When Willow and Brett ask me to come to the staff party on Friday night, my answer is “absolutely not.” For one thing, it’s at the lake. For another, it’s a party.
“Oh, come on,” Willow pleads. “The one at Bailey’s house only sucked because of Eric, and Eric is a changed man now. You said it yourself.”
“I don’t believe I used those words.”
“Close enough.”
“I hate the lake,” I tell them, glad that Luke isn’t at our lunch table yet. The last thing I want is for him to hear this discussion.
“You don’t have to swim in it,” Brett says.
“It’s still . . . the lake.”
“Don’t be a spoilsport,” Willow says. “Everybody is going. Everyone except you.”
“Luke isn’t,” I say.
“Do you and Luke talk?” Willow asks. “Because he said he would.”
I blink at her, unable to believe my ears. “He said he would? Does he know which lake it is?”
Willow looks to Brett, who looks at me like I’m the dumbest person on the planet.
“On account of how it’s the only lake in Winchester . . . yeah,” he says.
“Oh.”
“Ask him yourself,” Willow says as someone slides into the chair beside me. When I look up at him but don’t say anything, Willow asks, “Luke, did you say you’d go to the party tonight?”
“Yeah, why not?” he says.
Why not?
It’s the place where everything fell apart, that’s why not. But as I stare at him, he shrugs and goes on as if that place holds absolutely no meaning in his life. As he reaches for the ketchup across the table, he whispers to me, “It’s just a place.”
Except it’s not just a place. It’s the place.
Does it mean that little to him?
Did us mean that little to him?
“So, you’re scared of the lake?” Brett asks, still confused.
“I guess,” I say, not willing to go into detail.
“I’ll protect you!” Willow promises, giving me a side hug.
“Be brave,” Brett says. “If you don’t go, you’re giving it power over you. Plus, if you hate it, you can always leave.”
Be brave.
The words catapult me back in time to the night I kissed Luke.
The night I made a commitment to myself to be happy and grateful and well-dressed and brave.
It was the beginning of the end of everything.
But it was also the beginning of everything.
That things turned shitty a few months later didn’t negate the fact that I loved those words, that I wanted to live by them.
“I’ll come for an hour,” I say.
“Yay!” Willow says. “I was thinking of live streaming it. And since you were in the camping video, you can be in this one too!”
I give her a look.
“Or not,” she says.
So just like that, I’m doing it. I’m going back to the place where everything changed.
Luke looks so completely unbothered that I feel a swell of rage at him, and that fuels my determination to go and show him how equally unbothered I am. Because that’s what everything is between us, isn’t it? A game. A farce.
On Friday night, Willow comes over to my house to get ready. She picks out a denim miniskirt for me and a flowy, thin-strapped polka-dotted monstrosity of a top that I never wear. It reminds me of the opened wings of a ladybug.
“Monstrosity?” she repeats, shocked. “Girl. No, this is perfect.”
“It’s so . . . hippie-ish.”
“So? You can be hippie-ish. You can be anything for just one night.”
She goes with a long maxi-dress herself and gives herself gorgeous beach curls. Then she does our makeup. By the time she’s done, I look like a glamorous hippie version of myself and she looks like royalty from some sunny, exotic island. Because we live near each other and we got ready together, I drive us both to the lake. I’m also not planning on drinking, so I can be Willow’s ride back.
As we pull up to the lake, there are more cars than I’d expected.
“I thought it was just for staff,” I say.
“Maybe it snowballed,” Willow says easily.
We park in a line of cars under some big leafy trees and make our way to the “beach” part of the lake. The music is relatively quiet, so we won’t get a police visit, but people are laughing and talking and clearly having a good time. They are also decidedly not people from work, but I try not to dwell on that.
Besides, it’s not the people who are the problem. It’s the place. The memories it brings.
Before I can fall into a spiral, someone grabs my arm and I whirl around to find Luke, but I barely have time to say anything before his mouth is on mine. The kiss is wet and sloppy, and I step back from him.
“Are you drunk?” I say, with just a trace of hysteria in my voice.
“It’s Friday!” Brett says, appearing out of nowhere, too, and putting his arms around Willow and then me. “Let the man relax a little.”
So Brett is obviously also drunk.
I shrug him off and turn back to Luke, eyeing the can of beer in his hand. “How much have you had?”
Luke pushes his hand through his hair. “Didn’t count,” he says.
I drop my voice a little lower. “Did you drive here?”
