by Megan Hand
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Acknowledgements
About the Author
To Anna, who told me I could,
and I should, so I did.
To Dan, my partner in crime, love, and life.
Same team, for always and ever.
Don’t say it.
Don’t even think it.
I’m not crazy, I swear. It happened. I don’t know how, but it did.
I lived the same night twice—and not like that Groundhog Day movie, but like that Sliding Doors movie. I did two completely separate things in one night, like two halves of me split off in different directions.
I only know this because it’s the morning after, and I’m lying in bed, remembering everything from both scenarios, including my dreams. Like a choose-your-own-adventure book, I somehow know that I only lived one of them.
I’m not sure which one.
While the morning sun warms my face, my body chills as every hair stands on end from sudden terror.
Friday, 6:00 p.m.
I’m Lila, like Delilah without the dee. My mom was a real peach naming someone as sarcastic and independent as me somewhere between a biblical whore and a flower. I think she was hoping to make me her delicate flower. Sorry, Mom. Not that I hate it. It fits. Most people call me Lil. Last name’s Spencer.
It was an ordinary Friday evening, not fork-in-my-eyeballs ordinary, but it was right up there. I was bored to tears. My boyfriend, Jay, was journeying into town from about five-hundred-and-thirty miles yonder to see me. He went to a university in the heart of Chicago, and it was torture being here without him.
I lived in a small college town. The name was not worth mentioning, because it was that much of a snooze fest. The most you needed to know was that the town was small, the campus was small, the people were small. Small, small, small. Except for me and my five-foot-eight giantness.
Jay, the only person that managed to put a sparkle in my eye these days, was coming to see me. He was my lobster, my penguin, my mate-for-life, and the only person in the world that could make my insides feel like halfway-baked cookie dough. He melted me all over and gave me shivers from the roots of my scalp to my toenails.
We had been together for over three years. That was how I knew it was going to last because we still loved each other this much after all these days. During high school, we’d pretend to study around my living room coffee table while we played with each other’s fingers underneath, waiting for my mom to stop hawk-watching for ten seconds so we could make out. On rainy days, we’d study in the school library, the ugliest place on earth, just for any excuse not to go home. He’d let me snot up his T-shirt every time a family pet died. With ten hamsters, three rabbits, two ferrets, five dogs, a cat, and a very messy parakeet, the burials added up.
Thousands of seconds of endless togetherness, and we still weren’t sick of ogling each other.
Ah, Jay.
My heart beat a little quicker at the thought of seeing him. He was supposed to be here at seven, which meant it was going to be one earth-shatteringly slow hour. I had plenty to do though. Biology, psychology, mathology, and paperology were all calling to me. I sometimes wondered who invented all those ologies. Whoever it was, they sure were an expert in mental torture.
I was at my desk, halfway through a stack of quiz questions, when my two friends Nilah (pronounced Nee-luh) and Heather flounced in with a gush of September wind. It was funny, considering our dorm room door had an inside entrance. But with all my glamorous roommates’ grandeur, they always seemed to beckon the wind to follow them the thirty feet from the main entrance into our room. Or maybe it was just the drafty old building. Either way, in the room they choked on laughter from some finished conversation or punch line and threw themselves on their beds.
The three of us shared a decent 14×16 cell that, by the grace of God, squeezed in three twin-size beds, three economy desks, a couch, rug, TV, and two bookshelves that we (also miraculously) split evenly. I didn’t care that we barely had room to walk a cop-enforced DUI assessment line between our beds. It was worth it to be with my homeys.
As lame as it sounded, we came here together from a couple hundred miles north in Cincinnati, Ohio. We had known each other since KinderCare and had been besties ever since. For sixteen years, they had been the only ones I could escape to when my parents were in the middle of one of their love-to-hate-each-other fests.
Since Jay had already chosen his school, and I had no interest in The Windy City, my friends and I had applied to this college in Nowhere, Tennessee. Our original plan was to get out of the ‘burbs, but after being at this school for a year, we were all going a little stir crazy.
This was still a campus. It had all the amenities like parties and booze, including the guy who’d puke on your shoes at 2 a.m., then dump you on the sidewalk, and drive like hell to his mommy before his seventeen-year-old punkass got busted for underage drinking. (I got that from Molly, a girl down the hall.) But we had stuff to do. Knoxville was only about an hour and a half away, so if we really wanted to party—which we were rarely able to do because we’d have to rent a hotel room—that was the way to go.
Today, however, was Nilah’s birthday. Stunning five-foot-three Nilah was of Indian descent, but her parents had been in the U.S. since they were babies, so Diva was her only accent. She had an oval face, brown eyes that looked yummy enough to dip strawberries into, and hair that hit the middle of her back. It flowed straight down and laid so shiny and beautiful, like it had been sentenced into obedience.
“Happy birthday to me,” she announced with her arms spread wide, even though she was on her bed, flat on her back.
Heather belted a giggle so silvery it seriously could be patented someday. She looked exactly like her name, I thought. Sparkly, blue eyes, a peaches-and-cream complexion, and blonde layers that would do anything they were asked, like lay stick straight, gel into crunchy curls, or finger-dry into sun-catching waves.
