“Yeah. It was a cool vibe,” Finch said, his voice all chill and mellow.
“So cool,” Grace said, her ponytail swishing back and forth as she and Beau walked in front of us. “And he’s so hot.”
“Why, thank you!” Beau said.
She laughed and gave him a little shove. “Not you, dummy,” she said. “Luke.”
“Hey now,” Beau said, putting his hands over his heart. “Dummy? Aren’t we on a date here?”
“No, we aren’t on a date,” Grace said, continuing their flirty banter, which had been going since about midway through the show. “You didn’t even invite me. Lyla did.”
Technically, she was correct. When Finch had called about the tickets that afternoon, he’d said there were four, and that I was free to bring a friend. I’d made the mistake of telling Grace this part of the conversation, to which she’d replied that the whole thing seemed kind of sketchy. “Like, why wouldn’t Beau want to pick his own date?” she had asked.
“I don’t know,” I’d floundered. “Maybe he likes you.”
“Highly doubtful,” Grace had said, but I could tell she didn’t hate the idea. “And why isn’t Finch taking Polly?”
“They broke up.”
“When?” she’d asked, sounding suspicious. “Why haven’t I heard anything about that?”
“Like a day ago,” I’d said, making a split-second decision not to tell her the full story. I didn’t want to lie to Grace, but I also wanted to keep my promise to Finch. At least for now. I told myself I could always tell her everything after the show. Depending on how things went. “I think maybe he’s just trying to be nice. To, like…make up for things,” I said, the words coming out awkwardly.
“Okay. I guess I’ll go with you,” she’d said, some part of her probably intrigued by the idea of going out with the two most popular senior boys. “But don’t get your hopes up.”
“Oh, God, no. It’s not like that….” I’d said, even though I hoped beyond hope that it was exactly like that.
“So what’re you tryin’ to say?” Beau said to Grace now. “I’m not gonna get it in?”
It wasn’t the first outrageous thing he’d said tonight, but it was definitely the most. Grace groaned, then laughed and hip-checked him, a tough feat given that she came up to only his rib cage. “Not with me, you’re not.”
“Whoa! You’re pretty strong for an imp,” Beau said, pretending to trip on the curb.
“What the fuck’s an imp?” Finch said, as he walked along beside me while reading something on his phone.
“It’s, like, a little woodland creature. Like a gnome or some shit.” Beau laughed, then nudged Grace and said, “What do you weigh, anyway? A buck o’ five soaking wet?”
“I have no idea. I don’t go around weighing myself with no clothes on,” Grace said, her voice turning all high and coy, like she wanted him to picture her naked.
As we neared Finch’s car, parked in a surface lot a few blocks up on Grundy next to the World Gym, he said, “Lyla calls shotgun.”
“Good deal,” Beau said as he opened the door for Grace, and Finch did the same for me. “I get to sit with my date.”
“I’m not your date.” Grace giggled, climbing into the car.
“We’ll see about that,” Beau said, getting in beside her, then sliding into the middle seat.
“Move over,” she said, laughing and pushing him away.
“I’m good here, thanks,” he said, putting his arm around her.
She shoved him again, unsuccessfully. As Beau and Grace continued their antics, Finch walked around to get in the car, then slowly fastened his seatbelt, started the engine, and put the car in reverse. His foot on the brake, he glanced over at me, then looked into the rearview mirror. “So what next?” he said to all of us. “Y’all wanna grab a bite? The Flipside or Double Dogs?”
“Oh my God, yass. The Flipside,” Grace said, as I saw out of the corner of my eye that she and Beau were now getting handsy.
“Lyla?” Finch said.
I hesitated, checking my phone. It was ten after ten. “Yeah. I guess we could,” I said, waffling, trying to do the calculation of time and distance, both of which I pretty consistently misjudged. “I just need to be back by eleven.” I’d referenced having a “lame curfew” a couple times already, but it was the first time I’d come out and announced exactly what it was.
“E-lev-en?” Beau yelled, fumbling around behind my seat for a black backpack I’d noticed on the way over.
“Yeah. I know. It sucks,” I mumbled, thinking that it didn’t help matters that I lived on the other side of town from everyone else. “Lemme ask my dad if I can just be back to Grace’s by eleven.”
“Or you can sleep over?” Grace said.
I shook my head, feeling sure he’d say no to a sleepover, especially given the last time I’d been at her house. So I composed a text making a smaller request: Concert just got out. Starving, can we go get something to eat real fast? Can be to Grace’s by 11, then home a little after?? I threw in a few praying emojis for good measure, then watched his ellipses start to scroll. Slooooww typing was my dad’s trademark, and it didn’t seem to matter how short his replies were—they always took forever.
Sure enough, his delayed response was still brief and to the point. No. Be HOME by 11. Dad.
“Ugh,” I said, reading it aloud in the voice I often used to imitate my father—part nerd, part drill sergeant.
Finch laughed. “He signs his texts ‘Dad’?”
“Yeah,” I said with a chuckle.
“That’s hilarious. Okay…I’ll take you back to Grace’s,” Finch said, pulling up his Luke Bryan songs on his phone.
