But I don’t turn around.
Instead, I just keep walking.
Once I’m in the hallway, I realize I have nothing to do for the rest of the night. Izzy’s with her dance team, and obviously Liam’s back at the party. I wonder what he’s going to do now that I left. Maybe he’ll hang out with his stupid jock friends. Or maybe he’ll call Annabelle.
Whatever.
Not my problem.
I think about just heading back to my room, but something about that seems like a cop-out—if I just end up back in my room, I’ve let Liam win. Why should I give him the power to ruin my night just because he felt like picking a fight?
So I text Reva Tannenbaum, this girl I know from the Student Action Committee. She texts me back right away, letting me know that she and a couple of her friends are at an outdoor restaurant on Ocean Boulevard.
So I head down there for a couple of hours, making small talk with people I don’t know that well and trying not to think about Liam. I eat nachos and drink fruity drinks and have more ice cream and buy a tiny key chain that looks like a Florida license plate and has my name on it, because you can get them custom-made and they never have my name on anything.
By the time I get back to my room, I’m feeling a little better. My stomach is pleasantly full, I’m drunk on the ocean air, and even though I’m not close with Reva and her friends, they were still nice and fun to hang out with.
I open the door to my room slowly, not sure if Quinn and Lyla are going to be there. Quinn’s bed is empty, but Lyla’s sleeping in hers, and so is her boyfriend, Derrick.
Wow. How totally disrespectful. She didn’t even ask us if it was okay to have a guest spend the night, much less a male guest. They probably had sex in that bed. How disgusting.
And what happened to the school rule about coed sleepovers? It was one of the main points in the informational packet that got handed out. In fact, I thought Mr. Beals was supposed to be checking everyone’s rooms at night. Wow. This trip is totally mismanaged—people drinking in hotel rooms, people having sex in hotel rooms. Our parents definitely wouldn’t be happy if they knew what we were getting up to.
Thank God Lyla and Derrick are already sleeping. The last thing I want to do is make small talk with those two. I change quickly into my pajamas and then slide into bed. The cot is actually surprisingly comfortable. Either that or I’m just exhausted, because it actually feels cozy in here, with the doors to the balcony open and the breeze sliding in. I can smell the freshness of the ocean air, and if I listen hard enough, I can hear the waves sliding onto the shore.
My phone buzzes from where I’ve set it down on the floor next to me. My heart leaps. Liam. It has to be. Texting me to tell me he’s sorry, that he can’t believe we got into a fight over something so ridiculous.
But it’s not Liam.
It’s that stupid email.
Before graduation, I will . . . tell the truth.
Thank God I didn’t listen to it.
Thank God I didn’t tell Liam how I felt.
I delete the email and set my phone back on the floor.
The thought flits through my head that maybe I’m using this thing with Liam, this thing with Annabelle and our fight, as an excuse to not tell him how I feel.
But then I decide that’s not true. People don’t stay friends for four years if there’s something more there. If Liam had wanted to be more than friends, he would have asked me out, he would have made a move. There have been hundreds of times he could have tried to kiss me, or tell me how he felt, or given me some kind of sign.
When Izzy moved here last year, he didn’t become friends with her and spend a bunch of time getting to know her. He decided he liked her, and he asked her out after, like, two days.
Two days to ask out Izzy.
Four years of being friends with me, talking to me every day, without giving me any indication that he likes me as more than a friend.
It’s time for me to really face the truth.
Liam and I are just friends.
And the sooner I accept that, the better.
SEVEN
THE NEXT MORNING, I’M WOKEN UP BY A knock on our hotel room door.
Probably Liam.
But I’m not answering it.
He can stay out there for all I care.
I roll over and squeeze my eyes shut tight. I even put my thumb in my mouth. I know it’s lame, but I’ve done it ever since I was a baby. I tried for a while to break the habit, but I can’t. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t need to do it every night, but it still helps if I’m stressed or having trouble sleeping.
