Niamh looked puzzled. “Really? That seems like an … unusual thing to do.”
He shoots, he misses. “Um … yeah, no, it was … it was a, uh … a joke … we didn’t really … um … my aunt’s sick, so we’re staying here for a while to help out.”
All three girls stared at me. I stared back at them. Then an enormous black hole opened up in the floor and I happily let it suck me into the depths of the earth.
Lara puffed out her cheeks. “That’s a downer.” Juliette not-so-subtly elbowed her, and Lara made a show of nursing her rib cage. “Jesus, Jule, the hell was that for?”
“So you spent the summer in town?” Juliette asked, raising her voice over Lara’s, clearly trying to smooth over the awkwardness.
“Not right here, no. We were at the lake. This is my first time in Collinswood since I was a little kid.”
“Oh cool,” Niamh jumped in. “I spent a week over there, too. We probably walked by each other a dozen times without even realizing. How funny.”
“Niamh likes to spend as much time there as she can,” Juliette said. “She’s completely convinced she’ll end up in a torrid summer romance one year.”
“Closest I got was Grandpa’s lawn-bowling buddy,” Niamh said, fiddling with her necklace, a simple rose-gold chain with a rose pendant dangling at the end. A rose-gold rose. “But he was more into me than I was into him, unfortunately. I don’t mind an older man, but I draw the line at sixty.”
I’d seen Niamh’s necklace before—on Juliette, I realized, looking between them. Yup, identical. On a hunch, I glanced at Lara. A rose glittered at the base of her throat, too, catching the fluorescent light.
Juliette tapped Niamh’s arm good-naturedly. “That’s what I keep telling you. If you want adventure, you’re gonna have to go a little farther than the lake, don’t you think? Scandalous summer romances aren’t a thing in North Carolina.”
I played my poker face. As far as I was concerned, I’d nailed it. That is, until Lara narrowed her eyes at me, leaned her elbows on my desk, and said, “Or not? Ollie?” I blinked. “Hmm?”
But it was too late to play innocent. Lara gave me an evil smile and pointed right at me. “I saw that look! What did you get up to over the break? I’m assuming she was younger than sixty.”
The flush from before would’ve been but a soft glow compared to the way I must look now. “Um … I, uh …”
Juliette jumped on board now. “He did, oh my God. Niamh, I stand corrected.”
Niamh pouted. “Some people get all the luck.”
A nervous laugh burst out of my throat like a shaken soda can fizzing over. “Isn’t it time for class?”
“Nope,” said Juliette. “Didn’t you hear Ms. H? She’s giving us five minutes to catch up on summer goss. So, please, goss.”
Lara grabbed an empty chair from a nearby desk and sat in it back to front, lavender frills bouncing every which way. “Yeah, regale us with all the R-rated details, would you? God knows the rest of us don’t have much to report from over the summer.”
“You don’t?” Juliette asked her. “That’s disappointing.”
Lara waved a hand in her face. “We’re not talking about me right now.”
On the one hand, I barely knew these girls, so should I really be sharing so much with them so early? On the other hand, they seemed interested, and I’d barely had the chance to talk about it with my friends back home in the big moving rush. If I didn’t tell someone soon, the words were going to overflow right out of my pores.
I swallowed. “Well … maybe I did, I guess …”
Three heads turned back to me, and the stage person swiveled the spotlight right on my face. Juliette circled a hand in midair. “Yeesss?”
“I did meet someone,” I said. “And … yeah, some things did happen. Um …”
“Someone? Guy or girl or … ?” Juliette interrupted.
Well. So much for tiptoeing around pronouns. I’d known I’d have to “come out” here sooner or later, if you could call it coming out when I’d been out for years. But I’d already gone through all that awkwardness back home. I kind of felt like I’d paid my dues, you know? Also, notably, Collinswood, North Carolina, was possibly a tad higher difficulty level on the coming-out spectrum than San Jose. I’d hoped it’d happen more organically, like people would kind of figure it out, and we’d all just know and act like it was normal, because it was normal for me, and we could skip off into the sunset with zero interrogations.
And yet.
“Guy,” I said finally. Weirdly, it was hard to make my mouth form the word. After all these years being comfortable and confident in myself back home, I felt fourteen again. And I did not appreciate it.
Juliette nodded like she’d expected it. Niamh raised her eyebrows and tilted her head, as though she’d spotted a rare bird or something. Lara blinked, and made a lemon-sucking face. Well fine. Screw her. I didn’t particularly care about her approval anyway, so.
After a slight pause that came close to uncomfortable, Niamh and Juliette spoke up at the same time.
“What’s his name?”
“Do you have a picture?”
I hesitated, then figured why not? I flicked through his Instagram—for such a hot guy, his pictures sure didn’t do him justice—until I found a photo that was acceptable. I held the phone out to Juliette, and Lara leaned over to peek. I wished she wouldn’t, but I couldn’t exactly ask her to keep her nose out of it, could I? “His name’s Will,” I said.
Juliette and Lara made identical taken-aback expressions. “I know,” I said. “He’s out of my league, right?”
“Don’t knock yourself,” Niamh chided, holding her hand out to see. Juliette passed it to her silently. Niamh checked the photo, then turned it back around to Juliette. “Wait, Will—”
“He’s all right,” Lara interrupted, holding up a hand, all traces of lemon lips vanished. “And have you told Prince Charming you’re staying south?”
Good question. “Uh … well … he hasn’t posted anything in a while, so I’m not sure he saw,” I faltered. No need to go into the painful details of how many texts he’d left unanswered. “The move happened pretty quickly.”
“Oh? So he doesn’t know you’re here?” Lara asked.
I had no idea what her angle was, but it was clear from her tone—and Juliette’s sideways glance at her—that she wasn’t asking out of empathy. Probably to rub in that I’d been rejected. Which was the case, let’s be honest. Who disappears off social media with no warning for two solid weeks? He’d probably blocked me from seeing his new posts. What happens at the lake stays at the lake, right?
“Well … no,” I said. So much for hiding the “he’s ignoring me” thing. “I mean, there could be a good reason he’s gone quiet. He didn’t really seem like a player, you know? He was really sweet. And I actually … kind of … don’t know where he lives, exactly. He told me once, but I’ve forgotten.”