“Yes,” I say, because it’s what people expect. The truth is, I’m not that excited to graduate. I like living at home. I like my parents. And once everyone goes off to college, all the possibilities will be gone. The possibility of being with Liam. The possibility that Lyla and Quinn and I will be friends again.
Everyone will go to college, and it will be like our high school relationships never even happened. Everyone will form new friendships, fall into new romances, meet new people. And then when college is over, everyone will leave again. It’s actually really depressing when you think about it.
“Yeah, college is much different from high school,” Colin says. “It’s just so much better.”
“How so?” I ask.
“Just having more control. You’re not spending all day in class, learning things you’re not excited about. Yes, it can be a lot of work, but it’s a lot more interesting and there’s more chance for self-direction.”
“That’s good,” I say. That’s the best he can come up with? Everyone knows you get more control of your schedule in college. If it were Liam, he would have said something about—ahhh! I need to stop thinking about Liam! Colin is perfectly nice. He’s even putting up with the fact that I’m being kind of bratty right now, giving him one-word answers and thinking mean thoughts about him. I’m sure he has tons of good qualities, even better than Liam.
I glance over at him again.
“How tall are you, anyway?” I ask.
A look of surprise and confusion passes across his face, but he recovers quickly. “Six-two. Why?”
Ha! Liam is only six feet! And everyone knows being taller is better. It’s, like, scientifically proven. Men who are taller get further in business and life. It’s a known thing. Score one for Colin!
It somehow makes me feel better, this little game. I try to think of other things that might make Colin better than Liam.
“What was your GPA in high school?” I ask.
“Three point seven.”
Ha! Liam’s is only a 3.0! Colin is smarter than Liam!
“What was the last book you read?”
“Probably my astronomy textbook.”
“No, I mean, like, for fun.” Maybe if it sounds interesting, we can start a new book club. One with books I actually want to read.
“I don’t read much,” Colin says. “When you’re in college, you don’t have much time for pleasure reading.”
I frown. I don’t get it. How can you not have time for pleasure reading? That’s like saying you don’t have time to eat or brush your teeth. If Colin has time to go to parties or sunset cruises or the dining hall or . . . I don’t know, anywhere, he should have time to read. I would much rather read than go out to some stupid frat party where a bunch of Neanderthal guys are going to be playing beer pong and doing keg stands. In fact, I would much rather read than do almost anything else. In fact, I wish I were curled up in bed with a book right now. But not in my hotel room. Back in my own bed, at home, before any of this happened. Before I told Liam how I felt.
“Oh,” I say, because I realize I haven’t replied and I don’t know what else to say.
“Are you feeling okay?” Colin asks. He shakes his head. “I knew I shouldn’t have given you those drinks.”
“You didn’t give them to me,” I say, irritated. “I’m a grown woman; I’m in charge of myself.” It’s true, even though I don’t really feel like a grown woman who’s in charge of herself. In fact, I feel a little bit out of control.
Before graduation, I will . . . tell the truth.
I can’t believe I did that.
I can’t believe I told him.
“Did I do something wrong?” Colin asks. “You seem annoyed with me.”
“No.” I shake my head, feeling guilty that I’ve made him feel bad. It’s not his fault I did something totally crazy and listened to a stupid email I sent myself when I was only fourteen. It’s not his fault Liam doesn’t love me.
In fact, Colin’s been nothing but nice to me all night. And shouldn’t that count for something? Isn’t that the premise of, like, tons of romantic movies? That maybe the guy who’s nice is the one you should be with, not the one you’re in love with but who doesn’t love you back?
Of course, there are also tons of movies where the guy who didn’t want the girl in the beginning suddenly comes to his senses and becomes willing to change everything about his life and stop being a player because he’s found the one girl who’s worth it. Those movies are way more popular than the ones where the girl ends up with the boring nice guy.
