“No,” I said automatically, since I’d cleared the afternoon to eat pizza in Mystic, which was now very much not happening. “Need me to do a walk?”
“Well . . . kind of,” Maya said after a pause, which should have been my first clue that something was up. “I did a drop-off at a vet, but can’t make the pickup and was wondering if you could do it.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sure. Which dog is it?”
“It’s actually a cat,” Maya said, and I could hear how hard she was trying to make this sound fun and exciting, but not even coming close to pulling it off.
“Oh, no,” I said, since I had a feeling I knew exactly which cat we were talking about. “Is this Miss Cupcakes?”
“Oh, you know her?” Maya asked, and I could hear the relief in her voice. “Thank goodness. So you know what you’re in for.” I tried to get myself to think fast, wishing I hadn’t so definitively told Maya that I was free, but before I could come up with anything, she was pointing out that the hard part of the job was already done, since she’d had to corral the cat and get her into the carrier, and all I’d have to do was pick her up and bring her home. It was so logical, I really couldn’t argue with it. And since I had nothing else to do that afternoon, I’d agreed.
And it truthfully wasn’t that bad, picking Miss Cupcakes up. The strangest thing, I realized as I brought her carrier into the kitchen, was being in Bri’s house without anyone else there. I pushed open Bri’s front door and stepped inside, holding in front of me, at arm’s length, Miss Cupcakes’s carrier, which contained a very angry Miss Cupcakes. “Look, you’re home,” I said, setting the carrier on the ground while trying to keep my hands away from the airholes, which I’d learned the hard way Miss Cupcakes was very skilled at getting her claws through. “Okay? Stop being such a jerk.” As though the terrible cat could understand me, she started yowling, the carrier rocking back and forth. I reached over to unlatch the door, keeping the rest of me as far away from it as possible, and once it was open, took a huge step back. The cat shot out of the carrier, hissing, and disappeared into the kitchen. I let out a breath, thinking, for the umpteenth time that day, just how much I preferred dogs.
I’d texted Bri earlier to see if she was going to be around but hadn’t gotten a response back, which made sense, since she’d told me she had plans. Even though I’d been in her house more times than I could count, being there alone was making me feel like an intruder. I closed the latch on the empty carrier, then wrote a quick note to go along with the letter from the vet that they’d given me when I’d picked her up.
I started to head toward the front door when I heard a sound from upstairs.
“Hello?” I called, figuring one of the Choudhurys was home after all. “I have your cat!” I called, then a second later, realized it made me sound like I’d kidnapped Miss Cupcakes and was demanding a ransom. “She’s fine,” I added when I didn’t get a response. I waited, ears straining, but didn’t hear anything and tried to tell myself that it might have been my imagination, or the house settling, or something. I had just reached for the doorknob when I heard it again—the sound of low laughter and footsteps coming down the stairs. I looked around, trying to decide if I should stay, or make a run for it, when I heard someone say, “Well, of course you do,” and I realized it was Bri.
I started to walk toward the front stairs, figuring I’d meet her halfway, when I heard someone else. I’d just assumed Bri was on the phone, and it took me a second to recognize the voice. It wasn’t until I saw them on the stairway together—pressed up against the wall, arms around each other, kissing—that I even began to get what was happening. And even then I somehow couldn’t get my brain to understand what I was seeing, though it was right in front of me.
Because Bri was kissing Wyatt.
Chapter SIXTEEN
I dropped the keys I’d been holding, and they clattered onto the wood floor. Bri jumped and broke away from Wyatt, her eyes widening when she saw me. “Andie,” she said, blinking at me. “What—what are you doing here?”
“I was bringing the cat back from the vet,” I said, saying these words because they still belonged to a universe that I understood, with logic that I could follow. “I . . .” I stared at them, wondering if there was any way I could have misunderstood, trying to come up with some other explanation for what I’d just seen. But Wyatt’s hand was still tangled in Bri’s hair, and her cheeks were flushed, and Wyatt’s shirt was on inside out. There was no pretending that she’d been giving him emergency mouth-to-mouth, or anything other than what this was. Wyatt was looking from me to Bri, like he was trying to figure out what happened next.
