I was willing it to be the Thanksgiving holidays already. The days seemed to be dragging by. It wasn’t just that I was desperate to see Noah, but I felt like I already needed a break from school and my homeroom teacher asking me every other day if I’d worked on my college application essay yet (did I have a first draft I wanted him to give me a second opinion on? Not exactly…) and the mountains of homework that never seemed to get any smaller.
Lee had been spending a lot of time at football practice or hanging out with the guys from the team. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was usually with Rachel. And if Rachel wasn’t with Lee, she was pouring herself into studying—she wanted to make sure she got into Brown—and rehearsing for the drama club. (She got the part of Fantine in the end.)
So I found myself hanging out with Levi a lot. After talking about his past and his dad, and my mom, I could tell there was a shift between us. We’d bonded over something the others wouldn’t really understand.
And honestly, he was maybe the only person who made me feel at least a bit less stressed about college. He worked hard at school, but he was pretty blasé when it came to college. He had no desire to go. It wasn’t for him, he said. It was as simple as that. But he did try to help with my application essay.
The less Lee was around, the more I found myself missing Noah. One study hall, Levi and Dixon jokingly threw Skittles at me each time I mentioned Noah’s name. They ran out of candy after ten minutes.
“So sue me,” I’d snapped at them. “I miss my boyfriend.”
Sometimes it just made me feel cold and empty, like he should’ve been there with me, arms wrapped around me. Sometimes it was an ache so strong it hurt. All the phone calls in the world didn’t make up for it. And the Uber Eats of my favorite takeout he had sent to me one evening he knew I was trying to work on my college application essay had totally made me cry.
We had some school council meetings about the Sadie Hawkins dance, too, which kind of helped distract me and kind of didn’t.
It didn’t help because I couldn’t work up the courage to ask Noah—not sure I could handle the rejection when I was already missing him so much—and it did help because, duh, it was a school dance, and planning was a welcome distraction. Even if it was being held in the gym. (That just made the challenge of decorating on a low budget all the more fun.)
Lee was getting just as antsy about everything as I was. Rachel had her college application for Brown all ready to go, and it seemed like most of our friends were on their way to completing applications or at least their essays, and Lee and I were trailing behind.
Not that we talked about it much.
Actually, we didn’t really talk about much of anything anymore.
It felt like Lee was avoiding seeing me as much as Noah was avoiding talking to me about college—the more time that passed, the less he seemed to talk about classes and his friends. I kept telling myself it was no big deal and that, obviously, there was nothing to tell, but…I couldn’t help but wonder, sometimes, if there was something he was hiding from me.
Luckily, there was a brief respite from everything with Jon Fletcher’s party, the first weekend of October. It was the first party of the year, aside from a few we knew the juniors had thrown, but none of us had bothered to go to those.
Maybe, I realized, when we’d thrown parties last year and all the seniors hadn’t come, it wasn’t necessarily because they thought they were too cool; it was because they didn’t have the time.
Levi offered to give me a ride.
“You don’t wanna drink?” I asked as we sat down on a patch of grass in the shade off the side of the football field at lunch on Friday. We’d got out of our last class a little early, so still had to wait for the others to turn up.
He shrugged, focusing on taking his lunch out of his backpack. “It’s not really my thing. When we all started going to parties and drinking beer last year, all this stuff started happening with my dad, and I wasn’t really in the mood to party. It wasn’t really Julie’s scene either.”
“So, what, you’ve never really been to a party?”
“I went to one at New Year’s, and one at the end of the summer, but I didn’t stick around too long. Showed up late and left early.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sure you’re gonna love this one. You can let your hair down now, right?”
Levi tugged at the ends of his hair. He’d had it cut a couple days ago, and you could hardly see his curls anymore. “Yeah, you know, this pigtail I’ve had in for the past ten months has really been bugging me.”
I rolled my eyes and tore the crust off my sandwich. “How is your dad?”
“He’s good. Finally found a therapist he likes.”
“That’s good.”
Then Cam and Lisa showed up hand in hand, and Dixon wasn’t far behind, engrossed in his phone, so we dropped the conversation and all started talking about the party instead.
Now, standing in front of my closet with clothes on the floor all around me, I huffed for the millionth time. I had nothing to wear.
“For Christ’s sake, Shelly.” Lee sighed. “Just pick something. Levi’s going to be here soon.”