The knocking stops. Wow. Talk about giving up easily. Humph. Maybe he just went down the hall so he could call my phone and try to wake me up. I wonder what I’ll do if he does call me. Will I answer it? I’ll probably have to. It could wake everyone else up and then—
“Lyla!” comes a loud whisper from the other side of the door.
Lyla? Why would Liam be calling for Lyla? Does he think he can try to get her to talk to me about how ridiculous I’m being? Why would he do that? He knows Lyla and I aren’t friends anymore.
“Lyla!” comes the voice again.
It’s a little louder this time, loud enough for me to realize it’s not Liam out there after all. It’s some other guy. Some other guy calling for Lyla when she’s in bed with her boyfriend! How totally scandalous. This is definitely not something I want to get involved in, so I keep my eyes shut tight. A few seconds later¸ I hear Lyla getting out of bed and opening the door.
“Finally,” the mystery boy says. He doesn’t sound mad, though. He sounds cocky, like he knew she would come no matter how long it took.
I crack my eyes a little bit and try to see who it is. But the open door is blocking my view.
Then the boy says, “Rough night?” His voice has a sexy lilt to it, almost like he’s teasing her. Which is pretty messed up, if you ask me. I mean, Lyla has a boyfriend. A boyfriend who’s sleeping in her bed.
“No.” Lyla says. She sounds mad, like she can’t believe this guy has the nerve to wake her up. But I notice she doesn’t ask what he’s doing here or seem all that surprised. Is Lyla cheating on Derrick? Whenever I see them in the halls at school, they seem happy. And again, he’s in her bed. She had sex with him last night, and now she’s got some other guy after her. Why is it that Lyla has two guys and I have none?
I listen as the guy at the door asks Lyla to go get coffee with him.
She sounds annoyed and tells him no, but I know Lyla well enough to tell that she’s not really that annoyed. She has that tone in her voice she gets when she’s trying to act like she’s mad, but deep down she wants you to convince her to do whatever it is you’re asking her to do.
Then she steps out into the hall, and I can’t hear the rest of what she’s saying, because her voice is all muffled. A few moments later, she comes back into the room, and I hear her rustling around before she leaves again. Only this time, she doesn’t come back.
Great. Lyla’s taken off with some guy and left me alone with Derrick. Where the hell is Quinn, anyway? Her bed is still empty, and it doesn’t look like she slept in it last night. What if Derrick wakes up and wants to know where Lyla went? I’m a horrible liar. My lip starts twitching and I talk really fast and add unnecessary details to the lie that make it completely obvious I’m not telling the truth.
I’m tempted to just leave the room, but I have nowhere to go. I haven’t heard from Liam since our fight, and Izzy . . . Actually, where is Izzy? I haven’t heard from her, either. Are they both mad at me now? Did Liam somehow convince Izzy that since he’s mad at me, she should be, too?
I toss and turn for another hour or so, before finally sending her a text.
What’s up? How was your night?
Once she replies, I’ll tell her about the fight I had with Liam. Maybe she talked to him about it and she has some insights. Maybe he told her it was totally ridiculous, the way we fought. Maybe she t
old him he shouldn’t be so mean to me, that the guy I was flirting with wasn’t a douche, that I hardly even liked him, that if I didn’t mention it, then it obviously wasn’t that big of a deal.
Unless.
Unless she went the other way, and told Liam that Colin was hot and cool and cutting mangos and looking sexy while doing it. Maybe Izzy said she couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t interested in him, and then maybe Liam and Izzy put two and two together and realized it was because I was in love with Liam! And now they’re both not talking to me until they can figure out how to handle the situation.
Of course, that scenario is highly unlikely, since Izzy’s probably still upset about the whole Annabelle debacle. But maybe they worked that out, too. Maybe Annabelle’s, like, Liam’s cousin or something, and it was all a big misunderstanding.