“Right,” Bri said, taking a step away from Wyatt and smoothing her own shirt down, like she was trying to regain some of her composure. “I guess I just thought . . . I didn’t realize you would be the one bringing her back.”
“Last-minute thing,” I said, and Bri nodded and then looked down, and I wondered if she’d just felt what I had—that I’d reached my limit of talking about things other than the elephant in the room.
“So I think I’ll head out,” Wyatt said to Bri, after the awkward silence had stretched to the breaking point, and I watched them have a fierce, silent conversation that ended with Bri glancing at me and nodding. Wyatt leaned forward, and was clearly about to kiss her, but stopped at the last moment, looked at me, then pulled back and gave Bri an awkward half hug/pat-on-the-head combo. Wyatt hurried past me like he was fleeing the scene of the crime, slamming the door behind him as he went.
I looked at Bri, who wouldn’t meet my eye, just turned and started walking up the stairs again, her steps heavy. “Come on,” she said over her shoulder. “We should talk.”
“You think?” I asked as I followed her up the stairs to her room.
“I know,” Bri said, looking down at her hands, which were twisting together. “I know, Andie.”
“But . . . ,” I said, trying to get my head around this. “What is even going on? I mean . . .” I looked at her, wanting her to jump in, somehow explain things so that I could understand them. “How did it happen?”
Bri let out a long breath and looked up at me. “The night of the scavenger hunt,” she finally said, and I felt my jaw drop open.
“Wait,” I said, shaking my head. I had been ready to hear that this had been a one- or two-time thing, that she now realized was a huge mistake. “The scavenger hunt was weeks ago. You guys have been . . . this whole time?” Bri nodded and pressed her lips together hard. “Did it happen when Wyatt’s car broke down?” Bri just gave me a look, and much too late, the penny dropped. “His car never broke down,” I said, feeling like an idiot for not putting this together sooner.
“No,” Bri said, her voice quiet. “We were starting to do the list when he told me how he felt. And I hadn’t wanted to admit it, but . . . I’d been feeling the same way too.”
I closed my eyes for a second, still trying to get this to be a reality I could deal with—that Bri and Wyatt had been together, in secret, for half the summer.
“Oh my god,” I said, sinking down to the floor, feeling like my legs were not really up for holding me at that moment. My eyes strayed over to her bed—it was messy, the sheets rumpled, and I knew for a fact that Bri made her bed, hospital corners and all, every morning. “Are you sleeping with him?”
Bri just looked at me—I could see the answer clearly written across her face. “Bri.” I suddenly thought of the day on Palmer’s roof, how quiet she’d been when we were talking about guys and bases, keeping this secret from all of us. Keeping it from Toby. “What about Toby?” I asked, feeling like this just kept getting worse.
Bri shook her head and let out a short laugh, the kind with no humor in it whatsoever. “Right,” she said, and I could hear her voice was tight, and higher, the way it was when she was getting emotional and didn’t want to show it. “Because of course this is about Toby.”
I just looked at her. “Well . . .”
“It’s
always about Toby!” Bri yelled this, her voice reverberating in the room.
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” she asked, her voice still raised. “You found out I’m sleeping with Wyatt and your first thought was about Toby. Not me. I don’t get a morning at the diner where we all get to talk about it. I don’t even get to be with him in public, because of Toby. Because we need to protect her.” Bri brushed her hand across her face. “Nobody ever cares about making things easier for me. It’s always about Toby. It’s like I can’t even see myself sometimes when I’m with her, and I just . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she sat down on the bed, pulling her knees up underneath her.
