“I’m not angry with Aidan,” he said, slowly turning to focus his furious gaze on me. “I don’t have any room left for that, because I’m so angry with you.”
“With me?” I breathed.
He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. Before he’d even opened it all the way, I knew what it was. I saw Tia’s drawing of me lying like a dog.
“I lost that,” I said carefully. “Did you find it stuffed down in the chair at Harper’s?”
He stared at me silently, then shook the note at me. “I was your experiment? I asked you something like that the other day, and you lied to me. You said no.”
“You don’t understand,” I said quickly. Lowering my voice to a whisper, I said, “This is just between you and me, but the Superlatives elections got messed up. A lot of the titles are wrong, including yours, and mine. We’re actually the Perfect Couple That Never Was.” In a normal tone—which was shaking now, because no matter what I told him, he didn’t look any less angry—I said, “That’s why I’ve been curious about you for a while, not just because Aidan broke up with me.”
Sawyer gaped at me. “So I was your experiment,” he repeated. “You thought it would be hilarious to fuck around with me, knowing that I’ve had a crush on you since I moved here.”
It was my turn to stare at him with my mouth open until I covered it with my hand. “No, I had no idea about that.”
“Tia told you,” he prompted me.
“No,” I said, “she didn’t.” But if she’d known, that explained why she’d been so keen on throwing me together with Sawyer.
“Harper told you,” he said next.
I shook my head. “Harper keeps secrets.” I wished she didn’t. I really could have used this information a couple of weeks before.
He nodded. “Everything makes sense now. When I talked about following you to New York, you looked at me like I had three heads.”
“Because I never thought about it before, Sawyer!”
“I’ve thought about it for two years,” he said acidly. “And what do I get for my trouble? I’ve made Aidan so jealous that he’ll want to take you back. You’re welcome.”
“No—” I had no intention of dating Aidan again, ever.
“What are you going to do once you graduate from high school,” Sawyer sneered, “and from college, and there’s no preplanned program for you to cycle through? There’s no Most Likely to Succeed for the rest of your life to let you know you’ve succeeded. There’s no office of student council vice president to let you know you’re almost in charge, or head cheerleader to let you know you’re the only popular girl anybody trusts to keep the rest of the cheerleaders out of trouble. How will you know how or when to be happy if nobody’s telling you?”
Tears stung my eyes. “That’s not fair.”
He stepped very close to me. “You know what’s not fair, Kaye? I risked everything for you. I could have been arrested. Your mother could still have me evicted and fired from the B and B.” He pointed in the general direction of that awful argument. “She just called me trash, all for the sake of your experiment.”
Now he pointed at me. “I have been playing you straight this whole time. When I told you I loved you, that’s what I meant. I never intended to be your experiment, or your walk on the wild side, or your favorite mistake.” He blinked, appearing for a moment like he had tears in his eyes. “I can’t even look at you.”
That hurt worse than anything else he’d said. He’d loved to look at me even when it seemed nobody else did.
He stomped back through the doorway, bullied right through Will’s lecture to Aidan, and parted the crowd around the front door. I tried to push through, but by the time I’d run down the front steps, the taillights of his clunker truck were disappearing down the street.
I turned slowly toward the house. Tia stood in the doorway. Our note with her dog drawing was crumpled in her hand. Sawyer must have shoved it at her on his way out.
* * *
“He’ll be back for work in the morning,” Harper said. “I promise. He never misses work.”
She and Tia and I sat on the low wall of the mermaid fountain with the water flowing between our toes before it cascaded over exquisite antique mosaics. The party was winding down, and so were they, with their elbows on their knees and their chins in their hands.
I was past wound down. I’d cried so hard in the past fifteen minutes that I felt half dead. At least DeMarcus had driven Aidan home to get him away from the alcohol supply secreted in someone’s car, and from Will, and from me.
