“Yes, Annabelle.” Izzy repeats it with a mean sort of look on her face and then sits back in her chair. “We know all about her.”
“Uh, well, I don’t,” I say quickly. “I mean, I just know what Izzy’s told me.”
“What Izzy’s told you?” Liam repeats.
“Stop repeating everything we’re saying,” Izzy commands.
I’m slightly panicked by the fact that she keeps referring to us as a “we.” “We” weren’t the one who looked in Liam’s phone while he was walking down the beach. “We” weren’t the one who was so nervous he was cheating on her that she freaked out and started questioning him.
“I think I should go,” I say.
“No, I think you should stay,” Liam says, giving me a look like he knows exactly what I’m trying to do. “I really want to hear what you two have to say, and how you know about Annabelle.”
“I don’t really know about her,” I say. “I told you, I just know, ah, what Izzy told me.”
“And Izzy?” Liam asks, turning to her. “What do you know about Annabelle?”
“I know that you’re having a clandestine affair with her!” Izzy says. She goes to grab for Liam’s phone, like she wants to pull up the proof, but he moves it out of her reach. He does it very calmly, like he could actually care less about her seeing what’s in it, that it’s more just a matter of principle. He doesn’t seem worried that he might have been caught doing something wrong. In fact, Izzy’s the one who seems frantic. Like, she’s trying to appear calm, but you can tell she’s totally spiraling.
“A clandestine affair?” Liam repeats. “You cannot be serious.”
“Of course I’m serious!” Izzy says. “And I asked you to please stop repeating everything I said.”
“You didn’t ask me, actually,” Liam says. “You ordered me.”
“Listen,” I say, “guys, I’m sure this is just a misunderstanding. There’s probably some really good explanation for the whole Annabelle thing.” I turn to Liam. “Right, Liam?”
“Hold on a second,” Liam says, shaking his head. “You never answered my original question. How do you two know about Annabelle?”
“I heard it from Izzy,” I say quickly.
“How I found out isn’t important,” Izzy says vaguely.
But of course it is important. It’s important because if Izzy has to tell Liam how she found out, then he’s going to have a reason to be mad at her. He’ll question her and she’ll try to deflect and then—
“But if you must know, I went through your phone,” Izzy declares.
“Oh, Izzy,” I breathe, and put my head in my hands. Not that I think admitting it is necessarily a bad thing. It’s just that she’s going about this whole thing the completely wrong way. If she was going to admit she’d gone through his phone, she should have led with how she felt like something was off with their relationship. Then she could have told Liam she went through his phone, and that she was really sorry but that she was so upset she didn’t know what else to do. You can’t just blurt out the fact that you went through someone’s phone like that and expect them to be okay with it.
“You went through my phone?” Liam asks. He takes in a deep breath through his nose, and his jaw sets into a firm line. “Wow, Izzy, that was a gross invasion of my privacy.”
“Looking through someone’s phone is nowhere near as bad as cheating,” Izzy says, like she’s the moral police or something. “So if you want to start pointing fingers at people, maybe you should start pointing them at yourself.”
“Izzy—” I start, but she’s not done.
“And obviously I was right to look in your phone, because I found something incriminating!” She goes to reach for his phone again, and Liam pulls it out of the way.
“Izzy,” I say, starting to get worried about how crazy she’s acting, “why don’t you and Liam go back to the hotel and have a nice, normal conversation about this? I bet if you talk to each other like adults, this can all be worked out.”
“Cheating is a deal breaker!” Izzy says.
“Yeah, well, so is looking through my phone,” Liam says.
“Then I guess there’s nothing else to say,” Izzy says.
“I guess not.”
“I guess we’re breaking up,” Izzy says.
My pulse starts to pound, and goose bumps break out on my arms. Breaking up? Like, for real breaking up? I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about that. On one hand, I’m excited. On the other hand, I don’t want Izzy to be sad. I don’t want Liam to be sad. Although in my darkest moments, when I’ve let myself really go there, when it’s late at night and I’m alone in my bed and allowing myself to think about no one but myself, I don’t care if Liam and Izzy are sad. I want them to break up. I do. I can’t help it.
“I guess we are,” Liam says quietly.
There’s a silence, where I think maybe both of them are waiting for the other one to take it back, or at least say they should talk about it. But neither one of them does.
“Maybe you guys should talk about this,” I offer after a moment. It may seem counterintuitive to the fact that I want them to break up. But when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Why would I want to get my hopes up over a fake breakup? A fake breakup would be worse than no breakup at all.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Izzy says. She slides her sunglasses down over her eyes. “I’m leaving.”
“No, don’t go,” I say halfheartedly, hoping she won’t listen. How awesome would it be for Izzy to leave and me to be left here with Liam, just the two of us? He wouldn’t have a girlfriend anymore.
Before graduation, I will . . . tell the truth.
There wouldn’t be a reason not to. I could tell him right here, right now. I could tell him how I feel, that I can’t stop thinking about him, that ever since the moment I met him I’ve had a crush on him, and then it turned deeper and now I might be in love with him. I could point out all the things we have in common, all the time we’ve spent together, all the reasons we would be perfect together.
