by Elia Winters
“Well, are they?” Scarlett’s eyebrow went up in irritating judgment.
Megan turned away toward the closet, her face still red. “None of your business.” It was none of her business because no, nobody was seeing it lately. She had been celibate for months now. But Scarlett didn’t need to know that.
The dress hung right in the middle of the closet, still in its plastic garment bag. She had not intended on buying something so pretty, so fancy, but this long lilac gown with dark purple lace overlay had spoken to her in a way no little black dress had. Pulling it out of the closet, she prepared for Scarlett’s judgey comments. “Here.” She put it out on the bed, laying it carefully but trying not to look like she was being really careful about it. If Scarlett knew how much she cared about her opinion, still, even after these years, she’d never live it down.
“Oh.” Scarlett stepped closer, and her expression was hard to read, so Megan braced herself. Then, finally, she said, “Megan, it’s beautiful. It’s going to look so pretty on you.”
Megan felt even weirder with the compliment than with an insult. “Thanks.”
Scarlett touched the fabric. “It’s really nice. This must have cost a fortune.”
“I got it on after-holiday sale last week. Those are still going on.” Megan hadn’t wanted to spend money on herself, especially not on something as frivolous as a dress she probably wouldn’t wear again, but she hadn’t been able to say no to this dress, especially with its reasonable price tag. “What about you? You get a dress yet?”
“I was thinking about maybe wearing...a suit?” Scarlett scrunched up her nose like she was considering. “There’s this gray velvet one I saw on sale, and I sometimes think that girls in suits are super hot, but usually that’s skinny girls, not, you know.” She gestured to herself, all those curves, and flushed. Oh. Was Scarlett embarrassed? How long had it been since Megan had seen Scarlett embarrassed? It brought out a weird desire to comfort her.
“A suit would look great. Maybe with some heels, or boots? And, like, a camisole.” Scarlett would look amazing like that, her curves filling out all the parts of the suit, and the feeling was kind of weird. She hadn’t thought about Scarlett like that since some confusing sleepovers in high school, long before she’d figured out what those feelings meant.
“You think?”
Megan busied herself with pulling the plastic bag back down over her purple dress and hanging it back in the closet. Anything that would prevent or distract her from this weird sensation. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so. It’s a good look. You look good in everything you wear.”
“Oh, come on.” Scarlett huffed out a laugh. “Quit making fun of me.”
Megan paused. Maybe Scarlett didn’t know she was gorgeous. “I’m not making fun of you. You look good in everything. It’s one of the things that annoys the hell out of me about you.”
There, now they were back to whatever bickering had become normal for them in this brief time of rekindling some kind of friendship. Scarlett rolled her eyes. “Sure. You got any ideas about this road trip, or not?”
“Of course I do.” Megan had nothing but ideas. She glanced at the scrapbook on her nightstand, the one that she’d been poring over most nights since her conversation with Scarlett.
Maybe she was staring at it for too long, because Scarlett snapped her fingers in front of Megan’s face. “Hey! Stop zoning out.”
“I wasn’t zoning out. I was thinking.” Megan snatched the scrapbook up off her nightstand. “I’ve got a scrapbook here of all the places I want to visit. I didn’t put anything on the map because I wasn’t sure you’d be up for going to any of them.”
“A scrapbook? Let me see.” Scarlett held out her hands, which made Megan clutch the scrapbook ever tighter.
“No. I’ll go through it.”
“Do you have naked pictures of yourself in that scrapbook?” Scarlett waggled her eyebrows, making Megan laugh despite herself.
Two could play at that game. “I keep my naked pictures on my computer like everybody else.” She pushed past a gobsmacked Scarlett, taking a bit of satisfaction from that look of shock, and headed back to the kitchen and the maps.
Scarlett trailed after her. “Wait. Seriously. Have you taken naked pictures of yourself?”
“Why, do you want to see them?”
