Isn't She Lovely

by Lauren Layne

  Possibly.

  No. Probably.

  The thought makes me sick, and yet am I any better? I’m doing the opposite thing for the exact same reason. Instead of keeping close someone who’s perhaps bad for me, I’m pushing someone away who’s absolutely good for me.

  All because she doesn’t fit.

  Olivia’s eyes are on my face. “You love her.”

  It’s like she’s stabbed me. That word was thrown out so easily between the two of us over the years, each giving and receiving it, and while I’m sure we meant it, it was too light. We took it for granted. Took each other for granted.

  And because I can’t think of love and Stephanie just yet, I focus on Olivia.

  “Why’d you do it?” I ask.

  She had to know the question was coming, and yet she jolts as though dealt a blow.

  “Ethan … I’ve tried to explain so many times. I’ve called. I’ve texted. I came by your parents’ house, but you were never there.…”

  “So explain now.”

  Her hand finds my arm, and I expect to feel either loathing or longing, but I feel … nothing.

  “You have to know, Ethan, we never, never meant to hurt you.”

  “Lack of premeditation’s not going to help your case, Olivia. I still saw you. And don’t tell me it was all him, because I know a reciprocal kiss when I see one.”

  Her head dips, her chin almost touching her chest. “I went over there because I wanted to talk to Michael about planning a surprise party for your birthday.”

  I snort. “Well, congrats. I definitely got my surprise.”

  “It just happened, Ethan. You have to believe me. It was a one-time thing, and it’s not something I’d even thought about before it—”

  “Never?” I prod, genuinely curious. “Because Michael’s a good-looking guy.”

  “So are you,” she says loyally. But it’s still not an answer to the question, and she’s not meeting my eyes. Not really.

  “Olivia,” I say more softly. “Do you have feelings for Michael?”

  “No.”

  But she says it too fast, too loud, and I’m starting to feel a little enlightened.

  “Olivia …”

  I don’t know why I’m prodding. Don’t even know if I really want to hear the answer. But I’ve known Olivia for so long, and there’s something not adding up. She’s not the crazy type who falls victim to her hormones. If she kissed him, regardless of who initiated, there was something there.

  It would also explain the expression I saw on Michael’s face when I interrupted them. I hadn’t let myself think much about that—I was too busy being the victim.

  But beneath Michael’s shock at seeing me, beyond the guilt … There was something else there when he immediately moved in front of Olivia, as though to protect her from my wrath.

  There was longing.

  Jesus Christ. I rub a hand on my neck. Maybe my best friend had had a thing for my girlfriend the entire time, and I’d never seen it. I wish I could say I could look back and see various hints, but the truth is, I’d never bothered to notice.

  “Ethan, you have to know how sorry I am,” Olivia is saying. “I’ve hated myself every minute of every day. I know it’ll be hard for you to trust me again, but we can work toward it together, if you’ll just give me a chance—”

  Her hand is flailing all around, her panicked monologue a little disarming because it’s so out of character, and I reach to grab her trembling fingers, cupping her hand in both of mine and holding it still. There’s no shock at the contact. No zip.

  Olivia’s eyes meet mine and I know she realizes it too.

  There was something between us once. But it’s gone now. First because of Michael, and now because of Stephanie.

  Stephanie.

  I think Olivia can tell the second I really, truly put us behind me, because her green eyes go a little bit sad before softening altogether.

  “Okay, Eth,” she says softly. “Okay.”

  I squeeze her fingers. “You’ll be all right.”

  Olivia gives a harsh little laugh. “I can’t believe you’re the one trying to comfort me when I’m the one who cheated.”

  “I know how it feels to lose someone you care about.”

  She’s quiet for a moment. “You’re not talking about me.”

  I don’t respond. But we both know the answer.

  “One last question?” she asks, stretching her hands out behind her and tilting her face to the midmorning sun.

  “Shoot.”

