Surprise at The Grove

Cole

"I feel like I just said goodbye to my own daughter," I told my friend John Stephen the first time I met Savannah and Everleigh. It was the strangest feeling. I had no idea where it came from.

This certainly wasn't what I expected to find when John Stephen and I headed out that morning in search of the perfect motor scooter to ride around the campus of Troy University back home in Alabama. I hadn't really thought about how I was going to get a scooter home when we flew back to Alabama in five days but, hey, I was nineteen, and questions like how to get a motor scooter from Los Angeles to Troy, Alabama, by way of the Atlanta airport didn't really concern me. I just knew I wanted one and I'd found the perfect one online at a warehouse about half an hour away from where we were staying. I convinced John Stephen to get up early and go with me. We found the warehouse, but it turned out it didn't have the exact one I wanted, so I decided to pass. Now we found ourselves thirty minutes out of our way. I say minutes and not miles because in our few weeks out in Los Angeles, we'd learned that everything is measured in time. Miles don't matter because traffic is so bad everywhere you go that it takes forever to get anywhere, especially at the wrong time of day. That's why we decided to try to find something fun to do where we were rather than drive all the way back over to where we were staying.

We had less than a week left in California after our month-long bros trip, and we wanted to make the most of it. My oldest brother, Luke, had flown out with us right after all of us finished up our classes at our respective colleges that spring to spend a month bumming around Southern California. We didn't have any kind of plan except to go exploring, hang out at the beach, and maybe meet girls. The last part was mainly Luke and me since John Stephen already had a serious girlfriend he ended up marrying. I also tried acting while we were there. I had some television experience from being on The Amazing Race, and I wanted to see if acting might be something I'd like. It wasn't. In fact, I hated it. All it did was waste some of our already too little time in California, so I didn't want to waste any more. Then Luke had to fly home a week early, which made the end of our adventure feel that much closer.

When the motor scooter place turned out to be a bust, I started Googling fun things to do close to where we were. The number one thing to pop up on my phone was an outdoor mall called The Grove. I'd heard some people talk about how cool it was, and now we were only a mile and a half away. I told John Stephen we should go check it out, and he agreed. We drove over there and started walking around the shops.

The Grove was huge. All these great stores wound around parks and fountains, plus the mall had a theater and all kinds of places to eat. We could spend a week there and not get bored. I could see why it was number one on the Google list.

John Stephen and I started wandering around, taking everything in, when I happened to see this super-beautiful blonde girl across the mall from us. Now, I am no ladies' man. I'd never had a girlfriend, and I was the last guy on earth any of my friends thought of as smooth with the ladies. But I was also a nineteen-year-old single guy, and anytime I saw a beautiful, blonde California girl, that was a pretty good day. I looked a little closer at the girl, and she looked familiar. Living in a small town in south Alabama, I never ran into famous people, either from movies or television or social media, but this was Southern California, not south Alabama. I started trying to figure out where I knew this girl from. Then it hit me. I said, "Hey, John Stephen. I think that's the girl from musical.ly." Musical.ly is a social media platform where I'd recently started posting videos. "If you see a little girl with her, then it's definitely her," I said.

"Is that the girl?" John Stephen asked as a little girl who looked to be around three ran past.

"Totally," I said. "That's Everleigh, which means that has to be Savannah Soutas. I sent her a direct message a couple of weeks before we came out here. I thought maybe we could tag each other in our videos to help each other get more followers, but I never heard back from her."

"So what do you want to do?" John Stephen asked.

"What do you mean?" I said.

"Should we go up and say hi?"

"I don't know. Should we?"

"I think so."

"Nah, feels kind of weird since she never messaged me back. Besides, she has a kid. She has to be married. If that was my wife, I wouldn't want a couple of goofs like us to go up and start bugging her," I said.

"You're probably right," John Stephen agreed.

"You know, let's leave her alone," I said. We then took off to another part of The Grove. John Stephen wanted to buy something for his girlfriend. Eventually we ended up at a Barnes & Noble.

Maybe forty-five minutes later, the two of us walked out of the Barnes & Noble and literally ran into a woman walking by. As we were apologizing, her eyes widened as she said, "Hey! My name is Chantelle. My sister, Savannah, saw you guys a little bit ago, and she told me that if I happened to see you to tell you to come over and meet her. She's over that way with a friend and their daughters," Chantelle said. "I'd take you over to her, but I'm on my way out of here."

"Okay, thanks. We will definitely head over that way," I replied. As soon as she walked away, I looked over at John Stephen, shook my head, and said, "This is going to be awkward."

"Ya think?" he said.

"Oh man, how can it not be? I kind of wish we hadn't run into her sister," I said.

"But we have to go over and meet her now. Her sister will tell her she ran into us. If we don't go meet her, it will be rude."

I shrugged. "I guess you're right," I said, and the two of us headed over toward where we first spotted Savannah.

We found her pretty easily. She hadn't moved since we first saw her. I walked over and said something like, "Hi. I'm Cole. I hope this isn't weird, but we ran into your sister, and she said we should come over here and meet you. I wanted to tell you that you have a really cute daughter, and I love the videos the two of you make together."

Savannah smiled and said, "Awww, thank you!" Before she could introduce herself, her daughter came bouncing up and said, "Hi. I'm Everleigh."

I have to be honest. I was much more comfortable meeting Everleigh than I was meeting Savannah. I am the second oldest of six children. I have a little sister, Lily, who was six years old at the time. Since Everleigh looked to be a little younger than my sister, I immediately went into big brother mode. "Hey, Everleigh. You're so cute," I said, or something like that. Savannah also introduced me to her friend Michelle and Ava, Michelle's daughter. Everleigh and Ava were your typical super-energetic preschoolers. The two of them started jumping on John Stephen and me, wanting to play, so, like the big brothers we were, we chased them around this grassy area. Eventually the girls stopped jumping on us and started playing together. When they did, John Stephen and I went over to talk to Savannah and Michelle a little more. All we really had to talk about was the fact that we both made videos on social media. Then I remembered VidCon was coming up that weekend. VidCon is...