Rachel had declined going to the party because she was staying in to study for the SATs she was taking next week. She was praying for early admission to Brown, and we all knew she’d get in, even if it was just through regular admission. Her GPA was good, and she was going to kick ass in the SATs.
I sighed again, picked out a black skater skirt that went to my knees, and stepped into it. That was half an outfit, so I deemed it good progress.
My cell phone rang, and Lee answered it before I could ask him to. “Hey, Levi.” After saying “Mmm-hmm” a few times, Lee hung up. “Levi will be here in fifteen minutes.”
I picked out a pale blue silky cami and a cute yellow wraparound top I’d bought in an end-of-summer sale. “Which one?”
“Uh…the yellow one.”
“Are you sure?”
Lee sat up and gave me a flat look, silencing me. Not that he was very convincing—I was just surprised at how pissed he looked. I knew he wasn’t really happy that Rachel wasn’t going to be there tonight, but he hadn’t told her that—he understood that she wanted to stay home to study. But now he was taking his grouchiness out on me. And I felt grouchy enough on my own without his attitude.
“You know what? I’ll wear this white one.” I picked a plain white cropped T-shirt instead, turning away before I rolled my eyes at him. “I know it sucks Rachel’s not coming with us tonight, but this is going to be fun! Hanging out, us and the guys, like it used to be. And it’ll totally be worth it for her, when she gets into Brown.”
Lee was quiet—so quiet it startled me. When I glanced back, he had his hands knotted together in his lap, scowling at them.
“What? What’s up?”
“I was thinking,” he said slowly, not looking at me, “about applying to Brown. With Rachel.”
“You are? But what about Berkeley? We…we always talked about it.”
“Yeah, and now I’m talking about Brown, with Rachel. I could do it, maybe. My grades are good enough. Like you always said, school council looks good on college applications.”
I stared at him for a long while, not sure what to say.
Lee and I had always done everything together. Whenever we talked about college, it was always together, and it was always UC Berkeley.
“I might not even get in,” he said eventually. “But…you know. It might be nice. Hasn’t Noah talked to you about applying to somewhere in Boston, so you guys can be closer together?”
He hadn’t, and I’d never even thought about it before.
And I wasn’t thinking about it now: I could only think, Lee’s picking her over me. Again.
“Levi’s gonna be here soon,” he said. “I’m gonna go wait downstairs.”
I watched him go, not sure I’d ever felt like Lee was such a stranger to me.
By the time Lee and I were climbing into the back of Levi’s green Toyota, he was still quiet, withdrawn, nothing at all like his usual upbeat self. Cam was riding shotgun, and I was squashed between Dixon and Lee in the backseat.
“Who’s excited?” Dixon yelled as I wrestled with the seat belt.
“Sure,” Lee muttered.
“Wow, look who’s got a stick up their ass tonight. What’s your problem, dude?”
“Nothing, all right?”
I turned to Dixon, pulling a face, and he shrugged in response. Was this all about college? Rachel? Or was it something else entirely?
Lee started to liven up once we were actually at the party, and once he’d gotten a few cups of beer down him. Warily, I watched him refill from the keg for the third time but decided not to nag him about it. He was a responsible drinker. He always got tipsy, but rarely ever got completely wasted. I tended to be the irresponsible one.
When Rachel told us she wasn’t coming tonight, I’d been way more thrilled than I’d ever let on.
But now we were here, I was starting to wish Rachel had turned up after all. I couldn’t help but think Lee’s bad mood had to do with me and that she would have helped.
Lee seemed more interested in hanging out with the guys from the football team than any of us. A few of them walked past, yelling, “Hey, hey, Little Flynn! How’s it going, man?”
“It’s not just me, right?” I said, clutching Cam’s sleeve, looking between him and the guys. “He’s being weird.”
“He’s being a dick,” Warren agreed, and walked off.
By the time Lee was on beer refill number thirteen, he was acting as if I wasn’t even there. He pulled the tap on the keg, swaying a little as he stood, laughing at something Jon Fletcher had just said.
“Lee,” I said, “don’t you think you’ve had enough for now? It’s not even eleven o’clock….” I hiccupped. I’d only had a couple cups of beer, but it was enough to make me feel less than sober.
“Shut up, Shelly.”