I wished so hard that Sawyer would reappear in Aidan’s place. To give me a comforting hug, or to drag our awful argument out. Anything, just to have him here with me a little longer.
But I knew he wasn’t coming back.
“Why didn’t you tell me Sawyer’s had a crush on me for two years?” I finally whispered.
“I’ve only known for a couple of weeks,” Harper said. She glanced at Tia for help.
Seeing the look on my face, Tia held up her hands. “He told me a month ago and swore me to secrecy.”
Two years, and a thousand times that he’d called me a name or tried to sit in my lap. All that time he hadn’t been bugging me for a laugh. He’d been flirting, and hoping I’d flirt back, when I was dating Aidan. It must have been torture for Sawyer.
“If it’s any consolation,” Tia said, “he hates me too now. Harper and I never should have tried to push you two together. But he was completely smitten with you, and it was making him miserable. Once I started looking, it seemed to me that you had a crush on him, too, whether you admitted it to yourself or not.”
“I did,” I sniffled.
“You’ll get back together,” Harper said soothingly. “You just need some time.”
“I don’t know,” Tia said. “Kaye’s lost a boyfriend, but Sawyer’s lost a lot more than a girlfriend. He’s lost himself. The first time he ever felt worthwhile was when he won the mascot position. The second time was when you went to find him at the beach, Kaye. Not that I think you can really understand what low self-esteem feels like, when you’ve grown up with everybody calling you princess.”
Harper kicked water on Tia’s bare leg. “That was the wrong thing to say.”
“She meant it,” I said, “or she’d be apologizing.”
“Well,” Tia muttered. “I’m not saying you should get back together with Sawyer just because you feel sorry for him. He would hate you when he found out, you would resent him, and that would make everything worse in the long run. But if you really love him, you can’t let each other go just because you’re both stubborn.”
“He doesn’t want me back,” I assured her. “You didn’t see the way he was looking at me.”
“We have seen the way he looks at you,” Harper interjected. “That’s our whole point.”
I took my feet out of the cold water and lay balanced along the wall. I listened to the burbling fountain, Harper and Tia’s hushed conversation, music blaring from a few rooms away, an argument between Quinn and Noah, and laughter. And I thought:
What if Angelica hadn’t intercepted a note from me to Harper about my crush on Aidan in Ms. Yates’s ninth-grade science class? He would never have guessed I liked him. I’d hidden it well. And the next week, I would have moved on to someone else. At that age, my crushes had seemed crushing, but they weren’t so bad that I couldn’t get over them when another boy caught my eye at the movies on the weekend.
Aidan wouldn’t have asked me out. When Sawyer moved to town two years ago, I would have been available. He would have asked me out instead.
I would have said no.
He would have worked on me.
I would have said yes.
I would have lost my virginity with him instead of Aidan.
“Wait a minute,” Tia protested. “Then who would I have lost my virginity with?”
I hadn’t realized I was talking out loud.
“I’m confident you woul
d have found someone,” I said.
If I’d dated Sawyer for the last two years—well, there was no way that would have happened. We would have fought and broken up and gotten back together and broken up again. My last two years would have been less like training camp and more like high school. Less like an accounting course and more like a life.
I fell asleep with that wistful dream in my head. I was only vaguely aware that Brody carried me to Harper’s car, and they drove me home.
17
I SLEPT UNTIL NOON. AFTER that I stayed in bed for another hour, trying to go back to sleep just to avoid thinking about the night before. The bright sun wouldn’t let me, and the deep blue sky flashed at me through the palm trees outside my window. If last night’s cool front was any indication, today would be warm—not hot—and perfect for a jog. A jog would give me time to think, exactly what I couldn’t stand. I rolled over for the millionth time.
A soft knock sounded at my door. I knew from the fact that the door opened without me giving permission that it was my mother. She sat on the edge of my bed and put her hand in my hair.
“Harper’s mom called,” she said. “We had a long talk. She’s dating Tia’s father!”