As we turned out of the parking lot and onto Grundy Street, I felt myself start to relax, my concert high returning. Clearly Finch wasn’t judging my curfew or really worried about anything, including Beau, who was now clicking his JUUL, the same orange one I’d seen him use at his party. A few seconds later, the car filled with a cloud of vapor as Finch unrolled the two back windows about halfway. Over my shoulder, I watched Grace take a hit, murmuring that it tasted good.
“You think that’s good…you should taste something else,” Beau said.
“Eww! Gross!” Grace laughed as she passed the vape back to him.
“Anyone up there?” Beau said, reaching into the front seat, offering it to us.
I glanced at it, tempted. But I played it safe and shook my head. “No, thanks,” I said casually. “Not tonight.”
“Bro?” Beau said, now angling it toward Finch.
“I’m good,” Finch said, looking distracted as he read something on his phone. “Can’t you see I’m driving precious cargo here?” He gave me a little smile but then turned back to his phone, texting with one hand.
As I glanced out the window, Grace suddenly piped up from the backseat. “Well, if she’s precious cargo, then you should probably stop texting and driving.”
Her voice sounded harsh, and it made me glance over at Finch. Looking busted, he immediately dropped his phone to the seat, then tucked it under his left thigh. A weird vibe settled over the car before I cleared my throat and said, “She was just kidding.”
“No. I’m not,” Grace said. I glanced into the backseat and gave her a panicked look, but she continued, all preachy and pissy. “Texting and driving kills more people than drunk driving.”
“God. Grace. Chill,” I said under my breath as I looked at Finch to gauge his reaction.
“Nah. She’s right,” he said, giving me a little wink and one of his awesome smiles. “Bad habit. I’m really sorry, girls.”
* * *
—
“PRECIOUS CARGO?” GRACE said about fifteen minutes later, after we’d been dropped off at her house and were alone in her driveway. She opened her mouth and made a gagging sound
.
I knew she was quoting Finch, but I had no clue what her point was, and why she’d gone from carefree party girl to complete buzzkill in a span of three miles and ten minutes, totally ending the night on a bad note.
“What’s with the one-eighty?” I said. As we walked toward her car, I typed a quick text to Finch, thanking him again for the tickets.
“Well. Let’s just say I’m good at reading texts over people’s shoulders.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said, stopping to stare her down. “I’m not trying to hide anything.” I held up my phone, showing her what I’d just written. “I just thanked him for the tickets. Since you kinda forgot to.”
“I’m not talking about your phone. I’m talking about Finch’s. I saw him texting Polly,” she said. “In the car. He was holding the screen away from you, but I could see it all.”
My heart sank as I asked her what, exactly, she saw.
“Well. I saw Polly’s name. I saw an ‘ILY.’ I saw a kissy emoji. And I saw the word lame.”
“Lame?” I said.
“Yeah. Lame.”
“What was he calling lame?” I couldn’t resist asking, just as it occurred to me that it might be a who, not a what.
“I don’t know. Does it matter? You fill in the blank. Lame concert. Lame date. Lame night. Lame effort to pretend to break up with someone and like someone else so that she’ll get you off the hook next week.”
“Okay. First of all,” I said. “He could have been calling a lot of things ‘lame’ that had nothing to do with us….Second of all, they did break up.”
“Doubtful,” Grace said, adjusting the strap of her Miu Miu cross-body bag. “Highly doubtful.”
“Oh my God, Grace. Because he texted her? What do you want him to do? Block her?” I said. I’d never been in a serious relationship, but I saw how breakups worked. In most cases, it seemed that couples didn’t just go cold turkey. They often kept talking or fighting or begging or getting temporarily back together only to re–break up, in some combination.
“I didn’t say he had to block her. But typically after you break up, you don’t tell that person that you love them. And you don’t throw shade at the girl you asked out on a date. I mean, shit, Lyla. He used the word lame.”
“Well. Maybe he feels sorry for her….Maybe he’s worried about her….Maybe he still loves her on some level….”
“Yeah. And maybe he and Beau just set your ass up. With Luke Bryan tickets.”
“God, Grace. It was a fun night. A really fun night.”
“Yeah. And I bet Finch is still having fun. I bet he’s on his way to see her right now. I bet she doesn’t even know he went out with you tonight. Or maybe she does, actually. Maybe she’s in on the whole plan.”
“Okay, look,” I said, glancing down at my phone. “It’s ten-forty. I gotta get home. Are you okay to drive?”
“Yeah. I took, like, one hit,” she said. “I’m totally fine.”
“I didn’t mean that. I mean…your foul mood. Why are you so pissed at me?”
“I’m not pissed at you. I’m pissed at them,” she said, our shoulders now squared toward each other as we stood behind the new white Jeep her parents had just given her for no reason at all.
“Them? So now you’re mad at Beau, too? Because you seemed pretty into him all night.”
“I’m not into him,” she said, making no moves to get in her car. “Besides. That was before I saw the text calling us ‘lame.’ ”
“He called us lame? Or you just saw the word ‘lame’?” I said.
