“Remind me why we’re out here again?”
“We’re here to support my boyfriend and our friend,” Emery said, shielding her eyes and looking out over the Bay.
The rowing crew was out of sight, around a bend in the Bend. Their coaches stood on the dock several yards ahead of us, stopwatches in hand, as they watched and waited.
“It’ll be Tucker’s first regatta as a senior and Xander’s first for CHA. It’s a big deal.”
“Hm,” I said, hunched in my old jacket, scanning the horizon for Orion and pretending I wasn’t as eager to see him as Emery was to see Xander.
“You mean to tell me you aren’t having fun, wasting your afternoon freezing your booty off out here with me?” Emery teased.
I laughed and rolled my eyes. “More fun than I can handle. And don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.”
“What secret?”
“That the glamorous Emery Wallace is actually kind of a dork.”
She giggled, nudged my elbow and, not for the first time, I marveled that this girl was my friend. That I had gotten her all wrong. When I’d met Emery, I was sure she was just another Richie without a care in the world. The Queen Bee in a hive full of drones who worshipped her. But she was kind, sweet, and a talented artist with a tyrant for a father, hell-bent on cramming her into a little life she didn’t want.
And she’d listen to you just like you listen to her. Tell her about Orion. Get itoutso it’s not chewing you up inside.
But then Emery shocked the hell out of me by telling me she’d applied in secret to UCLA and how Xander had offered to marry her so she could detach from her parents’ money for financial aid.
I blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“But I don’t think I could go through with it,” she said. “I don’t want to get married unless I mean it. Not until I’m older and can actually do it right. Because it’s important to me. And anyway, if I gothrough with all this, my dad will disown me for sure. I wouldn’t have a family.”
“Are they really worth keeping?” I asked gently. “I know that sounds terrible, and I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to have the kind of pressure they’re putting on you. But if our own family is no good for us, it’s okay to build a new one from scratch.”
She smiled sadly. “Easier said than done.”
I took her hand. “Xander believes in you, or he wouldn’t have made that offer. And I think, deep down, you believe in you.”
“I’m trying.” She smiled. “In any case, I don’t have to worry about it right now.”
“Emery—”
“So!” she said brightly. “Who’s your date to the Halloween festival?”
I started to argue but there was no arguing with Emery once she put on her Everything Is Okay smile.
“As of right now, no one,” I said.
“Any prospects?”
For one wild moment, a fantasy bloomed in my mind of Orion turning to me in chem, no barriers, no caste system, no protective defenses standing in the way…
“I’m waiting for a particular someone to ask me,” I said softly, without thinking.
Emery bounced in her seat. “Oooh, who? Tell me! Someone I know?”
“No, forget it,” I said, coming to my senses. “It’s not going to happen. Not in my lifetime.”
Ask me again, Emery, so I can tell you. Ask me so I can say his name out loud and you can confirm everything Aria and Elowen told me—tell me he’s a manwhore, a heartbreaker who takes pity on the occasional Bender, and then I can finally stop thinking about him.
But Emery bit her lip, thinking. “Okay, how about Dean?”
“We’re just friends.”
