A gray pickup rattles by in the crumbling brick alley behind Sierra’s backyard. Bea glances up and freezes, her heart plummeting to somewhere around her bare feet.
It’s Gabe. He sees her, stops the truck, and leans out the window. “Hey!”
Oh no. Oh shit.
Bea dashes to the truck, trampling through Mrs. Alvarez’s pink and white impatiens. She still has the paintbrush in her hand; it’s dripping orange paint onto her bare knee.
“Hi, Gabe!” She glances over her shoulder. Everyone is watching. Erik is watching.
“Hey. What are you doing?” Gabe grins at her, pushing his sunglasses to the top of his head. “Is that going to be BB-8?”
“Uh-huh. Yeah. The other one’s going to be R2-D2. It’s for the raft race on Sunday. Our theme is Star Wars. Obviously,” Bea explains.
She’s been down at the marina, hanging out with Gabe, almost every night for the past week. There have been more kisses—a lot of kisses—but she’s stopped before things went further.
It’s not just about kissing either. At least she doesn’t think so. They’ve talked about their families. Their lives. How he’s in his third year at Vanderbilt, studying musical arts and teacher education. How much he loves Nashville. Bea told him how her parents died. About her internship at the Gazette and how she wants to be a journalist. But she hasn’t told him about her team for the raft race. She hasn’t told him anything that involves Erik. She has left out huge, gaping swaths of her life.
“What are you doing here?” It comes out sort of accusatory.
“I was at Memaw’s place.” Of course. Miss Amelia’s backyard backs up to the alley too. “Uncle Matt and I took out the carpet in the living and dining rooms, and there was this gorgeous old hardwood underneath. You should come by and see it sometime.”
Bea bites at her fingernail. “I’d like that.” She looks back at the others. Chloe and Faith have abandoned all pretense of attaching R2-D2’s second leg to stare at her and Gabe. Sierra is focused as always, attaching the plywood while Drew holds it steady. Erik’s hands are on the raft, but his eyes are on Bea.
“This is cool. You didn’t tell me you were doing this.” The way he smiles at Bea makes her melt, but right now, she needs him to quit it. It’s not a just-friends smile. “You guys need any help? I’m pretty good with this stuff.”
“No. We’re good. I mean, thank you.” Bea blushes. “This is kind of—our thing. Our team. This is our fourth year. We won last year, actually. Our theme was Guardians of the Galaxy.” She can’t stop talking. “I should probably get back to—”
“Hey, Bea. What’s up?” Erik is suddenly next to her. Jesus, this is bad. This is so bad. She shifts away from him.
“Hey, Erik. This, um. This is Gabe. You remember Miss Amelia? This is her grandson. He’s in town fixing up her old house. Gabe, I should get back to painting the—”
“Hey. I’m Erik.” Erik reaches out to shake Gabe’s hand and slips his other arm around Bea’s waist. What is he, a fucking octopus? “I’m Bea’s boyfriend. Nice to meet you.”
Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit.
Bea wants to sink through the ground and disappear. She stares at Gabe, trying to apologize without words.
“Oh.” Gabe looks—surprised. He shakes Erik’s hand quickly. “Hey.”
He could say so many snarky, awful things right now. But he doesn’t.
Unlike Bea, he is a good person.
“I’ll let y’all get back to painting,” he says, sliding his sunglasses down over his eyes. Bea can’t tell what he’s thinking. Is he mad at her? He must be mad at her.
She shrugs away from Erik, but he keeps his hand on the small of her back, possessive. He’s making it clear that she belongs to him. He might as well pee on her.
Normally, this would infuriate her. Jealousy is stupid. If you can’t trust the person you’re with, why are you with them? Back in May, Kat got her heart broken by her first serious boyfriend. They could all see it coming a mile away. Bea tried to warn her that if she didn’t trust Adam, if she had to snoop through his phone, if she was that jealous when he was around other girls, maybe her gut was telling her something important.
Right now, maybe Erik’s gut is telling him something important.
Bea never, ever thought she would be this person.
“Bye,” she says faintly after Gabe’s already driven off. She starts to walk back to BB-8.
“How do you two know each other?” Erik asks.
“We met at the Daily Grind,” Bea says. “I ran into him. Literally. Spilled coffee all over him.”
“I think he likes you,” Erik says. He knows. He is not the irrationally jealous type.
“What? No!” But her voice doesn’t sound believable even to her own ears.
She can’t keep doing this. She’s lying. Not only by omission, but straight out lying to his face now. Yeah, Gabe likes her. And she likes him.
How did she become this person—someone who is cheating on her boyfriend of five years because she’s too much of a coward to break up with him?
But how can she break up with him before Sunday? She looks over at their friends. This is their last Tea Party. Chloe’s going to Penn, Sierra’s going to Villanova, Drew and Faith are going to Carnegie Mellon. Erik will be at Georgetown. Bea will be…
Where? She doesn’t have a plan. She still doesn’t have a plan.
Chloe must see her panicking. “Hey! Get back to work, you two! It’s going to get dark in an hour, and we still have a lot to do.”
Bea kneels and dips her paintbrush back into the orange paint. Erik hesitates and then goes back to the raft.
After she tells him the truth, he won’t want to see her. He won’t want to stay friends. He won’t want Bea on his team for anything, ever again.
She’ll tell him after the race.
• • •
Sierra and the boys finish assembling the raft, and Faith starts painting the assembled R2-D2. Chloe takes pity on Bea and helps her with BB-8. When it gets dark, they haul everything into Sierra’s shed. Their life jackets and paddles from previous years are piled in a corner. Seeing them makes Bea’s chest ache.
Once her friends find out, they won’t want her on their team anymore either. Drew and Faith have always been closer to Erik. Sierra will follow Faith’s lead because they’re best friends. Maybe Chloe will still be her friend. But Bea has no illusions that she’s anything besides the villain in this breakup story.