We’re not really supposed to drink anything in sight of the customers, but since there are no customers, I take a long sip. It’s sweet and delicious, and I immediately feel more awake. “Thanks, Kyle.”
He nods and goes back to prepping for the day.
Kyle’s concoction gets me through to my half-hour lunch break at eleven. I ask him to make me another one and then take it outside to drink on the office building steps. The weather is beautiful, sunny and not humid for once, but I barely notice the warmth on my skin. I can’t stop thinking about yesterday, the shock and hurt in my friends’ eyes. They’ve been my bright spot over the past year, and now they’ll probably never talk to me again. I’ll be going back to school in a few weeks with no friends at all, and it’s my own stupid fault.
My eyes start watering. Shit. I thought I’d gotten all my crying out of the way last night. I sift through my bag for a tissue, but find nothing. Great. I’m contemplating the grossness factor in using the sleeve of my polo when a crumpled white napkin appears in my line of vision. I look up. Dawson is standing three steps below me, wearing his Ace Burger T-shirt and a button inviting me to Try Our Sizzlin’ Sausage and Egg Breakfast Burger!
“It’s clean,” he says when I take the napkin. “I think. I was bussing a table earlier and stuffed it in my pocket until I could toss it. Then forgot about it.”
I smooth out the napkin, fold it in half, and wipe my nose. I’m not fussy. “Since when does Ace Burger serve breakfast?” I ask as he sits down next to me.
“Since last week. Gotta reach that early-riser demographic.”
I nod and take a sip of smoothie. Silence stretches between us. Our friends must not have gotten to him yet. He wouldn’t be so nice to me if he knew.
“Aren’t you going to ask why I’m crying?”
He brings his feet up a step, aligning them with mine. “I have a pretty good idea.”
“You talked to Sophie?”
“No, but I talked to Zach, who talked to Sophie.”
“So I guess everyone hates me now.”
“No,” he says slowly, like I’m silly for thinking such a thing. “No one hates you. Would I be sitting here if I hated you? We’re just, uh . . . kind of surprised.”
“You didn’t see Alyssa’s face.” I give my nose one more wipe and slide the napkin into my pocket. “She hates me. She thinks I’m a bad person.”
“Well, I can’t speak for her,” he mutters. “But Sophie and Zach aren’t mad or anything. You should text them.”
“I will. Soon.” We fall silent again. Okay, so most of them don’t hate me. That’s promising. Still, I can’t see how anything will ever be like it was. They’ll see me differently now.
“I cheated on a test once,” Dawson blurts out.
My head spins toward him. “What?”
“In eighth-grade English. The test was on the elements of a short story and we had to know a bunch of definitions.” He smiles with half his mouth. “Well, you know me. I’m a numbers guy. The definitions just did not want to stick in my head, so I wrote them down on a little piece of paper and hid it inside my sweatshirt sleeve.”
I gasp. “Dawson. You didn’t.”
“I did. And I got caught too. I swear, I thought my dad was going to send me to one of those boot camps for delinquent minors.”
I shake my head. It’s hard to imagine nice, smart Dawson doing anything wrong. “Well, I appreciate you trying to empathize, but cheating on one test in middle school isn’t quite in the same league, you know?”
He shrugs. “I’m just saying, sometimes even smart, decent people do stupid things when they’re feeling desperate.”
I can tell by the flash of misery in his eyes that he isn’t just talking about me or the test. “We miss having you around, Dawson,” I say, nudging his knee with mine. “All of us. Even Alyssa. She told me about the Lighthouse.”
“Yeah, well . . . at least I know exactly where I stand.” He rubs a hand over his face like he’s trying to wipe off the sting of her rejection and stands up. “I’d better get back.”
My break’s over too. I stand up and we walk down the steps together.
“Dawson,” I say when he turns to leave. He pauses on the sidewalk. “I . . . I don’t know how to tell Eli the truth. About my, um, problem. Any advice for me?”
“Wait. He doesn’t know?” When I shake my head, his brown eyes go wide for a moment before he composes himself. “Well, he seems like a good dude, and he’s obviously into you. I’m sure he can take it.”
I wish I were so sure.
Like the coward I am, I play sick that night too. And the next. But when Eli texts me after work on Wednesday evening, asking if he can see me, I know I can’t put him off any longer. I’m going to have to talk to him eventually, and the longer I wait, the more pissed off he’ll be. I learned that much from experience.
Tonight is Dad’s late night at the dealership, so I tell Eli to come over. He shows up forty-five minutes later with a single white flower in his hand.
“It’s a zinnia,” he says, handing it to me.
I thank him and touch my fingertip to one of the smooth petals. He’s not going to make this easy.
