“Jay’s the one. I know it more than I know anything else in this world. If the only reason to wait is to make other people more comfortable, then that’s stupid. My life has never been about making other people comfortable.” Clover sounds like she’s on the verge of tears.
“You’re still in high school!”
Silence. I think the call has dropped. When she finally speaks, her voice is frosty around the edges, hard and brittle and dangerous. “The wedding will be after graduation.”
“But you’re still so young! What if you change your mind about him?”
“I know what I want. Just because you’re afraid of making big choices doesn’t mean the rest of us are.” Her brittle voice breaks into thousands of icy shards that tear at my heart.
“Hey,” I say. I glance up, meeting Harrison’s eyes. My voice sounds wounded and I hate it. “I just want you to be happy. I don’t want you to ruin your life—”
“Message received. And thank you, for ruining the happiest moment of my life.” She ends the call.
My stomach swims as my forehead breaks out in a sweat. I lean forward, head in hands, and try to stave off the coming nausea.
I messed up.
I lift my head. Harrison’s still here, waiting for me to say something. “I should have lied and said I was happy for her, right?”
“Are you kidding? She’s freaking crazy.”
“Don’t talk about her like that.”
“I’m agreeing with you! She’s nuts and you were right to tell her that.”
My heart pounds furiously in my chest as the slimy snake of unease coils through my stomach. That moment was all wrong. I need to fix it. “She’s not crazy. Don’t say that. But—what about college? What about her life? What about—”
He places his hands on my knees again. “She’s not getting married tonight. So you can calm down for now.”
Calm down? I shake my head. He doesn’t get it.
I’ve never missed Fitz more in my life.
“I wish I could.” I drop my head into my hands again. What I need is a way to time travel out of this, not a guy telling me to calm down. “I screwed up. I should have asked the app. I shouldn’t have—”
“Reacted? You’re allowed to have a reaction. Don’t be so hard on yourself.” He reaches a hand out to comfort me.
“Stop talking, please!” I snap. His hand drops. “I need to go.” Except it’s after midnight on Christmas morning and it’s twenty degrees outside and I have nowhere to go and no way to get there. “Bed. I need to go to bed.”
“Paige, hang on—” Harrison’s exasperated. But I can’t care about him right now. I leave him in the shadow of the Christmas tree, crawl into his bed, and stare at the dark ceiling for the rest of the night.
My stomach plummets.
No.
It can’t be what it looks like.
No no no no no no no.
This is not happening. I refuse to believe that my best friend’s eighteen-year-old boyfriend bought an engagement ring. I open the box with trembling fingers. A white-gold ring with a small princess-cut diamond is nestled in a bed of black velvet. Fitz’s shadow falls across me as he stands up, blocking the fading daylight from the window. I snap the box shut and shove it back in the glove compartment. Fitz sees me stretched across the front of Clover’s car and gives two thumbs-up. They’re done.
I have to do something to stop this coming train wreck. I crack the door open. “Distract Clover for a few minutes, okay? I need to talk to Jay about a surprise. A Christmas thing.”
“Sure thing.” Fitz jogs back to his car and sits in the passenger seat. Clover laughs at something he says. I crawl backward over the center console and sit in the driver’s seat as Jay opens the door. His broad shoulders fill the car as he climbs in.
“Hey, Paige. What’s up?”
“Don’t propose to Clover.” My statement comes out easily, because this isn’t a hard decision to make. This is me saving Clover from herself.
He looks stricken. “She found the ring?”
“I did. She doesn’t know, but I promise you, it’s a bad idea.”
His face visibly relaxes. “We’ve talked about this. We want to spend our lives together.”
“You’ve talked about this? Now? You told her you’re going to propose to her while she’s halfway through her senior year of high school?”
“We’re in love.”
“Then be in love! Spend your lives together! You don’t have to start now. At least let her graduate before you tie her down forever.”
Jay’s confidence falters. “I thought Clover and I were on the same page. We wanted a summer wedding.”
“Trust me, Jay, I’m her best friend. I know what she wants. She needs more time, or you’ll scare her away.” I’m rambling, talking without thinking, saying words I don’t even believe.
He nods, still looking uncertain. “I’ll think about it.”
“Thank you.” A nagging guilt tugs at my stomach as we look through the windshield at Fitz and Clover, who are singing loudly in his car. Fitz catches my eye and winks.
What if this situation was reversed? What if Clover was making decisions about my life, about the boy I love?
I shake the ridiculous thought away. I may be an anxious, paralyzed disaster of a human, but I’m not stupid. I would never dream of marrying Fitz, or anyone, now or even five years from now. There’s nothing romantic about being eighteen-year-old newlyweds who don’t know the first thing about how to adult.
I’ll tell her the truth someday, and she’ll thank me for saving her from a huge mistake.
Clover climbs out of Fitz’s car as I approach.
“What was that all about?” She bounces on the balls of her feet.
“Nothing important.” I shrug, hoping she won’t read into it. But she nods and smiles knowingly, her face glowing with anticipation.
“I’m excited about tonight.”
“Why?”
She takes a deep breath, preparing to tell me something. Does she know? She can’t. She wouldn’t actually agree to marry Jay, would she? Her face lights up as she looks over my shoulder at Jay in her van, and a boulder drops in my stomach.
Yes.
She would.
I knew it as soon as I saw the ring, which is why I intervened.
I did the right thing.
I’m positive I did.
I’m, like, 95 percent sure.
“We’ll talk later. Thanks again for saving us. You’re the best, and that boy of yours is pretty great too. Cut him some slack. He might surprise you.” She squeezes my hands and joins Jay in the Prius. They wave as they pull out onto the road. I trudge slowly back to Fitz’s truck as SIM whispers terrible things in my ear about how I destroyed my friendship with Clover.
My stomach squirms with unwelcome guilt as Fitz drives us back through town. He frowns, darting sideways glances at me, but it takes him half the drive before he says anything.
“You look miserable.”
“I might have done something bad, but if I did it for the right reason, it’s okay, right?”
“Depends. What’d you do?”