“You succeeded.” I wondered if my face was blushing as badly as I suspected. “There’s just one thing…one favor…”
“Sexual or otherwise?”
I laughed. “Otherwise.”
“Damn it.”
“It’s—the people I hang out with at school.” I couldn’t bring myself to say my friends. “They’re complicated. And I—”
He brought his finger to my lips. “Don’t worry. I get it. Showing up at clubs with you wouldn’t do much for my street cred either, Science Club.”
I tried not to be offended by that, since I was essentially saying the same thing. He was cool with what I was proposing. Which was—I wasn’t so sure, exactly. I wanted to keep kissing him, I knew that for sure. But everything else was fuzzy.
“Listen. We’re just having a little fun. No one else needs to know.”
With that, he gave an exaggerated glance around to be sure no one in the parking lot was looking in our direction, and then took my face in his hands and kissed me again. Every part of me was charged, crackling with electricity. A moment later, though, I was smoothing out my uniform shirt, walking through the doors of Nona’s Café as if nothing had changed.
Chapter Nine
Early on a Saturday morning, I walked down the boardwalk that ran parallel with the most populated part of the beach, the long lines of sand dotted with umbrellas. I passed the lifeguard stand and the snack bar Adam Dixon’s family still owned, kept going until there were no crowds, and then went farther. I walked down a long dirt road, slipping on rocks in my flip-flops, straining the muscles in the backs of my legs. I’d traveled this path once before, with Jack holding my hand, leading me to places within myself I never knew existed.
This time, though, when I reached the end of the road, I could see only horizon. All that was left was a stone monument, no taller than me, that I almost missed. stonebury’s only lighthouse was nearly destroyed by a fire in 2003 and left abandoned for several years. ten years later, the historic structure was razed. a maritime museum is planned for construction to begin early 2015.
It wasn’t a total shock, of course. The lighthouse had been condemned for years. A part of me had always held out hope that maybe that businessman would come through and save it. But it was gone, had been for a year, and the memories inside it had been gone for longer than that. I couldn’t hold on to them, just like I couldn’t hold on to the way I felt when Jack and I were up there. It had been as if I’d uncovered a whole new world where other people lived, that I’d never known about but where I could live, too.
Would I ever feel that way again? Or had everything good in my life already happened?
…
It was Sarah’s last night in our apartment, and I sat on the end of her bed with a mug of green tea, watching her dump the contents of her bureau into yet another cardboard box.
My tea tasted bitter, but adding more sugar wasn’t going to help. Over the past few days, the apartment had slowly emptied of all evidence that Sarah had ever lived here. I hadn’t realized how many of the things I loved about our place were hers. The eucalyptus wreath on the door, the white bowls perfect for soup, even the coffeepot. This morning, I’d eaten alone in the breakfast nook by the sliding glass doors. It’d always been my favorite place in the apartment, but it was much less homey without the pretty table runner and fruit bowl where I’d always kept my lip gloss.
I’d moved back here knowing that at least I’d be living with Sarah, and now, I wouldn’t be. So what if she was only going across town, less than ten minutes away. This was only the beginning. She’d probably be engaged soon and then married. She and Amber were going to practically be neighbors. Maybe she and Derek would eventually buy a house in Amber and Peter’s neighborhood. They’d have dinners for four, go on vacation together. It was only natural to hang out with couples once you were part of one.
Gillian was planning on moving in at the end of July, so at least I had that to look forward to. I had a feeling she’d be fun to live with. Half stationary store catalog, half hot mess, if her desk at the Gazette was any indication. Sarah organized her cereals alphabetically and used chip clips to keep the packages fresh. It was perfect; I never had to worry about my Cheerios going stale.
I sipped the tea as she wrote pajamas on one box with a Magic Marker. “You aren’t going to join the country club now, are you?”
She taped it up, set it aside, and started in on another drawer. She shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe. They have really good turkey clubs.”
