With a familiar ding, Gina watched the seatbelt light go off and reached under the seat to grab her carryon. After hundreds and hundreds of flights, she basically went on autopilot moving through planes and airports. Which in this case was a good thing, because her thoughts and emotions were such a jumble at the moment that otherwise, she's not sure she'd be able to function. It had been years since she'd been back in Salt Lake, and she had no idea what to expect.

As she rode down the escalator to catch her Lyft into town, she couldn't help but flash back to another trip down the escalator, and the warm smile waiting for her at the bottom. "Gotta show up for your peeps…" She hadn't been one of his "peeps" for a long time now. But that memory seems to wait for her at the bottom of every airport escalator since.

Once she got into the car, she pulled out her phone and tapped out a quick text to Ashlyn that she was on her way to the hotel. A quick response came:

Ashlyn: Hotel? I thought you were going to stay with me.

Gina: Well, I definitely need a room for the night of the wedding anyway, so I figured I'd just set up camp there.

Ashlyn: But I need you here the morning of to get ready! And we haven't seen each other in person in so long.

Gina: I just don't want to be in the way, Lord knows that I've imposed on the Caswells enough times, LOL!

Ashlyn: You're not an imposition, and you're the maid of honor. I've got work for you to do, girl!

Gina leaned back with a sigh. She WAS worried about being an imposition, but she was also worried about running into another Caswell. But this wasn't about her, this was about Ashlyn. And if that's what the bride wants, that's what she'll get.

Gina: Ok, you've got it. You're at your parents' til the wedding, right?

Ashlyn: Yeah, Ricky got in this morning and is crashing with Big Red at our place til the weekend. I don't want any part of that, LOL!

Gina: No joke. I'll see you soon.

Gina let the driver know that she was going to do a quick stop at the hotel before she'd need another ride, and he agreed to wait to bring her over to the Caswells' house. She wasn't paying for the hotel anyway, thanks to her mom's gazillion frequent flyer miles, and she wanted the security blanket of knowing she had somewhere to escape to, just in case.

Gina wasn't sure how she'd feel being back here. The year she spent here wasn't the longest she'd lived somewhere, but it definitely left an outsized impression. Even though she'd spent the last two years of high school with her mom, in Albuquerque in all of its High School Musical irony, she never felt quite as home there as she had here. And her enduring friendship with Ashlyn had been one of the brightest lights through all the transitions of the last 6 years. Ashlyn was pretty much the only thing that would bring her back here, because Gina learned a long time ago the best way to deal with memories, the good and the bad, were to just leave them in the past and keep moving ahead.

Though there weren't many bad memories here. Sure, there had been some painfully adolescent angst with Ricky, but otherwise, good stuff had happened here. Her first forever friend, her first kiss, her first time falling in love. And even that had no real drama back then… she and EJ had one pretty fantastic summer before they mutually agreed that they were in two different places, geographically and in life, and so it was better to part when things were good than have it fall apart over a thousand miles. But even though it was as mutual and amicable as a breakup could be, Gina knew she had never quite settled her feelings for him. That much was obvious the last time they'd seen each other when they both were in Salt Lake just once, and ever since THAT happened, they had studiously avoided being in the same room together. Given that they hadn't had a conversation of real substance or seen each other in person since, it was tough for Gina to know if EJ had those same unsettled feelings, or just a lot of regret. Not that that was what she wanted… she'd started to call him a hundred times, just to say she missed him and see if he said he missed her, too. In truth, she wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer. So avoidance was the obvious solution.

But now it was unavoidable. She was Ashlyn's maid of honor, he was her cousin. It was going to be impossible to avoid each other for the next 5 days. Watching the familiar neighborhood pass outside the window, Gina wasn't sure if it was nostalgia or real feelings rising in her chest, but she knew she had to push them down quick as the car pulled up in front of Ashlyn's parents' home.

Gina stood in the driveway, taking in the house she'd called home for the better part of a year. She would always be grateful to Ashlyn's family for letting her stay with them back then, and that familiar mix of feeling out of place and home at the same time overwhelmed her. She had visited Ashlyn a bunch of times over the years, but lately had conveniently planned to visit her at college, so this was the first time she'd been back at the house since the end of their freshman year. Which was also the last time she'd seen EJ. Which means this was… a lot. Shaking her head, she berated herself. "Pull yourself together, Porter. You're here for ASHLYN, who cares about EJ?" The truth was, Gina cared… more than she should. But that needed to take a backseat for the next five days. She squared her shoulders, picked up her duffle bag she'd rearranged to have her essentials for the next couple nights, and walked up to ring the bell.

Ashlyn flung the front door open, and Gina found herself near immediately tackled, the redhead's voice already off the running in her ear.