Megan said it as a retort, but Scarlett’s eyes went fractionally wider, and Megan’s face blazed hot all over again. Shit. This was some unspoken territory, and she had no idea how to negotiate it. “Come look at this map,” she said, changing the subject as quickly as she could.
“Right.” Scarlett dropped it, too, fortunately, and for a moment, she looked as unsettled as Megan felt before her regular demeanor snapped back into place. “You know, I thought maybe you’d have, like, a whole itemized list drawn up with mileage and key facts. It doesn’t seem like you to procrastinate.”
“I didn’t procrastinate. I wanted your input.” Megan tapped the map. “I will draw your attention again to my excellent highlighting skills.”
Scarlett leaned over to nod at the single line. “A notable start.”
“So you are okay with detours?” Megan had been worried Scarlett would want to do this the most direct way possible so as not to spend time in the car with her, and she hadn’t wanted to fight about it.
“I thought you were planning to stop at every ass-backwards tourist trap between here and the border. I’ve already resigned myself to my fate.” Scarlett spread her arms wide. “Hit me with your destinations.”
Megan got hesitantly to her feet. Now, faced with the paper map and the permanence of marking something on it, she paused. Her sensible ballpoint pen lay untouched in the middle of the map, resting in a crease.
She couldn’t put her dreams aside forever. At some point, she had to start living.
She grabbed the pen and drew a tight circle around New York City. “There.”
Scarlett nodded slowly, looking at the circle. “It’s a good choice.”
“Thanks. I’m glad you approve.” Megan couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice, but it was just defensiveness without malice, and Scarlett didn’t take the bait.
Scarlett waited, her expression expectant. “And what else?”
She might as well dig into the scrapbook. Megan flipped it open with a sigh of resignation. Scarlett was going to see this stuff anyway. If Scarlett made fun of her choices, she could always say that she was allowed to do whatever she wanted since she was paying most of the money, and she kept that excuse in her back pocket.
New York was the first page, so she was able to skip right by that. Scarlett put out a hand as she turned the page, though, and stopped her. “Wait a minute. Let me see.” She kept her hand there, holding the page open. “You made this?”
It was just a scrapbook page, decorated with images of the city, photographs and a couple of drawings, the words “New York City” spread across the page. “Yeah.” Megan drew back her hand. Scarlett didn’t look about to make fun of her, so maybe this was fine. “I like scrapbooking.”
“Why’d you leave all these blank spots?” Scarlett asked.
“For my own pictures.”
Megan turned to the very front page, the one at the start of this section, where she’d created a sort of vision board for her scrapbook. It had all kinds of inspirational words like “travel” and “dream,” which was maybe a bit cheesy but she liked it. The center focal point was a couple of Polaroids she’d taken: one of the beach at sunset that she’d taken over the Gulf of Mexico, and one of a dandelion just starting to lose its seeds to the wind.
“This is really good, Meg.” Scarlett sounded genuine. Genuine, and impressed, and kind. Oh, suddenly Megan wanted to forgive all the ways she’d been wronged, wanted to tell Scarlett all her deepest hopes and dreams, wanted them to go back to the way they were.
Instead, M
egan clamped her lips shut and nodded once, curtly. Those were dangerous feelings, the kind that got her in over her head. She couldn’t get her heart broken again by trusting Scarlett too much.
“Can I look at the rest of it?” Scarlett asked, drawing the book closer to herself.
“No.” Megan pulled it out of her hands, more violently than she’d intended, and Scarlett’s eyes widened. “Maybe some other time. I just...want to focus right now. On the map.”
She added a few easy ones first. Washington, DC, which was a place everybody should visit. Tybee Island in Georgia was the closest one to home that she could circle, followed by Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. That was where Scarlett stopped her.
“Okay, wait a minute.” Scarlett held out another hand. “It is February. And you have not one but two beaches on this sheet. Are you unfamiliar with the fact that winter is occurring, right now, in our lives?”
