“So,” Courtney said. “Do you know who you’re bringing to Aspen?”
“I don’t know.” Madison sighed and rested an elbow on the armrest. “I want to invite Oliver, but I don’t know if I should.”
“Oliver?” Courtney gasped. If there was one person she didn’t want in that house with them, it was Oliver. “Isn’t he still recovering from his accident?”
“He is, so he won’t be able to ski, but there are lots of other things to do in Aspen,” Madison said. “And I think he’ll be happy to hang out with everyone again.”
“I don’t know.” Courtney shrugged. “He ate lunch outside by himself near where Brett and I eat. He looked like he wanted to be left alone.”
“So that’s where he was,” Madison said. “It was his first day back, so I texted him to try to find him when he wasn’t in the dining hall, but he didn’t reply. I’ll track him down and sit with him tomorrow.”
Courtney sat back and looked out the window. “After what happened between you and Oliver, why do you want to invite him to Aspen?” she asked. “How can you forgive him so easily?”
“Oliver was the only person who was there for me last semester,” Madison said. “He wouldn’t have gone through with Peyton’s dare without telling me the truth. And he’s going through a tough time right now. I want to be there for him. I just wish he would let me.”
“Would he be there for you?” Courtney asked. “If the situation were reversed?”
“Yes.” Madison nodded. “He would.”
Courtney ran her hands through her hair, saying nothing. The Oliver that Madison knew and the Oliver that Courtney had met might as well be two completely different people. And Courtney didn’t trust Oliver for a second.
“I’m going to invite him,” Madison said. “He might not come, but I have to try.”
“He was a huge jerk to me and my sisters from the day we moved here,” Courtney said, biting her lip. “If you want me to say that I’m okay with him coming to Aspen, I can’t do that. It would be a lie, and I’m sick of all these lies everyone’s been telling recently.”
“Me, too,” Madison said. “But you have to understand...these past few months have been rough for all of us. You have no idea how scared I was when Oliver’s parents told me he was in the hospital...” She stared out the window, tracing her fingers along the glass. “I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t been okay.”
Madison seemed so vulnerable in that moment, and for the first time since meeting her, Courtney felt bad for her.
Then Courtney realized—Madison loved Oliver. She wasn’t sure if Madison had realized it yet, but Courtney could see it. Because she suspected she looked the exact same way when she was talking about Brett.
“If you invite Oliver, and he wants to come... I suppose I’ll figure out how to tolerate him for a few days,” she finally said.
“Thank you.” Madison smiled. “And I’m glad you brought it up, because I did want to talk to you about it. Anyway, are you still set on not bringing anyone? It seems like Savannah’s taking all of your invites.”
“You mean with those One Connection guys?” Courtney asked, and Madison nodded. “I don’t know what Perry’s doing with Savannah, but it seems like he’s leading her on, and I don’t like it. I’m worried about her.”
“At least Damien will be there,” Madison said. “From what he’s said to me, he really cares about Savannah.”
“You trust him?”
“Yeah.” Madison didn’t miss a beat. “I do.”
Courtney nodded, because while hearing that about Damien was unexpected, Madison seemed to believe it. And Damien had helped Savannah with her YouTube channel. Compared to Perry, he might actually be good for her sister.
It was crazy how much had changed since last summer.
“I’m not bringing anyone,” Courtney said, answering Madison’s earlier question. “All the people I want to spend time with are already there. My sisters and Brett.”
When she said “her sisters,” she meant Peyton and Savannah. Madison might be related by blood...but sisterhood meant more than that. It was about shared experiences, trust, knowing you had people who would be there for you and would listen to you no matter what, and who could always tell if there was something wrong. They were the ones who, with a single look, knew if you were about to burst into giggles or into tears and why, and who knew when you needed to get out of the house for a midnight trip to In-N-Out Burger to gorge on a milkshake and animal-style fries. They were the ones you could be raging angry with one moment, and completely forgive ten minutes later. She would always be there for her sisters, and they would always be there for her, because they loved each other no matter what.
And no matter what blood might say, Madison Lockhart didn’t feel like Courtney’s sister.
“I think I know what’s going on.” Madison smiled conspiringly. “You and Brett must be together in secret after that kiss over the summer, and you want to spend vacation together. I’m totally over him—what happened between us over the summer was a one-time thing and I’ve been over him for months—so you can be honest with me. I won’t tell anyone.”
“Brett and I aren’t together,” Courtney said—it had become automatic for her over the past few weeks of covering up their relationship. “We have a lot in common, so we’re friends and we hang out a lot, but that’s all it is.”
She glanced down at her lap after speaking. Hadn’t she just told Madison that she was done with the lies? And then she’d gone ahead and said that.
She was officially the biggest hypocrite ever.
But if she told Madison the truth, then Madison might tell someone else, and she couldn’t risk that. She was doing what she had to do for her and Brett.
