You Say It First

by Katie Cotugno

  Back in the car, he saw Doug had called while he’d been in the pharmacy. He’d called yesterday after their breakfast, too, to ask a question about Colby’s availability, but with everything that had happened with Matt, Colby hadn’t gotten around to calling him back. He sat there for a moment now, thumb hovering over Doug’s name in his contact list, before dropping the phone in the cup holder and turning the key in the ignition. He’d do it later, he promised himself, then pulled out of the parking lot and headed home to take a nap.

  Twenty-One

  Meg

  That night, Meg was sitting at her desk eating a granola bar and working on her independent study—she’d gotten an extension, and permission to research Maxine Waters instead—when her phone dinged beside her with a text. I really miss you, Emily had written. Can we hang out this week?

  Meg frowned. We hang out all the time, she typed, then deleted it letter by careful letter and told herself not to be such a bitch. After all, it wasn’t like she didn’t know what Emily was getting at: they may have had almost every class together, and they may have shared a bag of Pirate’s Booty in the cafeteria every day, but they hadn’t seen each other outside school since last Friday with Mason at Cavelli’s. Meg had texted both of them when she got back from Colby’s to apologize, to promise she’d just been freaked out about her dad’s engagement and everything was totally fine, but still there was something weird and chafe-y about their friendship the last few days, like a shoe rubbing a blister on her heel.

  Now she sat back in her desk chair, her eyes landing on Colby’s gray hoodie slung over the armchair across the room. It still smelled like him: a little like Dial soap and bonfire and a little bit like the hamper. She’d worn it to bed every night since she’d gotten back from Ohio.

  I need to get a dress for my dad’s wedding, she told Emily finally. Actually, the wedding wasn’t until Memorial Day, but it felt like a good low-stakes activity, the kind of thing they could do without talking too much about Mason or Cornell or anything else. Shopping tomorrow?

  They went to the Short Hills Mall after school, loading themselves down with dresses and cramming themselves into a tiny Nordstrom fitting room just like they had before junior prom last year, both of them trying as hard as they could to act like everything was okay. “Oh my God,” Emily said, as Meg pulled a long blue dress off the hanger and over her head. “Did I tell you Andrew walked in on my mom and dad having sex the other night?”

  Meg whipped around so fast she almost busted a seam, her eyes wide. Andrew was Emily’s brother, a sophomore at Overbrook with big ears and a goofy smile. “No!”

  “He showed up in my room looking like he’d just seen the freaking Babadook,” Emily said with a grimace. “I guess he just, like, barged in there looking for clean laundry and got an eyeful of my dad’s bare ass? I don’t even know.”

  “I mean,” Meg said, trying not to giggle and mostly failing. “I guess it’s nice to know that your parents are still, you know, attracted to each other?” She snorted. “You know, like . . . theoretically?”

  “Is it, though?” Emily asked, and by now both of them were really starting to lose it. “Is it really?”

  They wound up doubled over laughing, the weirdness dissolving between them as they cackled so loudly the saleswoman rapped on the door and demanded to know if everything was okay. They were finally pulling themselves together when Emily frowned. “Wait a second,” she said, reaching out and tugging the strap of Meg’s dress aside. “Is that a hickey?”

  “What?” Meg startled. “No.” Shit. Meg hadn’t even realized hickeys were a real thing until she’d seen it in the mirror when she got home from Colby’s three days ago, her whole body lighting up like a pinball machine at the memory of his mouth on her neck. It had faded since then, but not all the way; she’d put a thick layer of her mom’s concealer on it in the bathroom this morning, but it must have rubbed off as she was trying on clothes.

  Emily frowned, popping up on her tiptoes to get a better look at it. “Are you sure?”

  “Who would I have gotten a hickey from?” Meg asked, cringing as her voice echoed through the dressing room, swatting Emily gently away. “I burned myself with the curling iron the other day.”

  “Ugh, Piper did that,” Emily said. Piper was Emily’s older sister, who was in a sorority at Penn State. “She got this gnarly scab that filled with pus; it was totally disgusting.”