“I know. But I want to go there.” Stubbornly, Megan flipped the pages of her scrapbook until she found the page she’d made for Tybee Island. “It’s supposed to have the most beautiful sunrises on the east coast.”
“So you want to get there for a sunrise?” Scarlett frowned. “That’s a far drive, Meg. That’s got to be what, four hours?” She pulled out her phone and started typing in something. “Five hours! It’s a five-hour drive. Do you have any idea what time we would have to leave in order to watch the sun come up on Tybee Island?”
“Okay! Fine. It was dumb.” Megan’s skin felt hot, and she quickly drew an X through her previous circle. She should have known this wouldn’t be a good idea. It was only five hours away; maybe she could go there on her own. She drew another X over the Myrtle Beach circle. “And we can skip Myrtle Beach, too. I just heard it was pretty.” It was easier to give in. Did any of it matter that much, anyway?
Scarlett looked at her. Really looked at her, close enough that Megan couldn’t escape that gaze. She was never comfortable with the intensity of Scarlett’s full attention.
“Sorry,” Scarlett eventually muttered. “Show me your Tybee Island page.”
So Megan slid the scrapbook over to her, and Scarlett looked at the magazine picture of grasses blowing against white beach sand, the reddening sky promising daylight. “Fine. We’ll go to your beach.” Scarlett leaned over and re-circled Tybee Island. “And the other one, too.” She added Myrtle Beach to the list with another circle. “I’ll freeze my damn ass off, but you can get your scrapbook pictures. Okay?”
“I can go on my own, if you’re gonna be a bitch about it.”
Scarlett smiled. “Very funny. No, I’ll go with you. I’m not swimming or some ridiculous shit like that, though, capisce?”
* * *
Scarlett left that night more exhausted than she’d been in a while. Dealing with Megan was exhausting. Had it always been so difficult? Of course not. Not when they were friends. But whatever they were now, it certainly wasn’t friends, and the tension between them was enough to wear her out and leave her emotionally drained. She had to walk on eggshells around Megan. Megan was so touchy, ready to get defensive about everything, even when Scarlett was totally only teasing.
They’d ended up with a route, though. Scarlett hadn’t computed the days of travel, but she was going to have to. The trip had gotten quite lengthy once Megan started opening up about things she wanted to see. Scarlett hadn’t added any destinations of her own—this was Megan’s trip, after all, and she was just along to do some of the driving.
The worst part of all of this was how much she wanted Megan to have a good trip. She’d let that friendship go, and now she was getting sucked right back into it again. Back when they stopped talking to each other, it had seemed a necessary evil. Now, though, Scarlett missed her, and she missed the friendship they had.
She hadn’t missed the fact that Megan was really cute.
She wasn’t hot. Megan wasn’t a “hot” type of girl. Maybe with a haircut and the right makeup, and a really slutty dress, sure, but Megan as-is had this fresh-faced beauty that Scarlett had quietly mooned over back in high school, and then ignored, because Megan didn’t swing that way and Scarlett was terrified of being rejected.
Whatever. The damage was done. She was going on a road trip with Megan Harris in only a few short days, from the looks of things, and she hadn’t packed or, hell, even bought that gray velvet suit she’d been eyeing in the mall.
She had a lot to get done. And that wasn’t counting all the ways she was going to have to distract herself from her frustrating—and frustratingly cute—road trip buddy.
She pulled into her driveway. Jacen had gone to bed already, or was out with his boyfriend. Good thing she had the place to herself; she needed some alone time to think.
And, as embarrassing as it was, maybe a cold shower.
* * *
Megan spent the next day in a flurry of disbelief and worry, vacillating so quickly between the two sometimes that she could barely tell them apart. One minute, this was the best idea she’d ever had, and the next, she was being reckless and irresponsible. There was no middle ground in her mind, not when she was doing something so far outside her comfort zone. But her comfort zone had gotten way too limited, and it was time to shake it up.
