He talked about it like it was still happening. Like it wasn’t a dream that was in the past tense now, and it was like a knife to my chest.
I plopped my corndog in the sand, swallowing hard. “It’s getting late,” I got out, voice tight. “I need to be home to get the kids off the bus.”
“Aren’t they old enough to be home by themselves?” Dalton asked as he watched me hastily pack up my beach bag. “Penn’s, what? Fourteen?”
“She’s too young to watch them all.”
“Youwere watching them all at fourteen.”
My bag caught on the corner of the cooler, wrenching the strap out of my grip. I fell still, his words taking the knife sticking out of my chest and twisting it further.
Jamie grabbed my beach bag strap and stood up, offering a hand down. “Nellie can catch a ride home with Beck?—”
“No.” I pushed to my feet on my own, pulling my bag away from him and shoving it up my shoulder. It was heavier than I remembered. “I—I’ll get an Uber.”
“All the way to Addison?” Jamie swiped an orange soda from the cooler, offering it tome. “Let me drive you. It’s another boyfriend responsibility.” He looked at me with meaning.You’re slipping.
Dalton watched us, and for a split second, he almost lookedhopeful.
I nearly caved, then and there. Because I didn’twantJamie to drive me, and I didn’twantto convince Dalton that we were a stellar couple. I didn’t want to lie about NYU, and pretend I was okay when I wasn’t. At that moment, I didn’t want to do anything except go home.
Jamie slipped my bag off my shoulder. “Tell everyone we said bye, could you?” Jamie asked Dalton, swiping up my hand.
He squinted up at us with a nod, an unreadable expression on his face now. “I’ll catch you later, DD.”
I clenched my jaw, swallowing a reply as I dragged Jamie away, the two of us walking through the sand and dodging other sunbathers. He only waited until there were a few beach blankets between us. “I’m sorry,” Jamie said under his breath. “I’m sorry, Daze. He—he just—he gets under my skin, and I?—”
“Right, andthat’swhy you went all storyteller mode and deviated from the script.” I gave a harsh nod. “You’ve been in love with me since freshman year? You weretryingto make it seem like we’ve had some sordid love affair from the beginning, just to set him off.”
Jamie’s eyes went wide behind his glasses. “No.No, that’s not why I?—”
“Then why?” I wanted to grind to a halt in the sand, to drop his hand and turn on him, but I knew Dalton could’ve been watching us walk away. So, instead, Igripped Jamie’s hand so tightly that his bones shifted. “Why would you tell him that?”
Jamie sharply looked away from me, straight ahead, as he pressed his lips together. “I know you’re angry.”
Something about the way he said it lit a fire through me. “Wow, look at you and yourfabulousskills on reading the room. You’re a good actor, Jamie, but you know what else you are?” The spot behind my eye pulsed as I faced the full parking lot. “A good liar.”
I told myself I didn’t care that Jamie had flinched. I told myself I didn’t care that his fingers slackened around my palm. And I told myself that my words were nothing but the truth.
“Why does it matter?” Jamie demanded, his scowl set on the cars. “If we hurt Dalton’s feelings, or set him off, or anything else? It shouldn’t matter.”
You shouldn’t carewas what he meant. It only made me angrier. “Just forget it.”
And, miraculously, Jamie let it drop.
The rest of the walk to the car was silent, our hands only locked together out of necessity. I was sure that if I loosened my grip at all, our palms would fall away entirely, because Jamie barely held on. I’d taken the knife from my chest and plunged it into his, but instead of feeling relief, it only hurt me more.
CHAPTER 9
For the past three years, Jamie had been attending Alderton-Du Ponte’s book club.
When reading was suddenlyinon the Connecticut coast, the moms of the country club started a reading circle where they’d read one book a month and meet up weekly to chat about it. It sounded like hell to me, honestly, but strangely enough, Jamie liked it. And Nellie, like the good sister she was, always went with him. But she, too, would rather die than read a book picked by Mrs. Conan or any of the other stuck-up socialites.
“Why do you come with him to these, anyway?” I asked her now, leaning my head so close to the table that I nearly was lying on it. My sketchbook was flipped open in front of me, and I worked in my realism style. “Jamie’s off in the library, and you’re just in here by yourself for an hour?”
We were in Alderton-Du Ponte’s game room that had a few tables and a chessboard set up near the window. Thesun was still high in the sky, since it was only six-thirty, but it was comforting. Soft piano music filtered from the speakers embedded in every room at the country club, creating the perfect, calming soundtrack to sketch to.
“Well, during the school year, it was fine because I had homework.” Nellie, across the table from me, actually was lying her head on the tabletop. Her cheek was smushed against the surface, her words slightly muffled. “And doing homework here meant I could pick up a drink from the café.”