But obviously that’s because the bad-boy movies are totally unrealistic. I can’t think of one real-world example where some guy has come to his senses and decided he wanted to be with a girl who’d been pining away for him for ages. On the other hand, I can think of tons of examples where a girl has wasted tons of time on some guy who didn’t want anything to do with her.
“Okay,” Colin says.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just . . .” I trail off, not sure what kind of explanation to give him. Something tells me I’m upset about some other guy who rejected me isn’t going to really go over that well. So I decide to borrow a page from Quinn’s book. “I think I was just a little seasick. You know, from being on the boat and dancing and everything. But I’m starting to feel better.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” Colin says. “You should have told me. Wait here.”
He ducks into one of the souvenir shops and reappears a moment later, holding a bottle of water.
“Thanks,” I say, taking a sip.
“No problem,” he says.
We continue walking up the strip, and I force myself to ask him questions about his family, how many brothers and sisters he has (two brothers, one younger, one older), if his parents are still together (yes), what he’s hoping to do after school (maybe get his MBA, because he’s interested in business, but he’s worried about becoming a Wall Street suit, so he’s not sure if that’s going to be his path).
By the time we get back to the hotel, I’m starting to feel a lot better. I’ve gone from thinking about Liam and being sad to actually being upset that I gave him the power to make me so upset. Here I am, out on a date with a supernice, supercute guy, and instead of just enjoying myself, I’m worried about some stupid jerk who can’t even be bothered to send me a text to make sure I’m okay after I poured my heart out to him. Seriously, we’ve been friends for four years, and he had to have known I was upset. And he couldn’t even be bothered to text me? I mean, wow.
That was it. I was done with Liam. Liam was nothing to me.
I was onto Colin now.
I glance at him out of the corner of my eye again, wondering how far I’m willing to take my new plan. I want to kiss him. I want to kiss him badly, not only because he’s cute and nice, but because I’m desperate for some other feeling, something that’s going to distract me from what I’m feeling about Liam.
“Let’s do something else,” I say, desperate not to be left alone in my room all night. My body, which had felt kind of sluggish and depressed all day, now feels alive and almost tense, like I’m on alert and waiting for something to unleash me.
“Okay,” Colin says. “What do you want to do?”
“Something fun,” I say. “Maybe we could go walk on the beach. Or we could go up to my room.” I grab his hand and pull him up the cobblestone sidewalk toward the front doors of my hotel. I’m not sure if Quinn and Lyla are in my room, but really, honestly, who cares? Lyla had her boyfriend spend the night. Why can’t I have a boy come up to our room, too?
I’ll kick them out. I’ll say, “Sorry, girls, but you two need to leave this room immediately.” And if they refuse, I’ll just make it really uncomfortable for the two of them until they finally get the message. The mental picture of it is making me giggle, and I pull on Colin’s hand harder, and he laughs as we stumble up the front walk together.
“Now, listen,” I start to explain to him. “I have these
roommates, and they’re not—”
“Aven?” a voice calls.
I turn.
Liam.
It’s Liam. He’s sitting on the wrought-iron bench in front of the hotel, and he frowns when he sees me holding on to Colin’s hand. I see the confusion on Liam’s face as he tries to process what’s happening. Not that it’s that difficult—it’s late at night, and I’m giggling like a crazy person and holding the hand of a random guy as I lead him toward the hotel I’m staying at. It’s pretty obvious what I’m doing.
“Liam,” I say, raising my chin in the air and dragging Colin forward. If Liam thinks he has any right to give me a hard time about what I’m about to do, then he’s wrong. I’m not listening to Liam. La, la, la, erasing him from my mind. I quicken my pace and keep pulling Colin toward the door.
“Aven!” Liam says, following us. His legs are longer than mine, and he’s faster, and he’s not trying to pull a six-foot-two college boy behind him, so he catches up to me and Colin pretty quickly. Liam steps in front of the automatic doors that lead to the hotel lobby.
“What?” I ask.
