“What is it with all the ghosts coming back from the past?” Nellie muttered, and I knew she was talking about Beckham Jennings. An ex-friend instead of an ex-boyfriend, but with a history just as tangled. “Now that he’s back, we should TP his house. Or egg his car.”
“He’d just pay someone to clean it up.”
Nellie grumbled on the other line. “Jamie said Dalton acted all nonchalant. Like no time had passed.”
The image of Jamie relaying everything to Nellie made me feel nauseous. “He’s making it sound more than what it was.”
“I’d hate to see you get hurt again, Daisy.”
“Please, me? Hurt?Psh. I’m over him, Nell. Swear to God. I was totally fine when we saw him.”
“Throwing your ice cream on him doesn’t sound fine,” she said gently, clueing me into just how many beans Jamie had spilled. “Not that I’m complaining! I wish you’d have gone for his face, and taken a picture so I got to see.”
Nellie and Jamie had been on the front lines during the Dalton Fallout. It’d been the last week of summer vacation, and I’d spent the entirety of it crying in eitherNellie’s bed or Jamie’s, because I couldn’t go home and worry the kids. They’d taken turns watching them for me while Mom had been at work, and whoever wasn’t with the kids was with me.
That week before school started blurred together, but I could still remember lying in Nellie’s bed with Jamie kneeling on the floor beside it. His eyes had been glassy.
“Why are you crying?” I’d asked him in a voice thick with tears.
Jamie had looked shattered. “Because you are.”
“I still think that fake dating idea was a good one,” Nellie said, drawing me back from the memory. “Hire a guy for the summer to hold hands with and rub Dalton’s nose in the fact that he lost you.”
“He didn’tlose me.”More like he threw me away. “Besides, it’d be too suspicious. I suddenlyget a boyfriend when he gets back into town? Andhiringsomeone, Nell? What, should I find one on an escort service?”
That made my best friend laugh. “I’m sure there are guys from school who will take one for the team.”
“Yeah, and who will be quiet about it?”
“Jamie would.”
“Jamie is…”Wrong, I wanted to say, but didn’t. Anyone would look at Jamie and me, though, and see the platonic bond as if it were a red rope tied around us. Friends. “We already talked about this. I need a Mr. Darcy type, not—Sydney Carton.”
“Who?”
I shook my head. “Never mind. Just… not Jamie.”
Nellie let out a breath on the other end of the phone,and I pictured her sitting on her bed, tipping the crown of her head against her headboard. “Be honest with me, Daisy.” She paused. “You don’t still have feelings for Dalton, do you?”
The oxygen in my lungs shriveled. The question was direct. Very Nellie Brighton. Unavoidable, unless met with a lie. “Iambeing honest. I’m over Dalton Giovanni.”
The strong declaration was true… enough. I was over him in the sense that I no longer fantasized about what it’d be like if he climbed the tree right outside my window, knocked, and begged me to come back to him. I no longer imagined hearing the words I’d been waiting nearly a year for. “I made a mistake.”
But maybe I wasn’t over him in the sense that if hedidclimb my tree, knock on my window, and beg for me back right this very second… I wasn’t sure what I’d say.
Nellie didn’t need to know that, though.
“He’s no good for you,” Nellie said. “Jamie agrees.”
“Jamie’s there, too?”
“He just came in to drop off one of my socks. It got mixed into his laundry.”
I felt weird thinking that he might’ve heard me reject the idea of fake dating him, but more importantly, I feltangry. I sat up in my desk chair, pencil nearly flying from my grip. My voice was eerie. “Put him on the phone.”
It only took a second for her to pass her phone over. “Jamie speaking.”
“Snitch,” I all but growled. “You didn’t have to tell Nell that I panicked over seeing Dalton.”
