total mistake.

But I’d been so stoked after being the top baseball lifter of the day—hell yes—that it’d seemed like a brilliant idea (at the time). Why not hang out for a few extra minutes, doing nothing but reveling in the fact that so far, on Day One, I’d yet to screw up?

I quickly took an empty seat in the front, unzipping my backpack and pulling out a notebook (I was not a laptop guy when it came to note-taking). It was an intro course, the introductory course for civil and environmental engineering majors, so the last thing I needed was to miss any important information.

“Instead of going over the syllabus with you, such a cliché thing to do on the first day, I’m going to trust that you are capable of reading it. You look like a smart bunch.” Professor Tchodre, a tall man with a serious mustache, stood at the table in the front of the hall and said, “So let’s get started, shall we?”

I pressed on the eraser of my mechanical pencil, opened the notebook, and got ready to take notes.

“In this class, we will be looking at the role of civil engineers in infrastructure development and preservation.”

I started writing as he launched into the material, still blown away by the fact that I was taking an engineering course on the first day of my first quarter. I’d assumed gen eds would fill my freshman year, bogging me down with pointless classes like world music and anthropology, so it felt amazing that I was enrolled in this, as well as chem and calc.

I’d missed math and science in the two years I’d been out of school, as crazy as it sounded.

I blamed Mrs. Okun, my tenth-grade physics teacher.

She talked me into attending an engineering camp in Missouri the summer after my sophomore year (during the two weeks between summer and fall ball), and I really hadn’t known what to expect. I’d really only gone because it was a two-week getaway from boring Nebraska, right?

I never would’ve imagined how much I’d love being around other people who liked math and science in the same way that I did. Before camp, I’d been a good student with no clue what I wanted to do with my life, aside from being a major league pitcher, of course.

But the minute I had arrived, it felt like I’d found my spot. I understood the way everything worked in that place, with those people; it all made sense. That camp lit something inside me and made me feel like I was meant to follow the engineering path, even though baseball was my higher priority.

So the fact that I was finally here, in a lecture hall, on my way to making it happen?

It felt huge.

I basically wrote down Tchodre’s every word until class ended, knowing I wouldn’t need the majority of the info but not really caring. I took college for granted the first time, the idea that of course I could go if I wanted to, but after seeing those options disappear, I had an entirely different outlook now.

I was cherishing every fucking piece of it.

Bring on the notes, the study sessions, and the term papers—I wanted it all.

After that I went to chem, followed by lunch and a quick nap. I needed rest before practice, a little quiet time to get my head right, because as great as it was that I’d killed it at lifting, that didn’t mean dick if I couldn’t throw.

“You sure you don’t wanna hoop?” AJ yelled from the living room as he and some of the guys got ready to go shoot for an hour at the Hitch courts.

I loved pickup games, but I needed to save every bit of my energy for the first practice of my collegiate career.

“Nah, I’m good,” I yelled back, setting a timer on my phone and closing my eyes.

But sleep was elusive.

Because now that I’d made it here and had officially begun my educational and athletic career at UCLA, the time had finally come.

It was time to get Liz Buxbaum back.