You Say It First

by Katie Cotugno

  “Your dad used to talk about you all the time, you know that?” Doug asked, putting a slab of cake on a plate and sliding it in Colby’s direction.

  Colby shook his head, surprised. “No, sir,” he said. It was funny to think of his dad out in the world talking about him. It was funny to think of his dad out in the world doing anything, really. At some point, Colby’s memories of him had started to narrow to the very end part, but of course he’d been more than that: he’d been the star of an old-guy bowling team and an excellent remover of splinters and the person throwing Colby in the air as a kid in the picture that hung in the hallway back at home—over and over, up and up. “I didn’t know that.”

  Doug nodded. “You and your brother,” he said. “All the time.” He took a sip of his coffee. “He left you the Paradise property, didn’t he? What are you going to do with it?”

  Colby frowned, caught off guard by the question. “I mean, nothing right now,” he replied, picking the crumbs off the top of his cake. “I don’t have any money.”

  “But when you do?”

  He opened his mouth to say he hadn’t thought about it, just like he’d told everyone else who’d asked since the day they’d read the will—just like he’d tried to tell Meg—but for some reason, all of a sudden, it felt like a cowardly thing to lie. “I want something like this,” he confessed, looking around the kitchen. The dog had gotten bored and passed out on the rug in front of the sink. “Like what you’ve built here, I mean. I don’t know how I’m gonna get it, or if I ever will, even. But, uh . . . That’s what I want.”

  Doug nodded at that, taking a sip of his coffee. “Look,” he said finally, “I’ve got another project starting in a couple of weeks, an addition on a place over in Castleton. We can try it, see how it goes.”

  “Really?” Colby asked, immediately cursing himself for sounding so fucking eager. Then again, maybe there were worse things than sounding eager every once in a while. “Um, I appreciate that,” he said, unable to keep himself from grinning. “Thanks a lot.”

  Doug nodded. “I’ll call you with more details when I’ve got them,” he said. “And pick up the damn phone this time, all right?”

  “I will,” Colby promised. “I will be sure to do that.”

  He finished his cake and waved goodbye before heading out across the driveway. The sun was warm on the back of his neck.

  Later, he brought Joanna an iced coffee from Bixby’s and they sat on the curb outside the hair salon, her feet in her flats narrow and officious-looking against the blacktop. It was a warm, steamy afternoon, the smell of trees and car exhaust thick and heavy in the air. “I owe you an apology,” Colby said.

  “Uh-oh.” Joanna’s lips twisted knowingly. “What’d you do?”

  “I think it’s, like, more what I didn’t do?” Colby frowned, scrubbing a hand through his hair. It had felt important on the way over here to own up to what he’d done with Joanna, but now that they were face-to-face he didn’t know exactly what to say. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be vague.”

  “Oh no?” Jo leaned over and nudged him with her shoulder, the vanilla-cupcake smell of her hitting his nose. “Don’t worry about it, Colby. It’s fine.”

  Colby blinked. “It is?”

  “Sure,” she said with a shrug, running a freshly painted thumbnail along the plastic lip of her cup. “We’re friends, right? We’ve always been friends. And if the timing isn’t good for you, or whatever . . . I don’t know.” She smiled. “Life is long.”

  “No, I know, but . . .” Colby broke off. He had the distinct impression he was getting off entirely too easily here. Shouldn’t she be pissed at him? After all, he’d objectively been kind of a dick about the whole thing. “I just mean—”

  “I’m a big girl, Colby.” Jo smiled. “I knew what I was getting into with you. Like I said, we’re good.”

  “I . . .” Colby searched her face for a moment, hunting for traces of insincerity and finding none. She meant it, he realized slowly. She was serious. She didn’t think there was anything wrong with how he’d acted—or, if she did, she was willing to let him get away with it. She didn’t expect anything else. It used to be he’d liked that about her—her willingness to meet him where he was at any given moment. Now, though, he wasn’t so sure he did. “I’m sorry anyway,” he said firmly. “I should have done a better job with you.”

  “Maybe one day you will,” Jo said lightly, getting to her feet and brushing the seat of her skirt off. “In the meantime, Colby, you take care of yourself.”

  Colby lifted his hand to say goodbye to her, sitting on the curb as her figure receded and waiting for the inevitable pang of regret. He was surprised to find it never came—and that instead he found himself thinking of Meg’s voice on the phone late at night, the way she drove him nuts and made him laugh and talked about the world like it was some old jewelry box she’d found at a curiosity shop, full of treasures just waiting for someone to blow the layer of dust off. He thought of what he’d said to Doug this morning: I was scared that the job would turn out to be a letdown, or, like, that I would be a letdown . . . or just that, like, the rug would get pulled out.

  He dug his phone out of his pocket and gazed down at it for a moment. It felt heavy as a stone in his hand.

  Thirty-Six

  Meg

  Meg borrowed a dress of her mom’s for graduation, a silky pale peach situation with a cinched waist that she remembered from when Hal used to play gigs at fancy historic theaters. “You look beautiful,” her mom said when she came down into the living room. “Actually, I take that back; you look fierce. Honestly, sweetheart, I am so, so proud of you.”

