Page 46

“You did the sigh sigh.” She sets the spoon down and crosses her arms. “Sloane.”

I consider, for a moment, the cost of telling her versus the cost of not. The not-telling is easier in the short term and worse in the long term, the way it always is, and I’m tired enough that the long term wins.

“Evan’s been texting,” I say.

Margo’s whole face changes.

It’s worth saying that Margo has never liked Evan.

This isn’t a recent development dredged up to make me feel better after the fact. She didn’t like him in March, when I started seeing him, and she didn’t like him in May, and she said so both times, in the clear, sunny, completely unmovable way Margo says things she’s decided are true. She has more friends in the football crowd than I’ll ever have — cheerleaders and players orbit the same gravitational system, and Margo is beloved in it — which means she has watched Evan be Evan in rooms where he thought no one whose opinion mattered was watching, and she has not been impressed by what she saw.

“What does he want?” she asks, flat, which is the closest Margo gets to dangerous.

“To talk. To explain. To inform me that he didn’t, and I’m quoting, actually do anything wrong.”

The spoon goes back down on the counter with a small, precise click.

“He did not.”

“He did.”

“He texted you the words I didn’t actually do anything wrong after you walked in on him—” she gestures, a sharp circular motion that encompasses the entire situation without naming it “—with her.”

“He framed it as a disagreement by saying we never established exclusivity. Therefore…”

“Therefore nothing. Therefore he’s a worm.” Margo pulls two plates down from the open shelf with more force than plates require. “And not even an interesting worm. A boring, predictable, bad-at-football worm, which is the part that genuinely offends me, Sloane. If you’re going to be a cheater you could at least be good at the sport you’re allegedly prioritizing over your relationship. Three and eight. Three and eight.”

I feel something in my chest unclench by a degree. This is the thing about Margo when she’s angry on your behalf — it’s so uncomplicated, so completely on your side, that it does a thing for you that careful sympathy never could. She’s not handling me. She’s just furious, cleanly, in my direction.

“And Vivienne,” she continues, plating chicken. “Vivienne Park. Of course it’s Vivienne. Those two deserve each other. I mean that. I hope they’re very happy performing relentless superiority at each other for the rest of their lives.” She glances up. “You know she’s going for the same Yale thing as you.”

“I’m aware.”

“She submitted three weeks early so she could tell people she submitted three weeks early.”

“I’m aware of that too.”

“You’re going to wipe the floor with her.” Margo says it without drama, like a weather report. “You’re a better actor and a better person and you don’t smell like a department store. Here.” She hands me a plate, and it’s genuinely beautiful — golden chicken, vegetables glazed and crackling at the edges, the quinoa with the lemon and the herbs she knows I like. Margo cooks the way she does everything, with full commitment and a flair that should be annoying and somehow isn’t. “Sofa. Now. We’re not eating standing up like animals.”

We settle on the sofa, and the leather makes its familiar complaint, and Margo pulls the throw blanket with the geometric pattern over her knees and balances her plate like a person who has eaten approximately nine hundred meals in exactly this position.

The TV is paused, mid-frame, on a woman in a very specific shade of blue and white.

“You’re watching the cheerleader show again,” I say.

“I’m watching the cheerleader show again.” She’s already cueing it up. “Season two. Don’t judge me, it’s research, I’m a professional.”

“You’re a college cheerleader.”

“It’s aspirational research.” She points the remote at the screen. “These women are elite athletes and the world treats them like decoration and I find it both infuriating and deeply soothing, and you’re going to watch it with me, and you’re going to like it.”

I slip my boots off — the ones that are a half size too big, that I keep meaning to replace and never do — and pull my feet up under me, cross-legged, my plate warm in my lap. The chicken is, predictably, excellent. The first bite does the thing food does when you didn’t realize how hungry you were until it arrived, and I feel the day recede another inch.

Margo doesn’t press play.

I look over. She’s biting her lip — the way she bites her lip when she’s holding something, which Margo is constitutionally bad at doing for long.

“What?” I ask.