Expecting some sort of commentary on my spectacular display of self-destruction, my shoulders wilted.
Instead, Teddy said, “You’re still writing?”
For one, blistering second, I thought I might melt.
“Well… not currently.”
He rubbed his jaw and stared at the flames. “You’re not letting one little slip up stop you from writing, right?”
“It wasn’t exactlylittle,” I said with an indignant sniff. “And it’s not as if you’d have any idea what it was like.”
“Now what’sthatsupposed to mean?” Teddy leaned forward on his knees, head cocked in the way that said I had his full attention. No less unnerving than it always had been.
I snorted. “Last I checked, you’re the only one of us who ended up so successful that you’re famous.”
A pink tinge appeared on his cheeks as he mumbled, “I’m not famous.”
“Stop with the false modesty,” I snapped before I could take it back. Then I blurted, “I just mean—none of us are getting hailed by adoring fans. You’re the only one who ended up doing everything you set out to do.” The conviction in my voice made my chest tighten.
He hummed thoughtfully. “Serena’s a fashion designer, Georgie’s made a life for herself in Bluebell Cove, and last I checked, Wes is getting paid to swim with sharks or something.”
Teddy trailed off, fiddling with the sleeve of his sweater. The message between the lines turned my stomach.
And he was right. Wes, Serena, and Georgie had all reached their goals. Each of them happy and successful and living the lives we’d dreamed about while stargazing on Seaglass Beach for our entire childhoods.
I was the outlier—the washed-up one, the walking cautionary tale. The worst part was that I had no one to blame but myself.
He watched as I slipped from my chair and perused the bookshelves. Maybe I could wait out the rest of the storm with a good novel and no more uncomfortably insightful comments. Teddy didn’t seem to get the memo, though, because soon he was right beside me, hands in his pockets and thoughts so loud there might as well have been a speech bubble above his head.
“What?” I said with a sigh, tracing my fingertips along a gilt-stamped spine that glittered in the window light.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he whispered. “I remember seeing you at Marigold’s funeral and thinking: ‘She’s going to conquer the world, isn’t she?’”
The small laugh sounded so close that I nearly jumped away.
“And look where I am now. Unemployed and living with my mother,” I retorted, forcing myself to continue reading book titles as if his abrupt nearness hadn’t spiked my heart rate.
Teddy leaned his shoulder against the bookshelf, forcing me to look him in the eyes. “You didn’t let me finish. The Margot I knew didn’twantto conquer the world—you wanted to write.”
“We shouldn’t talk about this,” I murmured.
“Why not?”
My fingers curled into my palms and I paced across the rug toward the windows. When I turned back, he’d followed me again. “Because, Teddy, that girl is gone.”
It felt like acid on my tongue. I wanted to believe it—so, it had to be true.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” he replied.
“It doesn’t have to.”
“Seven years isn’t exactly a lifetime,” Teddy continued, oblivious to the heat steadily mounting beneath my skin.
I fixated on a thick droplet sliding down the glass. “Drop it.”
“You’re my friend, and you’re unhappy. I can’t just leave it alone.”
That dreaded word again:friend. It was proof, yet again, that the years I’d spent yearning had been completely pointless. No epic love story waited for me—just an insignificant relationship that was so meaningless he didn’t even remember it seven years later.