“Ooookay.” Madison elongated the word, clearly not buying it. “Then what about your friends from school? There has to be someone else you want to invite to Aspen. Or from your old school in California?”
“Not really.” Courtney shrugged and checked her watch. Five minutes until they were back to the Diamond. And in those five minutes, Courtney did not plan on telling Madison the pathetic truth about why she wasn’t using her invites: because she didn’t have any friends to bring along.
In California, once she was old enough to get a job she’d been so busy that she’d lost any friends she’d had. Here in Las Vegas, the acquaintances she had at school barely knew her. They would find it strange if she invited them on a vacation. Sure, on her first day at Goodman a few people had tried to reach out to her, but they’d all seemed disappointed when she wasn’t a free-spirited, party-girl hotel heiress. It didn’t take long for them to stop trying.
When she wasn’t studying, Courtney had been spending all her time with her sisters and with Brett, and she was perfectly fine with that.
At least that was what she’d been trying to tell herself.
chapter 15:
Dear Peyton,
Congratulations! You’ve been accepted to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV).
The email continued on to say how the acceptance was offered with the expectations that her grades would stay where they were and that she would graduate high school in the spring. They gave her a student number to log into the website and accept the offer—which, of course, she hadn’t done.
It had arrived in her inbox a few days ago, with fireworks in the background and everything. She’d stared at it every day since. It also said that a formal letter of acceptance would be arriving in the mail soon.
Which was why, every afternoon, Peyton had been making sure she was the first person to go through the pile of mail the housekeeper left in the foyer. The official letter hadn’t arrived yet, but Courtney was bound to ask Peyton if she’d heard from UNLV soon. And then Peyton would have to tell her the truth—that she’d gott
en in.
She closed out of the email and went to Facebook to check on Jackson. He didn’t post many pictures, except for some of his new apartment, which had so much snow piled up outside that it reached the hoods of the cars. It looked cold and miserable.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, wanting more than anything to send him a Facebook message asking how he was doing. But she stopped herself. If he’d wanted to contact her, he would have. And sending him a message and having him ignore it would only make her feel worse.
So she took a deep breath and closed out of his page. She had to stop checking up on him like this. She had to get over him. He didn’t want to be with her, and since she couldn’t force him to want her, she didn’t have a choice.
Instead, she looked up the gap-year programs again. There were so many companies who offered them, and they went to places all over the world. Cities in remote areas that Peyton used to think she had a better chance of going to Mars than visiting. The photos were cheesy, of people her age smiling with their arms around each other, but Peyton wondered: what would it be like to do something like that? To travel the world for months, not worrying about school, or family drama, or anything else?
It sounded...freeing.
It would also mean leaving her sisters.
Would she be able to do that? Would she want to do that?
She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she hadn’t shared a home with her sisters. She’d never imagined a life where she didn’t see them every day.
Before she could think it through, there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” she said, closing out the browser and shutting her laptop.
Adrian and Rebecca walked inside, and Adrian had a thick envelope in his hand. Peyton frowned at the sight of it. If it was what she suspected... Why had it gone to Adrian’s condo instead of hers?
“What’s that?” she asked, glaring at the envelope.
“A large packet from UNLV,” Adrian said, as if it were something he received in the mail every day. He and Rebecca joined Peyton on the bed, and while it was a queen and had enough space for the three of them, it still felt cramped. He placed the overstuffed envelope in front of her. “It has your name on it, so we thought it was best that you open it.”
“I know what it says.” Peyton stared at it blankly. “I got in.”
“They say a big packet is a better sign than a small letter, but you can’t know until you open it and see for yourself,” Rebecca said.
“I do know.” Peyton gathered her hair over her shoulder and sighed. “They sent me an email a few days ago. I thought the actual letter would come here, but I guess Courtney put your address on the application instead of ours. I should have looked it over before she sent it.”
“Courtney filled out your application?” Adrian asked.
“Yep,” she said. “Do you think I would have applied otherwise?”
“It did seem rather...out of the blue,” he said. “Especially since I thought you didn’t want to go to college.”
“I don’t,” she said. “I’m not going.”
“Then why send the application at all?”
Since he and Rebecca clearly weren’t going to budge until getting an answer, Peyton gave him a rundown of the deal she’d made with Courtney.
“So I told her that she could send in the application for fun to see if she could get me in,” she finished. “And she did. I’m not surprised I got in. The essay she wrote was killer.”
“She doesn’t know yet that you were accepted?” Adrian asked.
“No.” Peyton held his gaze. “I haven’t told anyone.”
“Interesting...” He stroked his chin, as if he thought she was considering going. Which was stupid. Hadn’t she already been clear on her feelings about college?
“Since you’ve known for a few days now, have you already told them your decision?” Rebecca asked.
Peyton crossed her legs and looked down at her bedspread, where the package was still waiting to be opened. “No,” she said. “I have a few weeks before I have to let them know, so I haven’t bothered with it yet. But you already know I’m not going.”