“She’s right,” Liam says. “You don’t have to leave, Izzy. Because I am.” He pushes his chair away from the table and stands up a little too quickly. His orange juice jostles on the table and sloshes over the side.
And then he’s gone.
I turn to Izzy.
“Wow,” I say, letting out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “That was intense.”
“What an asshole,” Izzy says. “Can you believe he admitted to cheating on me and then had the nerve to get mad at me for going through his phone?”
I frown. “He didn’t really admit he was cheating,” I say, realizing it’s true. “All he said was, ‘How do you know about Annabelle?’”
“Which is admitting it,” Izzy says. “If he wasn’t cheating on me, he would have been like, ‘I’m not cheating on you.’”
Or maybe he didn’t want to have to justify himself to you after you looked in his phone, I want to say, but don’t. Izzy is worked up enough already. And besides, maybe she has a point. Why didn’t Liam just tell her who Annabelle is? He didn’t look guilty, though, like he’d been caught. He looked more pissed off than anything.
“I have a headache,” Izzy says suddenly, putting her hand to her head. She sniffs at her orange juice. “I hope this wasn’t made in a facility that manufactures peanuts.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t.” Why would they be making orange juice in a place that manufactures peanuts?
“It probably was,” she says. “Even though the menu claimed it was fresh-squeezed.” She reaches into her bag, pulls out a prescription bottle, and shakes two pills into her hand. “You’d be surprised at how often places misrepresent what they’re serving.”
“Totally,” I say, even though I’m not sure I agree with her.
“I’m going to have a migraine now,” she says. “Great. Just great.”
She’s probably going to have a migraine not because of the peanuts but becau
se of the fact that she and Liam just had a very public fight and then apparently broke up. Stress can cause migraines, can’t it? And what are the chances some fresh-squeezed orange juice ended up with peanuts in it? It really doesn’t make any sense.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Yes.” She reaches across the table and grabs my forearm like it’s a life raft. “You can stay here and pay the bill. I need to get back to my room.”
She stands up and shoulders her bag.
“Are you sure you should be going by yourself?” I ask, looking around for the waitress. “Let me go with you.”
“No, no, I’ll be fine. Sometimes if I lie down before it gets going, it helps ward it off.”
“Okay,” I say doubtfully. I’m not sure I should let her go alone, but a second later, she’s gone.
She probably went to find Liam, anyway. He’s probably going to be waiting for her outside her room, and they’re probably going to end up talking it out. They’ll be back together before dinner.
They might not be, a tempting little voice in my head whispers. Coming back from someone possibly cheating and the other person breaking their trust is going to be really hard. Even if they try to work through it, they could still split up. And if Liam really is cheating on Izzy, then they’re probably done.
On the other hand, if Liam and Izzy do break up, then this Annabelle person might be Liam’s new girlfriend. And who knows what she’s like. At least with Izzy, I knew what I was getting—she could be annoying sometimes, yes, but she was my friend, too, and she never saw me as a threat. She didn’t care if I hung out with Liam until all hours of the night, if we had a book club and our own private jokes.
She looked at me the same way she’d look at one of Liam’s guy friends. Sometimes I think she was even secretly relieved Liam and I were so close, because it made her feel less guilty when she wanted to hang out with her dance team or do something Liam wasn’t interested in.
But Annabelle is a total question mark. She could be one of those completely jealous girls who doesn’t want their boyfriend to do anything except be with her. She might not like the fact that Liam has me as a friend. She might see me as a threat, she might force him to make a decision—her or me.
And even though I know Liam would never intentionally just throw our friendship away, what if it happens unintentionally? What if now that they’re not a secret affair, Liam and Annabelle can start spending all their time in public, out and about as a couple? What if slowly Liam and I just start drifting apart until finally we’re not even speaking? First our book club meetings will get further and further apart, then they’ll stop altogether. He’ll stop sending me his music. I’ll stop writing my book, the one that’s about us. Or I’ll have to give it a horrible ending, one where the two people don’t end up together.
Because it won’t feel right to write the ending I want unless it actually happens. Of course I’ll have to make sure it seems like the girl is okay even without the guy, that she’s realized she can find someone better or work on her dreams or something. But none of the readers will believe it, because everyone will know her heart is still broken and that she’s never going to be the same.
Wow. My book is really going to suck. It’s definitely not going to sell with an ending like that. Readers want a happily ever after. And the reason they want a happily ever after is because they want an escape. They want something to happen in a book that’s never going to happen to them in real life. At the same time, they want to feel like maybe it could, like maybe they’re going to be the exception to the rule.
Which is what I wanted.
Which is why I was writing that particular kind of book!
“Okay, here we go,” the waitress says, returning to the table with our food. “French toast, omelet, and oatmeal.” She sets everything down with a flourish and gives me a smile. “Can I get you anything else?”
Sigh.
I pay the bill and then head back to the hotel.
I’m slightly annoyed that I had to pay for everyone’s food, even though it was just breakfast. They’re the ones who dragged me to the restaurant—well, Izzy did at least—under false pretenses, then made it really uncomfortable for me while they had a fight and broke up, so to stick me with the bill on top of it . . . Ugh.