“See, I knew it. Pretty soon, you and Amber will be sharing brownie recipes and volunteering at the Junior League.”
“Oh yes. That is why I’m getting a law degree, after all.” She gave me a look.
“I don’t know, Amber has a four-year degree, and Peter’s completely fine with her playing housewife.”
“Derek is not Peter.”
I shrugged.
Sarah squared her shoulders. “Do you not like him or something?”
“What? No, I do.” He really was a nice guy, always thoughtful of Sarah, the kind of guy who remembered what flowers you liked or, in Sarah’s case, if you don’t like flowers at all. Any time I saw him, he asked me about my photography or how my parents liked Iowa. It was just… “I don’t have a problem with Derek, personally. It’s the way it all happened. When Amber set you guys up, it was like, preordained or something.”
Sarah tore off a piece of tape rather aggressively. “I know you aren’t implying I’m with him because Amber told me so.”
Well, the thought had crossed my mind. Yes, he was a really nice guy, but he played racquetball with Peter on the weekends. What twenty-three-year-old guy played racquetball?
She sighed, threw some sweaters into the box, and then sat cross-legged on the floor. At least now, since our talk outside the coffee shop, we were speaking honestly to each other. Sort of. “Okay. I know you and Amber have this weird competitive relationship. I know she gets on your nerves.”
“I am not competing with Amber—”
“But honestly, she’s really been there for me over the years. Especially after the whole Mike thing. Remember that? I was so depressed my parents actually made me go talk to somebody.”
I took another sip of tea, trying to stave off the growing ache in my chest. I hadn’t known that part.
“You weren’t there. You left for Brown two months early.”
“Six weeks, actually.” There was a summer photography workshop I really wanted to go to. Plus, yeah, getting out of Stonebury as quickly as possible had been a motivating factor. I’d been so wrapped up in what had happened with Jack that I, apparently, hadn’t paid much attention to what Sarah had been going through. Which made me an even suckier friend, considering I’d been the cause of it.
“Whatever.”
“I’m sorry. I know that wasn’t the point. I should have been there for you.”
Sarah didn’t say anything to that. After a second, we went back to the socks. She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s me. Ever since I saw Mike again, all I can think about is high school. It’s so stupid. I mean, it was five years ago, get over it.”
Yeah, totally, get over it. If she only knew. “I don’t think it’s stupid. You were together for a long time. Do you still have feelings for Mike or something?”
“No, not at all,” she said, and I would have felt relieved if I hadn’t noticed the tiny bit of hesitation in her voice.
“Not at all?” I repeated. I pulled my legs under me on the bed, drawing into myself, a protective gesture. If she still had feelings for Mike, then she deserved to know the truth, right now, and I couldn’t keep coming up with excuses not to tell her.
She looked at me pointedly. “I love Derek. I do. But you know what I was thinking? Remember those choose-your-own-adventure novels?”
“Of course.” We were obsessed with those back in the day. “Do you try to kill the poisonous snake? Or do you jump over it and hope for the best?”
&nb
sp; “Exactly! Do you go to law school and become a lawyer and get married, or do you, like, run away with the boy you were in love with when you were seventeen and, I don’t know, backpack around Europe for the rest of your life.”
There was such a faraway look in her eyes when she said that, I wondered if she still wanted to. Run away with the boy you were in love with when you were seventeen… What would she do now if I told her the truth? I knew I had to, but how could I?
Up until now, if my life had been a choose-your-own-adventure novel, I’d made all the wrong decisions. “And while you’re there, you climb some mountain and lose your footing and fall into a canyon and die.” Those types of things were always happening to me when I read those books. I never married the prince and lived happily ever after.
Sarah laughed, then grew quiet. “Maybe it all worked out for the best. Maybe there’s just something different about your first love…”
I thought about riding in Jack’s car, his hand on my thigh. The way his room smelled like the soap he used and plastic CD cases.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you thought I was silly back then, and believe me, I know I acted stupid. I wish I’d been more like you, focused on school. Then I wouldn’t be thinking these crazy thoughts. Feeling…whatever this is.”