She didn’t answer, just kept staring at me.
“Look, Grace. This curfew thing isn’t just a loose suggestion. My dad means it. You want me to just call him to get me? He’s probably out driving anyway….” I usually avoided mentioning my dad’s side job, even to Grace. But at that moment, I really didn’t give a shit about appearances of any kind.
“No. I’ll take you,” she said, finally getting in her car.
As I got in beside her, I inhaled the new car smell and felt a wave of resentment. Although I never held Grace’s money or nice things against her, they all irritated me now. Along with her shitty, cynical attitude. Maybe she, with her music industry dad, could take a night like this for granted. There were plenty more sweet concerts with front-row seats in her future. But she wasn’t going to rain on my Luke Bryan parade. At the very least, I wanted tonight to be a good memory.
We drove in silence for a few minutes, before she cleared her throat and said, “I’m sorry, Lyla. I just don’t want you to get hurt. More hurt.”
“I know,” I said. “But it really is more complicated than you realize.”
“How?” she said, shrugging while she kept her hands on the steering wheel.
“It just is,” I said.
“How?” she said again.
I swallowed, feeling myself cave to her stronger personality and my need for her approval. Without Grace, I really had nothing at Windsor—and we both knew it. “If I tell you something, do you promise not to tell anyone?” I asked, knowing that it never worked that way, and maybe hoping that it wouldn’t. That she might tell Mr. Q or a guidance counselor or another close friend. That the truth might come out.
“Of course,” she said.
“Okay. So. Here’s the thing.” I paused, taking a few deep breaths. “Finch didn’t take that photo of me. And he didn’t caption it. And he didn’t send it to anyone.”
She looked at me, her eyebrows raised, then returned her eyes to the road. “Who did?”
“Polly,” I said. “From his phone.”
I expected a complete transformation—or at least a softening—but instead she slapped the steering wheel and started to laugh. “Oh my God! He told you that?”
“Yes.”
“And you actually believe him?”
“Yes. I do, actually,” I said, delving into the rest of the details. How he wasn’t trying to get out of trouble; he just wanted me to know the truth. That he was willing to take the blame for Polly because he was genuinely worried about her stability.
“Wow, Lyla. I thought you, of all people, would have more street smarts than this,” she said, shaking her head.
“Why would I have street smarts?” I said, my face burning. “Because I grew up on the wrong side of the river with a single dad who makes furniture and drives Uber?”
“What the heck does that mean?” Grace snapped back.
“Never mind,” I said because I knew I might be overreacting. Maybe I was reading too much into the expression. Maybe Grace simply meant that I usually had good instincts about people. Maybe it had nothing to do with any of that other stuff—and those were just my paranoid, insecure issues. “Can we just drop it?”
“Yeah. Sure. We can drop it,” Grace said, going all passive-aggressive on me as she cruised along in her pretty white Jeep. “No problemo.”
* * *
—
BUT SHE DIDN’T drop it. Instead, about twenty minutes after I got home, when I’d already been doubting myself, and doubting Finch, and generally feeling like shit, Grace sent me three photographs of Finch’s car parked in the driveway of a big brick house, along with a text that said: Look who went straight to Polly’s.
My heart sank. After all, it was one thing to text his ex, it was another to go over to her house the second he dropped us off. I still wasn’t convinced that Polly hadn’t taken the photo of me, but I decided that it really didn’t matter. Either way, it seemed pretty clear that they were working as a team, and that Grace was right. The Luke Bryan tickets were a bribe of some sort. A last-ditch effort to win me over.
I scrolled back through my text thread with Finch, starting around one o’clock, when he’d first asked me what kind of music I liked.
A little bit of everything, I’d writte
n back, trying so hard to be cool. I kept reading, cringing at myself, wishing that, at the very least, I’d played a little harder to get.
Finch: Top 5 fave artists?
Me: That’s too hard!!! So many!
Finch: K. Just 5 ur listening to lately?
Me: Walker Hayes, Bruno Mars, Jana Kramer, Jason Aldean, and Kirby Rose (new artist, but love her).
Finch: Cool…So mostly country?
Me: Yeah.
Finch: What about Luke Bryan?
Me: Love him.
Finch: He’s playing tonight. Wanna try to go?
Me: Seriously?
Finch: Yeah. Why not? Let me see if I can get tix.
Me: OMG. That would be amazing!
Finch: Got four tix. Wanna go with Beau and one of your friends?
Me: Yes! I’ll ask Grace!
Me: Grace is IN!
Finch: Awesome. Did you mention Polly?
Me: I told her y’all broke up.
Finch: But the rest of the stuff?
Me: No.
Finch: Thx. Don’t want the drama. Have enough already!
I scanned the rest of the thread, which was a discussion of logistics about the concert, followed by my final text, which I’d sent from Grace’s driveway, thanking him. He had yet to reply to that one, of course. Picturing him with Polly, maybe hooking up, or maybe just laughing at me, I told myself I had to do something. At the very least, I had to let him know that I wasn’t as stupid as he thought. My mind raced with all the things I could say to call him out, but I played it a little safe, settling on a snarky Having fun?