  “I’m proud of you, too,” Meg said, and it was true. Her mom had gone from the hospital into a ten-day inpatient program in south Jersey; since she’d gotten back she’d been going to meetings every evening in the community room of a synagogue not far from their house. Two days ago, Meg had come home from school to find her standing at the kitchen island with a tube of cookie dough and a spoon. “It’s my turn to bring snacks,” she’d explained, looking a little sheepish.

  “You want help?” Meg had asked, setting her backpack in the breakfast nook. She couldn’t remember her mom baking anything since she was a little kid.

  Her mom had nodded. “I should have just bought something,” she’d said, digging an ancient cookie sheet out of a cupboard. “But I want them to like me. Is that pathetic?”

  “I think it’s human,” Meg had said, and her mom had smiled in a way that made her look like a teenager, flicking the kitchen television to HGTV. In the end they’d eaten most of the cookie dough before they got it into the oven and had to run out to the store for another tube.

  “Dad and Lisa are going to meet us at school so I can give them their tickets,” Meg said now, tucking the envelope into the outside pocket of her tote bag. “You guys don’t have to sit together, obviously, I just—” She broke off.

  “It’s fine,” her mom said, squinting at the antique mirror hanging in the foyer and slicking on a coat of plummy lipstick. She looked different since she’d stopped drinking, Meg thought, even though it hadn’t been that long yet: her eyes were clear, and her face was less swollen. She’d started shuffling around the block in her walking cast every morning before she went to work, listening to the true-crime podcasts Meg had shown her how to download onto her phone. “I’ll behave, I promise.”

  Meg grimaced. “No, I know you’ll behave. I’m not saying—”

  “Meggie, sweetheart,” her mom said, turning away from the mirror before laying two gentle hands on Meg’s shoulders and squeezing. “I’m teasing. Today is about you, okay? You’ve done so much—at school, yeah, but also around here. Try to enjoy it.”

  Meg nodded. She’d stayed at her dad and Lisa’s while her mom was away, helping Lisa cook plant-based dinners from some mail-order meal kit and running errands with her dad on the weekend. It had reminded Meg of when she was a little kid, kind of—the two of them go
ing to the hardware store and the dry cleaners and the nursery, stopping for a dozen doughnuts on the way back. After school during the week, though, she’d driven home to her mom’s house and gotten to work: scooping her hair up into a messy knot and blasting Fleetwood Mac as loud as the sound system would go while she vacuumed the bedrooms and dusted the baseboards and scrubbed the inside of the refrigerator, opening all the windows to get the air moving around. She’d watched a YouTube video and figured out how to hang the art in the hallway; then, encouraged by her success, she’d gone ahead and painted the living room a fresh, clean white. She’d gone to the Philly farmers’ market with Lillian and Maja. She’d taken Lisa’s kids to an arcade.

  She hadn’t talked to Colby at all.

  She missed his laugh and his bitten cuticles and his dry sense of humor; she missed him more than she’d ever missed anyone before. And the worst part was how she’d been kind of right that night in the hotel room; he did lift neatly out of her life, as far as everyone else in it was concerned. Like maybe he’d been her imaginary friend. She’d thought about texting, about getting in her car and driving all the way to Ohio, but in the end she knew it wasn’t going to accomplish anything. It had been fun for a while, but now it was over.

  It was never going to work.

  Meg swallowed hard and straightened up, turning and slinging her purse over her shoulder. “Come on,” she said, slipping her hand into her mom’s and squeezing. When she’d gotten back from the rehab place, they’d cleaned out all the closets and cabinets one by one. Meg knew they had a long way to go—when she’d driven to New Jersey for the family therapy session, her mom’s counselor had explained about the probability of relapse and maybe even more inpatient rehab, that addiction was a lifelong disease that could be managed but never cured. Still, in this house in this dress on this warm, sunny morning, it felt like they were making a start. “Let’s go.”

  Two nights later, her coworkers threw her a little graduation party in the tiny conference room at WeCount, with paper cups of Trader Joe’s lemonade and a fistful of Mylar balloons Lillian had picked up from Party City. Maja had made lavender sopapillas. Rico played the sunscreen song on his phone.

  “To the newest member of the Annie Hernandez campaign,” he said, offering a lemonade toast. “They’re not going to know what hit ’em.”

  Meg grinned. It had been easier than she’d thought, telling her parents she was taking a year off from school to see what happened, that she’d rethink what she actually wanted and apply again. Meanwhile, in the days since she’d gotten the call about the internship, she’d found a roommate through the campaign and lined up interviews for some waitressing gigs to supplement her piddly stipend. She’d leave for Columbus at the end of the month. She didn’t think she’d ever been this terrified—and for the first time since she could remember, she was kind of thrilled by the idea of what came next.

  After the party, they all drifted over to their stations, Meg pulling up her call log on the computer—the software was working for once—and brushing some pastry crumbs off the front of her shirt. She’d just hung up with a single dad in Cincinnati when Lillian’s round face appeared over the partition. “Hey, Meg?” she said. “There’s a call for you.”

