The Upside of Falling

“I love your mom, but I think we both have regrets about high school and what we missed out on.”

Brett’s father gives him this strange pep talk right before leaving for a “business trip.” Something about his father’s words confuses Brett, and this comment foreshadows the news of Mr. Wells’ infidelity. Mr. Wells was forced to settle down when he was in the “prime” of his life as a high school senior, and when he became a teenage father, he had to put his dreams on hold to help raise his son. Mr. Wells is restless and seeking some sort of freedom that he had to give up when he was still a kid, and he feels like he “missed out” on something by becoming a father and marrying his high school girlfriend.

“In a way, it’s like we’re mutually using each other. And we can just be friends along the way.”

When Brett and Becca agree to enter a fake-dating relationship, Becca believes that they won’t develop real feelings for one another. The arrangement was meant to be strictly platonic, and Becca and Brett think they will be able to “use each other” to benefit in their own way. Although this agreement was meant to be strictly for optics, it isn’t long before Becca and Brett become real friends, and their friendship evolves into something deeper that they can’t deny.

“I wondered if a day would come when he’d abandon that child too. I really hoped it didn’t. I hoped he’d choose to stick around so that little baby would never have to go through what I did.”

Becca has gotten into the habit of spying on her father and his new life, and when Becca learns that her father is going to have another child, she finds herself wondering about the future of her half-sibling. When her parents divorced, Becca’s father wanted nothing to do with her, and she was abandoned by the person who was supposed to love her unconditionally. Becca worries that her father will walk out on his next child, and the cycle of abandonment and neglect might continue. Even worse, Becca worries that her father will think her new sibling is more worthy of his love and affection than Becca was.

“Becca never mentioned she wanted to keep us a secret from her mother. But that was clear now. Crystal clear.”

Unlike Brett, who can’t wait to introduce his parents to his pretend girlfriend, Becca is determined to keep her mother in the dark and deny Brett’s existence. Brett is a little offended to learn that Becca wants to keep him a secret, and he can’t understand why Becca is okay with being seen with him at school but not at home. Brett realizes he needs to learn more about Becca and her motivations behind their fake-dating relationship.

“It doesn’t make much sense if my own girlfriend doesn’t know anything about me.”

Brett decides that Becca needs to get to know the real him: not just the version she sees at school. He invites Becca to join him at the arcade, where he feels more comfortable and in touch with his inner child. Although their dating relationship is fake, Brett is interested in cultivating a real friendship with Becca, and deep down, he is lonely and wants a friend with whom he can share his vulnerabilities.

“When I told him about my dad, he blew up, said it wasn’t a good idea to idolize people because they can never live up to your expectations. But this wasn’t a celebrity or some random person in a magazine. This was my dad, and there had to be a reason why he didn’t show up.”

Jeff’s extreme reaction implies that Jeff and Brett have had this conversation before. Brett idolizes his father, and he has a hard time acknowledging when his dad has done something wrong. Although Brett’s dad has never missed any of his games (and he promised to be there for Brett’s first game of the season), Brett pushes down his disappointment and tries to rationalize his father’s absence. Brett’s father has let him down, but Brett has a hard time accepting this and voicing his disappointment without feeling immediate guilt.

“I grabbed a book. Any book. I didn’t even bother reading the title. I flipped to the last chapter because I needed the happy ending right now. I read and read and read until reality faded into fiction.”

When Becca runs home from her father’s house at the end of Chapter 7, she is embarrassed, confused, and full of hurt. She glances into her father’s new life, sees nothing but happiness, and buries her pain in a book. Instead of working through her feelings, Becca detaches from reality and distracts herself with a fictional world. This is Becca’s preferred coping mechanism, and when Brett finds her reading voraciously the next day, he cannot understand why Becca is unwilling to stop reading.

“My dad was back in town now. Things were supposed to be going back to normal. Instead, it felt like something was off. And the worst part was that, whatever it was, my parents were keeping it a secret.”