“What are you doing?” he asks, looking back and forth from me to Colin.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” I ask. “I’m going up to my room to have sex with Colin.”
Colin gasps. “Whoa,” he says, dropping my hand and backing a step away. “Who said anything about having sex?”
“Really, Colin?” I ask, annoyed. “What did you think we were going to be doing up in my room, playing backgammon?” It’s kind of a funny thing to say, because I’ve never played backgammon in my life, and honestly I don’t even know anyone who does. I must be under a tremendous amount of mental stress if I’m talking about backgammon.
“No, but I didn’t think we were going to have sex,” Colin says, totally serious, proving that he doesn’t get my sense of humor at all. I wasn’t really saying we were going to be playing backgammon.
“I didn’t mean we were really going to be playing backgammon, Colin,” I say, annoyed. “It was just a sarcastic remark.”
“Look, I don’t want any trouble,” Colin says to Liam. “I just met her yesterday.”
“There isn’t going to be any trouble,” I say. “Why would there be trouble?”
“Because your boyfriend looks like he wants to beat my ass.”
I turn and look at Liam. He does kind of look like he wants to beat Colin’s ass. His eyes are intense and angry, his gaze boring into Colin like he’s one step away from punching him in the face. It’s kind of sexy, if you want to know the truth. Not that I want anyone to actually get in a fight, but it’s kind of nice knowing that Liam feels that protective of me.
Then I remember he has no right to be protective of me, that he rejected me, that it’s none of his business if I’m taking Colin up to my room to have sex.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I say to Colin.
“Oh,” Colin says. He takes a small step back toward me, but I can tell that now he’s wondering if maybe I’m crazy. He’s also not sure if Liam really is my boyfriend and I’m lying about it, or if Liam is just some kind of psycho stalker. Either way you can tell he’s not that psyched to get involved in the whole situation.
“He’s not anything,” I say.
“Oh, really?” Liam says in disbelief. “I’m not anything, huh?”
“No,” I say, thrusting my chin into the air and daring him to contradict me. “You’re not.” I’m suddenly aware of how close he is to me, so close I can see the flecks in his blue eyes, the tiny birthmark he has on his collarbone, the little cracks in the letters of his T-shirt from where the ink has worn away.
“So that’s how it is now? After four years, it just doesn’t mean anything?”
“No,” I say, “it doesn’t. If it did, you would have texted me earlier.”
“I would have texted you earlier?” he repeats. “Jesus, Aven, it’s been, like, a day.”
“Yes!” I say. “A whole day! A whole day after I poured my heart out to you and you rejected me and I was left just waiting to hear from you.”
“It doesn’t look like you were just sitting around,” Liam says, looking over at Colin again, anger flashing in his dark eyes.
“Look, Aven, maybe you should just call me later,” Colin says. But it’s the kind of thing you say when you don’t really mean it but feel like you have to say something, because you want to get out of there and don’t know how else to do it.
Wow. What a traitor. Just when things get a little rough, he takes off. Typical guy.
“Whatever,” I say. “Go ahead.” I flick my hand at him, and he takes off down the cobblestone walk.
“Well, I hope you’re happy,” I say to Liam. “You just ruined my night.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry I ruined your random hookup with some college douche bag.”
“He wasn’t a douche bag!” I say. “He was nice.”
“Oh, yeah, he was so nice that he came back to the hotel room of a girl he barely knew, and then as soon as he saw me, he beat a hasty retreat out of here.” He shakes his head. “Asshole.”
“It wasn’t like that!” I say. Why am I even standing here trying to explain this to him? It’s pointless. And it’s none of his business. He has no right to pass judgment on my life or my decisions. If I want to hook up with a hundred douche bags, well, then, that’s my prerogative. “It’s none of your business,” I say. “You can’t stand there and judge me. You have no right.”