  “You’re over me. Clearly. But you are so not over Stephanie.”

  I don’t even know Stephanie. “You said you had a question. That’s not a question.”

  She gives me a knowing look. “You only play word games when you’re trying to dodge a point.”

  “And the point would be …?”

  Olivia stares back at the water, her eyes serious. “You know, when I heard from my mom—who heard it from yours—that you were seeing someone, I didn’t believe it. I mean, I believed that they believed it. And I believed that you had in fact produced some girl and slapped the label ‘girlfriend’ on her. But I had it in my head that you were doing it as a way of saving face after I’d betrayed you. Or even just as a way of keeping our matchmaking mothers away, because we know how they can be.”

  She’s so dead on, I almost smile. Ironic, really, that Olivia would be the only person to know what I was up to. But it made sense. We really had known each other. Almost more like brother and sister.

  “But then I got here this weekend,” she’s saying, “and I watched so carefully for the crack in your charade. I kept looking for a tiny little cue that it was all fake.”

  Her eyes meet mine. “But it never came. You two … you were the real deal. You are the real deal, because I can’t believe that much has happened since last night.”

  I open my mouth to tell her that she doesn’t know shit. To stay the hell out of my business.

  But Olivia holds up a hand, calmly stopping me before I can argue. “Ethan, what I saw between you two … that’s worth reaching through the social bubble for.”

  It’s a simple statement, but it feels like she just hit me with an anchor.

  She’s right. She’s so damned right.

  “Liv, I’m an idiot.”

  She gives a nod of agreement. “It shouldn’t matter if she lives in a cardboard box, if you care about her—”

  “I do,” I say, cutting her off.

  I care so fucking much.

  I’m on my feet, already turning to race after Stephanie, when on impulse I plant a brotherly kiss on Olivia’s familiar head. “You always were a freaking genius,” I tell her softly.

  Although really, I should have been the one to see it. I should have known that what Stephanie and I felt together was every bit as real when we were in pastels as it was when we were naked or wearing spikes and leather. Not that I have any experience with the last of those.

  What Stephanie and I had had nothing to do with that fool Pygmalion or that stupid statue, and everything to do with two people perfectly right for each other.

  And Olivia’s right about something else too.

  I don’t just care about Stephanie.

  I love her.

  And I fucking turned away from her because I didn’t like what she was wearing.

  “I’m an ass,” I mutter.

  “Totally,” Olivia says back with a small smile.

  But I’m already climbing over the boat rail, running down the dock, and bounding up the steps toward Stephanie’s room.

  It’s empty.

  I find my mom in the kitchen, where she’s arguing with the caterers about how they used the wrong champagne flutes.

  “Where is she?” I interrupt.

  My mother raises an eyebrow. “Who, dear?”

  “Stephanie. The next jitney’s not for another forty minutes. She should still be here.”

  Mom’s eyes scan my face, and her features soft
en a little at what she sees there. “Mike and Michelle offered to give her a ride back to the city, sweetie.”

  I slump against one of the counters. “Did you catch where they were going to drop her off?”

  “Mmmm?” Mom’s already turned back to the caterers. “Oh, I think she said NYU. Something about moving in early to the dorms.…”

  I close my eyes. It’s not a surprise, of course. Turning my back on her hadn’t exactly reaffirmed last night’s suggestion that she stay. At my place. With me.

  But NYU is huge, and the perfect place for someone who doesn’t want to be found.

  I push back from the counter, propelling myself up the stairs to grab my bag before heading toward my parents’ garage. They’ll be pissed, seeing as they need the car themselves to head back to the city in a few days, but hell, maybe a little exposure to the “riffraff” on the Hampton Jitney will do them good.

  I call Stephanie as I’m pulling out of the driveway and am totally unsurprised when it goes to voicemail. I text her just in case: Where are you?

  I make it back to Manhattan in record time.

