I looked away from the window and walked on, down the hall to the room that had been Sloane’s. I paused for a moment outside of it, praying that it wouldn’t be locked. But the old glass doorknob turned easily in my hand, and I looked around again once more before slipping inside.
All the furniture was the same—but everything about it was different. When the room had been Sloane’s, there had been stuff everywhere, makeup and clothing and the British fashion magazines she special-ordered taking up the surface of every dresser and most of the floor. She’d twined twinkle lights around her four-poster bed and had covered the mirror with pictures—me and her, her and Sam, ripped-out pages from magazines. But now, every trace of her was gone. It was just an anonymous room, one that could have belonged to anyone.
It was worse, somehow, being up here than being in any other room of the house. I started to go when I suddenly turned back, remembering something.
The throw rug was still there, and I lifted it up, folding it back and trying to remember where the loose board was. When I found it, it just creaked open a little, and I pressed on it harder, easing it up. When Sloane had been using it, there had usually been a collection of things, rotating as their importance changed. But now, there was only one of her disposable cameras and a thin layer of dust. I pulled up the camera, wiping it off. There was nothing written on it, and it looked like all the pictures had been taken.
I don’t know what I’d been expecting. I put the board back where it was supposed to be, folded down the rug, and left Sloane’s room, not letting myself look back, closing the door behind me and hurrying downstairs, even though the last thing I wanted to do was go back to the party.
I made it back to the living room without being stopped, and saw that Frank’s parents were now standing even farther apart from each other, fixed smiles on both their faces, and Frank was nowhere to be seen. I tried to fit the camera into my clutch, but it was one of the tiny, useless ones, and was barely big enough to fit my keys and ID, so there was no getting a disposable camera into it. I headed toward the front door, glad for an excuse to get away from the party for a bit, figuring I’d just leave it in my car.
“Hey.” I turned, my hand on the doorknob, and saw Frank. His hair was slightly askew, like he’d been running his hands through it. He was wearing a tux, and the sight of him in it made me feel off-balance. He looked so handsome, I had to look away from him, or I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop staring.
“Hey,” I said, mostly to my shoes. “How’s it going?”
He looked toward the center of the room, where his parents were now standing on opposite sides. “It’s going,” he said grimly. “Were you leaving?”
“Well,” I said, looking down at the camera in my hand. “I was just going to my car—”
“Because if you are,” Frank said, overlapping with me, “I’d love a ride home. I have to get out of here.”
“Oh,” I said. “Um, sure.” I was more than happy to leave, I just didn’t know if Frank was supposed to. But he just nodded and held open the door for me. I stepped through it and heard him draw in a breath.
“That’s really quite a dress,” he said, and I realized he must have just seen the back—or lack thereof.
We walked down the steps together, the steps that I had sat on next to Sloane while we read stacks of magazines and worked on our tans, the steps I’d sat on when I was desperate to find her. “In a good way?” I asked. Frank opened his mouth to answer as thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance. “We’d better go,” I said, picking up my pace. “The roof’s open.”
We walked together across Sloane’s driveway. I’d avoided the valet guys and just parked at the end of the long line of cars on the side of the road, so we had a bit of a hike to the car. “Thanks,” Frank said as we walked.
“Sure,” I said, glancing over at him. His hands were deep in his pockets, and I knew him well enough to see that he was upset about something. “Is it okay for you to leave?”
“It’s fine,” he said shortly. “I really shouldn’t have come in the first place. Sorry to drag you out here.”
“It’s okay—” I started, as thunder rumbled again and we both picked up our pace, hurrying for my car as the wind started to blow, and I realized we were in our usual running spots, just wearing evening clothes, and not T-shirts and shorts. There was something strange between us tonight, some weird tension that hadn’t been there before, and I didn’t think it was just coming from me. I unlocked my car, and we both got in. I didn’t bother with music, just turned around and passed Sloane’s house again on the way up the road. As I did, I saw the house all lit up, and through the windows, the crowd, in their tuxes and gowns. It was how I’d always imagined the house, and tonight, I’d been a part of it. But it wasn’t how I’d thought it would feel. It just felt sad.
I turned down the road that would take me to Frank’s, and started to drive a little faster than I normally would have, worried about the rain I had a feeling was coming. I couldn’t help thinking about both the tarp and the wooden piece resting, warm and dry, in the garage. When we’d driven nearly halfway to Frank’s without a word, I glanced over at him. His jaw was set as he looked out the window, and I knew something was wrong. “Are you okay?” I finally asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking over at me. I suddenly saw this wasn’t just about his parents—he was mad at me. “What happened to you? You disappear from camping without saying good-bye, you won’t answer any of my texts, then you show up tonight in that dress . . .”
“What’s wrong with the dress?” I asked, adjusting the neckline, suddenly feeling self-conscious.
“Nothing,” Frank said, letting out a breath and shaking his head. “I was just worried, that’s all.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just . . . thinking about some things.”