Maybe they even talked about their boring sex life, and Liam said of course he wanted to sleep with Izzy, that he was just nervous about her thinking that’s all he wanted when their connection obviously goes so much deeper. And then Izzy said of course she didn’t think that, and then the two of them spent all night having sex in a bunch of different places. On the beach. In their rooms. In . . . I don’t know, other romantic places people go to have sex. Like a hot tub or something. Not that there are any hot tubs in this hotel, at least that I’ve seen, but I’ll bet there’s a pool and a—
Oh.
Text from Izzy.
My night was horrible!!!! Can you meet for bfast?
I text her back.
Yes. Where?
Cute café on Ocean Boulevard.
She texts me the address.
Okay. Give me 30 mins? I want to grab a quick shower.
Okay.
I hesitate with my hand over my phone, wondering if I should ask her for more details, so I know what I’m getting myself into. Did she and Liam have a fight about Annabelle? Did they break up? Whose side am I on?
Obviously I’m closer friends with Liam. But Liam shouldn’t have cheated on Izzy (if he did), and he shouldn’t have been so mean to me last night. But Izzy shouldn’t have looked in his phone—if she had an issue with their relationship, she should have just asked him about it.
Whatever. I can’t start driving myself crazy with all the what-ifs. So I push them out of my mind and head for the shower.
Twenty minutes later, I’m clean and dressed and ready to go meet Izzy. I’m over by my bed, sliding some sunglasses into my bag and trying not to wake Derrick, when the hotel room door opens.
Lyla. She’s back.
Panic flows through me, and I quickly sit down on my cot. I don’t know why. It’s like I want her to think I’ve been sleeping this whole time or something, even though I’m dressed. Not that it matters, because Lyla looks completely oblivious to everything going on around her. She blinks fast, like she’s trying to hold back tears, but her face is blank and emotionless.
“What’s wrong?” I blurt, before I can help myself. The last thing I want is to get involved in Lyla’s drama. Okay, fine, that’s not completely true. I mean, I do miss her.
She turns to look at me, like she’s surprised I’m even in the room.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she says.
Liar. “You’re getting that look on your face,” I say.
“What look?”
“The look you always get when you’re about to cry.”
“I do not have that look on my face!” She thinks about it. “And besides, I don’t get a look on my face when I’m about to cry.”
“Yes, you do,” I say. “Your bottom lip gets all wobbly and you get these weird little wrinkles at the side of your eyes.” She tilts her head, considering, and her crying look goes away for a second. So I try to make a joke. “If you’re going to cry, you should probably just cry, because if you keep letting your face get wrinkled like that, you’re probably going to need Botox when you’re older.”
She bursts into tears.
“Oh, wow,” I say, feeling horrible. “Lyla, I’m sorry. I was just kidding. You’re not going to need Botox when you’re older. You have really nice skin.”
“I’m not crying because of that,” she says. “I just . . .” She trails off and takes in a shuddering breath, like she’s trying to figure out exactly what it is she wants to say, but then her eyes fall on Derrick, sprawled out under the covers on her bed.
She looks at me again and opens her mouth to say something. I wait expectantly, but instead of explaining, she turns and runs out of the room! Great. Now what am I supposed to do? I wait a second to see if she comes back, but she doesn’t. So I follow her. She might not want anything to do with me, but I want something to do with her, and besides, she’s obviously upset. It would be mean not to at least check on her.
When I get out to the hallway, she’s leaning against the wall, facing away from me. I put my hand on her back gently.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
Her breath is coming in short bursts, almost like she’s going to hyperventilate or something. “I did something really bad to someone,” she says.
“Who?”
“Derrick.” She wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. Then she sort of half slides/half collapses onto the floor. So she is cheating on him. With whoever that was at the door. What is up with everyone cheating lately? It must be because it’s the end of our senior year. Everyone’s getting restless in their relationships.