  She still hasn’t responded.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Stephanie

  Okay, I’ll admit it.

  North Carolina’s not nearly the hell I’ve been making it out to be in my head. Even if it were, it’d be worth it for the look of surprised pleasure on my dad’s face when I showed up unannounced.

  It was worth it for the way he hugged me to him and held me on the front porch for five minutes past awkward.

  And then, because he was predictably Dad, he wanted to know about my classes.

  I didn’t bother to correct the impression that I’d given him earlier by explaining now that I had been taking just one class.

  “Oh, turns out everything’s been pretty flexible,” I’d demurred. “Just have to turn in my final project in a week, and then I’ll have a week off before the regular year starts up again.”

  By project, of course, I meant the screenplay. I haven’t touched it since before the Hamptons trip, but I suppose I’ll have to face it at some point. God knows I don’t trust Ethan to finish the damn thing. He’d probably end it with Kayla wearing a cotton-candy-colored dress while changing her major to communications and declaring that she really did like pearls.

  No freaking way am I going to let that happen.

  Our screenplay is going to be based on real life. In which our pigheaded, stick-up-the-ass Pygmalion realizes showing someone how to pretend to be something won’t make them that way.

  And yet …

  Something’s wrong. Because although I’ll probably die happy if I don’t see another pair of four-inch heels for the rest of my life, I feel off in my clothes. And I’m not talking about my new stuff. I mean my old stuff.

  I expected to feel like I did before. Sort of comfortably invisible.

  But my endless supply of dark pants? They’re hot and not at all comfortable in the middle of the summer. I tried to put on my usual Midnight Sky nail polish but hadn’t applied it to more than two fingers before I removed it and opted for the pale yellow I’d purchased during the charade.

  Yes. Pale yellow. And not because anyone expected it, but because I wanted to. Because I liked the way it looked against my summer tan, and the way it matched the polka dots on my favorite dress.

  Because yeah, I’m wearing dresses now. Not every day, of course, but I threw one on when I let my dad and Amy take me to a welcome-home dinner. I paired it with my boots, which probably wasn’t in fashion, but I kind of liked the contrast. And although I haven’t gotten rid of my dark eye makeup—truthfully, I kind of like the way it makes my blue eyes stand out—I’ve eased up a bit, so now the look is sort of edgy rebel instead of gothic scary.

  The symbolism of all this isn’t lost on me. The old Stephanie and the fake Stephanie had collided, and now I’m new Stephanie. And it feels right.

  Even if I’m lonely as hell.

  I don’t know why I didn’t expect that I’d miss Ethan. I shouldn’t miss him. He’s a shallow, superficial little boy who was scared that hanging out with creepy old me might dull some of his upper-crust shine.

  I should be angry. And I suppose that I am.

  But more than that, I’m hurt.

  That look on his face when he saw me that horrible last morning in the Hamptons? That horror on his face?

  I hope to God I never feel like that again, ever. It burned.

  He didn’t just reject my admittedly ugly outfit. He rejected me.

  And the worst part was, I didn’t see it coming. I really thought he cared beyond what I looked like, beyond what people thought.

  I was so awfully, horribly wrong.

  It’s not that I was faultless. Everything he said about me was right. I opted to be the statue instead of taking his offer of life.

  I just wish it didn’t have to be his life. His way.

  The pain was bad enough that I actually wanted to come home. I hadn’t even realized I thought of North Carolina as home until I was at the airport, after telling my campus job that I wouldn’t be able to start early after all.

  I just wanted my dad.

  I wanted family.

  There’s a knock at my door, and I tug off the headphones that are blaring angsty break-up music.

  “Come in.”

  It’s Amy.

  “Hey, I’m headed to the mall to get something for my niece’s baby shower. You want to come?”

  “No, thanks,” I say automatically. Saying no to Amy is a habit.

  She forces a little smile onto her face. “Okay. No problem. Shrimp scampi for dinner sound good?”

