Small Town Hearts

by Lillie Vale

  “Would you go talk to Chad for me and, um, tell him I don’t want to see him?”

  “What? Why?”

  She didn’t meet my eyes. “Because I broke up with him.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, sure,” I said, swiping the bottle of beer out of her hands. Penny’s houseboat swayed beneath us, gently bobbing with the tide. “Ha ha.”

  “I’m not kidding. I told Chad we were through yesterday, but I didn’t really handle it that great. He wants to come over, and I just know that if I see him so soon, I’m going to feel crappy and then—” Penny let her hair spill out of its bun and wound the elastic around her wrist. She waited for me to take a swallow before snagging the bottle back. “Please, Babe?”

  Our shoulders brushed as I turned to look at her in disbelief. “What? You dumped him yesterday?”

  She pursed her lips.

  “You … you didn’t tell me.” I was in the deep end. I was always the first one she went to when it came to Chad, when it came to anyone. Loss took hold in my stomach, filling my limbs with cold. “Why—why did you break up?”

  “I didn’t know that I was going to,” said Penny. “It kind of happened out of nowhere. I wasn’t planning it.”

  “So you broke up with him … just because?” They had been together for years. Since we were fourteen. Was this a joke? Was there something I wasn’t getting? A minute ago, everything had been okay.

  She looked back at me, stare for stare. There wasn’t a hint of a joke in her eyes. I’d always thought her brown was much more beautiful than my blue—warm and friendly and all-encompassing. She didn’t look that way now. Still, I waited for her face to break into a smile, for her to cry Gotcha! and tease me about how I’d fallen for it.

  I felt sick, my stomach thrashing. Queasy, I looked away. I had this writhing thing inside me, something terrified and angry and wholly new. Something that Penny had birthed. Something that, worst of all, wanted to go along with what she wanted just so I could stop feeling this way. This sick, petrified way that told me that everything had just changed.

  I wanted to heave. I wanted to scream. This was our summer—Chad’s and Penny’s and mine. The very last summer we’d have before college.

  From where we sat, cross-legged on her deck, I could see the wooden slats of the pier where we’d used chalk to draw a yin-yang sun and moon. The fiery sunburst orange and the calm blue melded together to form one shape that represented wholeness and harmony.

  That was us, Penny and me.

  “It just all feels so same-y,” said Penny. Her voice sounded like it was coming from very far away. “Like we’ve been the same people our entire lives and nothing’s changed. College is my chance—his chance, too—to start again.”

  I didn’t like the way she said that. Like she’d been paused for the last few years. It hadn’t been that way for me. These were the best years of our lives. How could she not see that?

  She stretched her legs out and let her head loll back. Her voice softened. “Babe, I just … I think this is what’s best for me.”

  I wouldn’t argue with her. And anyway, it was done. It was already over. My opinion seemed unnecessary now.

  “Could you just run some interference and make sure he doesn’t drop by?” asked Penny. The edge of desperation in her voice didn’t sound right, not on her.

  I startled out of my fog. It was one thing to accept her decision; it was another to actually involve myself in the fallout. “How do you expect me to do that?”

  “He texted me. Said he’s going to come over.” She dropped her eyes to her lap. “I didn’t really give him a reason yesterday. Could you … could you do, like, a Breakup 2.0?”

  This was too much, even for her. I gaped. “No way. He’s your boyfriend. I’m not going to just—it’s not my place, Penny. Oh my God. It needs to come from you. Properly, this time.”

  Her lips scrunched. “Just tell him I haven’t changed my mind.”

  Crazy to think that if I hadn’t started school a year late, we wouldn’t have ended up in the same grade. The three of us had been friends since elementary school. Didn’t she care that he was my friend, too? I wanted to scrunch in on myself, ball myself up like a wad of paper. I didn’t have a lot of constants in my life, but Chad and Penny? I thought I could count on them always being there, all of us always being together. The three of us were a team. Without our friendship, I would have fallen apart the past year. Between my ex-girlfriend leaving for college and my mom spending less and less time at home, I’d clung to my friends like the lifelines they were.