When Brett’s father returns home at the beginning of Chapter 8, he cannot shake the feeling that something is wrong. Usually when Brett’s father returns from a trip, Brett’s mother is delighted to see him. However, Brett notices that his mom seems sad, and when his mother and father start whispering behind closed doors, Brett realizes that his parents are hiding something from him. Brett has lived a charmed life and he isn’t accustomed to his parents being dishonest with him, and he is frustrated that he cannot make sense of their bizarre behavior.

“I pushed them down, closed all the windows, and shut them out. I twisted the key to the lock on my heart and swallowed it whole. No one was getting in. Nothing was getting out.”

Becca likens her heart to a house with windows, a door, and locks. When she senses that she is starting to develop feelings for Brett, Becca panics and orders her heart to enter a lockdown mode. She believes that she can will herself to not fall in love with Brett, and subsequently, to not feel the pain of heartbreak if and when their fake dating relationship comes to an end. Becca hasn’t allowed herself to get this close to anyone in a long time, and she is well-trained to block people out and protect her heart from possible invaders.

“He wasn’t in Ohio. That was his car. His suit. Those were his hands holding someone else’s. That was my dad. But it wasn’t my mom.”

The moment when Brett realizes that his father has been lying to him and cheating on his mother signals a huge shift in the novel. Brett has lived a charmed life under the impression that his father was always above reproach, and Brett helped make excuses for his father’s unusual absences. When he comes face-to-face with reality and sees his father doing the unthinkable, Brett’s world is shattered. His hero has become a villain, and Brett is in shock.

“At what point do people realize the odds are always stacked against them?”

Becca argues that love is illogical: When two people fall in love, they will either end up married or breaking up. Becca adds that most marriages end in divorce, which means that few relationships ever see a happy ending. Becca doesn’t realize there is more to love than a happy ending, and sometimes the temporary happiness of love is worth the heartache that follows. For Becca, love is a numbers game, and if the odds aren’t good, the game isn’t worth playing at all.

“I wished the past had been recorded like my football games. Then I could rewatch it all, rewind to the moment everything changed.”

When Brett learns that his father was lying to him and his mother, he starts to question all of the small things that confused him over the last few months. Brett thinks of his life like a football game, full of plays that can be replayed and analyzed. He wishes he had the power to view his life like a training tape so he can go back and see the moment when his father started to cheat, and the moment when the business trips became something more. Brett believes that if he can study a problem, he can fix it, but this is a problem he can’t fix.

“I was starting to care about her. How could I not after what she’d done for me?”

As Brett and Becca’s friendship grows, Brett develops feelings for Becca. He realizes that the quiet girl from his English class is smart, funny, determined, and fiercely loyal to the people she cares about. Brett recognizes that Becca has a good heart and finds himself drawn to her in a way he can’t ignore. Brett is confident enough to admit that he has a crush on Becca. However, Becca never thought someone like Brett Wells would ever have feelings for her, and she is shocked.

“[P]eople always leave. Parents, friends—it doesn’t matter. It’s all temporary and I’m not sure I can handle another person walking out on me.”

Becca’s life as a young adult has been marked by one heartache after another. It began when her father left her and never looked back, and it happened again when her best friend abandoned her for the popular crowd at school. Becca believes that relationships are transactional, and people will only stick around as long as they can benefit from the relationship. Becca thinks that Brett is no different, and he will walk out on her just like her father and Jenny did.

“I felt like what I needed was a fresh start. A clean slate to figure out who I was without him.”

After the dramatic confrontation at the hotel's grand opening, Brett questions his entire life. He feels like his life was never quite his own, and he has lived the last 17 years as a surrogate for his father’s dreams and missed opportunities. Brett’s life and hobbies have been carefully curated to make his father happy, and Brett decides he doesn’t want to do anything to make his father happy anymore. He wants a clean break from his father and a chance to be his own person, away from his father’s influence. 

“It’s a scam. The entire book industry is a gigantic scam. [...] They’re feeding vulnerable readers lies about love and life and we’re buying into it like mindless consumers.”