“It’s Friday. Let my man relax a little,” Luke parrots.
First, what he said doesn’t even make sense. Second, what the hell?
I look around, wanting to grab someone, to explain to them, but there’s only one person in the world I would have grabbed if I ever found Luke drinking. And he’s not here.
I try to get Willow’s attention, but her camera is on and she’s holding it toward her and Brett.
I want to grab them by the shirts and explain. You don’t understand. Luke doesn’t drink.
He hates the taste of beer. He doesn’t like the way it makes him feel, the way it makes him lose control.
So what the hell happened before I got here?
I realize for the first time that apart from my crippling anxiety, I was kind of looking forward to tonight. Luke and I have had a string of good days, days where it didn’t feel like we were hiding folds of hate under love. And now I feel all that shattering right before my eyes.
Brett is inviting Luke into the camera shot. I duck away from the three of them before I’m captured on film with people underage drinking. Not that I have any scholarships to worry about losing.
“Rumfield,” someone says, giving me a nod as he walks past. Eric.
I grab his elbow. I’m that desperate.
He looks taken aback. “Whoa,” he says.
I quickly let go. “Sorry. It’s just . . . how long have you guys all been here? I thought it started at eight.”
“A bunch of people went from work to Blueberry Diner for dinner; then they came here and started drinking, I guess,” Eric says with a shrug.
“Luke?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says, following my gaze to where Luke and Brett are mugging for Willow’s camera. “Kinda looks like it.”
“He doesn’t drink,” I say now, trying not to sound like a concerned wifey or something. “I mean, usually.”
“Yeah, I believe you,” Eric says. “It’s fine. He’s just having a good time, but let’s keep an eye on him, okay?”
The let’s almost makes me cry.
It means I’m not alone in this, that I’m not crazy or overreacting. That I’m not reliving the worst night of my life.
“Okay,” I say. “Yeah, let’s do that.”
“Want something to drink?” Eric asks. “I know where there’s some unspiked punch.”
“Where?” I ask.
“In my backpack. I brought my own, like a freaking kindergartener,” he says, and I laugh. “I try not to overdo the booze thing too often anymore. Not this summer, anyway.”
I remember the night when he humiliated me at Bailey’s party. He wasn’t drunk then? I don’t know whether that makes it better or worse.
I glance over my shoulder to make sure Luke is still with Brett and Willow. At least Willow isn’t drunk . . . yet. To my surprise, Luke is looking over here. When his attention drifts back to Willow again, I hurry to catch up with Eric.
“So what kind of punch?” I ask.
“It’s made from the tears of infants and the sweat of old men.”
I make a face.
“That was a joke. Meant to imply that I know you think I’m an asshole.”
I give a reluctant laugh.
Eric stops under a tree and pulls out a backpack. He holds out a nearly full Gatorade bottle to me.
“This is your punch?”
“What, you thought I was at home mixing lemonade and shit?”
When I still don’t take the bottle, he sighs. “I didn’t poison it, Jessi. I’ll prove it.”
He opens the bottle and pours it into his mouth without letting it touch his lips.
“I think I’m good,” I say.
“Come on!” he says. “It’s a show of good faith between us. I’m done being a jerk, you’re done believing I’m a jerk.”
He pushes the bottle on me and I hold it over my mouth and drink. Someone bumps me from behind, and my next swig completely misses my open mouth and trickles down my shirt. “Shit,” I say.
Eric coughs, holding his hand to his mouth to hide a laugh.
“Oh, screw you!” I say, handing him his bottle, but he’s still laughing, so I start laughing too. “Now I have to walk around like this all n—”
I jump at a hand on my shoulder.
“I want you to be honest with me.” It’s a voice that sounds like Luke’s but also so unlike it.
I turn around, and it’s him, his eyes looking unfocused, a brand-new bottle in his hand.
“Hey—are you okay?” I ask, already feeling a knot of anxiety in the pit of my stomach.
“I just want one question. One simple question,” he says.
His tone and the way he’s looking at me are making me very uncomfortable. “Okay?”
“Did you fuck him?”
I freeze at his words, my heart plummeting to a pool at my feet. “Luke, you’re drunk . . .”
“It’s just a question. One question. He’s always around you, and I knew something was going on. I always thought about it, but I told myself, no, she loves you.”
“Luke—”
“—and then I see you with him.”
Eric, who has been silent all this time, takes a step forward toward Luke. “Dude, it’s not what you think. We were just talking.”
“So—you did?” Luke completely ignores Eric as he looks at me. “That’s a yes?”