  She must have read the conflict on my face, because she sighed and handed back the bottle. “I don’t think I can face him, B. It’s just … it’s Chad. It’s not easy.”

  I laughed. “And it is for me?”

  “We’re starting college in September. People are supposed to break up before they go to college.”

  My arms flushed hot. We weren’t starting college—they were. Penny had the habit of saying it like I’d be right there on their first day, but I wouldn’t be.

  “That’s because most people go to different colleges,” I said. “You two are staying right here in Oar’s Rest. You don’t need to break up.”

  “What if I just want to?” asked Penny. “What if I want to start fresh with someone new? What if I want to be different? Don’t I have that right?”

  The cold hand of dread felt its way down my spine as Penny’s words echoed over and over in my head. With a little snip snip, could I be cut out of her life just as easily? When she talked about starting over, it was hard not to feel like she was shedding our friendship like a snake that had outgrown its skin.

  Penny put the bottle to her mouth and took a deep swallow, buying me the time to collect my racing thoughts. Her silence made me feel paper-thin. It was just summer, but she was already thinking about fall. About being someone else in fall, someone who wasn’t recognizable as my best friend or Chad’s girlfriend. In that moment, she reminded me so much of one of the paper dolls we’d played with as children. Her mom had bought a book of them for us, sweet-faced dolls punched out of pages, who could be altered with just a change of outfit into someone new.

  In the distance I heard the dull thuds of stroller wheels bumping over the pier. A seagull’s caw as it swooped over the water and landed with nimble grace on a support beam. The sound of water cresting at the bow of a boat slicing through the stillness.

  Penny touched the cold bottle to my knee. “So? Will you? Please?”

  I couldn’t say yes to her. There was no way. I ignored the thing in my stomach. Chad was our friend. Having this incredibly awkward discussion with him on her behalf would feel too much like us versus him. It was fine if Penny wanted to start college single, but I didn’t want to choose sides.

  It wasn’t like when we were kids. It had been easy to be the mediator then, to fix whatever had cracked before it actually broke. When you had two best friends, it was just something you had to do if you didn’t want to be torn between them. I didn’t want to feel the pressure of having to choose. We’d never really had this conversation, but I couldn’t help but feel a little betrayed anyway. I had never wanted to pick one of my best friends over the other. And yet here I was.

  “Chicks over dicks,” said Penny.

  In this situation, it wasn’t him who was the dick.

  I rubbed the side of my nose, resenting her easy assumption that I was on her side. It wasn’t that I wasn’t, exactly, but I wasn’t her henchwoman, either. It felt dirty and grubby to do her work for her. Not looking at her, I mumbled, “Right. Yeah. I know.” I felt like it was expected of me.

  A memory floated from the deepest recesses of my mind, softly blurred at the edges. When we were little kids, Chad had been chubby. He wasn’t one of the boys who had made fun of Penny’s lunches, but he’d joined in the laughter. So when he’d started hanging around us more often, making it clear he wanted to be our friend, Penny made him do all kinds of stupid things to ear
n our forgiveness.

  It was her favorite game to make him ring someone’s doorbell and run away as fast as he could, only we were always faster, so we were already giggling behind a hedge while he was huffing and puffing his way down the driveway. He was the one who got in trouble, not us. A decade later and it still made my mouth taste sour.

  But she was my first real friend. The first friend who had chosen me back, not someone who was forced to play with me because our moms set up a playdate. The way we’d treated Chad was mean, and even back then, I’d known it was wrong, but Penny had the kind of charisma that made us want to pass her test of friendship.

  Penny was like that. If someone said something to her, it wasn’t just hers to deal with. It was mine and Chad’s, too. And Penny was always willing to show up for a fight and have our backs. It made me proud that she unfailingly thought of us as a team, but for the first time, I didn’t want it to be us against the world. Not if the world was Chad.