After a lifetime of loving books, Becca makes the dramatic decision to throw her beloved novels into the river. Becca believes that fiction is all a scam to give people false hope about the world, and on the heels of her first breakup, Becca is hurt, confused, and feeling misled. Becca knew that real relationships were risky, and she counted on her books to keep her safe from heartache, but instead she allowed these romantic notions to take seed in her heart. She rails against the books, but deep down, Becca blames herself for letting these happy stories color her perception of reality.

“I didn’t know if there were no family counselors in Crestmont or if my dad had just chosen one that was a few towns over. That way, it limited the chance someone would see us going. God forbid another Wells family secret was exposed.”

The Wells family is well-known and celebrated throughout the town of Crestmont, and after their very public meltdown on the night of the hotel’s grand opening, Mr. Wells decides to keep their family business under wraps. By going to a family counselor out of town, Mr. Wells thinks he can minimize his family’s public embarrassment and help the people of Crestmont forget about the nasty affair sooner. Mr. Wells is all about optics, and he doesn’t want to be seen going to therapy with his family and bringing more shame and embarrassment upon himself.

“We were kind of allies in the broken-family department. And allies don’t abandon each other.”

After their breakup, Becca still can’t forget about Brett. She harbors no hopes of getting back together with him, but she still considers Brett a friend. When Becca learns that Brett is in danger of being permanently kicked off of the football team, she springs into action and tries to help him get his grades up. After all, Becca and Brett have bonded over their complicated family situations, and Becca doesn’t want to abandon someone she cares about in his time of need.

“He was the answer, the reason I stopped counting the days. Brett gave me something better to look forward to.”

At the beginning of her senior year, Becca was alone and looking forward to her life after Crestmont High School. She counted down the days until graduation and spent her time hiding out in the world of fiction, but as soon as Brett came into her life, Becca stopped counting down the days. Suddenly, high school didn’t seem so bad anymore, and rather than tallying days like a prisoner, Becca learned to enjoy her high school experience because of Brett.

“I thought this past week was only hard on her because the truth was out. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was hard because my dad was staying at the hotel and she was away from the person she loved.”

When Brett learns that his father cheated on his mother, he exiles his father and forbids him from coming back into their family home. Brett thinks he is doing something heroic and protecting his mother, but as the days go by, Brett realizes how much his mother loves and misses his father. Brett cannot understand why his mother would want his father to return after he betrayed her in such a callous and public way, but ultimately, the choice is not his. His mother explains that it’s hard to stop loving someone after nearly 20 years, and sometimes love means forgiving even the worst of mistakes.

“Life didn’t have to fit into a four-sided box that was neat and tidy. It was okay if the box had three sides or the fourth one was hanging on with duct tape. It was okay if the corners were dented and if there was a big red FRAGILE sticker on top.”

As Becca watches a family in her mother’s bakery, she has an epiphany. For the past five years of her life, Becca has wanted a life and family that was less complicated. She mourned the loss of the family and father she had during the first 12 years of her life, but over the last five years, everything has changed. She no longer wants her father to come back into her life, but she wants to be free of the anger and pain that his absence has caused. Becca thinks of herself as a box with a FRAGILE sticker on top, and she doesn’t want to be so fragile that she is afraid to love anymore.

“All I wanted was to be around my real family now. Around my mom and Brett. Around Cassie. Around the people who had never let me down.”

As Becca stands in her father’s doorway sharing her feelings with him, she realizes that she has no desire to have a relationship with him anymore. Her father might be biologically related to her, but she no longer considers him family. Family is more than blood: families don’t abandon one another, and as Becca looks back on the past five years of her life, she realizes that she was surrounded by people who loved her and wouldn’t leave her. Becca has a new family, and she doesn’t need her father’s love or approval anymore.

“I really did love her. And here, in the darkness, it was like those words were all that existed.”

Brett and Becca’s relationship developed quickly, but their feelings for one another are true. In a matter of weeks, Brett and Becca went from being little more than acquaintances to friends and then to lovers. Their love is genuine, fueled by respect and kindness, and they have supported and encouraged each other through difficult times. Becca has taught Brett the value of living for himself, and Brett has shown Becca that she is worthy of love. Light uses this exchange to show how love can be pure, selfless, and fueled by much more than physical attraction.