Blind Ambition | ✓

29 | Acceptance

January 6th, 2021

Dear Dallas:

Congratulations! The admissions selection committee in the SC Johnson College of Business has accepted your early action application to Cornell University for the fall of 2021. On behalf of the admissions committee, I am delighted to welcome you to the Cornell community.

I sighed and placed the paper back on the counter. My mother had already made me a coffee before leaving for her usual Saturday morning pilates class, but she never put enough creamer in it. People who drank coffee black - like my father, for example - were probably sociopaths in a past life.

"Must feel good to actually see it in writing," my father said from behind his issue of The Economist, obviously referring to my admissions letter. "Not that I had any doubt."

I groaned as I took my place next to him at our kitchen table. The morning sunlight was warm, but frost still clung to the outside of the windows that looked out into our backyard. "Please tell me you didn't pull any strings with the admissions committee."

"I did not," he replied, as even-toned as ever as he flipped through another page of his magazine. "Didn't think I would need to."

A little grin tugged at my lips, and I let out a relieved sigh.

"When we go to the Cornell Club in Manhattan in a few weeks, you'll realize that not every future alumni can say that," he shot me a faint smirk. "Even without football as an advantage, you've earned it."

My stomach flipped over at the very mention of the Cornell Club, like I'd just been dropped down the world's largest roller coaster. It was just an excuse for the alumni to humble-brag about their children and parade them around like toy monkeys, and I'd be expected to play nice with my supposed future classmates. But it was just one more nail in the coffin for me, and at this rate, I'd be six feet under before I could even realize it.

I scraped at the eggs on my plate, trying to make it look like I'd at least eaten some of it. My appetite had been less than significant lately, but the last thing I needed was for it to set off more alarms in my house. The fact that I'd been sleeping until noon (or later) every day of winter break already had my mother hovering like I'd break with one sudden move in the wrong direction, but I also figured they chalked most of it up to my breakup with Jordyn. I'd overheard my mother on the phone with one of her friends, going on about how distraught I'd been the last few weeks about the breakup, and I'd let them believe that.

The fact that I could talk to my dad about girls and relationships with such ease, but not where I wanted to go to college, reminded me that I was nowhere near as strong-willed as I sometimes believed.

I glanced over at the paper on the counter again, then I swallowed hard before speaking up. "Just out of curiosity, if I hadn't gotten into Cornell, where would you have wanted me to go?"

I baited him, in hopes the answer was something akin to wherever you wanted to go.

"Well, that's a silly question," he scoffed. "There's no doubt you would have gotten in."

"Okay but if I hadn't," I bit back a little too hard, and it garnered a sideways glance from him.

"Well, your mother and I were always very fond of Vanderbilt. I used to do a lot of business in Nashville when I worked for Bloomberg, and I actually almost got my MBA there."

"But you went back to Cornell." It wasn't a question - both of my father's Cornell degrees were hung in deep mahogany frames in his office above his desk.

He put his magazine down and let his fingers graze over the stubble on his chin. When he looked over at me, there was an earnestness to his eyes that I wasn't expecting. "When you become a more well-traveled adult, you'll realize that there are certain places you just feel like you belong, like another home. Sometimes even more so than your own home. Cornell was always that place for me."