  Meg grimaced. “Here,” she said, frowning at herself in the mirror and motioning down at the dress, a satiny sleeveless number that made her look like she was going to a seventh-grade formal. “Help me get out of this.”

  Emily unhooked the tiny clasp in the back, pulling the finicky zipper down and stepping back so that Meg could wriggle out of it. “Hey, have you called Cornell yet to check on your application?” she asked as Meg pulled her jeans back on.

  “Um,” Meg said, turning away as she reached for her T-shirt. Just say it, she ordered herself. Just tell her you don’t want to—

  “I’m just getting really worried now, you know?” Emily continued, clipping the dress back onto its hanger. “It just feels so weird that you wouldn’t have—”

  “I got in!” Meg blurted, yanking her T-shirt over her head with more force than was really necessary; she blinked in the light of the dressing room, shocking herself.

  Emily whipped around to stare at her. “What? Oh my God, you did? When? Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I—” Meg broke off. Oh, this was bad. This was not how she had wanted to do this. “Things were a little weird between us, so—”

  “Meg! Oh my God!” Emily flung her arms around Meg’s shoulders, wrapping her in a Sephora-scented hug. “This is the best news I’ve ever heard.”

  “I know,” Meg said, squeezing her eyes shut. “Me too.”

  “You want to come over for dinner?” Emily asked as they headed out to the parking lot a little while later, the sun just starting to sag. “My mom’s making stuffed shells.”

  “Sure,” Meg said, cheered by the thought of it. “I have to be at WeCount at seven, but I can just go straight there.” Emily’s house was nothing like hers—a midcentury ranch in a neighborhood full of midcentury ranches, always bustling, full of various people’s winter coats and sheet music and soccer cleats, but never actually messy. Meg loved it there: the lemon-scented hand soap and the detailed dry-erase calendar on the fridge and the fact that there was always some kind of homemade baked good in the big glass canister on the counter. Most of all she loved Emily’s mom, who was as sweet and predictable as the raspberry-lime seltzer she drank every night with dinner. You never had to worry about which version of her you were going to get.

  They stopped for coffee on the way home, Emily insisting they needed iced campfire mochas to celebrate Meg’s acceptance letter. “Let me get it,” Emily argued, waving her wallet in protest as they cruised through the drive-thru lane. Meg shook her head and Emily grumbled good-naturedly, clearing a handful of junk out of the cup holder in order to set her coffee inside. “When were you in Ohio?” she asked.

  Meg froze, whipping her head around to stare at the passenger seat. Emily was holding the receipt from her lunch with Colby, the address of the Subway franchise stamped in huge letters at the top.

  “Meg? What were you doing in Ohio last weekend?” Her eyes narrowed. “Why were you—did you go see that guy? Oh my God, is the guy the one who gave you the hickey?”

  Even through her panic, there was a part of Meg that was impressed Emily had figured it out so quickly. She hadn’t thought their friendship still had the mind-meld quality it used to, like back in middle school when their other friends hadn’t let them be on the same team for Celebrity because it wasn’t fair to everyone else.

  “Em,” she began as she pulled out of the parking lot, trying to figure out how she was possibly going to explain this in a way that didn’t sound completely demented. “Look, I was going to talk to you about it—”

  “Oh my
God, are you kidding? That’s actually where you were?” Emily looked at the receipt again. “You told me you were at your dad’s.”

  “I know I did,” Meg said. “I just—” She broke off.

  “You just lied to my face, is all,” Emily snapped, her voice surprisingly nasty. “Nice, Meg. What else are you lying about?”

  Meg bristled in spite of herself. “Hold on a second,” she said, turning onto the leafy green avenue that led to Emily’s neighborhood. “Do you of all people seriously want to give me a hard time about lying right now?”

  Emily sat up straight in the passenger seat. “What does that mean?”

  “You know what that means, Em.”

  “What, because of me and Mason? You said that was okay!”

  “It is okay!”

  “I mean, clearly not.”