  “Whatever,” I mutter.

  Amy closes the door softly behind her, and I feel righteous and justified for about four seconds before I feel like a total brat.

  I’m on my feet and out the door before I realize I’ve moved.

  “Hey, Amy.”

  She turns around.

  “Actually, I would like to come to the mall. Just give me a sec to do something with my hair.”

  I don’t know which one of us is more surprised, but she recovers quickly, and her smile gives me a little stab of regret about my behavior for the past four years.

  “Your hair looks great,” she says. “I love the cut.”

  “Thanks. I do too,” I say. Another surprise. Another part of me that’s changed. Another change I’ve embraced.

  Maybe it’s time to take on a change bigger than hair and dresses.

  Maybe it’s time to change my relationship with Amy. Maybe that too will be better than expected.

  Shopping is considerably less painful than I would have thought, and when Amy suggests that we stop at her favorite wine bar before heading home for dinner, I hear myself say yes. And not just because I feel obligated to, but because sharing a glass of wine with a mother figure sounds kind of … nice.

  My wine-drinking expertise is less than a year old, as my access to alcohol before the age of twenty-one was pretty much limited to keg cups. I ask Amy to pick something for me, and she gets us two glasses of sauvignon blanc, which is every bit as refreshing as she said it would be.

  “So your dad and I are so glad you decided to surprise us,” she says as we settle into chairs on a little outdoor patio.

  “I’m sorry to miss Chris,” I say. “I didn’t realize he’d be at baseball camp this week.”

  “He gets back next week, so hopefully you can have a couple of days together before you head back to school. Your father and I would love it if you guys could become closer, although I suppose a twenty-one-year-old film student and a seventeen-year-old jock might not have a lot in common.”

  The word jock makes me think of Ethan, and I take a bigger-than-classy sip of wine.

  “So what inspired your visit?” she asks. Her tone is casual, but she’s watching me closely, and it doesn’t take a genius to see that she’s fishing, although not in an obnoxious way.

  I give her a
knowing smile. “Did my dad put you up to this?”

  Her white teeth beam. “Guilty. If you don’t want to share, that’s totally fine. I just thought you might want to, you know … talk.”

  I run a finger around the base of my glass, considering. Ever since that conversation on the beach with Ethan, my resentment of Amy has been sort of fading, as though saying it out loud forced me to realize how petty I was being.

  And that while maybe six months was fast for them to get married, love apparently didn’t work on a schedule. Perhaps my dad and Amy weren’t guilty of anything but finding happiness with the other person, and it just hadn’t happened to adhere to my emotional schedule.

  Talking to Ethan about Amy had been therapeutic.

  Maybe it would work the other way as well.

  I take a deep breath. “It’s about a guy.”

  She nods knowingly. “It usually is.”

  Suddenly I’m telling her the whole story. How Ethan was gorgeous, even when I thought he was a prick that first day. How he was even more gorgeous when I started to think he wasn’t such a prick after all.

  I tell her about the screenplay, and how I think we both knew all along that we weren’t doing it for the sake of our film class, or even the sake of his fake-girlfriend story, but because it had given us a way to be together when we lacked the guts to do it for real.

  I tell her about the first time he kissed me, and how it had been the most incredible kiss of my life. I tell her about the clothes, the haircut, and the makeup, and how even as I resented it all, he made me feel pretty for the first time in a long time. I tell her about the wedding, the parties, and the dancing. I tell her about the quiet moments too, watching movies or sharing a pizza.

  I tell her that I love him.

  And that he hurt me.

  And that I think I hurt him too.

  Somehow in the midst of all this I’m crying, and I hate that I’m crying, and Amy’s moved her chair around the table to put an arm around me. And I let her.

  She doesn’t seem to care that I’m soaking her white button-down with mascara-stained tears, and strokes my hair. And it’s nice. She’s not my mom, but she’s here. And that counts for more than I realized.