I pushed myself off the floor and walked over to sit next to Bri on the bed. “Okay,” I said, hearing the question in my voice. I felt like I was so without a plan and so beyond anything we’d ever experienced that I had no idea what to do from here, how we should proceed. My first, automatic thought was that it should be Toby here, doing this, before I realized how crazy that was. “So tell me about it.”
Bri gave a trembly smile as she looked at her hands. “It’s . . . He’s . . .” She looked up at me. “You know he’s the first thing I’ve had that’s mine? Just mine? In, like, a decade? And it’s good.” She took a shaky breath. “It’s great. He’s so different when you really get to know him. He’s actually really funny, and he’s got such a good heart. And he gets me,” she said, more quietly now. “He sees me. I make him laugh, and . . .” Her smile got wider. “We just . . . work.”
“I’m glad for you,” I said. “I am,” I added quickly when she shot me a look. And I was—I was thrilled that Bri had fallen for someone she really liked. But there was almost no way to separate this from who it was she had fallen for. “It’s just . . .” I knew I didn’t have to say it. The underside, the shadow, of everything Bri was saying was that Toby was out there, not knowing any of this.
“I never wanted to hurt her, Andie. That’s the last thing I wanted.”
“I know that,” I said, my voice quiet.
“But . . .” Bri pushed herself off the bed and paced over to the window. “They never even dated. It’s not like he’s her ex, or anything. She has this crazy crush on him, but Wyatt told her that he’s not interested. And still she has this claim on him. And at some point . . .” Her voice faded out, and she bit her lip.
“What?” I asked, keeping my voice soft, thinking back to Clark, in the car, in the rain.
“At some point,” she said, then took a big breath. “It was like I was putting my happiness on hold for something that only existed in Toby’s head.” She stared at me with something like horror. “Oh god, I have to tell her the truth, don’t I?”
I let out a long breath. “Well . . .” Sitting between us, the elephant in the room, was that this had been a secret. That the only reason I knew—the only reason we were having this conversation—was because I’d caught them. That this might have been a different conversation if she’d told Toby before anything had happened with Wyatt. But now . . .
I played this through to the end, and it hit me. Just what this meant, really. For all of us. Because there was no way we got out of this, as a group, still okay. Even if Bri and Wyatt came clean now, I didn’t see Toby getting over this any time soon. If she found out by accident, it would be the same thing—but probably worse. There was no way out of this, unless . . .
Unless Toby never found out.
I pushed myself up to standing and walked over to the couch in Bri’s room, the one that was parallel to the bed, and felt something inside of me click back into place. Peter’s words from this morning were echoing in my head. We had to shape this narrative and figure out a plan while we still could. This was still fixable.
It had to be fixable. The four of us had to be okay. My friends had been the one thing I could always count on, and with everything else beginning to spin out of my control, I needed us to stay together. My dad might have a foot out the door, but I wasn’t about to let us fall apart.
“Bri,” I said, leaning forward. “Tell me how you see that playing out. You telling Toby you’ve been sneaking around all summer and lying to her.”
Bri’s chin trembled slightly as she pulled at a thread on her comforter. “I . . . ,” she started, then shook her head.
“Exactly,” I said, not looking away from Bri. “So . . . what if she doesn’t need to know? What if she doesn’t have to go through all that?”
Bri blinked at me. “Andie?”
“Who does it benefit for her to find out?” I asked, making my voice as calm and reasonable as possible. “You’ve been keeping this a secret all summer. What’s a few more weeks?”
“What do you mean?” Bri asked, though the expression on her face told me she knew exactly what I meant.
“I mean,” I hesitated, then made myself say it. “Have you guys talked about what is going to happen when Wyatt leaves?”
“No,” she said, and I could hear her start to get defensive. “Have you and Clark?”
I swallowed hard. “No,” I admitted, feeling my heart clench, the way it always did when I had to think about this. “But,” I said, trying to focus on Bri as I told myself that ours wasn’t even close to the same situation, “do you think that this is . . . like, a long-term thing?” I winced even as I said it and braced myself for her to throw the same question back at me, one about Clark that I couldn’t come close to answering.