“I locked Fergus in my bedroom,” I say as I bring the flower to the kitchen. We don’t own a vase, so I fill a drinking glass with water and stick it in there. “Hopefully, that’ll cut down on the allergens floating around.”
“No worries.” He follows me into the kitchen and leans his back against the fridge. “I popped some Claritin before I left the house.”
When I turn around from placing the flower on the windowsill, I catch Eli gazing at me like I’m something he wants to devour. My pulse thuds.
“Are you feeling better now?” he asks, moving closer.
“Yeah, I feel fine.” It’s the truth. Living off cereal and smoothies for the past few days has actually helped restore me, at least physically. I’m probably the healthiest I’ve been in over a year. “Why? Did you miss me?”
He stops in front of me and grips the counter on either side of my waist, fencing me in. “Yes.”
It’s extremely difficult to focus on anything else when he’s standing so close, with his firm, broad chest just inches from my face and his scent filling my nostrils. At the moment, all I can think about is kissing him. Because kissing him would be so much easier than telling him he’s been hanging out with a lying thief all summer.
But if I’m going to change and become the person he thinks I am, then he needs to know all the pieces to the story.
“Eli.” I press my palm to his chest and push him gently away. He takes a step back, letting his hands drop from the counter.
“Yeah?” he prompts when I don’t say anything.
I stare at him, formulating and then immediately discarding a dozen different explanations. Explanations about my mother, and how her actions affected me, and the stealing, and how sorry I am that I led him to believe that I was someone different, someone who’s worth his time and his praise and his family’s respect.
But nothing I come up with seems right. Everything sounds like an excuse, because that’s what they are. Excuses that don’t absolve me or solve a damn thing. And I’m scared that if I tell him the truth, he’ll look at me the way Alyssa did, or not be able to look at me at all, like Sophie. I can’t stand the thought of either.
I just want one more night of him looking at me like I’m the girl he asked out in the middle of a busy sidewalk. The girl he thinks is smart and funny and obnoxiously cute. One more night of him believing I’m decent person.
“Nothing.” I take his hands and pull him toward me again. “I just . . . missed you too.”
He leans down to kiss me, and soon we’re sitting on the living room couch, my legs straddling his lap, picking up where we left off in his family room. Except this time his family isn’t upstairs, and my father won’t be home for another two hours.
“I swear the whole accept this flower as a token of my love thi
ng I did earlier wasn’t some kind of calculated move,” Eli says when we pause for a breath. “I mean, I’m totally on board with what’s happening right now, but I want you to know I didn’t come over here expecting anything.”
Love. He said love. Not exactly an I love you, but in the neighborhood. No guy has ever said that to me before. Just the idea of it, that he might feel that way about me, fills me with a conflicting mix of panic and happiness. But mostly happiness.
Without taking my eyes from his, I grab the bottom of my shirt and slip it over my head.
“Jesus, Morgan,” Eli breathes, his throat moving as he looks at me. Luckily, I put on my best bra this morning—the black lacy one with the little silver bow. He’s touched it before, but always under my clothes. He’s never seen it, or me in it, like this.
“Should I put my shirt back on?” I ask, amused, when he doesn’t move or say anything else.
“No.” He shakes his head, still dazed. “Please no.”
He peels his eyes off me long enough to yank off his own shirt and toss it on the floor next to mine. Then he eases me against his chest, and the high I feel when his bare skin meets mine eclipses all the ones before it.
The next night, I finally take Dawson’s advice and text Sophie, asking if she wants to hang out. To my relief, she texts me back a few minutes later. She tells me she’s at Zach’s and that I can come over if I want. Some of my heaviness lifts. Maybe I won’t be a friendless loser, after all.
When I get to Zach’s, I let myself in like usual and head to the basement. The two of them are stretched out on the couch, snuggled together and watching TV. They sit up when I walk in.
“Hey there, Sticky Fingers,” Zach greets me with a teasing grin.
I stop dead and stare at him.
“Zach,” Sophie says, whacking him across the head with a pillow. I’m glad. It’s far too soon for me to find any humor in my situation.
“Sorry,” he says to me.
I nod my forgiveness and sit down on the love seat. “What are you guys doing?”
“Nothing much,” Sophie says, yawning. “We were just about to play Street Fighter.”
Street Fighter. The same game Eli played a few weeks ago when he was here. My face floods with warmth at the thought of him, and suddenly I want to tell Sophie everything about what happened last night. The almost I love you. The kissing on the couch that turned into more.
“You want in?” she asks, yanking me back to the present.
“Sure,” I say. Maybe we’ll get a chance to talk later.
She hands me a controller while Zach sets up the game. For the next hour, the three of us take turns kicking each other’s asses like it’s any other night. Like I didn’t just drop a major bomb a few days ago.