Not to mention that now I have nothing to do for the rest of the day. I mean, I guess I could call Reva from the Student Action Committee, but come on. I really do not want to be spending my vacation with her. She’s nice enough, but she’s not Liam and Izzy.
Liam and Izzy.
Izzy and Liam.
I’m so sick of hearing their names together. I picture the two of them back at her room. Are they making up? Is he taking care of her since she has a migraine? Is he promising never to see Annabelle again? Or is Liam relieved Izzy found out, is he alone talking to Annabelle right now, telling her the good news, that he finally got rid of his girlfriend?
I take the elevator up to the second floor, hoping against hope that Quinn and Lyla aren’t in our room. I’m emotionally exhausted, and the last thing I want is a run-in with those two. I’m hunched over and looking at the floor while I walk, which is why I don’t see him at first.
Liam.
He’s waiting outside my door, sitting on the floor, his head back against the wall, his hands resting on his knees. Longing and want flow through my body, the way they do sometimes when I least expect it, when nothing’s happening except that he’s near me, or I catch him looking at me a certain way, or my hand brushes against his arm.
“Hey,” he says when he sees me.
“Hey,” I breathe.
“Can we talk?” He stands up and moves toward me.
“Sure,” I say. “Um, do you want to come into my room?”
He shakes his head. “I’m too keyed up to stay inside. You wanna go for a walk?”
I nod. “Beach?”
He nods back and starts walking down the hall.
Before graduation, I will . . . tell the truth.
“You coming?” Liam asks.
“Yeah.” I take a deep breath and follow him.
EIGHT
THE BEACH IS PRETTY BUSY, BUT EVERYONE is congregating around the center of the coast, up where the pavilion and the food stand are located. So Liam and I walk silently until we find a spot all the way down the shore. There’s a wall that curves up from the ground to protect the oceanfront houses from trespassers, and right behind it are a bunch of palm trees casting a bit of shade onto the beach. So I pick a patch of shade for myself and sit down near the wall, up where the sand is rocky and not as smooth.
“Do you mind if we sit farther down?” Liam asks, gesturing toward the shore. “I kind of want to be closer to the water.”
“Sure.” I move into the sun and we both sit down right in the sand, no blanket or umbrella or anything. I slip my sandals off and let the tide slide over my toes. The water is cold, but the air is hot, so they kind of cancel each other out. I remember what Liam said about vitamin D, so I raise my face to the sun and hope I’m soaking some up.
I wait for Liam to say something, and when he doesn’t, I glance over at him. He’s staring out at the water, his face contemplative, his chin resting on his hand, his thumb moving back and forth over his bottom lip, like he’s trying to work something out in his head.
I pick up a stick and doodle a little bit in the sand, just nonsense things, my name, a heart, one of those five point stars you can make without picking up your pen. I draw a tic-tac-toe board and play a game with myself until Liam notices what I’m doing.
“Are you playing tic-tac-toe with yourself?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why not? This way I always win.”
He grins and takes the stick out of my hand. He draws a new board on the sand in between us and then hands the stick back to me.
“Your move,” he says, and his fingers brush against mine. A breeze
rustles through the palm trees overhead, and maybe I’ve been reading too many romance novels or maybe I’ve just finally gone insane, but it feels like something’s different, like there’s been a subtle shift between us. I can’t explain it, but it’s there.
“No way,” I say, shaking my head. “You get the first move.”
“You sure?” he asks.
“I’m sure,” I say, raising my chin. “I’m not scared.”
He draws an O in the middle square.
I shake my head. “Taking the easy way out, eh, Marsh?”
I draw an X in the upper middle square and then hand him back the stick. Every time we pass it back and forth, our hands are going to touch. With nine squares on the board, that could be a lot of touching.
“So I wanted to explain to you,” he says, drawing an O in the lower left square, “about Annabelle.”
“Okay,” I say. “But honestly, Liam, you don’t have to explain anything to me.” It’s true—as much as I want to know about this whole Annabelle thing, it really isn’t any of my business. If Liam has a secret girlfriend, it would suck and break my heart—but he doesn’t have an obligation to tell me about it unless he wants to.
“No, I want to.”
“Okay.” I draw my X and hand him back the stick. But he doesn’t draw another O. Instead he takes the stick and just kind of moves it back and forth across the sand in a lazy swirly pattern.
“I’m not cheating on Izzy,” he says. “Annabelle isn’t a girl.”
“Annabelle’s a boy?” I ask, confused.
He laughs. “No, Annabelle’s a girl. Well, a woman, actually. I just meant she’s not a girl that I’m, like, romantically involved with or anything.”
“Oh. She’s a friend?”
“No. She’s my therapist.” He turns and looks at me, waiting for my reaction. Which, honestly, is one of relief. Annabelle’s not a girlfriend! She’s isn’t even a friend! She’s his therapist! Wow. Talk about much ado about nothing.
Wait. Since when does Liam see a therapist? And why didn’t he just tell Izzy about it?
“I didn’t know you were seeing a therapist,” I say.