Bri looked down at the floor, and I could see her lip was trembling and I felt horrible for putting her through this. I told myself firmly that this was for the best—not only for Bri, but for all of us. “I don’t know,” she finally said, in a half whisper.
“That’s okay,” I said, sitting down next to her. “And it’s understandable. You guys are still figuring it out. But since you’re not totally sure it’s going to be a long-term thing . . .” I let my sentence trail off, hoping that Bri would fill in the blanks.
“What if Toby finds out that we were both keeping this from her?” Bri finally asked, looking up at me. “And Palmer, too. How do you see that playing out?”
“I think it’s better than the alternative,” I finally said. “Don’t you?”
I held my breath while I watched Bri struggle with this. She had to be able to see it. Because the four of us, together, was everything. And we had to stay that way—we had to do what we had to to make it happen.
“Okay,” Bri finally said, nodding once.
“It’s for the best,” I said, feeling relief flood through me. “For all of us.”
“You’re sure about this,” she said, not exactly phrasing it like a question.
I nodded, quashing any small voices of doubt that were trying to tell me that I was doing this all wrong and that there was more going on here than just Bri and Wyatt. This was the only way we were going to make it out of this unscathed. And so I nodded and looked Bri right in the eye. “I am.”
Bri nodded, and I felt a weight start to lift off my shoulders. It was all going to be okay. I had the same feeling as when you duck at the very last second and miss something you would have walked right into—realizing just how close you came to danger. And then the relief that followed when you realized you were safe, that everything was going to be fine.
• • •
“What do you think?” Clark asked, as he swung his car into the parking lot of the Boxcar Cantina. “I thought it might be nice . . . kind of romantic . . .” He adjusted his glasses, and I saw how nervous he was about his surprise.
“It’s great,” I said, leaning across the car and giving him a quick kiss. We hadn’t been back here since the night of our first date, and I liked that we were going back now, when everything between us was different, on the cusp of another first.
I started to get out of the car, but Clark practically ran around to my side and opened my door for me. “Thanks,” I said, stepping down and taking the hand he offered me. Clark closed my car door and then slid his arms around me
.
“Hi,” he said, pulling me close.
“Hi,” I said back. He leaned down and kissed me, and I kissed him back, until we were pressed up against the side of the car, both of us breathing hard, and my pulse was galloping in my throat. “Um, do we really have to have dinner?” I asked, and Clark laughed. But I was only partially kidding. There was a piece of me that wanted to tell him we should skip it, just get back in the car and head straight back to his place.
“So,” he said as he took my hand in his and we walked up to the restaurant, “how was your day?”
“Oh,” I said, feeling myself start to come back down to reality as I thought about the day—starting with Peter showing up in our kitchen and ending with walking in on Bri and Wyatt. I didn’t want to tell Clark that everything was fine—he’d be able to see through me, anyway—I just didn’t want to have to think about these other things tonight. Tonight was about us. I’d been looking forward to it for weeks, and nothing was going to wreck it. “Well—” I started, just as we reached the hostess podium, and took my opportunity to avoid answering the question.
While Clark gave her his name, I felt my phone buzz in my purse and pulled it out.
TOBY
PALMER
Yes! Tonight’s the night!!
TOBY
PALMER
I think Toby wants a picture of what you’re wearing.
Me too.
I smiled as I read these, then sent one of the pictures I’d taken when I was getting ready, mostly because I’d had a feeling this conversation would happen. I was wearing one of my favorite dresses and the fanciest underwear I’d ever owned—Bri and I had bought it together last week, and it hadn’t even occurred to me then to wonder why she was also getting some for herself.
PALMER
You look amazing!!
TOBY
ME
Thanks, you guys.
PALMER
We can meet up at the diner and discuss tomorrow over waffles!