  “Babe,” snapped Penny, impatient now. She frowned at me.

  She wanted me to tell her I’d do it. She was waiting for me to do what she wanted. The hard edge in her voice couldn’t be softened even by the glow of alcohol.

  Would I be the next to go if I failed her now? My vision swam. All I wanted was for things to go on like they always had. There was safety in things staying the same. A year from now, five years from now, all I wanted was for us to be the same, doing things together, being the people we’d always been. I didn’t want to be the kind of friends who drifted apart after high school, the kind who could live in the same town and still be strangers. I didn’t want to think about fall and college and uncertainties. I wanted what was certain. I wanted what was right now. Was that so wrong? Was it so unreasonable?

  “Babe,” said Penny. “I really need you. Please, will you talk to him for me?” She reached out to twine her fingers between mine. She squeezed. I understood. She needed me to be her strength.

  The thing in my stomach was roaring at me. I squeezed my eyes shut. My friends were my everything. They meant more to me than any of my exes ever had. The only way this summer would be saved was if I saved it. I knew my role well. I could be the captain and get us through these rough waves.

  “All right,” I said. My shoulders hunched, defeated. “If you really want me to.”

  The tension lifted with her smile. “Oh my God, thank you, thank you, thank you! I just know if I do it, it’ll turn into this whole big thing. Chad and I need a better reason to stay together than habit.” She rolled her eyes. “We’re not Rory and Logan.”

  She loved Gilmore Girls. I wasn’t such a fan, but I watched it for her. “If you were Rory, though, then I’m Jess,” I said. “Because I’m always there for you.” It was hard not to say it with a little resentment, but she didn’t appear to notice.

  “You are,” said Penny, pale skin shimmering in the hazy glow of twilight. Her smile was luminous as she leaned forward to lay her head on my shoulder. “You’re the best, B.”

  The guilt that churned in an angry whorl dissipated when she pressed her cool lips to my curve of my shoulder. We stayed like that for a minute, or maybe it was more than that. The beer lay between us, forgotten, and the outside waves and chatter dulled to nothing.

  The stillness was broken only when Penny’s phone beeped. She tore herself away to look at the screen. “It’s Chad,” she said, holding the phone up as proof. “He just left his house.” She typed something back, face inscrutable. “Feels too weird to have him back in my house after yesterday. I told him to wait on the beach. You can meet him there.”

  “The beach?” Guilt stabbed at me again. “Penny, I don’t know—”

  “It’s not a big deal.” She placed her phone on the deck and leaned against the wall. She cast a sidelong glance at me, lips pursed. “You said you’d do it.”

  It needled that she felt she had to give me a reminder. I’d played the go-between to smooth over many of their little tiffs, but this was a big deal. It wasn’t like when they argued about how to spend Friday night or when Chad caught Penny returning someone’s flirtations at her parties. Those times had been different. “But—”

  “Go!” she said, her voice sharp with urgency. “He’s going to just come over if you take too long to show.”

  “But I don’t know what to say to—”

  Penny shoved at my shoulder. “You promised.”

  She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Babe, I just don’t want to see him right now. I don’t want to feel bad about doing what I need to do. If I don’t do this now, then … everything will always be the same. We’ll always be the same. I can see it all stretching in front of me. College, engagement, marriage, children, just … all of it! I can’t deal with love like this. Not right now. We just graduated. I want to be free. I want to feel like I’m growing up, like I’m doing real things. I don’t feel like that when I’m with—” She paused. “With him.”

  But I’d heard that little crack in her voice. She hadn’t been about to say with him. She’d meant to say with you two. Both me and Chad. Tingles shot up my spine. If this was my test, I would make sure to pass. I would do what she wanted.

  The thing in my stomach calmed. I was doing what it wanted, too.

  I stood up. “Okay, okay!” I flashed my palms at her. “I’m going.”

  As I scrambled onto the pier, I almost lost my balance. Dotting the boards in front of her boat like a welcome mat were her yacht and sailboat doodles. Chad always encouraged her to pursue art—even when we were little kids, he’d been the first to buy her arts and crafts.