I go to move by him, but he steps in front of me again, blocking my path. “I have no right? Aven, you told me you had feelings for me, and then a few hours later you show up with some other guy, ready to do God knows what. So yeah, it is kind of my business.”
“Yeah, I told you I had feelings for you, and then you ignored me all day! You didn’t even text me to see how I was doing. And now you’re showing up here, trying to pretend like you have a say in what’s going on in my life. When the truth is, Liam, you don’t. Not when it comes to this. You lost that right when you told me you didn’t feel the same way. You’re not my boyfriend, Liam.”
It feels like a lot of words to say at once, and I take a breath and wait for him to fire back. My voice is angry, raised. A couple of people walking into the hotel are looking at us, giving us that look that adults give teenagers when they see us showing emotion, that look that we’re just being dramatic, that none of it really matters, when it feels to us, to me, like it’s the only thing that matters.
“You hardly gave me any time to respond!” he says. “You just sprung everything on me and then you took off.”
“Sprung everything on you?” I rage. “This has been going on for four years, Liam. You really expect me to believe you had no idea?”
“I had no idea!” he says. “How was I supposed to know?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe because I haven’t dated anyone seriously since I’ve known you. Maybe because I’ve spent every single second of my free time with you. Maybe because I read your stupid books that I have no interest in just because I want to discuss them with you!” God, how dense can he really be?
“I’m not a mind reader, Aven,” he says. “You never tried anything, you never told me how you felt.”
“I shouldn’t have had to!” I say. “You should have known from the way I was acting.” I cross my arms over my chest, defensive. “And besides, there was never a good time.”
“Really?” He laughs then, a high, sarcastic little laugh, the kind of laugh you use when you think the other person is really trying to sling bullshit at you. “There was never a good time? We only hung out, oh, I don’t know, every single night!”
“Oh, yeah, right, every single night while you were dating Izzy.”
“Izzy and I were dating for six months,” he says. “What about the other three and a half years?”
“You had other girlfriends,” I say vaguely. Which is true. Liam has had a couple of other girlfriends, Shani Peters and Jor
dan Block and a few other girls he’d randomly hook up with at parties.
“I didn’t, and you know it!” he says. He takes a step toward me and shakes his head. “Look, I don’t want to fight with you.”
“Then why are you?”
“I don’t know.” He reaches out and takes my hand, and his touch sends electricity through my entire body. An ache fills me, a need so intense I’m not sure I’ll be able to hide it from him. It’s different from the way I used to feel when he touched me before—this time, I can feel that shift. Something’s different—this isn’t the way it used to feel when his hand would brush against mine when he handed me a soda, or even the way it was earlier when we were having crab fights in the ocean. This is different, because it’s the first time he’s touching me after he knows how I feel.
“Aven,” he says. “I just . . . I want to talk about this.”
“So talk.” My voice catches in my throat, because I don’t want to talk about this, I don’t want to hear the same things over and over again about how he doesn’t feel the same way. I just want things to go back to the way they were, before I told him any of it.
I’m staring down at the pavement, and he’s still holding my hand, and I can see the tiny little cracks in all the cobblestones, and I get this overwhelming feeling of melancholy. It’s so corny and melodramatic, but it’s like those cobblestones are a metaphor—they’re so beautiful, but they have all those tiny little cracks in them that you can’t see unless you get so close, and it’s so awful that I can hardly take it.
“Aven,” Liam says. “Please, look at me.”
I can’t. It’s like trying to lift a fifty-pound dumbbell over your head when you haven’t worked out in months. But somehow, I do it. “Please,” I say, and I can hear the pleading in my voice and I hate myself for it. “Can we please just go back to the way it was? Can we just pretend it never happened? Nothing has to change. You said so yourself back on the beach.”
He blinks, slowly, his eyelids closing and then opening, and I can’t tell if it’s just that everything seems like it’s happening in slow motion or if he’s just blinking so slow because he’s thinking, and then he lets out a long sigh. “You know we can’t really do that.”