He looked over at me for a moment. “Me too.” I nodded, but was suddenly afraid to ask him what they were. What if Collins was right, and what he’d been thinking about was that we couldn’t be friends anymore? “Emily,” he said, but just then, rain started to hit my windshield—and come in through my sunroof.
“Oh my god,” I said, speeding up. “I’m so sorry. Just . . . um . . .” The rain was coming down harder, and I turned up my wipers. I was starting to get wet as the rain poured in through the roof. Even though I wasn’t directly under it, it was hitting the console and splashing me, and coming in sideways when the wind blew. I reached into the side of the door where I’d put Sloane’s disposable and held it out to Frank. “Would you put that in the glove compartment?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the wind that had started to pick up.
He took it from me, glancing over with a question in his eyes. But I looked straight ahead, just concentrating on getting him home before he got too wet or either one of us said something we shouldn’t.
I pulled into his driveway and put the car in park, expecting him to get out and run for it while he was at least partly dry. But he just looked at me across the car, through the rain that was pouring down into my cupholders.
“What were you thinking about?” he asked, his expression serious and searching. “You haven’t been talking to me this whole week. What was it?”
“Nothing,” I said, looking away from him. “I told you, I’m sorry. You should go inside, you’re getting soaked—”
“I don’t care,” he said, leaning forward. “Tell me what it was.”
“Nothing,” I said again, trying to brush this off, trying to go back to something that felt more like solid ground. I reached for the game we’d been playing all summer, the phrase I knew by heart. “You know, in an well-ordered universe . . .” But I looked at him, at the rain running down his face, his white tuxedo shirt getting soaked, and realized I couldn’t finish it this time.
Or maybe I could, because I leaned forward, into the rain, and kissed him.
He kissed me back. It lasted just a moment, but he kissed me back, right away,
without hesitation, as though we’d always been doing it.
But then he pulled away and looked at me. We were both leaning forward, which was ridiculous, since that meant we were directly underneath where the water was coming into the car.
I looked back at him through the rain that was pouring down between us and took a breath to try and say something, when he leaned forward, cupping my cheek with his hand, and kissed me again.
And it was a kiss that felt like it could stop time. The rain was falling on us, but I didn’t even feel or notice or care about it. We were kissing like it was a long-forgotten language that we’d once been fluent in and were finding again, kissing like it was the only thing either of us had wanted to do for a long, long time, kissing with the urgency of the rain that was pounding down all around us and onto the hood of the car. His hands were tangled in my hair, then touching my bare back, and I was shivering in a way that didn’t have anything to do with the cold. His face was wet as I ran my hands under his jaw and over his cheeks, as I pulled him closer to me, feeling my heart beating against his, feeling that despite the rain, despite everything, I could have happily stayed like that forever.
Until, abruptly, Frank stopped.
He broke away and dropped his hands from my hair. He sat back heavily against the side of the car. “Oh my god,” he said quietly.
I sat back as well, trying to catch my breath, which was coming shallowly. “Frank . . . ,” I started, even though I didn’t have anything to follow this.
“Don’t,” he said quickly. He looked over at me, and I could see how unhappy he suddenly looked—because of me. I had done this. Reality came crashing down on me in a horrible wave. He had a girlfriend. He had a very serious girlfriend and I knew it and I had gone ahead and kissed him anyway. I suddenly felt sick, and looked down at my hands, which were shaking.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, hearing how scratchy my voice sounded. “I shouldn’t have—”
“I have to go,” he said. “I—” He looked over at me, but nothing followed this. After a moment, he opened the door and got out, closing it hard behind him and walking up the steps to his house, not running, his shoulders hunched, just letting the rain beat down over him. I waited until I saw that he had gone inside. And then I waited a moment more, to make sure he wasn’t going to come back out and somehow make things okay again.
When it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, I put the car in gear and headed home.
And when I started to cry as I pulled into my driveway, it was coming down hard enough that I could pretend that it was only the rain hitting my face, and not the fact that I’d just lost another friend.
“Em?” my mother knocked on the doorframe and stuck her head into my room, her expression worried. “You okay, hon?”
I looked up from the floor, where, in an effort to try and deny the fact that everything in my life was falling apart, I’d been cleaning out my closet.
The morning after the kiss, I’d texted Frank, but had gotten no response. I’d spent the day staring at my phone, waiting to hear from him, glad for once that Paradise was totally deserted, since I would have been useless to anyone who wanted ice cream. I’d finally run out of willpower that night and had called him, but it had gone right to his voice mail. I still hadn’t heard from him the next day, and I finally told Beckett to hide my phone somewhere high so I’d stop staring at it. On the third day, trying to pretend I wasn’t stalking him, just getting some exercise, I’d walked past his house, and saw that his truck was gone. I figured maybe he was at work, but it was still gone at night when I drove past. It was that night, when I’d begun to think I really was never going to hear from him again, that I got a text.
Hey, can’t talk right now.
Sorting through things. More soon.
As someone who had been raised by two playwrights, I understood subtext. And this text, coupled with the fact I hadn’t heard from him in three days, meant Frank was brushing me off, acting like I was a stranger. He clearly wanted to forget what had happened, and act like the kiss had never taken place—as though that would make it go away.