  “It’s fine,” Meg insisted. “But it just doesn’t feel fair for you to be holding yourself up as some gold standard of transparency when—”

  “We’re not talking about me!” Emily exploded. “Did you tell anybody where you were going?”

  Meg blew a breath out. “Not exactly,” she admitted.

  “I don’t believe this,” Emily said. “What did you do, you just got in your car and drove to his house? Do you have any idea how stupid that was? You’re lucky you’re not trapped in some terrifying rape dungeon where nobody knows where the hell to find you. You’re lucky you aren’t dead.”

  “Can you stop being so apocalyptic?” Meg asked. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Then what was it like?” Emily countered. “However it was, you obviously felt like you had to lie about it.”

  “I felt like I had to lie about it because you were totally judgmental from the very beginning!”

  “It’s not being judgmental to say it’s sketchy to drive across state lines to meet some rando from your telemarketing job!”

  They were pulling into Emily’s driveway now, Mrs. Hurd standing in the front yard in a hoodie from the resort in the Poconos Emily’s family went to every summer, pulling damp winter leaves out of the flower beds. She waved at Meg, her hand encased in a dirt-covered gardening glove; Meg smiled at her reflexively, then frowned. “Emily . . .” she tried again, but Emily was already unclicking her seat belt, scooping her purse up off the floor of the car.

  “Forget it,” she said, snatching her iced coffee out of the cup holder. “I can’t talk to you about this right now. I’ll text you later, okay?” She slammed the passenger door before Meg could reply.

  Meg knew something was wrong before she even got her key in the door. Bonnie Raitt was turned up so loud on the stereo it was audible even with the windows shut. When she got inside, her mom was sitting at the kitchen island, a mostly empty bottle of sauvignon blanc open beside her. “Hey,” Meg said, picking her mom’s phone up off the counter and using it to turn the music down. “I’m home.”

  “I see that,” her mom said without quite making eye contact, pouring the last of the wine into her glass. “How was the mall?”

  “It was fine,” Meg said cautiously, gaze flicking around the kitchen in a way she hoped wasn’t too obvious. The garbage was piled over the top of the can in the corner, the edges of the bag pulled up to halfheartedly contain the overflow. There was something sticky—honey, maybe?—glistening on the counter. Meg had been trying to do a better job keeping up with stuff around the house lately, but it felt like there was always something left to do: a mountain of laundry in the bathroom hamper or a bunch of moldy leftovers to throw out in the fridge. She wanted to say something about it to her mom, to suggest they get a cleaning lady or something, but she felt like doing it would start an argument about her dad not paying enough alimony and also puncture some kind of illusion both of them were still holding on to. “How are you?”

  Meg’s mom didn’t answer. “I heard from your father today,” she said instead, and all of a sudden Meg knew exactly what the music—and the wine—were about. “He had some news.”

  “Oh yeah?” Meg said, hedging. “What about?”

  Her mom made a face. “Why don’t you tell me?” she said. “Since apparently you already know all about it.”

  Meg dropped her bag on the counter. “Okay, Mom, listen—”

  “How long have you been sitting on that?” her mom interrupted. “How long did you know he was engaged and—”

  “He wanted to be the one to tell you,” Meg interrupted, aware even as she was saying it that she was lying all over the place lately. “He asked me not to say anything.”

  “So your loyalty is to him and what he wants?”

  “No, Mom.” Meg shook her head. “It’s not—”

  “That’s good to know, since I’m the one feeding and housing and clothing you.”

  Meg gaped at her for a moment. “That’s not fair,” she said, a feeling like tears rising dangerously in her throat. It was a lot, all of a sudden, her mom being mad and her dad getting married and her fight with Emily and everything that had happened with Colby; she felt like an overfull glass. “You can’t just stick me between the two of you guys like that. It isn’t fair.”

  “Life isn’t fair, Meg.” Her mom stood up unsteadily, her elegant hands gripping the side of the island for balance. “If I can impart one life lesson to you, as your mother, let that be it.”