I try to reach for Luke’s arm, but he shrugs me off, and his voice gets louder. “It’s a simple question. Did. You. Fuck. Him.”
“Luke, stop it,” I say, my eyes filling.
“Man, you’re totally overreacting,” Eric is saying. “I swear to God. We don’t even talk, normally, but she was worried about you and—”
“Eric, shut the fuck up,” Luke says, turning on Eric.
“Don’t talk to him that way,” I say. It’s not Eric that he wants. He’s not asking about Eric. None of this is about Eric.
Luke shoves a rough hand through his hair, and his voice is broken and swollen with alcohol and anger and tears and fear. “It’s so simple. God, it’s such an easy answer. But you did, you fucked my brother . . .”
“No, I didn’t,” I say, but my voice comes out tiny in the dark. Around us, a crowd is forming.
“I should have known,” he says, his voice still threatening tears, though none are running down his cheek. Only mine. “You didn’t want me. You wanted my family. Hell, maybe you didn’t even want Ro, you—”
My hand on his cheek makes a terrible sound. Loud and hard, and my fingers are stinging so badly. “Fuck you,” I say, and I’m surprised to hear myself speaking almost as loudly as he was.
He’s staring at me with wide eyes, the imprint of my palm leaving a red mark on his face.
“Fuck you.” I say it again, and then I’m pushing through the crowd, ignoring the sound of a girl calling my name. My eyes are blurring so hard I can barely find my car.
I knew it I knew it I knew it . . .
I should never have come tonight.
Luke and I had our very first fight over it. It was on Wednesday. He’d gone back on Sunday, and he was still refusing to drive down for Rowan’s birthday on Friday.
“Why’s it such a big deal to you if I come?” he’d asked over the phone that night.
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Well, yeah.”
“First, because I want to see you. Second, it’s your brother’s freaking birthday and you’ve never missed it before and you actually have the weekend off, but you’re just not willing to come down. Because of some stupid ego trip you’re on.”
“I’m not on an ego trip.”
“Could have fooled me,” I said.
“You’re being so unreasonable.”
“No, you are.”
In the end, he’d said something about how this was between him and Ro, and if his brother didn’t care about him not being there, neither did he. I’d said fine and then I’d hung up.
The next day, Thursday, was the first day since our fro-yo date that we didn’t speak once, either over the phone or even by text. I couldn’t believe I was seeing this other side of Luke. He was so damn stubborn. Insufferable was the word, actually.
I’d spoken to Ro about it, and he’d just shrugged and said, “If Luke doesn’t want to come, he doesn’t have to.”
I was certain he was putting on a brave face. I obviously didn’t have siblings, but I knew I would care if they missed my birthday for reasons that were not totally unavoidable. I knew what it was like to have a family that was alive but not living. Here, but not present. Knew what it was like to feel like an afterthought to the people who were supposed to love you. And there were few things that sucked more.
The day of Ro’s party, I’d spent the afternoon at Mel’s house, where we piled the back of Ro’s car with snacks, paper plates, napkins, and two foldout tables.
“There better not be any drinking,” Mel warned, and Ro scoffed and acted like his mother was being ridiculous.
“I’m not an idiot,” he said.
I suspected that he was bluffing and that someone (or several someones) was bound to show up with alcohol, but I would always be loyal to Rowan, so I said nothing to Mel.
At seven thirty, dressed in a pair of jeans, a nice top, and a bomber jacket, I jumped into Ro’s car and waved at Mel and Naomi, who had come over for wine. Ro drove us to the lake.
It was kind of dumb to begin with. Having a party at the lake in October. It had been an unseasonably warm fall, and we didn’t have to worry about snow or ice or anything yet, but it was still fall. When I pointed this out, Rowan shrugged and said he couldn’t help when he was born.
When we arrived at the lake, we got to work setting up. My phone was in my jacket, which I’d thrown in a pile on the beach after realizing that Ro was right; it wasn’t “that cold” yet. By eight, most of Ro’s friends were starting to arrive. Cassie Clairburne greeted him with a passionate kiss, whispering something in his ear. She didn’t acknowledge me as I continued setting up. For some reason, there had been this weird tension between me and Cassie since she and Ro started dating. Before they were together, we never really spoke to each other. And now that they were together . . . we never really spoke to each other. I didn’t worry too much about it, though, since I suspected that their relationship had all the longevity of a juniors tennis match.