I’d been dodging Dawn’s calls, not wanting to tell her what happened until I spoke to Frank. But since I no longer felt like I owed him anything, the next day, when Dawn called, I picked up.
“Oh my god,” she said, before I even said hello, her voice high and excited. “I’m so glad you’re finally around! Have you been sick or something?”
“Well—” I started, but she was already continuing on.
“I have a date tonight! With Matthew! He asked me yesterday. We’re going to the movies, isn’t that great?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling myself smile for the first time in days, beyond glad that Collins had taken my advice. “That’s fantastic.”
“So you have to help me figure out what to wear,” she said. “But maybe later tonight? I’m at work now anyway, and it’ll help to be in front of my closet.” She took what sounded like a much-needed breath. “What’s up with you? Are you okay?”
“Frank and I kissed,” I blurted out. I knew I wouldn’t be able to make small talk about anything else with that on my mind, since it was pretty much the only thing I had thought about for the last three days. “I kissed him,” I admitted. There was just silence on Dawn’s end, and I went on, in a rush, “And now I don’t know what’s going on. He texted me back, but it doesn’t seem like he really wants to talk to me. And I just want things to go back to how they were. . . .” Even as I said this, I knew it wasn’t true. I didn’t really want that at all. But I would have preferred that over whatever we were doing now.
“Emily,” Dawn said, and her voice was colder than I had ever heard it. “He has a girlfriend.”
I blinked, a little startled by Dawn’s change of tone. “I know,” I said slowly. “And I feel terrible about this. I—”
“Do you?” she asked. “Because you knew he had a girlfriend when you went ahead and kissed him, didn’t you?”
“Dawn,” I said, trying to regroup. I had actually hoped to talk to her about this, to get her take on things, and instead, it felt like I was being attacked. “I—”
“Did you honestly think I would be on board with this?” she asked, her voice rising. “After what Mandy did to me? After what Bryan did?”
I closed my eyes for just a second and rested the phone against my head. “No,” I said. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to do, and—”
“Look, I can’t really talk right now,” she said, her voice clipped and cold. “I’m at work.”
“Okay,” I said, a little confused, since Dawn had never exactly been committed to her job. “Should I call you later?”
“I have to go,” she said, not really sounding angry any longer, just sounding sad. “I have to work, and then I have this date to get ready for, so . . .”
A moment too late, the penny dropped. Dawn didn’t want to talk to me anymore. She didn’t want to be friends with me, not after what I’d done. We said stilted good-byes and I hung up the phone, feeling like everything in my life was suddenly breaking apart and floating away just when I needed it most.
After I hung up with Dawn, I called Collins. When he answered the phone, he sounded wary, and I hadn’t gotten far in my halting explanation when he cut me off.
“I know what happened,” he said, letting out a long breath. “This isn’t good, Emily.”
“I know that,” I said. Any last hopes I was holding on to that Frank might want to still be friends again, or that we might be able to move past this, ended when I heard the resigned tone in Collins’s voice. “But I just wanted to—”
“You know I can’t do this, right?” he asked, not sounding angry, mostly just tired. “I can’t take your side. He’s my best friend.”
“I know he is,” I said, “But if you could just talk to him—”
“I can’t,” Collins said. “Even if I wanted to, which I really don’t. He’s in New—” Collins stopped abruptly,
but I’d heard enough to put it together. I hadn’t realized that I could feel worse, but I did. I now understood why Frank’s truck hadn’t been at his house. He was gone. He had gone to Princeton. He had chosen his girlfriend. Of course he had; it wasn’t even a question. And he’d slept there, with her.
I knew I had no right to feel mad about this, but even so, I had to fight back the tears that were threatening to escape—for what Frank and I had had, and for what we would never have, and for what I’d broken.
“I’m sorry, Em,” Collins said, and I could hear that he meant it.
“Yeah,” I whispered, not trusting myself to say much more, trying to keep my voice steady so that he wouldn’t hear that I was about to burst into tears. It was suddenly becoming clear to me that I had nobody on my side. “Have a good time tonight.”
“Thanks,” he said, and his voice was gentle when he added, “Take care, okay?”
And I’d nodded, even though Collins couldn’t see me do it, and hung up, realizing that he had just told me good-bye. So I’d lost Dawn, and Collins, and of course, Frank. With one stupid action, I’d just wrecked everything that I’d built over the course of the summer.
And now my mother was standing in my doorway, because even she had noticed that something was wrong. “Hi,” I said, setting down the pair of shoes Sloane had bought for me the last time we’d been at a flea market together. I squinted at my mother, and noticed that she was wearing actual clothing, and that her hair was washed. “Did you guys finish your play?”
My mother gave me a smile that was equal parts thrilled and tired. “Late last night,” she said.
“Wow,” I said, making myself smile at her. “That’s great. Congrats.”
“Thanks,” she said, her smile fading as she took a step closer into my room. “I’m just a little worried about you.”