What If It's Us

by Becky Albertalli

  Ben. That’s who I should FaceTime. He knows breakups, and more importantly, he knows Ethan. And most importantly, I’m wearing a button-down shirt and a cardigan and glasses, and I’m kind of feeling myself tonight. Also, a few weeks ago, Ben drunk-texted me to say I look hot in my glasses. So there’s that.

  Ben answers right away. “I was just thinking about you!”

  “You were?”

  He nods.

  “But you’re going to leave me hanging on the details, aren’t you?”

  “Yup.” His face breaks into a grin, and wow. We need to FaceTime more often, because his smile is my favorite smile ever. He’s gotten a haircut since the last selfie he posted—sort of longer on top, but it’s subtle. He looks perfect. Which is a thing I notice in a strictly platonic way. I’ll just be here thinking all the platonic Ben thoughts. Even though he’s on his bed. It’s not like I’m thinking about all the things we did on that bed. I can appreciate the bed as a well-crafted, functional item of furniture. Ben leans back on his pillows and yawns. “So, what’s up?”

  Might as well spit it out. “Jessie dumped Ethan.”

  Ben sits up. “Whoa.”

  “Right? It’s weird.”

  “I bet. Wow. How are they holding up?”

  I stretch my legs out in front of me, settling in for the long haul. “Jessie’s good, I think. Ethan, though. Have you looked at his Instagram?”

  “Not recently.”

  “Ben, it’s bad. He posted this story where he’s singing ‘I’ll Cover You’ from Rent and crying, and like . . . I don’t know. Can you pull a muscle from cringing?”

  Ben winces. “Uh-oh.”

  “Whatever you’re picturing, it’s worse. Just watch it.”

  “Poor Ethan.”

  “I know.” I press a hand to my face. “Tell me this gets less awkward.”

  “You mean breakups?”

  “Yeah, I mean. I’ve only ever had ours, and ours was awesome.”

  Ben laughs. “Best breakup ever.”

  “I know. We rocked it.” I sigh. “Maybe Ethan and Jess will bounce back, too.”

  “They might. I bet they will.”

  “Should I go visit him at UVA? I don’t want it to be like I’m picking sides. Jessie’s my friend, too.”

  “That’s tricky.” Ben wrinkles his nose, and it’s so cute, it makes my heart flip. I’ll never get over those freckles. Not ever. “But it gets easier. You’ll see. Look at me and Hudson.”

  I narrow my eyes. “I try not to.”

  “I love that you’re still jealous of Hudson. Still.”

  “Always.”

  He shakes his head, smiling. “I’m just saying, it’s not exactly like it used to be, but we’re cool. We can text. We don’t really talk much, but—”

  A door bursts open, and I’m suddenly surrounded by girls in scarves and gloves and pom-pom hats. They’re loud and happy and flushed, probably tipsy, and one of them fist-bumps me when she walks by.

  “Where are you?” Ben asks.

  “In the Butts. The Butterfield dorms.”

  “You call it the Butts? People live in the Butts?”

  “Yup. People are literally partying in the Butts right now. That’s why I’m here. I escaped a Butt party.”

  “Wow.” Ben laughs. “Whose Butt?”

  I feel myself blushing. “Just this guy.”

  “Oh, right. That guy from your a cappella group?”

  “Mikey.”

  “Cool.” He pauses. “So . . . are you guys, like—”

  “No,” I say quickly. “I don’t think so. I mean, he’s sweet. But he has the same name as my dad.”

  “He can’t help that.”

  “Okay, and get this. He thought Hamilton was fine, but not great. And he doesn’t like arcades! That’s weird, right?”

  “Arthur, you don’t like arcades.”

  “I know, but he seems like he would, and he doesn’t, and I don’t like that.” I shrug. “Anyway, what about you? Are you . . .”

  “Single as fuck,” Ben says happily. “But Dylan and Samantha are back in town this weekend and are coming over later.”

  “Oh my God, I miss them! Remember that night at Milton’s apartment?”

  “Of course.”

  “Kind of weird, huh, that out of all three couples that night, Dylan and Samantha are officially the last couple standing.”

  “That is weird. Wow.”

  And for a minute, we just look at each other, and I swear the air gets thicker. I haven’t even been in the same state as Ben since we said goodbye that summer. But my heart and brain and lungs never remember that.

  The truth is, I don’t know how to do this. I’ve spent so much time googling. How to turn off a feeling. How to make myself like him platonically.

  When Ben finally speaks, his voice is low and soft. “We’re still standing.”

  “What?” I look at him strangely. I’m sitting in a dorm hallway against a wall. He’s sitting on a bed.

  “I mean, we’re still here. We’re still us. You’re still in my life.”

  “Very good point.”

  And it’s true. I love his smile. I love his voice. I love his face. I love that he lives in my phone, even now. I love being his friend. His best friend.

  My best friend, Ben.

  Maybe that’s what the universe wanted. Maybe that’s us.