Sarah was wrong, of course. I knew the feeling. Sometimes it seemed like I invented that feeling, that everything was so slippery I would always be falling endlessly into the canyon.
“What’s going on with you, anyway?” she asked.
I took a sip of my tea. It had gone cold. “What do you mean?”
She taped up a box and markered all its sides. “Everything okay at the paper?”
“Sure. It’s a job, it’s fine.”
“What about the freelance photography thing? I thought you were going to be building a website, getting your name out there.”
“I am,” I said, my defenses rising. It wasn’t Sarah’s fault that she knew exactly what she wanted to do and was on the path for it. Still, it seemed so easy for her: graduate law school, get a job at an established firm somewhere, and be done with it. Starting a business was different. I had to do everything on my own. It seemed so overwhelming that it was easier to spin my wheels at the paper than wrap my head around what I had to do to make it happen.
“Didn’t Lori say you could advertise at the salon? She’s really good with marketing and advertising.”
“Yeah…but this is different. Lori doesn’t know how to start something from the ground up. She got her business handed to her.”
Sarah cut off a piece of tape and raised an eyebrow at me. I sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m a little frustrated about how all this turned out. I obviously chose the wrong direction in my adventure,” I said into the mug.
“That’s okay, because you ended up here. And just because I’m moving out doesn’t mean I’m going to forget about you.” She got up from the floor and sat beside me on the bed. “Everything’s going to work out, okay? You’re going to be fine. You’re already better than fine. I mean, look at those adorable dimples. I was always so jealous of them.” She tried to pinch my cheek, but I slipped away, rolled off the side of the bed, and ended up on the floor, laughing.
Sarah got up, undid her ponytail, and redid it, surveying the room. “Want to help me pack all my textbooks? I saved the best for last.”
“Not really.” But I set my mug down on her bedside table—emptied of photos, lamp, and her Kindle—and helped my best friend move out.
…
With Sarah gone, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’d never lived alone before. I’d always had parents or roommates or boyfriends, and now it was only me. Maybe that was why I broke down and got the subscription to Celebrity Weekly.
It was a kind of revelation, this entire celebrity culture that, up until now, I really hadn’t paid attention to. College had kept me busy. I didn’t have the time to wonder about other people’s lives. I’d started buying the magazine to keep everything written about Jack, and once I’d started reading, I couldn’t stop. I’d learned all about reality show families. There were the Amish, four-year-old beauty pageant queens, the wives of mobsters, teen moms, the multiple wives of nominally handsome men. It was sort of fascinating, the way other people lived. There were full-page spreads on pop singers I vaguely remembered from my childhood who were now judges on reality shows or trying to pitch reality shows of their own. And there were, of course, women who looked like those I passed every day on the streets of Stonebury, perfectly attractive women who cut up their faces so that they no longer resembled themselves.
I hadn’t planned on subscribing, but I’d started to get a little embarrassed with buying the magazines every week from the teenage boy behind the counter at the bookstore. He raised his eyebrow, looking down at the headline: sex lives of celebrities—exposed! And then he smiled knowingly at me. That was the last time I bought a magazine at the bookstore.
Now that Sarah was gone and my apartment was empty, I needed to fill it up somehow. Reading about the latest pop star hookups and breakups seemed like a perfectly acceptable way to do it. Perhaps the best part of the subscription was that it gave me access to the app for free—exclusive with your purchase! our app is constantly updated to keep you in the know! My favorite feature on the app was the polls: which ‘brady bunch’ cast member has aged the best? bruce springsteen: still hot? choose the star with the tackiest style!
Sure, I was supposed to use my iPad, a Christmas gift from my parents, for work stuff. And I had taken it out to do some research on the best way to build a website and online photography portfolio in the hopes of scoring some new clients. Which I would totally do. Right after I decided which reality star had the wardrobe I most coveted.