  Meg frowned. “For me?” she repeated, her heart doing something strange and complicated deep inside her chest. WeCount’s number wasn’t listed on their website. There was only one person she could ever imagine calling her here.

  Lillian nodded. “I’ll transfer it over.”

  Meg tugged at her bottom lip for a moment, reminding herself not to get her hopes up. It was true that in the weeks since her dad’s wedding there had been a million things she’d wanted to tell him—about Emily and her mom and her internship, about all the ways knowing him had made her brave—but no matter how many times she came close to calling, she hadn’t been able to make herself reach out. Probably she had been right: they were just too different.

  But maybe that didn’t mean what they had wasn’t worth fighting for.

  Now she took a deep breath and lifted the receiver. Imagined her own heartbeat echoing out across the line. “Hello?” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “This is Meg.”

  “This is Colby,” he said, and she smiled.

  Thirty-Seven

  Colby

  The truck stop was right on the side of the highway, the neon sign glowing like Christmas in the blue-purple twilight; it came up so fast and sudden that even after waiting for it for four hours Colby nearly missed the turn. He pulled into the giant lot and shut the car off, sitting motionless in the driver’s seat for a long, quiet minute. He shoved a piece of gum into his mouth, then decided he didn’t want to be chewing gum when he saw her and spit it into a receipt he found on the floor of the passenger seat. Finally, he took a deep breath, wiped his sweaty palms—why were his palms sweaty? Fuck—on his jeans, and went inside.

  She was already sitting in a booth in the brightly lit diner, her own hands folded primly in front of her like she was waiting for a job interview. Holy shit, Colby loved her so much. As soon as he had the thought, he knew it was true, and that there was nothing to be done about it. Her gaze, when she glanced up and saw him, was dark and steady and clear.

  “Hi,” Colby said, sliding into the seat across from her.

  Meg smiled, a little uncertain. “Hi.”

  For a moment, neither one of them said anything, the silence stretching out like every mile they’d both traveled. It was even more awkward than it had been the first time they met. Colby thought again that they were probably too different; he thought of all the million reasons why this would never, ever work.

  Still: she’d shown up here, in this place right in between them.

  He had shown up here, too.

  And maybe that was all either of them—maybe that was all anybody—could ask.

  Colby took a deep breath then and looked across the table. He felt like his heart was sitting there on the Formica, bloody and raw. “So, um,” he said, and his voice was an apology and a declaration and a gamble, “I was wondering if you could tell me again why I should register to vote.”

  For a moment, Meg only stared at him, wonder and disbelief playing across her expression. Colby was sure he’d blown it, that he’d come with too little too late.

  Then, almost imperceptibly, she nodded.

  “Sure,” she said, and Colby heard her smile before he saw it. “I can probably help you with that.”

  Acknowledgments

  All I have ever wanted is to be able to write the next book and, as always, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the incredible team that keeps on making it happen: Josh Bank, Joelle Hobeika, Sara Shandler, and everyone at Alloy, for their big ideas and good humor and endless enthusiasm. My keen-eyed editor, Alessandra Balzer, for steering the ship, and everyone at HarperCollins, but especially Sabrina Abballe, Sam Benson, Donna Bray, Kathy Faber, Caitlin Garing, Caitlin Johnson, Nellie Kurtzman, Caitlin Lonning, Kerry Moynagh, and Andrea Pappenheimer. Thank you, Ana Hard and Jessie Gang, for putting together the most gorgeous cover I have ever seen in all my days on this earth. Dahlia Adler, Robin Benway, Brandy Colbert, Christa Desir, Corey Ann Haydu, Emery Lord, Jennifer Matthieu, Julie Murphy, Elissa Sussman, and Sara Zarr, for long talks and quick questions and troubleshooting and general brilliance. All the booksellers and teachers and librarians and bloggers and Bookstagrammers who have been so good to me all this time, for your attention and kindness and all the often-uncompensated work you do behind the scenes. Lisa Burton O’Toole, Rachel Hutchinson, Jennie Palluzzi, Sierra Rooney, and Marissa Velie, for first reads and cheerleading and being my very faves. Jackie Cotugno for literally everything, always, but especially this year. Tom Colleran for being my home for almost two decades. Annie Colleran, I’ll be yours for the rest of my life.

  Also, not for nothing: hey, go vote! xo

  About the Author

  Photo credit Jennie Palluzzi

  KATIE COTUGNO is the N
ew York Times bestselling author of Top Ten, 99 Days, 9 Days and 9 Nights, Fireworks, and How to Love. She is also the coauthor, with Candace Bushnell, of Rules for Being a Girl. Katie studied writing, literature, and publishing at Emerson College and received her MFA in fiction at Lesley University. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has appeared in Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, and Argestes, among others. She lives in Boston. You can visit Katie online at www.katiecotugno.com.

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  Books by Katie Cotugno

  99 Days

  9 Days and 9 Nights

  How to Love

  Fireworks

  Top Ten

  You Say It First

  with Candace Bushnell

  Rules for Being a Girl

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  YOU SAY IT FIRST. Copyright © 2020 by Alloy Entertainment and Katie Cotugno. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.