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“I’m proud of you.”
I balked. “Proud of me?”
“You came clean to her, Gibs,” he called back. “You got it off your chest. That couldn’t have been easy, lad, but you did it.”
“Johnny, she almost took leave of her senses,” I deadpanned. “She threatened to have Dee arrested, she forced her to resign on the spot, and I’m not sure if she still wants to be with me. I reckon it’s safe to say there is nothing about today that I can be proud of.” Shuddering, I added, “It was a terrible fucking mistake on my part and one I won’t ever be making again.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing you only have one skeleton in your closet, lad.”
“Yeah.” I clenched my eyes shut and nodded. “Lucky me.”
“Listen to me,” he said when the sound of the motor running abruptly cut out. “I want you to get your tux on, splash some water on your face, walk your ass across the street, and give that girl of yours the yellow bleeding flower you’ve spent the last two weeks trying to hunt down. Shannon and I will be over in the limo in an hour, lad, so you best be ready.”
“It’s a Midas Touch rose,” I muttered. “And what if she doesn’t want to go with me anymore, Johnny?” My heart seized with dread at the thought. “I’ve known Claire my entire life, and I swear I’ve never seen her so angry.”
“If you don’t shoot, you don’t score, Gibs.”
“Trust you to toss out a sport’s analogy when I’m having an existential crisis.”
“Just go get your girl, Gibs,” he instructed before the line went dead.
“Easier said than done, Cap,” I whispered, scrubbing my face with my hand. “Fuck.”
Tossing my phone on my nightstand, I reached a hand under my mattress to retrieve the familiar folded-up piece of paper, and then, like the masochist I was, I unfolded the page and reread Caoimhe Young’s suicide note.
The real one.
The one she left just for me.
71
Andie Anderson Yellow
CLAIRE
By the time the clock struck half past eight on Friday night and there was still no sign of Gerard, I resigned myself to the very high probability that I would be going solo to the winter ball.
Hugh had left over an hour ago to pick up Katie. Meanwhile, I remained slumped on the couch in my yellow satin gown, waiting on a boy who might never show up. Not that I cared if I didn’t make the dance. I’d missed my appointments with both the hairdresser and the beautician, and I was feeling a whole heap less festive than I was furious.
To be honest, if it wasn’t for the fact that my mam seemed so excited about the whole thing, I would have thrown on my pajamas and crawled into bed.
The fact that Mam had spent two painstakingly long hours straightening my curls and had phoned up her friend Betty to come over to do my nails and makeup only proved to me just how important this was to her, and I really hated letting my mam down.
She’s not the only person you’re letting down, my conscience hissed, and I wanted to cry.
I always like to think that I had a fairly straightforward moral compass. Wrong was wrong and right was right. But Gerard had forced my hand today, and now I felt like my compass was pointing in some morally gray area that I had never looked at before.
Dee had resigned. I’d watched her leave the school with my own eyes. It was definitively something to be satisfied about. But it wasn’t enough. Because I would forever know what she did to Gerard, and whether he wanted to acknowledge it for what it truly was or not, he would forever have to shoulder that abuse. Meanwhile, his abuser got to start over wherever she liked with zero consequences for her senseless actions.
It wasn’t fair.
“Claire?” Mam peeked her head around the sitting room door with a smile on her face. “Your date is here.”
My breath hitched and I felt weirdly emotional. “He is?”
She pushed the door wide open and there he was, standing in his tux, with a yellow corsage in hand. And not just any flower. “You got me a Midas Touch rose?”
His gray eyes locked on mine, and he offered me an uncertain shrug. “Andie Anderson yellow, right?”