“If you have a few weeks, then there’s no rush to tell them no.” Adrian gestured to the envelope. “Are you going to open it, or should I?”
“I’ll do it.” Peyton grabbed the envelope and ripped it open, pulling the congratulations letter out from amongst the welcome pamphlets.
“Well?” he said.
She thrust the letter at him. “Like I said, I got in. Well... Courtney got me in.”
Rebecca glanced at the door. “Do you think you should let Courtney know?” she asked. “She’ll be so excited to hear the good news.”
Peyton got out of the bed, walked over to her door and opened it. Sure enough, Courtney was there, standing close enough to have been listening to the entire conversation.
“When Rebecca looked over here, I figured that you were listening.” Peyton moved aside and opened the door wide. “Come on... I know you’re coming in no matter what.”
Courtney rushed inside, jumped onto Peyton’s bed and grabbed the acceptance letter. “You got in!” she squealed, beaming at the letter like it was the most valuable piece of paper on earth. “I knew I could get you in.”
“And apparently you knew to put Adrian’s condo as our address so I couldn’t hide it from him.” Peyton rolled her eyes. “But congratulations. You now know that you can write a college essay for the most challenging applicant ever and still get them in.”
Courtney picked up the welcome pamphlet, which had happy students on the cover carrying backpacks, smiling at each other as they walked around campus. “You haven’t said no yet, right?”
“No,” Peyton said. “But I haven’t said yes. And I’m not going to. You know that.”
“Luckily this isn’t a decision that needs to be made immediately,” Rebecca chimed in. “You have a few weeks to get back to them.”
“So during that time, I can do what?” Peyton asked. “Change my mind? That isn’t happening. I’m not going to college next year—not UNLV, or anywhere else.”
“You’ve made that quite clear,” Adrian said. “But you have time to consider your options, so you might as well take it.”
“I don’t get all this fuss about college.” Peyton sighed and leaned against the headboard. “At Fairfield High, people were proud of themselves for graduating at all, because not everyone did. If you said you didn’t want to go to college, that was it. End of discussion. But here, whenever I say I don’t want to go to college, people look at me like I admitted to committing a felony. It’s stupid. Why should I go to college? College is for people who want to study something. I don’t. So it would be a waste of time and a waste of money.”
“But surely you’ve been thinking about what you want to do after graduating high school?” Rebecca asked. “It’s getting so close to the end of the school year.”
“I’ll get a job somewhere,” Peyton said. “Once I graduate I’ll figure it out. A lot of people who graduate college don’t end up doing anything that has to do with their degrees, anyway. So why bother?”
“Get a ‘job somewhere’?” Adrian looked skeptical. “That doesn’t sound like a very well-thought-out plan.”
She shrugged. “It’ll work itself out.”
Courtney played with the acceptance letter, biting her lower lip. Peyton already knew her sister thought she should take general requirement classes at college to figure out what she was interested in, so she wasn’t going to bother asking what she was thinking.
“Well, you have a few weeks to get back to the school, so why don’t you consider it a bit longer?” Rebecca took the letter from Courtney and placed it back inside the envelope, along with the pamphlet of the overly happy students. “At le
ast you know it’s an option. Anyway, while the letter’s exciting, that’s actually not the main reason we came in here right now.”
“It isn’t?” Peyton glanced at Courtney, who shrugged.
“Nope.” Rebecca smiled and stood up from the bed. “I have something I need to ask you. Why don’t we go into Savannah’s room? She’s in there now, right?”
“Yep,” Peyton said. When Savannah wasn’t out, she was on her computer, doing whatever the hell she did online. They went into her room, and sure enough, Savannah was lying in her bed, her MacBook Pro propped on her lap as she furiously typed on the keyboard.
“Hey,” she said, not looking away from the screen. “What’s up?”
Adrian walked to the center of the room. “Rebecca and I wanted to talk with you about something.”
Savannah lowered her laptop screen and raised her eyebrows at Courtney and Peyton. Peyton shrugged to let Savannah know that they were as clueless as she was.
“Okay...” Savannah said, pushing her laptop to the side.
“It’s about the wedding.” Rebecca twisted her engagement ring around her finger. “The three of you already know how happy I am that you agreed to be bridesmaids.”
“Yeah,” Peyton said, dreading whatever new wedding thing Rebecca was going to ask them to do next. She’d already agreed to that boring photo shoot with some high-society magazine, and to sit around when Rebecca was interviewed about her dress, only to have one question asked of her that didn’t even make the article. All of these details were so stupid. The wedding was still a month away, and it all seemed like a hell of a lot of stress for one event that would only take up one weekend.
“Well...” Rebecca paced in a circle, and Peyton sat down on Savannah’s bed, not wanting to get dizzy from looking at her. “Adrian and I see this wedding as not only representing a union between the two of us, but of all of us—including the three of you and Brett—becoming a family. And now that you know about Madison...”
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