The party got underway, and music blasted out from Ro’s speakers. Despite not being as cold as I’d expected, it was still October and mostly dark by six thirty.
For the first hour, I circled among different groups, chatting to people from different classes. I didn’t know half as many people as Ro knew, and I certainly wouldn’t consider them all “friends,” but Rowan and I had never been the kind of best friends who always had to be joined at the hip. I was fine, drifting in and out of conversations, laughing with people I’d known since elementary school and people I hadn’t. The whole thing was going pretty well.
Until I realized I couldn’t find Rowan.
I shimmied through different clusters of people, looking for him. Thought about finding my jacket and grabbing my phone, but then I remembered that he’d asked me to put his phone in my second pocket while we unloaded the car. I grew more and more panicked as I searched. Especially when I saw Cassie sitting next to a lacrosse player who had his arm around her. Instead of feeling vindicated that I was probably right about her, I felt sorry for Ro and hoped he hadn’t seen this.
I continued threading my way through the party, looking for Rowan. Since he certainly was not with Cassie, I knew the most likely person I’d find him with was Eric, so when I spotted Eric laughing with a group of girls I didn’t know, my heart sank.
“Do you know where Ro is?” I asked him.
“No,” he said. “I’m sure he’s around somewhere.”
Helpful, I thought. And drunk.
My biggest fear was that he had done something stupid and wandered into the water. He wasn’t suicidal, but if there was a bad idea to be found, Rowan would find it. So I started walking, following the path around the lake until I saw a small figure several yards ahead. Just as I feared, I found him way down at the other end of the lake, his jeans rolled up as he stood in water up to the middle of his calves.
“Ro, are you insane?” I cried, running up to where he stood.
“You found me.” He grinned at me like he’d won a bet with himself.
“Yeah. Because I thought, where’s the stupidest possible place I could find him, and that’s where I went.”
I searched his face for signs that he was upset. Maybe he’d seen Cassie with that guy and decided to walk away.
But I saw no sign that he had.
He smiled at my comment and took a swig from the bottle in his hand.
“Thought you told Mel you weren’t drinking.”
“I didn’t tell Mel anything,” he argued.
“Okay. Well—come out. It’s dark, and that water’s looking freaking creepy.”
He looked down at it as if noticing it for the first time.
“Why aren’t you with your friends?” I asked. “Like, who throws a party and then runs away?”
“I’m not in the mood for company.”
“Well, gee, could you have notified all these people before they came out?” I pointed to the other side of the lake. I was feeling increasingly annoyed that I’d spent all this time looking for him, and here he was, fine and totally unbothered about disappearing on me.
“Didn’t know this would happen,” he said.
I took a step closer to the water and saw his face more clearly. His eyes were unfocused, and he was upset. But for some reason, I didn’t think it was about Cassie.
“What would happen?”
“Coach found out about my elbow.”
“Oh, Ro, that sucks,” I said, feeling a wave of sadness for him. Nothing upset Rowan more than not being able to play. “How?”
“I was in too much fucking pain to hit a damn ball today. That’s how.”
“Hopefully this will give you a chance to rest?” I ventured, trying to put a positive spin on it.
“I don’t want to rest,” he said, sounding petulant. “I want to play.”
“You will play. Next season and in college and for the rest of your life.”
He drank from his bottle and then appraised me, a twinkle in his eye. “Want to do something crazy with me?”
“Not really,” I said.
“Come on, Jess,” he said. “Please.”
“What’s the thing?”
“I want to get in the water.”
“You are in the water,” I pointed out.
“I want to get in properly. Like all the way.”
“That’s disgusting. You have no idea what’s been in there or what is in there. And it’s so dark. Ew. No way.”
“I’ll protect you. Nothing will happen to us,” he said.
“No. Come out or I’m going to go and call Mel.”
“Why are you like this?” Ro asked suddenly, glaring at me.
I glared back. “I’m not like anything.”
“You’re not you. You’re not my best friend anymore.”
The words caught me off-guard, and they stung. “Because I won’t let you drink and go swimming in some disgusting lake in the middle of the night?”
“Because you’re different,” he said.
“Different than what, Ro?” I asked, exasperated. Were we really going to do this now? And what the hell did he mean? After all the ways he had changed over the past few months, he was accusing me of being different?
“Remember when we were kids and we’d play mixed together, and you’d call out ‘mine’ for every shot? And then Coach was like, ‘Jessi, you have to let Rowan get the shots on his side of the court. When it’s for him, say “yours.” ’ But for like the next year, you wouldn’t listen. You still called out ‘mine’ every single time, so I just started running for every shot, and sometimes we’d go for the same one and collide?”