In answer I gave her a sigh.
“I guess I’m surprised enough for the two of us, then.” She rubbed my shoulders vigorously, like trying to rub the life back into me. “Sit up and let’s talk.”
Slowly I dragged myself up against the pillows, because once she decided we were having a talk, she never went away until she was done.
“Oh, honey.” She reached out to brush away the tears under my eyes. Like you care, I wanted to say, but that would just keep her here longer. I was all sassed out.
She smiled sympathetically at me. “Lynn actually called because she’s worried about you. Harper told her what happened last night. Lynn wanted you—and me—to know that Sawyer moved out.”
“Oh no!” I cried. “Where did he go?”
“Back to his father’s house, though he’ll still be working for Lynn in the mornings.”
“Oh.” I covered my mouth with my hand, relieved that he’d come back last night. And that he’d finally gone home.
My mother patted my leg under the covers. “You didn’t tell me he’s been having so much trouble.”
“I didn’t think that would help his case with you.”
She nodded, gazing out my window at the blue sky. “Lynn loves him.”
“A lot of people do.”
“So does Harper’s grandfather, which is saying a lot, because that man . . .” She didn’t have to finish. Everybody knew Mr. Moreau was hard to get along with. If he loved Sawyer, Sawyer was special.
“Lynn says I’ve been too hard on him,” my mother said, “and on you. After discussing it with your father, I think I was wrong to ground you, or to prevent you from dating him. But if you do have sex, you’re using a condom in addition to your IUD every time, yes?”
“Mom,” I said with both hands splayed in front of me, “we broke up.”
“Oh.” My mother sounded sad.
I was so angry with her that I couldn’t even feel anymore. I flopped backward on the bed and closed my eyes.
“Tell me what happened,” came my mother’s voice.
“He stuck by me through a lot,” I said woodenly, “but you have been awful. There was just so much even he could stand, I guess.”
She shifted up the bed and twisted a lock of my hair to make a tighter curl when she fingered it out. “I’m confident you can solve that problem,” she said. “You are smarter, and stronger, and more of a woman than I’ve given you credit for. I’m sorry.”
I opened one eye, and then the other, to stare at her in disbelief. She concentrated on pulling out the twist and placing the curl across my temple, framing my face. Finally she met my gaze. She said again, “I’m sorry.”
My voice sounded throaty with crying as I said, “I have an appointment Monday to see a counselor at school about stress management.”
My mother raised her eyebrows. “That’s a positive step.”
“I think so too. It was Sawyer’s idea. He set it up for me.”
She nodded slowly. “Why don’t you invite him over to go out on the boat with you and your father tomorrow? He can stay for lunch.”
“Because we are not spea-king,” I enunciated. My mother didn’t quite seem to get that Sawyer and I were broken up for good.
Then she said, “You need to eat breakfast, or lunch, or whatever you want to call it. I’ll fix you anything you like. But right now, you need to hop downstairs, because Aidan is here.”
“Oh. My. God.” The last person on earth I wanted to deal with this afternoon. The thought of him made me feel like I weighed five hundred pounds and had sunk permanently into the bed. “I don’t suppose you could tell him I’m asleep. Or dead?”
My mother shook her head, as I knew she would. She’d never in my life let me avoid a confrontation.
I rolled my eyes, put on a bra under my T-shirt, and slouched down the steps and onto the front porch. I never would have appeared like this in front of Aidan before, but I honestly didn’t care what he thought of me anymore. My decision was reinforced when I saw he’d taken the swing with the comfortable cushion. I had to settle for the seat across from him. I didn’t even bother to hold my head up, just collapsed across the wicker and waited for his bullshit.
“I came to apologize,” he said.
Now I looked up at him, curious. This was one of those rare times he dropped his pompous tone and let me see the real boy he’d been hiding under all that bravado.
He really was sorry.
