Leland raises her eyes. Sure enough, Fray is walking out of the private jet terminal wearing his usual uniform of white T-shirt, jeans, Ray-Ban Wayfarers, and a messenger bag strapped across his chest. His blondish-gray hair is long and unkempt; the hair is his signature, it’s what makes him the most recognizable CEO in the country. When he raises his arm and calls out “Lee!” it’s all she can do to stop herself from running into his arms.

“I’m jealous AF right now,” one of the girls stage-whispers. “He knows Leland Gladstone.”

Leland is tempted to turn around and say, He was my boyfriend in high school. That would have given them something to talk about—but Leland is well beyond defining herself by any relationship she’s had with a man.

“Hey, Fray,” she says with a coy smile. They embrace and kiss, gestures of fondness that Leland missed during the pandemic years. Fray smells like some kind of heavenly, expensive aftershave. He’s so delicious that Leland would like to take a bite of him, a reaction that thoroughly surprises her.

Cooper honks the horn. “Let’s go, kids!” he says.

Fray gallantly takes Leland’s bag and tosses it into the back of the Jeep, then he opens the passenger door so Leland can hitch her skirt and climb in. She sees her fans gawking from the sidewalk and she can’t help herself: She gives a four-finger wave.

“Woo-hoo!” Coop shouts. He turns up the radio, which is playing the top 500 rock songs of all time in honor of the holiday weekend, and number 426 is Van Halen’s “I’ll Wait.” It has been a very long time since Leland has listened to Van Halen (she sticks with female artists—Alison Krauss, Norah Jones, Lizzo) and the song delivers her right back to Deepdene Road in 1984.

She and Mallory are freshmen in high school and Cooper and Fray are juniors. Even though Leland has been around both boys all her life, they attain a new mystique that year because they get their driver’s licenses. Cooper is the good boy—clean-cut, preppy—and Fray is the bad boy. Fray’s hair is long, he wears red parachute pants and walks around with a permanent scowl, flipping his bangs out of his eyes. Leland finds him mesmerizing (but she doesn’t tell Mallory, because Fray is like a brother to her, and…ew). Fray is the arbiter of everyone’s musical tastes. He listens to Van Halen, Twisted Sister, Honeymoon Suite. Fray lives with his grandparents around the corner on Edgevale but he’s always at the Blessing house with Coop and because of this, Leland and Mallory start spending all their time there as well.