Despite myself, I smiled. “Yeah, so?”
“So, you used to fight me. They called us water and oil.”
“Because water and oil don’t mix.”
“They’re just as strong as each other,” Ro said. “They have an understanding.”
I sighed. “If you’re going to say that the understanding is that the water doesn’t tell the oil’s mom when the oil gets drunk, I’m not buying it.”
“No,” Ro said. “I’m going to say that my mom is fucking dying, I don’t know where I’m going when she does, I can’t play, and all I want is my best friend to get in the water and get drunk with me.” He was full-on crying now. “That’s all I want.”
“It doesn’t solve anything,” I told him now, softly.
“For a minute it does,” he said. “Please.”
And because he was my best friend and everything was falling apart, because he said it would make things better for a minute, because we’d been drifting apart for months and it felt like maybe for one moment we could find each other again, I did what everything in my head was telling me not to.
“Turn around,” I ordered.
He grinned through his tears and obeyed.
Unable to believe myself, I unzipped my jeans and climbed out of them. I discarded the tank top I was wearing and started toward the water.
Ro turned around when I was still only ankle-deep. I felt his eyes appraise my nearly naked body and I hugged my arms around my waist. I told myself I was pretty much in a bikini, underwear and a bra, but it did nothing to reduce the exposed feeling washing over me.
“It’s so cold,” I said, regretting this decision with every ounce of me but continuing forward. “What is even happening right now?”
“It’s not that bad,” he said. “You get used to it.”
Rowan peeled off his shirt then and flung it toward the beach, but he missed, and it landed in the water. “Son of a—” he said, wading out to retrieve it. He kept going until he was on the beach, where he started to take off his jeans.
I looked away, my entire body suddenly feeling warm even though I was immersed in lake water up to my thighs in October.
Ro whooped now as he ran back into the lake, the bottle still in his hand. I tried not to look, but my eyes immediately went to the gray boxer briefs he was wearing. They left absolutely nothing to the imagination, and my neck went hot as I snatched my gaze away again.
“Give me that bottle,” I said. “I need some liquid courage.”
Smiling, Ro handed me the bottle. I grabbed it by the neck and took a long sip of something that burned the back of my throat. Together Ro and I waded deeper into the water.
“What if there’s fish in here? Or flesh-eating bacteria?” I asked.
“Nah,” he said. “I know a dude who swims here all the time. He’s missing a few toes, but . . .”
I whacked his chest, and he laughed.
“I’m not going in any further,” I said. I was about hip-high in the water now, while Ro was in up to his mid-thigh.
I took another drink, then handed the bottle to him.
“What do you want to do next year?” I asked. “Do you want to go to your dad’s?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want. It seems like everything I want exists just so someone else can have it. The crazy thing is I always thought you and I were different.”
It felt like the alcohol was already making my mind cloudy.
“I literally have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Of course you don’t,” Rowan said in a voice that sounded strangely bitter.
“Am I supposed to?”
“I guess not. And yet you somehow manage to understand the complete lack of facial expression and the caveman grunts my brother makes.”
That was definitely bitter. And completely out of line. “Don’t talk about Luke that way.”
“That’s the thing,” Ro said. “I don’t want to talk about Luke at all. Not with you. Not after all this fucking time.”
“Why are you yelling?”
“Because you don’t get it!” he shouted. “And you don’t get it because you don’t want to.”
I stayed quiet and watched as he got more and more worked up. “All these years. I’m the reason you met him. Me.” He pointed at his chest.
“Ro—” I said, but no words followed.
“There’s nothing about me you don’t know. And there’s nothing about you I don’t know. Except that—oh wait, you’re in love with my fucking brother.”
“I didn’t . . . I don’t know everything about you,” I said.
“Like what?” he spat. “Name one thing you don’t know about me.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, feeling a fire start to burn inside me. “Why did you make me leave that night at your mom’s?”
“I told you,” he said.
“You said you didn’t want me to see you cry. That’s bullshit!” I yelled back, even though I had made my peace with the answer. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t believe it. But it didn’t make any freaking sense. And it hurt.
Why would he ever, ever ask me to leave if I was truly family?
“Because, generally, Jessi,” he spat my name out like it was a bad word. “When you’re in love with someone, you don’t want them to see you bawling like a baby.”
I opened and shut my mouth like a guppy.
