“I don’t understand,” Kenzie says to me. “Does she have an accent or not?”
Before I can answer, Whitney turns her smile to Kenzie, her expression softening. “I do have an accent. I was just teasing.”
“Oh.” Kenzie nods, her mouth pursed to the side. “Okay. Ohmigod,” she says again, this time louder and with more feeling, “you have to meet Tori! She loves accents.”
Kenzie takes Whitney’s hand and tugs her down the steps. Whitney glances back at me but doesn’t stop. Doesn’t pull away.
Doesn’t ask me to join them.
Whatever. That’s why I invited Whitney. So she could meet people and get started forming those lifelong friendships high school is so flipping famous for.
Leaning my hip against the wooden railing, I watch the party below, shooting for carefree and nonchalant. It doesn’t work. I’m grinding my teeth and my shoulders are rounded and tight with tension—a redhaired, hunch-backed troll in a tower watching the beautiful people below living it up.
I roll my eyes. Ugh, that’s more self-pity than even I can justify.
Straightening, I stare up at the darkening sky, count stars as I exhale and wiggle my jaw. I get to fifty and lower my gaze again. It snags on Sam’s. Though he’s in the center of a group of people all vying for his attention, a brilliant sun for them all to orbit, he’s watching me.
He doesn’t look away like he used to when I’d catch him staring at me, a guilty flush staining his cheeks. No, he holds my gaze, lets me see everything he kept hidden from me for years. How he feels about me. What he wants from me.
It’s too much, way more than I can handle, and I drop my gaze.
From my peripheral vision, I see him say something to his fans…er…I mean his friends…and extricate himself from Abby and head toward me.
I keep my eyes on the fire. Tori is standing next to the chair, T.J. beside her, his arm around her waist, while she talks to Whitney and Kenzie who is now without a cup, thanks, I’m sure, to Tori.
I keep watching them when Sam joins me. He rests his elbows on the top rail and gazes out over the yard with me and I wonder what he’s feeling. What he’s thinking. Is it different for him, too? Being here, no longer a part of this, not the way he used to be? Separated from these people by time and distance and his own choices? Or does it feel familiar, like coming home at the end of a long day? Like no time has passed at all?
Does he regret leaving?
Does he regret coming back?
I wonder. But I don’t ask.
“You want to go down,” he asks after a few minutes, “talk to Kenzie and Tori?”
His tone is quiet. Kind.
I shake my head.
He turns to me. “I’ll go with you.”
Why does he have to be so sweet? So thoughtful?
He tempts me, that’s for sure. Tempts me to forget what he did. How much he hurt me.
“I already talked to Kenzie,” I say, keeping my tone mild as if this whole conversation bores me. “Besides, they’re talking to Whitney right now. I’d hate to interrupt the beginning of a BFF threesome—that’d be rude.”
And I don’t go where I’m not wanted. Not anymore. I never did fit in with Sam and those like him. Popular, smart, athletic. But it seems they’ve taken to Whitney fast enough.
She’ll be one of them by the night’s end.
That thought leaves me unsettled, the idea of her being so easily accepted when I was only tolerated. I’m reminded, once again, why Sam and I weren’t meant to be friends.
It’s those differences between us. Too many differences.
“That was nice of you,” he says. “Inviting Whitney to join us.”
“Yeah, well, you know how much I love bringing people together. Gives me a break from polishing my halo.”
Elbows still on the railing, he links his hands together. “I thought you invited her so you wouldn’t have to be alone with me.”
I shrug. “That, too.”
And then Sam does the darnedest thing. He grins. Like he’s thrilled I admitted it.
Like he’s happy I chose to tell him the truth when I could have easily lied.
“It was still nice,” he insists, like it’s important for me to believe it.
Or maybe that’s not it. Maybe it’s more important that he convinces himself.
Then he can say he was right about me. That there’s more to me than snide comments, social awkwardness and a boatload of cynicism. He can claim to have seen something inside of me, deep, deep down, that everyone else missed. That proves I really was worth his time all those years we were friends. That I was deserving of his feelings.
I’m not. I’m too guarded, too stingy with how much I offer other people, too careful with my emotions.
I make too many mistakes.
But from the time we were little kids, Sam has seen good in me.
For a while he’d even managed to get me to start seeing it, too. And then he hurt me and left me and I did the worst thing ever.
So, no. Not nice. Not good.
Just me.
14
“You okay?” Sam asks.
I snort softly and cross my arms. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
Don’t be nice to me. Don’t look at me like there’s something special about me.
Please, please don’t ever leave me again.
That last thought, the one that popped up unbidden, unwanted, remains, stuck on a loop, spinning around and around in my mind.
Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.
Oh, God, I’ve been such an idiot. So stupid to believe things were over between me and Sam. Naïve to think I stood any chance against his honesty and patience and kindness. Against my own conflicted, confusing, terrifying feelings for him.
“Hadley,” he says, touching my arm, bending so he can see into my eyes. “What is it?”
“Sammy!”
At the sound of his name, Sam and I both turn. Abby is calling for him.
I could kiss her.
Which, honestly, would be a big hit with this crowd.
In that moment, Sam’s attention is diverted from me, from what I’d been about to say. Thank God for Abby O’Brien and her deep and abiding obsession with Sam Constable and her never-ending quest to separate him from me.
She must’ve been in her own version of heaven these past eleven months, what with Sam being far, far away from me.
Abby’s dream come true.
She grins widely and gestures for him to join her, her head tipped to the side, hip thrust out slightly, coy look on her face.
Ugh. Does she practice that pose in the mirror? And what’s with those under-the-lashes glances she keeps tossing his way? Subtlety, thy name sure as heck isn’t Abigail O’Brien.
He holds up a finger to Abby, indicating he’ll be with her in a minute. She nods, smile amping up, all but shooting sunbeams from her fingertips and hearts and flowers from her eyes.
Until Sam turns to me. Then her smile fades, her fingers curl into fists and she glares at me, trying to kill me dead on the spot with one vicious look.
I’m the bane of her otherwise perfect existence.
And what she sees as the only true obstacle to happiness as Sam’s girlfriend once again.