“I’ve been thinking hard about what I did to you last night,” he said, “and what Will said to me afterward. I really regret it.” He mumbled under his breath, “The hangover doesn’t help.”
I squinted my eyes to focus on him in the dappled shade. He did look a little green. I said, “I imagine not.”
“The office of the president went to my head,” Aidan said. “You’ve been telling me that, but I couldn’t hear you. We’ve been drifting apart for a while. Probably ever since we started going out in the first place. I’ve been angry with you about that, which got rolled into my feelings about student council, and . . .” He heaved a sigh. “I hear you now.”
“Good.”
“The last time I was over here,” he said, “I got that letter of recommendation from your mom. You were mad at me for waiting to break up with you until after. The truth is, I was thinking at that point that it would be cool if I got into Columbia and you didn’t.”
“Really.” I swallowed. I’d understood he resented me. I hadn’t realized how much.
“I should have known better than to ask you for a break rather than a breakup, and to try to hold on to you at the same time I was letting you go. I don’t know where a lot of this negativity comes from. Maybe we just got together too young, and we were together too long.”
I finally sat up. “It’s not all your fault,” I said. “Lately I’ve realized I was counting you as one of my accomplishments, something to put on college applications. You know, ‘Dating the student council president, Most Likely to Succeed.’ I thought that way in ninth grade. I guess I don’t think that way anymore.”
“Well, maybe we won’t have to cross paths in college. I’m not sure I want to apply early admission to Columbia anymore. If we get in, we’re locked in, and I’m not positive I want that to be my one and only choice.”
“Me too,” I said, seeing this for the first time. Flopping across the seat again, I asked, “Are you going to apologize to Angelica, too?”
He massaged his temple. “After last night, I think my relationship with Angelica is a lost cause. She’s not a fan of drinking.”
Or boyfriends who can’t get over their old girlfriends, I thought. “Maybe there’s still hope,” I said cheerfully. “I overheard Tia talking with her. She was upset, which means she’s into you. I’ve never seen Angeli
ca express an emotion before, so that’s huge.”
He nodded slowly. “I heard you and Sawyer broke up. If I caused that, I’m sorry. If you actually wanted to be with him, I mean.” He sounded doubtful.
“I did,” I said.
A silence fell between us, long and dead, while Aidan squeaked back and forth on the swing.
“Well,” I finally said, “we still have eight months of student council together. I’d like us to try to get along from now on. We’ve broken up, but that doesn’t mean the last three years didn’t happen.”
“Right.” He leaned forward in the swing, put his hand on mine, and stroked his thumb over my palm. Maybe he was thinking about the fact that we’d been each other’s first time.
As I gazed at him, I wished again that I’d waited. My attraction to him, and my dreams of spending the rest of my life with him, seemed to belong to another girl entirely. It was hard to believe I’d ever been young enough to love him.
I drew my hand away. “I’ll see you at school Monday.”
“Yeah.” He stood, sending the swing into wild motion on its chains. “We need to start planning the student council haunted house.”
“Oh boy. Maybe somebody else could head up the committee for this one. Will. Or Sawyer.”
He coughed at my mention of Sawyer. But all he said was, “That will work. You deserve a break.” He jogged down the steps, then turned around on the sidewalk. “By the way, Kaye, you did an awesome job on the elections, and the float, and especially the dance. I didn’t want to admit it, but you were right and I was wrong.”
“Thanks,” I called.
I went back to bed.
But an hour later, I did get up and let my mother cook for me. I watched a little football with Dad. Then I spent a few hours doing something I rarely did at home: I blasted music in the backyard and worked out cheerleader choreography for a couple of new songs the marching band was playing.
My mother didn’t say a word.
About four thirty, Harper surprised me by appearing in my driveway in my car. She had a key, but it was a real favor to bring my car over from Tia’s without me asking. Brody was right behind her in her new (to her) car. He didn’t get out to talk to me, though. He gave me a brief wave and disappeared into the back seat.