I repeated the words in my head. When you’re in love with someone . . .
“You’re saying you love me?” I asked, so stunned I felt as if I had woken up in the wrong body. The wave of doubt he’d started in me about whether the Cohens really cared about me, the cloud of confusion my relationship with Ro had become—and all along it was because he liked me?
“I’m saying I love you,” he said, looking me dead in the eye.
“But when . . . how . . . why didn’t you say anything?” I stammered. “You’re dating Cassie Clairburne.”
“Because she’ll look twice at me,” he said. “Because she didn’t find out everything about me and then decide I wasn’t good enough.”
“I did not say you weren’t good enough.”
“But you picked him.”
“It wasn’t a choice, Ro! There was no choice.” I was spitting the words out, but I didn’t even care. “And quite frankly, it sounds like you only decided you liked me when I started dating Luke. Because you’ve always wanted what Luke has.”
Ro laughed. “I’ve always wanted what Luke has?”
“All you ever talk about is how perfect Luke is, how your dad loves him because he’s smart, how your mom loves him because he’s kind. You have always wanted what Luke has.”
He glared at me. “So what you’re saying is you don’t know me after all?”
“I don’t know what I know,” I said lamely, my voice less loud this time.
Rowan took a step toward me. “When you say there was no choice—” he said now. “Would it have changed anything if there was? If you saw a choice?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out.
Ro kept walking until he was right in front of me. “Yes or no?”
“Don’t, Ro,” I said, swallowing as he came even closer. “I’m with Luke.”
“Tell me,” he said, ignoring what I had said. “And I’ll never ask you again.”
“I . . . I don’t kn—” I barely got the words out before he crushed his lips against mine.
Ten years.
Ten years and I had never considered—not even once—what it would be like to have Rowan’s lips on mine, what it would be like for him to touch me, to want me.
Everything was different with Rowan. It wasn’t as if Luke had never kissed me with passion, but with Ro, everything was passion. Everything was fire and ice. It was scalding, it was freezing. I wanted him to touch me and I wanted him to stop. I wanted his lips, his body, closer, but I wanted to be back at the other side of the lake, not knowing everything I now knew.
We were on our knees in the water, and his lips dropped to my neck and my chest. He pushed my knees apart so more of him could touch me.
And then everything stopped.
We heard voices on the beach and flew apart.
It was Eric and—somehow I knew instantly—Luke, who was staring into the water at us like we were strange, mythical creatures.
His name poured out from my mouth, the same mouth that had been kissing Ro seconds before, but he turned and started back up the path he and Eric had come down.
“Luke!” I raced out of the water and sprinted, but he wouldn’t stop. I ran back to the beach for my clothes, then took off after him again, but by then all I saw were trees. Shadows and night.
Eric came up behind me then, and I screamed at him, “Where did he go?”
“He parked on the other side of the trees, and then we cut through . . .”
He was talking too slowly, and I took off running again.
“Jessi!” Ro called from somewhere behind me. “Jessi!”
His long legs soon caught up to mine. At some point he’d managed to put his jeans back on, but his shirt was still in his hands and he was dripping wet.
“Jessi, Jesus, slow down!” he said, grabbing my shoulder.
“What do you want?” I snapped at him. All I saw was red. Everything was red. I wanted to strangle him. I hated what we’d done. Hated that I’d played just as much of a part as he had.
He stared at me for one second, appraising me, as if he were figuring out something just by looking at me, figuring out everything.
“I’ll go after him,” he said suddenly, throwing his shirt on. “I’ll tell him it was all me. I’ll . . . I’ll fix this.”
“You can’t fix this,” I said, starting to cry.
“I can,” he said. “I know I can. I’ll take care of it.”
He hesitated a moment, as if he had something to say, but I didn’t want to hear it. I started walking again until Ro brushed past me and said, “I’ll get my car and go after him. I’ll go all the way to State if I have to.”
Then he disappeared through the clearing, the details of his body so washed out by the darkness that soon he was a part of it.
I kept running through the trees until Eric caught up to me.
“He went back to his car. You can’t catch him,” he said, breathless, and I knew he was talking about Luke.
“Ro’s driving after him. I’ll go with him,” I said.
“And what do you think will happen when both of you show up together? How do you think Luke’s going to take that?”
“I don’t care,” I said.
“Just let Ro go,” he said, touching my shoulder. “He knows what he’s doing.”
My lungs were burning, and I was still in my wet underwear, so I stopped.
I let him go.