  Ben

  One Month Later

  New York, New York

  This is it. This is actually it. The end.

  I can’t believe I did it.

  The final chapter of The Wicked Wizard War is up on Wattpad.

  I’m sitting cross-legged on my bed, the same spot against my wall where I finished the first draft last December. A couple days before New Year’s. Met my goal. I was listening to Lana Del Rey then, and tonight I’m mellowing out to the Chromatics cover of “I’m on Fire.” What’s missing now is this sense of privacy. No one waiting on new chapters. Except Arthur. It’s so different now. I’ve been posting my edited chapters serially since January. Started off with a few hundred reads and it moved into the thousands in February. I’m pretty sure this final chapter is going to push me over fifty thousand reads, which is mind-blowing. I owe a lot of that to the awesome book cover Dylan commissioned Samantha to design last Christmas. The community loves it; readers have even found me and Samantha on Instagram to tell us.

  The chapter has only been up for a couple minutes and I’m already wanting to keep refreshing the page for new reads and reviews. Just to see that the previous thirty-nine chapters weren’t some fluke. I want to go on Tumblr and check my tags, as if fans have already had the time to whip up some epic fan-art for the scene where Ben-Jamin single-handedly annihilates the Life Swallowers and rescues King Arturo, Duke Dill, and Sovereign Harrietta. Or where Ben-Jamin teams up the Crowned Sorceress, Sam O’Mal, to exorcise the vicious spirits that were possessing Hudsonien so he can find happiness again.

  But instead of trying to scratch those itches, I pick up my phone and FaceTime the person who encouraged me to post the story in the first place. Feels extra full circle since I also called Arthur when I finished the very first draft.

  Arthur answers immediately. Beaming smile and glasses. “I got the Wattpad notification that BennisTheMenace uploaded a new chapter! I was just about to call you.”

  “You say that all the time,” I say, shaking my head.

  “You do too!”

  “Truth.” We always seem to call each other when we need to talk the most. Like last week when I FaceTimed him from Dave & Buster’s to show him the claw machine from our first date and discovered Arthur panicking in his dorm room and ready to quit a cappella because he cut things off with Mikey. He really needed to hear from someone who survived summer school with his ex-boyfriend, and he promised me he would sing even louder.

  Arthur is in his bedroom, back in Georgia for the holidays. Sometimes I forget that I’ve never been there because I feel like I know his house, especia
lly his bedroom, so well from all the hours we’ve clocked in on FaceTime. “I’m so proud of you,” Arthur says. “You did it.”

  Arthur telling me I did it makes this whole book thing extra real. It sinks in deeper than seeing the final chapter live online or when I switched the story’s status from In-Progress to Complete.

  “I couldn’t have done it without you,” I say.

  “You’re the one who wrote the book,” Arthur says.

  “I’m not sure I would’ve finished without you cheering me on.”

  Arthur lounges on the bed where he read the first few chapters before anyone else. “I, King Arturo, am your first fan, Ben-Jamin.”

  In more ways than one—I really do believe in myself because of him.

  I’ve thanked him a thousand times for helping me study on his last night in New York because those pneumonic devices helped me pass summer school so I could move into senior year with Dylan, Hudson, and Harriett. I got serious about school after that scare of failing. I set a challenge to not only be early—or at least on time—but also having a perfect attendance so I wouldn’t ever feel left behind on material like before. I was late a few times and absent twice because I’m still me, but not bad overall. Dylan, Harriett, Hudson, and I made it to graduation without killing one another, and our picture in our caps and gowns hangs right beside the one of me and Arthur on his birthday.

  College in the city has been tougher, but I’m getting through it. Whenever I pictured college life, I thought I would be sharing a dorm room with Dylan and hanging a Hufflepuff tie out on the doorknob whenever I had a guy over and Dylan would barge in anyway. But I’m home with my parents while Dylan and Samantha are getting their college on in Illinois. Thankfully, Hudson and Harriett are still in the city, even if our friendship is probably never going to be what it used to be. Maybe we peaked as a group before we started dating one another. But better where we are now than when things were messy.

  “I don’t know what’s next for me,” I say. My fingers are restless.

  “I’m always going to beg you for a sequel,” Arthur says. “Keep the story going.”

  “But what if the story should quit while it’s ahead?”

  “How do you know unless you give the story another chance?”

  I smile. “Like a do-over.”

  I’m pretty sure we’re not talking about my book anymore. At least Arthur is a lot subtler than he used to be. Unlike last year when he was heavily hinting that he should come to New York so we could spend New Year’s Eve together and watch the ball drop at midnight and if we happened to kiss that would be cool with him. That didn’t happen, but Arthur is still the last person I’ve kissed. One time I thought I was developing a crush on this guy in my creative writing class, but that didn’t last long. I just need more time with me, I think. To really believe in my worth without anyone’s help. Doesn’t mean I don’t find myself tracing the letters of Arthur’s name on the magnet I bought myself to match the one he has with my name. Or staring at the photo of when I kissed him in front of the post office where we met. Or constantly thinking about the future and asking myself: What if?