  “Mom.” Now she really did start crying, one ragged sob that slipped out before she could stop it. It broke the spell, and suddenly her mom was herself again: the same person who’d managed to explain sex in a way that wasn’t embarrassing and knew if Meg had a fever by feeling her cheek with the back of her hand, who always poured potato chips into a bowl and ate the broken shards because she knew Meg liked the big ones best. “God.”

  “I’m sorry,” her mom said immediately, scrubbing her free hand over her face. “You’re right, that was shitty. I’m sorry.”

  “We can’t keep this up,” Meg said, not sure which one of them she was talking to, exactly. Suddenly, she felt like some low-budget actress performing to a totally empty house.

  “Keep what up?” her mom asked, sitting back down again. Meg wondered with some horror if possibly she was too drunk to walk. “Come on, Meg, my girl.”

  Meg shook her head. “It’s fine,” she said, grabbing her backpack and heading for the doorway. “I have to go to work.”

  By the time she picked up a burrito for dinner and made it to the WeCount offices, she felt like a cartoon character who’d been in a fistfight, like she ought to have a missing tooth and an old-fashioned bandage wrapped around her head. “You good?” Lillian asked, raising her eyebrows over the partition.

  “I’m good,” Meg promised.

  Lillian nodded, eyes just slightly narrowed. “There are chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen” was all she said.

  Meg spent the next hour talking to a sweet old man in Toledo and a grouchy old lady in New Hope, then left four voice mails in a row before finally leaning back in her chair, staring up at the fluorescent lights in the drop ceiling overhead. Em would forgive her, she told herself firmly. She’d forgive her, and they’d room together at Cornell just like they’d always planned, and if the thought of it made Meg feel like the walls of this office were closing in on her by the second, she’d just have to be a damn adult and get over it.

  After all, what else was she going to do?

  She tugged on her lip for a moment, remembering the conversation she’d had with Colby way back when: If you actually do want to go change things, if you actually think you can, then shouldn’t you, like . . . go out there and change them?

  She glanced over the partition at Lillian, who was talking animatedly into her headset, then opened her internet browser and put in the address for Annie Hernandez’s website. She scrolled all the way down until she found it, there at the very bottom: a blue rectangular button that said Work with Annie.

  It wasn’t a real plan, she chided herself firmly.

  She didn’t know anyone who’d ever done anything
like it.

  Still, she took a deep breath and clicked.

  Twenty-Two

  Colby

  “I’ll tell you the worst part,” Meg said on the phone late that night, her voice bright and brittle like it always got when she was putting on a little bit of a song-and-dance number. “I didn’t even get a dress for the stupid wedding.”

  Colby laughed. He was lying faceup on the scrubby grass in the backyard, Tris farting periodically beside him. It had been warm out today, or almost. “Is that really the worst part?” he asked.

  Meg sighed theatrically. “I mean, no, of course not, but try to find me charming, will you? I’m doing a whole bit here.”

  “I hear that,” Colby murmured, sifting a rock out of the soil and twirling it between the fingers of his free hand. “That’s kind of my point, though.”

  “What is?” Meg sounded suspicious.

  Colby shrugged into the grass even though she couldn’t see him. “That you don’t have to do a bit with me. I don’t know.”

  “Oh really?” Meg huffed. “I thought me not doing a bit with you meant I didn’t think you were fancy enough to try to impress.”

  “Easy,” Colby said mildly, pushing himself up on one elbow in the weedy grass. “That’s not what I said.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No, actually.” At least, he didn’t think so; talking to Meg tied his brain into knots sometimes, until he wasn’t sure what his point had been to start with. “Or if it was, then it’s not what I meant.”

  “Fine,” Meg said in a slightly snotty voice, like she didn’t agree with him but wasn’t about to waste time and energy arguing about it. “Anyway, my point is, doing a bit isn’t always a bad thing. I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with not wanting to be full of doom and gloom all the time.”

  “It’s not being full of doom and gloom to say you fought with your friend and your mom was drunk in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday,” Colby said, though when he said it like that, even he had to admit it did sound kind of bleak. “Do you think I’m full of doom and gloom all the time?”