Still. I can’t be mad at her. I don’t know anything about her situation with Derrick, what their relationship is like. And besides, I want a chance to prove myself, to show Lyla I care about her, that I can be there for her when she needs me, that she shouldn’t have just cut me out of her life like she did.
“Stay here,” I tell her.
Then I go to the vending machine and buy two cans of Sprite and a king-size package of peanut butter cups. I’m kind of nervous that maybe she won’t be there when I get back, but she’s exactly where I left her, sitting on the floor, her back against the wall and her legs sticking out at a weird angle that definitely can’t be comfortable.
“Thanks,” she says, taking the soda from me and popping the top.
“You’re welcome.” I don’t say anything else, hoping she’s going to volunteer some information about what’s going on with her. But she doesn’t, so after a second I say, “So what did you do?”
But she shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
My heart sinks a tiny bit, because I had this mental picture of us sitting out here in the hall while she confided in me and we mended our friendship. But if she doesn’t want to talk about it, I have to respect that. “Okay.” I offer her a peanut butter cup, and she takes it. Besides, whatever bad thing she’s done isn’t even that important—it’s whether it can be fixed that matters. “Well, do you think it can be fixed?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says.
I nod and nibble at my peanut butter cup.
And then, suddenly, Lyla says something that totally throws me for a loop. “Did you tell Liam you’re in love with him?”
“You remembered,” I say, surprised. “About my email. What I wanted to do.”
“Of course I remembered,” she says.
I smile, but Lyla rolls her eyes.
“Don’t get so excited,” she says. “It’s not like it’s something I could forget. You’ve been in love with Liam since forever.”
She’s right. I don’t know why I thought that maybe her remembering meant something. I talked about Liam so much when Lyla and Quinn and I were still friends that she couldn’t have forgotten even if she wanted to.
“No,” I admit. “I haven’t told him yet. But I’m going to.” I don’t know why I’m saying that, when I just pretty much decided I wasn’t going to. I think it’s because I want Lyla to feel like we have something in common, like we’re both doing hard things together. She’ll tell Derrick the truth about whatever it was she was doing with whoever it was she was doing it with, and I’l
l tell Liam the truth about how I feel.
It will be like Lyla and I are in it together, which is kind of how those emails were supposed to be in the first place—the three of us were supposed to confront our fears as a unit.
“And honestly, Lyla,” I go on, “you should tell Derrick the truth. You’re not going to be able to work out whatever it is unless you tell him.”
I wait for her to say something, but she doesn’t.
She just stays quiet.
She has a contemplative look on her face, though, and at least she’s not yelling at me and telling me to stay the hell out of her business, so I guess it’s some sort of progress. But still. I miss her. I miss her so much. I wish I was going to breakfast with her and not Izzy, that we were going to be sitting in a cozy booth together, ordering pancakes and listening to island music before spending the day on the beach, away from our problems.
I think about pushing her a little, trying to get her to confide in me, but I don’t want to ruin whatever inroads I might have made. So I gather up the empty candy wrappers and then stand up. “I’m going to go grab breakfast.” I squeeze her shoulder. “Good luck.”
God knows we’re both going to need it.
Twenty minutes later, I’m at the restaurant where I’m supposed to meet Izzy. It’s called the Splattered Egg, and it’s cute, albeit a total tourist trap. Palm trees flank both sides of the sidewalk, and there’s a huge outdoor eating area with people sitting at brightly colored wicker tables.
Izzy’s already there, settled into a table in the corner, one of the only ones that doesn’t have an umbrella. She’s wearing big black sunglasses, a cream-colored tank top, and khaki shorts. A gauzy black beach wrap is slung around her shoulders. Her hair cascades down her shoulders in waves, and the sun glints off her curls. She looks like a movie star trying to avoid the paparazzi.
I’m wearing a navy-blue tank top and denim shorts, white flip-flops that are a little dirty from the beach yesterday, and my hair is in a messy ponytail. My bag is a black-and-gray-striped tote from Walmart.