I turned quickly to face her. Then I took a step back, but my hands curled into fists. Two very tight fists that were dying to swing. “What?”
“Does he know it’s you?”
My stomach gave a jolt.
So she had pieced everything together. Now I needed to figure out how to answer that question. If I said yes, she would confront Cade. If I said no … what? What would happen? Would she tell him? Keep playing it off like it was her … if that’s what she’d been doing?
I had to make a decision.
“No. He doesn’t.” There was no way I was going to tell her that he thought it was her, though.
Sasha smirked. “I didn’t think so. Lauren said you write and read letters in Chemistry almost every day. She didn’t know who you were exchanging them with.”
So Sasha hadn’t pieced together all the information from just my lyrics. Lauren had told her about my letter-writing habits as well.
“If Cade knew it was you, he’d die,” Sasha went on. “He hates you.”
“I know.” A lump was forming in my throat. I wasn’t sure why. She hadn’t said anything I didn’t already know. Why had my anger turned to this sadness? Why had I gone from wanting to pummel her, to wanting to crawl into bed and never come out?
“If you heard half the stuff he said about you, you wouldn’t have a thing for him,” she went on cruelly.
“I do not have a thing for him. I have a … boyfriend.” That last word came out kind of choked. Mostly because Lucas wasn’t my boyfriend. But I really needed to claim him as such in this moment.
“Those poems told a different story.”
“I don’t have a thing for him.”
“I won’t tell Cade it’s you but you have to stop writing him. We’re together now.”
“I know.”
A horn beeped twice and I looked over hoping to see my sister.
I saw Cade instead.
“There’s my ride,” Sasha said, her smile as smug as her tone.
She must’ve taken one second too long to run to his car because Cade hopped out and headed our way. This was turning from bad to worse.
“Hello, ladies,” he said.
“Let’s go,” Sasha said to him.
Cade pointed at me. “Great hair today, Lily.”
I willed myself not to reach up to tame it. I could tell he was being sarcastic with that stupid smile of his. Sasha laughed.
“Are you two detention buddies?” Cade asked.
“Not at all,” I assured him, trying to gather myself together. Thankfully, I no longer felt like crying. I was just mad.
“She’s another one of your enemies?” he asked me, still giving me a teasing smile.
“Don’t pretend like you don’t know that,” I snapped. “Your girlfriend was just reminding me why I don’t hang out with people like the two of you.”
Sasha laughed. “You don’t hang out with us because you’re not welcome, but nice try.”
Cade looked like he was going to say something but he hesitated as though waiting for my response. I didn’t give one. I was so done with them.
I turned on my heel and stormed away. I allowed myself one glance back at them and unfortunately saw that Sasha wrapped her arm around his waist. As they walked away, she threw me a wink over her shoulder as if we were now co-conspirators. As if we were anything.
Why hadn’t I just punched her?
My mom came in my room and set a small box in front of me. “Lily, I need you to do me a favor,” she said.
I looked up distractedly from my notebook. I’d been trying to drown my sorrows in songwriting but it wasn’t happening. I was still too distraught by what had gone down with Sasha after detention.
“Um … okay,” I said to Mom, closing my notebook and pushing my hair out of my eyes.
“I need you to deliver that for me.” Mom nodded to the box.
“What is it?”
“A piece of jewelry.”
“Okay. Do you have an address?” I got to my feet. Mom had asked me to drop off some pieces to clients before. “And are they paying when I deliver or have they already paid?”
“No payment. This is an apology gift.”
“I don’t understand.”
“From you.”
“From me? Why?”
Mom put her hands on her hips. “Because we had a guest over the other day that you treated very poorly. We didn’t talk about it that day because it was Thanksgiving. But now we are talking about it. That boy had been nothing but kind and you made him feel unwelcome.”
I was too horrified to speak but finally I found my voice.
“I know. I’m sorry.” I really did know and I really was sorry, but I also really didn’t want to deliver this box and I was hoping with all the hope in me that if Mom saw that I was sincere in my regret she wouldn’t make me. Because although our guest hadn’t deserved my treatment of him that day, he deserved it a thousand times over for every other day.
And his awful girlfriend deserved worse.
“Good. Then this shouldn’t be very hard.” Mom patted the lid of the box and walked away.
“Mom! Wait!”
She stopped.
“Can’t Wyatt just give it to him on Thursday at baseball practice? I don’t need to take it now and tie up your car.” Mom’s car was run-down, messy, and very mom-like. Even though it represented the story of my life pretty well, I tried to avoid driving it at all costs, especially in super nice neighborhoods to the house of a guy who didn’t need more reasons to make fun of me. “Or I could give it to him at school.” Or I could never, ever give it to him.
“I’d like you to take it now, Lily.” She nodded toward the box. “Go on. And actually use the words I’m sorry while you’re there, too.”
That would be impossible.
It had been years since I’d been to Cade Jennings’s house and I’d hoped I would never have to step foot in it again. But here I was, standing in front of his large double doors.
As I rang the doorbell, I prayed that he wouldn’t be home. Or maybe that some butler would answer instead. Then I could throw the box and run.
But luck wasn’t my friend these days. Between the whole guitar thing and the detention thing and the Sasha thing, I shouldn’t have expected this to actually go my way.
Cade answered. All six foot, slightly damp hair, sparkling smile of him. “Hey,” he said, like it was perfectly normal for me to be standing on his doorstep.
“Hi,” I muttered, my eyes down.
“Come in.”
Had my mom warned him I was coming?
I stepped into his huge entryway, thinking my memory had exaggerated it, but if anything it was bigger than I remembered. And whiter—marble floors, large white floor vases, a huge abstract painting with nothing but white lines.
I held out the box to him. “This is from my mom.”
“What for?” He opened the box and pulled out the bracelet she had been assembling on his wrist during Thanksgiving. “Ah! The man bracelet. I thought you said I was just her model.”
“Well, you were until I was rude to you,” I said. “This is a ‘my daughter was rude to you’ gift.”