  My breath caught as I looked down. Something uncomfortable stole across my heart. My foot had severed the yin-yang chalk drawing.

  two

  I intercepted Chad at the other end of the pier. He looked up from his phone, vague surprise crossing his face. “Where’s Penny?” His blue eyes darted over my shoulder like he expected her to materialize out of thin air.

  “Can we—” I looked around, faltering. There was nowhere for us to go that would be private. Even if Penny didn’t care, and I was sure that deep down she did, I wouldn’t break the news to him in front of other people. Especially since some of our high school dude bros were lounging nearby.

  I found an abandoned stretch of sand that was more pebble than beach and pointed to it. Chad slowed his loping strides until we were side by side. From the frequent sidelong glances he threw me, I could tell he was itching to ask what all the secrecy was about.

  Chad shuffled his feet in the sand. “What’s going on?”

  “I can’t just want to talk to my best friend?” Part of me thought that if I delayed the conversation, it would be easier.

  He snorted. “Come on. When’s the last time you and I”—he gestured between us—“actually talked?”

  As I opened my mouth to respond, he beat me to it.

  “And I mean just us. Me and you. About real stuff, things that matter.” He fixed me with a pointed stare.

  He had me there. Conflicting emotions built up inside me until my chest felt tight and stretched. Penny knew that this was a big ask. But she’d asked it anyway. That was Penny all over, but this wasn’t me. I wasn’t okay with this. I wished to God I hadn’t agreed, but now I was here and Chad was here, and there was no escape route. Penny was probably on her second beer by now, waiting for my text to tell her I had it all handled. Before, her faith in me would have been a comfort. Now it was a noose.

  “Kinda worrying me here, Babe,” said Chad. He kicked at the sand, and when I still couldn’t unstick my mouth, he kicked some right onto the tops of my feet.

  I shook the sand out of my flip-flops. “I heard about what happened yesterday.”

  His mouth opened and closed. He took a step closer, lowering his voice. “She told you?”

  Now it was my turn to fidget. I slipped my foot from my flip-flop and dragged my big toe through the sand, creating a line between us.

  “Damn,” said Chad. “It feels weirdl
y more real if she’s actually telling people.”

  I bristled. I wasn’t people. Immediately, my irritation rerouted. It wasn’t him I was upset with. What was I doing here? This wasn’t my place. I had no right to break his heart, and now that I thought about it, really thought about it … Penny didn’t, either.

  What was her excuse? She wanted to be single? She didn’t want to be one of those girls who went to college with a boyfriend and had to miss out on meeting new people?

  None of that was a good enough reason to dump someone who loved you.

  “Babe, seriously. What’s up?” Chad took a step closer and settled his hands on my upper arms, as if he was trying to steady me.

  The last time he was this close—the last time we’d talked about real stuff—he had said something neither of us had been ready for.

  One of his buddies shouted at him from the beach and Chad half turned, waving him off. When he looked back at me, concern pooling in his eyes, I felt something inside me give.

  This was Chad, my best friend. The guy who taste-tested all my cookies and cakes, even the ones that didn’t turn out great. The guy who showed me how to build my first sandcastle when we were kids, and then chased the older kids away when they tried to demolish it. The guy who taught me how to change a tire and drive a stick, even though I told him these life skills would be totally wasted on a girl who didn’t need to own a car. I couldn’t draw this hideousness out. Not for his sake, or for mine.

  “Penny doesn’t want you to come around tonight,” I whispered. “She wanted me to tell you that she isn’t going to change her mind.”

  My words hung between us, suspended and fragile, like the smallest puff of breath could blow them away. It took a second for it to register on his face, and when it did, I wasn’t prepared.

  His cheek twitched as his expression morphed into disbelief, then hurt, then anger. He didn’t need to speak for me to know everything he didn’t say. I felt it, too. Cheated, somehow. The sadness was there, too, but more than that it was the feeling of being used.