Now, with the two of them leaving in just a few days, Megan was in focused efficiency mode. She had tacked a to-do list onto the fridge and checked it again, for the third time today, to make sure she was on schedule. She’d blasted through almost everything on it, but a few annoying items still lingered, and she was going to get them done today.
The next item on her list was cleaning out the fridge, and that was where Matt found her an hour later, down on her hands and knees scrubbing the glass shelving.
“You still going through with this?”
This question again, like he hadn’t brought it up a dozen times in the last weeks, either directly or obliquely. Megan rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand, not bothering to look up from her task. “Yes.”
“You don’t have to do this to prove something to me, you know.”
Like she would actually do that. She laughed. “Sure. Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“Eh, I don’t know if I want to keep that job. They booked me two Saturdays in a row, and there’s a concert I want to go see next weekend.”
Megan sat back on her heels, pausing, the cold air of the fridge on one side of her face as she looked up at her younger brother. The mixture of annoyance, anger, and disgust rolling in her stomach was making her feel sick, and it wasn’t anxiety about the trip. “What the hell are you doing with yourself, Matt?”
“What?” He shifted back, frowning. “You’re asking me that? You, who don’t know what the fuck you’re doing with yourself without the diner?”
She had told herself she’d deal with reality after her trip, and reminded herself of that, tamping down the uncertainty his words evoked. “I paid your share of the electric and cable bills again.”
“Thanks.” Matt reached past her to grab a can of soda off the top shelf, where she was still cleaning.
“No, not thanks. You owe me a hundred and twenty dollars.”
He winced. “Meg, I’ll get it to you before your trip. I want to keep a cushion in case I get to go to that concert.”
Something snapped inside her, like a rubber band overstretched inside her brain, the parts ricocheting sharply around her mind. “Move out.”
Matt laughed. “Soon enough. I’m saving up, you know that. It’s way cheaper to live here than at my own place, and my friends aren’t responsible like you—”
“No. I mean, this month. Move out.”
Matt stopped laughing all at once. “You’re serious?”
“As a heart attack.” Everything else had vanished in the face of her resolve. She’d put this off long enough, always resistant to putting out the effort, always coming back to the underlying b
elief that family took care of family, no matter what. Her brother had been taking advantage of her for years, and he was going to keep doing it until she stopped letting him. That moment was today.
“You’re kicking me out, just like that?” He pressed a hand to his heart. “I’m your brother.”
The calm settled over her like a soft blanket, smothering the anger and frustration that so frequently colored their interactions, and Megan no longer felt sick at all. “Yes. I’ll give you thirty days. If you can’t find a place by then, you can ask mom and dad to crash with them.”
Matt pressed his lips tightly together. She had never drawn a clear line like this with him before, never made him act like an adult, and dammit, she couldn’t survive like this anymore. Not today, not now, not with everything else in her life.
“Fine, whatever. You know this trip isn’t going to fix anything, right? You’re going off with your girlfriend, and you’ll come home and be the same girl you’ve always been. And then you’re not going to have me here helping you.”
She didn’t even want to fight with him over this, didn’t need to correct him. He could believe whatever he wanted. She was done. Megan turned back to the refrigerator. “You can get boxes for your stuff at the liquor store.”
Matt swore under his breath and walked away, leaving Megan alone with the fridge. She smiled into its depths. He could say what he wanted, but she could feel changes yet to come.
Packing? Packing was a different story.
By all accounts, this should be easy. She liked the methodical precision of arranging outfits and folding them neatly into packing cubes. She had mapped out the predicted weather for the entire eastern seaboard for their trip, as far ahead as the websites would let her, sketching out the next ten days as close to precisely as she could. But she was a Florida girl; temps making it down to freezing was a newsworthy event around here, and where they were headed, thirty degrees was an optimistic high. How many sweaters did a person wear when it was below thirty? She didn’t even own long underwear, but was long underwear something a person owned in this day and age, or was that just some Little House on the Prairie thing?