Me—I was cute. I could admit it. Not quite as stunning as my friends, but I appreciated that my thick, dark red-brown hair curled its own ends and was rarely frizzy. Although I was tall, at least I had legs to back it up, and I could win a wet T-shirt contest simply by tilting my head and moving my shoulders back a pinch. Of course, my stellar Irish-green eyes didn’t hurt.
I let out my famous you-guys-are-so-dramatic-but-I-love-you laugh and did a squeaky swivel in the desk chair. God, I was tired of studying. “What are your plans for the night?”
Nilah propped herself on her elbows, a too sly smile on her face. Without moving, my eyes slid to Heather. She was wearing the same grin.
I began shaking my head, starting slow and picking up speed. “Oh no. No. Jay is coming. Sorry girls, but I can’t. I haven’t seen him in three weeks. I know it’s your day, Neels, but I just can’t.”
Heather hunched her shoulders, her blue eyes beckoning like a puppy in a store window. “Why not?” she whined. “We haven’t
been out in ages, and we promised Neels last year. ‘Member? We couldn’t go out because we all had that awful biology professor.” She threw her head back and did a little bounce. “Pleeease.”
Yes, I remembered that professor—Mr. Garner. We had nicknamed him Mr. Gargoyle. With an old face that lumped unevenly in the weirdest spots and a giant brown mole that sprouted from the left side of his mushroom nose, our description hadn’t been far off. Not to mention, he had been an absolute tyrant.
I groaned. “Seriously, I love you guys, but I can’t.”
Jay was coming all this way, and I was already going back to Cincy with them tomorrow for Nilah’s real birthday bash with her folks and three brothers.
Nilah sprang into a stand. “Fine. We’ll talk to Jay when he gets here,” she said, hands on her hips.
It was a threat. Jay was an absolute baby doll when it came to my friends.
With his finger-length dusty brown waves that always flopped right over his baby blues in the sexiest way, he looked ever the part of the acoustic guitar, in-it-for-the-music, loves-to-write-songs-for-his-girlfriend-but-knows-how-to-seduce-a-crowd type, except he wasn’t really that guy. He was just one that enjoyed his Gibson, wrote tunes, and played at the occasional Open Mic Night. He was also a kick-ass artist; hence, the city school with the killer art-ed program.
He did water colors, oils, acrylics, but he really shined with the charcoals. Something about the lack of color and the messy, smudged-up lines. They always had the most emotion, the most him.
Before I was distracted earlier by the mere mention of his name, Jay could be a hard-ass if he needed to be, but he was mostly a certified softy. A relationship could only really withstand one mouthy person, and that was definitely me.
I sighed loudly. “Leave him out of this, Neels. You know that’s not fair.”
Nilah pouted. “I don’t care. It’s my birthday.” Birthdays were kind of a big deal with us. She pranced into the bathroom to redo her lip gloss and probably run another hundred brush strokes through her fine locks.
“Where are you guys thinking of going anyway?” I asked.
“The Clove,” Heather answered.
My eyebrows pinched. “The Clove? You’re going downtown downtown? When was this plan made?”
Heather tossed her hair behind her shoulder. “We’ve had it planned for a week, but you’ve had your nose stuck up your books.”
It dawned on me that I had kind of been ignoring my friends lately. No one said college was easy, especially as a pre-med major. “Sorry, guys,” I said, not really apologizing. “I’ve had a lot of work lately.”
“We know.” Heather shrugged. “It’s been hard on all of us, being stuck in this godforsaken place, but tonight is special.” The plea was coming back, and I turned away as she unleashed it again. “Pleeeeease. We promise not to bug you for the rest of the weekend if you come tonight.”
I threw my hands in the air. “We’re already leaving tomorrow. When will I get anything done?”
Nilah poked her head out of the bathroom. “Oh, come on. We all know there’s no homework getting done tonight.”
I suppressed a dirty look. I hadn’t seen Jay in three weeks. What do they expect?
A knock interrupted my thoughts. I jumped for the door and flung it open in one smooth motion.
“Hi, baby,” Jay grinned, dropping his bulging duffel and guitar case to the gray-carpeted hallway floor.
We threw our arms around each other, and he picked me up for a feet-off-the-floor kiss. With all our mounting hormones, we both wanted to make out right there in the hallway. Since we were adults now—sort of—we practiced some mature self-control. It was a little like forcing yourself to wait an hour to open your presents on Christmas morning, except that I was waiting at least an hour to rip off his clothes.
Coming up for air, we sighed simultaneously, nose to nose. Jay grabbed his bag, I grabbed the guitar, and he closed the door behind him.
“Hi, Clan,” he greeted the girls, giving each a wave as we set his stuff next to my bed. The Clan had been his name for us, dating back to the eighth grade. Back in our early school days, we faintly resembled The Plastics from Mean Girls. We’d never actually done anything mean or spiteful—other than normal kid stuff—but we had been kind of tight knit and not very attuned to welcoming others into our trifecta.