When Lee told me to shut up, he was usually smiling. Now, though, he was rolling his eyes at me, grinning at Jon like it was some big joke. Jon didn’t look like he found it so funny, though, and looked at me awkwardly.
“Lee…”
“Stop trailing around after me like a lost puppy. It’s just sad. Just because Noah’s not around anymore doesn’t mean you have to moon over him around me.”
Then he barged past me, leaving me with my jaw somewhere on the kitchen floor.
“He’s just drunk,” Jon said apologetically. “He’s—”
“Sure.”
“I’m gonna…” He patted my shoulder before making his way out of the kitchen and calling out to someone.
I was still standing there when some of the guys from the basketball team barged through, holding a bottle of tequila aloft, shouting, “Shots! Shots! Shots!” and, for some reason, I followed them.
Out in the hallway of Jon Fletcher’s house, the party intensified. The music was louder, different songs pouring from different open doors, and people leaning against the walls or draped around plant pots and the banister.
It was a lot hotter out here, too, and harder to move.
I walked right into someone and stumbled back into someone else, staggering unsteadily as I tried to find my footing again. The first person I’d bumped into caught my elbow.
“Hey,” I cried, seeing it was Levi. “They’re doing shots. You up for it?”
“I’m driving.”
“Oh, yeah, of course. Well, you can come watch the rest of us do shots.”
“Lee told me to keep an eye on you if you got drunk—”
“I’m not drunk!” I protested. “Kind of offended, a little tipsy, but not drunk.”
“—and he told me to stop you from doing shots. The guys said you don’t handle your drink well, and, much as I don’t mind keeping an eye on you, I am not going to stand there holding your hair back while you puke into a toilet bowl.”
I argued that I wouldn’t puke, but I was too angry about Lee’s attitude tonight to take much notice of what Levi was saying. I’d lost sight of the arm holding a tequila bottle up in the air above the crowd like a neon orange flag held by a tour guide. If Lee was that concerned for me, then why did he push me away? Why wasn’t he looking out for me himself if he thought I was so much of a problem?
Why hadn’t he told me he didn’t want to go to college with me anymore?
And I started to cry.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Levi said.
I sniffled, but now that I’d started, I couldn’t stop. I saw a few people glaring at Levi, like he’d done something to upset me, and I half expected him to walk away and leave me for someone else to look after.
But he took my sweaty hand and said gently that maybe some fresh air would help, and pushed through the crowds to the front door, tugging me along behind him. Outside, we went to sit on the curb in front of the house, and after a couple of minutes, I calmed down. It was mild, but after how hot it was inside the house with so many people in there, I shivered, rubbing my arms.
“Feel better now?” Levi asked me.
I wiped my fingertips under my eyes to try and get rid of any rogue mascara, and then wiped my nose with the back of my hand. My purse was inside somewhere. It had Kleenex in it, but that was no good to me right now.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Lee’s just being so mean to me,” I whined, sounding pathetic even to my own ears. “We hardly get to spend any time together now, just the two of us, and tonight was supposed to be a chance for us to hang out without Rachel or anything, and instead he’s just ignored me and I don’t know what I did to make him hate me!”
“Lee doesn’t hate you.”
“Then why’s he being so mean?”
“He’s probably just stressing out about college, like everyone else.”
“Then why isn’t he talking to me about it? You know he told me tonight he’s gonna apply to Brown, with Rachel. Like, out of nowhere. We used to spend all our time together. And now, if we make plans, he almost always cancels to spend time with Rachel, or he’s too busy with football. He’s even canceling our college plans for her.”
“Maybe it’s because of Rachel that he’s not spending much time with you, when he has free time outside of football practice. Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s gotta be weird for her when her boyfriend’s best friend is a girl. And a very pretty girl, at that. Objectively speaking, of course. And, like, don’t lots of people want to go to college with their other half?”
“I’m supposed to be his other half.”
“You know what I mean.” Levi sighed. “I don’t know. I’m just trying to say that maybe there’s a good reason for it. I can’t see him being a dick just because he is a dick. He’s not. He’s a good guy.”
“Yeah, he is.”
Somehow, that only made me feel even worse.
“I think I want to go home,” I said, folding my hands over my knees. “I’m not really in the party mood anymore.”
I stood up.