Of course, the biggest reason for subscribing was the constant flow of information about Jack. The newest issue had a small article on his musical influences. He talked about all the shows he’d gone to and how they helped shape the performer he’d become. I knew some of the names. One of the bands, we’d even seen together. I sat in bed in an otherwise empty apartment, holding the magazine tight as his songs played through my earbuds. If I closed my eyes and listened, it was almost as if he was in the room with me.
Chapter Ten
Five Years Earlier
The soft curve of your sides
Under my hands
I know the signs
Like reading music
— Jack Moreland, “Palladium”
Reid really was the worst card player I’d ever seen.
As soon as Jack dealt the first hand, Reid took one look at his cards and threw an arm up in the air, mumbling obscenities.
“I thought the whole point of this game was to make what you have not so obvious,” I said.
Beside me, Jack snickered, and it crossed my mind that I never made any of my friends laugh. I was only funny when I was with him. “Don’t give him any tips. I desperately need”—he eyed the pot— “a half dollar from 1986, a Harley Davidson shot glass, and…what the hell is this?”
He held up something bumpy and green.
“A snap pea,” Reid grumbled, situating his cards.
“A snap pea.”
“A nutritious and delicious vegetable, great for salads or raw with some salad dressing.”
“Gentlemen, we have sunk to a new low,” Jack announced.
“I quit,” Reid said.
“Oh, come on! You haven’t thrown down any cards.”
“I don’t care. This is stupid. I’m going on strike.”
He stood up, and a second later, Travis did, too. “I’m gonna go see if Darcy has any more of those scones.”
It was just Jack and me. “Want to finish?” he asked.
I shrugged. “We could. Or we could…” I motioned to the closet, where at this very moment, I was supposed to be organizing supplies.
Less than a minute later, I was sitting on a pile of unopened boxes of paper cups and utensils, closing m
y eyes as his hands ran through my hair and then lifted my mouth to his. Three weeks had passed since our first kiss at the lighthouse. Since then, we’d kissed in his car, at the bus stop, and in this closet.
It was hard to keep my secret from Sarah, at least at first. But when I thought about it, I wasn’t even sure what I had to tell. We weren’t like Sarah and Mike. Jack wasn’t my boyfriend. I wasn’t going to cry when he didn’t call me. He was fun to make out with. Which made it easier to not look at him at school, to pretend I didn’t spend study hall fantasizing about when I was going to kiss him again.
But I couldn’t deny that suddenly, the thought of Jack Moreland made me look forward to getting up in the morning. Even though I pretended I didn’t know him at school, glimpsing him in the halls or the cafeteria or library sent a secret thrill through me. My friends didn’t know everything about me after all. Maybe I wasn’t the person they thought I was, the person I was when I was with them.
Those thoughts exhilarated me, but not as much as sharing a tiny, enclosed space with Jack.
He did this thing where he pushed my hair behind my ear and then kept going, trailing the sensitive parts of my ear and neck and then hooking his hands around my waist and pulling me closer, and it burned my body down to my toes. He softly bit down on my lower lip, and I started, my head bumping the bottom of a box and pouring packets of salt and pepper on us like rain. “Shit,” I said, hopping off. The two of us knelt on the floor to collect the packets, some of which had slid under other boxes and into narrow corners, and brushed ourselves off.
“Maybe we should just play cards,” Jack said. His hair had gotten messed up sometime during our make-out session. I reached out and patted it back into place. He gave me a curious look, and I realized the hair-smoothing might come off as a girlfriend gesture. I stuffed my hands in my black pants.
I shrugged, trying to seem casual when my nerves were still jumping from his touch. “Sure. Why not. I’ve never had a snap pea before.”
Back at the folding table, Jack dealt out the hand. A couple of minutes later, I danced in my seat with a full house. He shook his head as I collected my winnings. “Beginner’s luck.”
The Mean Girl Apologies Page 11