“Hey,” they each mumbled unenthusiastically.
Jay gave me a questioning glance. I wrinkled my nose, silently telling him he’d hear about it later. Then he plunged onto my bed, his lean, muscley form causing the springs to creak.
“What are you two up to tonight?” he asked. Between the lines, he meant, When can I be alone with my girlfriend?
I sat next to him, absentmindedly fingering the curls at the nape of his neck.
“Well,” Nilah started. I threw her a glare that said, Don’t you dare, but she raised her chin. “We’ve been trying to get Buzzkill over here to go out with us tonight, but she’s too worried you’ll be mad if she leaves you here.”
No. She. Didn’t.
My entire face flamed Hot Tamale red. I couldn’t believe she went right for the kill—Jay’s soft-hearted nature. The last thing he’d want to do was think that his visit was holding me back.
His eyes went to mine, and there was that crushed little bird look. “I didn’t know you guys had plans tonight.”
“We didn’t,” I said crisply.
One hand on her hip, Nilah protested, “Because you’ve been in a coma this entire week.”
“Babe,” Jay started to say.
I silenced him with a hand on his knee. “I’m sorry, Neels.” I was. I had been busy these past few days, but it hadn’t been my fault. “I’ll make it up to you another time. I promise.”
She choked back the divaness a notch and actually sounded humble. “But I want all my friends with me. Jay, you wanna come?”
Wow, she was getting desperate if she was inviting Jay. Girls’ nights were her specialty, and there was always a “No Guys Allowed” policy.
Jay valiantly held up a hand. “No thanks, girls. I’m driving you in the morning, remember? I need to stay sober. Plus I have a load of homework that won’t get done if I leave.”
My insides shrank. It was down to me. I was going to need to make this decision. I couldn’t believe they were expecting an instant answer!
Heather was sitting on the edge of her bed, eyes eager. She felt it coming. Of the two of them, Heather had always been the better friend. She was less spoiled, but really she knew me better. She could sense things with me, like when I needed some alone time.
After a three-second stare down, her attention began to roam on anything besides Jay or me—the ceiling, the fuzzies on her socks, the overgrown cuticles on her fingernails.
I breathed out in a huge angry puff, grabbed Jay’s hand, and yanked him toward the door.
“Make it quick,” Nilah crowed from the bathroom. “Our hotel reservation is at nine.”
Are you freaking kidding me? Of course our reservation was for nine, and of course it was going on seven-thirty now, and of course it took an hour and a half to get there. Argh!
Not that we had to be exactly on time, but I was hoping for at least an hour of precious alone time with Jay before we were stripped away. I imagined our hands reaching for each other as if we were being dragged away to our deaths.
I politely kept my mouth shut and out the door we went. To keep my edge and my sanity, the least I could do was make them wonder whether we were coming back or not. Even though they knew I would, because despite my tendency to sass, I was way too predictable, and I loved my friends. And it was Nilah’s birthday.
Jay loped behind me in long strides as I hauled him out into the warm fall evening. This was my favorite time of year, when the world turned all the shades of a rainbow. We found ourselves a nice shady tree to rest our backs against and a carpet of hued leaves to sit on. Then our hands immediately went for faces, lips on lips, and our eyes clo
sed. They weren’t ravenous kisses. They were soft, tender, beautiful. The melty kind.
“Why are my friends such brats?” I plucked a wayward curl out of his eyes.
Jay’s fingers lingered around my cheek, and he was giving me that worshipful gaze—the kind that could always somehow see way past my corneas, pupils, retinas, all the optic nerves (Biology was my pre-med specialty) and straight into my soul. “They’re not always brats. They’re just being selfish because they love you.”
I clutched at his navy T-shirt. My voice dropped to a whisper. “But I want to stay here with you. Tomorrow we’re going home for the weekend, and then you’ll go back to Honky Town,” Because of the honking taxis. Get it? I thought it was clever, “and I get to stay here in BFE. We won’t see each other for God knows how long. I can’t go another three weeks.”
I wasn’t just talking about sex. I really missed him.
Of course, ever-understanding Jay only said, “I know. We’ll make it work. Maybe I can get away next weekend.” There was no mistaking the disappointment in his voice, though. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen any three of you miss each others’ birthdays.”
Not since fifth grade. My birthday was in the summer and Nilah’s family happened to be on vacation. “We haven’t,” I reluctantly admitted because saying it aloud didn’t make the situation easier.
“Well then…” He let the sentence hang. His deep soothing voice was overworking all the controls and gears of my heart. And down in a place where my love for my friends was beginning to warm my tiny Grinch heart, I knew that Heather and Nilah were going to win.
As I formed a response though, something strange happened.
“Okay,” I replied, all defeated and slouchy. “I’ll go.”
Then a piece of me also said, “Nope. I’m staying with you. They don’t really need me, and we’re celebrating this weekend so I technically wouldn’t be missing it. Besides, I’m the only taken one, and I won’t get in the way of their outrageously whorish ways.”
And he laughed—at both answers, even though I knew I had only said one. When he led me back inside, I couldn’t remember which response I had given him.