“Wait, you’re not gonna walk home, are you? (a) You’re not sober, so that’s not a good idea, (b) you don’t exactly live nearby, and (c) that’s just not safe at this time of night.”
“Thanks for your concern, but I was actually only going to go find my purse. I’ll call my dad for a ride home.”
“Oh,” Levi said, and stood up, too. “I don’t mind taking you home if you want. Then I’ll come back here for an hour or whatever till the others are ready to go.”
“Are we paying you to be our personal chauffeur, or something?”
“Nah, this is just me building up some good karma.”
“I’m not sure you get the karma if you’re trying that hard.”
“Worth a shot, right?”
“I guess. Just a shame we’re not talking a shot of tequila.”
At home, the light was on in the living room and the drapes were shut. Levi put the car in neutral and pulled up the hand brake.
“Thanks. Are you sure I can’t give you some gas money?”
“It’s fine, Elle, really.” He smiled. “But I may call in another babysitting favor in payment.”
“Ah, I knew there was a catch.” I unbuckled my seat belt and climbed out. “Well, thanks. Again. I appreciate it.”
I shut the door and walked up the path to my front door, but only got halfway to the porch before I heard him wind down the window and call out to me. I turned back.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sure Lee will come around. You guys will figure out the college thing. If you two are best friends, you’ll work things out.”
“I hope so.”
Then he smiled again, waved, and drove off. I was fumbling around in my purse for my house key when my dad opened the door.
“I wasn’t expecting you back for a while.”
I just shrugged. “I got bored. Wasn’t a great party.”
“That doesn’t mean you got so drunk you threw up, does it?” He frowned like he was already trying to decide how long that deserved grounding me for.
“No, it means it was a crappy night. I just wasn’t feeling it. Levi gave me a ride home.”
“Did anyone else leave early? What about Lee?”
“No, only me. I’m just gonna go up to bed.”
“Are you sure? Me and Brad are watching the new Tom Cruise film. There’s not long left, but you can come watch it with us. It’s not exactly a difficult plot to pick up on….”
Brad didn’t usually stay up this late, but I guessed it didn’t matter as a one-off. And I was kind of tempted, because I felt so crappy and maybe being around my family with a not-too-crappy movie would make me feel at least a little bit better.
But I was way more tempted to go crawl under my comforter and stay there forever.
“No, thanks. I’m just going to go to bed.”
“Okay.” My dad had never known me to leave a party early; if anything, he’d tell me off the next day for getting home too late. So right now, I wasn’t surprised that he was looking at me with concern knitting his eyebrows together behind his glasses.
I got halfway up the stairs before he called after me. “Are you sure everything’s okay? Did something happen?”
I gave him a smile, seeing the worry turning to panic. “No, Dad, really. It’s fine. It was just a really sucky party, and I’m beat.”
“You know you can tell me anything, right, bud?”
“I know, Dad.”
“And there’s nothing you want to tell me about?”
“No. God, everything’s fine!” I huffed, and carried on up the stairs, and that was the end of that.
Once I was wrapped up inside the cocoon of my comforter and wearing one of Noah’s T-shirts he’d left behind, and my makeup was all washed off, I looked at the screen on my cell phone, my contacts pulled up.
June Flynn. Lee Flynn. Matthew Flynn. Noah Flynn.
My thumb hovered, and I knew I needed to talk to one of the Flynn brothers—I just couldn’t decide which.
Call Lee. Talk to him. Sort this out. He might be home by now. He promised his mom he’d be back by one and it’s twelve-forty. Call him.
No, call Noah. You haven’t had a chance to talk to him properly since Monday, and that was only a little. Call him. Tell him about Lee and see what he has to say. It’s a Friday night and he’s probably just getting in from a party, too.
I called Noah, even though he’d be fast asleep by now.
It rang, and rang, and…rang, and…
“Hey, it’s Noah. Leave me a message and I’ll get back to you.”
Instead of hanging up as the message started, I held the phone at my ear as the beep sounded. When had he changed his voice mail message? It used to be shorter: “Hey, it’s Flynn. You know what to do.”
I realized that, by now, he’d have ten seconds of me breathing down the line, and I figured I should probably say something. “Hey. It’s me. Um, Elle. I wanted to talk but I guess you’re asleep. I’ll call you tomorrow. Um…Love you.”
Tonight, more than ever, I wished Noah were here with me.