  “Never say never,” Arthur says. “Right?” So much hope hangs on one word.

  “Right,” I say. “Never know what the universe has planned for us.”

  I don’t know what we have planned for us.

  What if there’s a do-over down the line for us? What if we end up in the same city again and pick up where we left off? What if we go as far as we once hoped we would, and boom, happy ending for us? But what if this is it for us? What if we never get to kiss again? What if we’re there for each other’s big moments, but we aren’t at the heart of those big moments anymore? What if the universe always wanted us to meet and stay in each other’s lives forever as best friends? What if we rewrite everything we expect from happy endings?

  Or . . .

  What if we haven’t seen the best us yet?

  Acknowledgments

  This book is a collaboration in every way, and we’re so grateful the universe brought us:

  • Our editors, Donna Bray and Andrew Eliopulos, who helped us through infinite do-overs until we found our dream love story. (“Need?”)

  • Our wonderful team at HarperCollins, including but not limited to Caroline Sun, Megan Beatie, Alessandra Balzer, Rosemary Brosnan, Kate Morgan Jackson, Suzanne Murphy, Michael D’Angelo, Jane Lee, Tyler Breitfeller, Bethany Reis, Veronica Ambrose, Patty Rosati, Cindy Hamilton, Ebony LaDelle, Audrey Diestelkamp, Bess Braswell, Tiara Kittrell, and Bria Ragin. You’re all wizards who made this magic happen.

  • Erin Fitzsimmons, Alison Donalty, and Jeff Östberg, who gave us the dreamiest cover we’ve ever seen and have loved since day one.

  • Wendi Gu, Stephanie Koven, and the rest of our hardworking team at Janklow & Nesbit.

  • Mary Pender, Jason Richman, and our badass team at UTA.

  • All our international publishers who are bringing Arthur and Ben’s love story across the globe.

  • Our friends who kept us sane, including Aisha Saeed, Angie Thomas, Arvin Ahmadi, Corey Whaley, Dahlia Adler, Jasmine Warga, Kevin Savoie, Nic Stone, Nicola Yoon, and Sabaa Tahir. Veteran collaborators Dhonielle Clayton + Sona Charaipotra and Amie Kaufman + Jay Kristoff, who cheered us on and offered wisdom. Matthew Eppard, who kept the ship running smoothly. David Arnold, who made writing Ben and Dylan’s bromance the easiest thing possible.

  • Our early readers who made this book better: Jacob Batchelor, Shauna Sinyard, Sandhya Menon, Celeste Pewter, and Dakota Shain Byrd.

  • Our loyal readers who have followed us into this collaboration without knowing what they were getting themselves into. Librarians and booksellers for connecting books like this with the readers who need them.

  • Our families, including but not limited to: James Arthur Goldstein, who made it through two books with no dads. Persi Rosa for always helping with summer school homework. Great-Uncle Milton, who is great. The Thomas-Berman family, who let Arthur stay in their apartment. Anna Overholts for knowing chemistry.

  • And our agent, Brooks Sherman, without whom none of this would’ve been possible.

  About the Authors

  Seth Abel Photography

  BECKY ALBERTALLI and ADAM SILVERA were strangers when their agent sold their debut novels, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda and More Happy Than Not, within days of each other. Two weeks later they read—and obsessed over—each other’s books, and two months later the idea for What If It’s Us was born over email. Both authors were named Publishers Weekly Flying Starts and are Lambda Literary Award nominees and New York Times bestsellers. Becky lives in Georgia and Adam lives in New York, and they live together in each other’s text messages.

  Visit Becky at www.beckyalbertalli.com.

  Visit Adam at www.adamsilvera.com.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Books by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera

  Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

  The Upside of Unrequited

  Leah on the Offbeat

  More Happy Than Not

  History Is All You Left Me

  They Both Die at the End

  What If It’s Us

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  Copyright

  Balzer + Bray and HarperTeen are imprints of HarperCollins Publishers.

  WHAT IF IT’S US. Copyright © 2018 by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this
text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  www.epicreads.com

  Cover art © 2018 by Jeff Östberg

  Cover design by Erin Fitzsimmons and Alison Donalty

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Albertalli, Becky, author. | Silvera, Adam, author.

  Title: What if it’s us / Becky Albertalli & Adam Silvera.

  Other titles: What if it is us

  Description: First edition. | New York, NY : HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2018] | Summary: Told in two voices, when Arthur, a summer intern from Georgia, and Ben, a native New Yorker, meet it seems like fate, but after three attempts at dating fail they wonder if the universe is pushing them together or apart.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018013361 | ISBN 9780062795250 (hardback) | ISBN 9780062868671 (international edition) | ISBN 9780062870506 (special edition) | ISBN 9780062889300 (special edition)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. | Fate and fatalism—Fiction. | Gays—Fiction. | New York (N.Y.)—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.A434 Wh 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018013361