"GINA! Thank God you're here. I don't know what the hell I was thinking scheduling a wedding like, two months after I graduated, but, here we are. We've got a ridiculous amount of stuff to corral and finish up. And oh my God, how rude to jump straight to wedding business. How are you? How was your flight? Do you need help with your bags?"

Gina laughed to herself, letting Hurricane Ashlyn sweep her into the house. "Never a dull moment with the Wildcats," she thought.

An hour later, Gina was tying bows onto bags of Jordan almonds ("some Italian wedding thing, I guess? I don't know, Big Red's mom insisted," Ashlyn had explained) and listening to Ashlyn recounting the tales of wedding planning. She and Big Red were one of the rare high school couples that made it, despite his graduating a year before her and choosing community college to learn the business skills he needed to take over the pizza shop while Ashlyn took a more traditional route for a four year school. No one was surprised when Big Red proposed right before Ashlyn started her senior year. LOTS of people were surprised when Ashlyn announced that since she was staying in Salt Lake, that she'd be taking over the Caswell family business when the time came. It was sort of assumed that EJ would come back and take up his dad's position, but he was doing his own thing and had no intention of coming back to Salt Lake permanently, setting Ashlyn up perfectly to step in. This is all what Gina heard from Ashlyn, of course… her communication with EJ for the last three years was limited to "happy birthday" texts and the occasional social media "like." Not that she wasn't curious. But she didn't want to look TOO curious, which might invite more questions than she had answers for at the moment.

"You wouldn't believe how crazy this has been… actually, you would. You know everyone involved! Ricky is Big Red's best man, so the bachelor party was out in Chicago. It was the same weekend we went to Nashville for mine, so we had driven to the airport together and coordinated our flights home at the same time, but then he got stuck there due to weather AND he was the one with the car keys. So I'm trying to Uber home from the airport, and…"

Ugh, there it is again with rides to the airport. Someday maybe that won't be the nicest thing someone had done for her. "Focus, Porter," she coached herself, tuning back into Ashlyn's story.

"So now I'm like on red alert for flight related mishaps and just hope everyone makes it here. Well, except Nini. She flies private these days, so I'm sure she'll be fine."

It was still strange to think that a friend of theirs was an actual, real live pop star. After she started working with Gina's brother, Nini got signed by a label before she'd even graduated from East. and had been giving everyone Taylor Swift vibes ever since. She had been recording in Nashville, which is how they landed there for Ashlyn's bachelorette, and it started to sink in that she was famous-famous when a video of all of them singing karaoke in some dive bar on Broadway landed on TMZ. Definitely a "top 5 weirdest experience of my life" for Gina.

"And then of course my stupid cousin has to be in the middle of moving so he has to change his flight every time he figures out what coast he's coming from. I think I have like, eight change notifications for Elijah Caswell in my inbox."

Gina tried not to react, but at the mention of his name, her head snapped up. Which coast? EJ had been living outside San Francisco since he had graduated from Stanford. She hadn't heard about any move. Trying to be as casual as possible, she said "oh, EJ's moving?"

If Ashlyn noticed Gina's reaction, she didn't let on. "Yeah, he's been pretty disillusioned with the tech scene there for awhile, says that everyone basically expects you to live at work, and that all the cool amenities don't make up for not having a life. He took a job with a healthcare tech firm in Boston, and has been trying to wrap up in San Fran while also getting ready to move 3000 miles away."

Gina closed her eyes momentarily, taking in what Ashlyn said. Boston, really? Of all the places…

"But listen to me, could I be any more self-absorbed right now? I've barely let you say a word since you got here. We've had like no time to chat since Nashville in March, what's been going on with you? Have you decided what you're doing now, after graduation?"

Gina's college journey turned out nothing like she'd expected. She'd started out as a dance major at UCLA, intending to try and make it as a commercial dancer in Hollywood. A bad injury her freshman year had left that dream behind, but the silver lining was that she discovered physical therapy as she recovered. She became fascinated with the ways that the body could repair itself with the right kind of help, and her kinesiology knowledge from her dance major meant she was already on her way to what she needed. She knew she wanted out of LA, though… she didn't need reminders of what could have been all around her. So she decided to embrace her traveling spirit and pick somewhere as far from sunny LA as she could to get her doctorate… and Boston just happens to be about as far from LA as you can get.

"Um, actually… I did decide to go straight into grad school for physical therapy."

"Oh, that's great! You were so worried that you wouldn't get in. Where did you end up choosing?"

"Northeastern… in Boston."

The name hung in the air, as Ashlyn registered what that meant.

"Oh, I guess you and EJ will…. Have a lot to talk about, then."

Gina snorted and went back to tying bows. Ashlyn was pretty much the only person who knew why she and EJ were so distant, but whatever thoughts were running through her head, she wisely kept them to herself.

Gina chose Boston specifically to get away from what could have been. And now the biggest "what if" in her life was going to be in the same city.