So that’s how they want to play this. We’re supposed to ignore the elephant in the room and pretend like nothing’s changed at all. I guess I can live with that, if they can. At least they’re not ignoring me altogether, like Alyssa.
“Damn it,” Zach says as Sophie’s character uses her high-heeled boot to smash his character in the head. “I’m too hungry for this. I should’ve brought down some snacks before we started playing.”
“I’ll get them,” I say. I’m between turns right now and my stomach has been growling for the past twenty minutes. “Chips?”
“Yeah. There’s a bag in the pantry.”
As I’m heading for the stairs, Sophie quickly pauses the game and jumps up to follow me. “Wait. I’ll help you.”
I look over at her, confused. She was in the middle of a fight, and on the verge of winning. Why stop just to help me get a bag of chips that I can certainly handle myself?
When her eyes slide away from mine, it hits me. She doesn’t trust me to go alone. She thinks I’m going to steal something from Zach’s house. Zach. My friend. Acid rises in my throat.
“Actually,” I say, stopping at the bottom of the stairs, “I should probably go. I just remembered I have to do something at home.”
Sophie bites her lip. “Morgan . . .”
Tears fill my eyes and I turn away, not wanting her to see them. “Sorry, it’s just . . . I need to go. I’ll see you guys later.”
Not waiting for a response, I spring up the stairs and don’t stop moving until I’m outside and in my car. I was wrong. Pretending is impossible. They’re always going to be watching me, waiting to see if I slip up. And the sad thing is, I can’t even blame them.
Chapter Twenty-Five
FLIGHT 485, THE ONE CARRYING MY SISTER, switches from On Time to Arrived at Gate on the arrivals board. I walk back to my father, who’s sitting in a pastel chair in the waiting area, reading a magazine he picked up at the newspaper stand when we arrived at the airport.
“She’s here,” I announce.
Dad closes his magazine and stands up. We walk to the baggage claim area and stand by the escalator to wait. My stomach jumps in anticipation. In spite of the tension between us these past couple of months, I’m excited to hang out with my sister for a few days. Since Dad’s off work all next week, we made a bunch of plans—dinners, drives, a day trip to the beach. I try not to think about the other day trip Rachel has planned.
“There she is,” Dad says, grinning and waving.
I follow his gaze and catch my first glimpse of my sister in eight months. She’s walking toward us, smiling, wearing a short white sundress that shows off her tan. Her small pink suitcase trails behind her, the one that goes with the luggage set Mom and Dad gave her two birthdays ago, when they were still together. Like her, the suitcase is still as bright as ever.
Rachel hugs Dad first, then me. We hold each other tight for a few moments before stepping back to examine each other.
“Your hair got long,” she says, touching the wavy strands.
“And yours got short.” Her light brown hair always reached the middle of her back, but now it just brushes her shoulders. It hits me all over again how much she resembles Mom. Same brown hair and blue eyes, same dimpled smile and long, straight nose. The only thing I got from Mom is her lack of height. Rachel is five five, and I’ve envied her extra three inches—and the fact that she can tan in the sun instead of frying—for years now.
Rachel tosses her head. “I got sick of having it long. Change is good, right?”
I nod. She looks happy and shining and in love. It’s strange. I’ve never seen my sister in love before. She dated a lot in high school, but none of those boys made her cheeks pink and her eyes sparkly. The look agrees with her. Dad must think so too, because he smiles as he watches her. Or maybe he’s just relieved that she didn’t come home with an engagement ring or a protruding belly.
We make our way to the parking lot and Dad stuffs the pink suitcase into the trunk of the CR-Z. I climb in back, leaving the passenger seat to Rachel. During the thirty-minute drive to the apartment, she fills us in on her flight and her job and which courses she’s taking this fall. Dad listens to her ramble on with a contented expression on his face. I think about this past Christmas, when Rachel’s bubbly chattiness filled the normally quiet apartment, and how nice it was to have some life in the place for a change.
It’s late by the time we get home. Fergus greets us with a series of panicked meows, like he’s spent the past few hours worrying that we’d never come back.
“Fergburger!” Rachel scoops him up and kisses his head. Fergus’s purring is audible from here. “Morgan let you get too fat.”
“I take full responsibility for my weight gain,” Dad says as he flicks on the kitchen light.
“Dad, I was referring to Fergus, not you. You look great.”
Dad winks at me, making me laugh. Just like that, all the tension from the past few months slips away and we’re a family again. Complete.
We stand around the kitchen and talk for a bit before deciding to call it a night. Dad goes to get sheets for the pull-out bed while I get into my pajamas and brush my teeth. When I’m done, I head back out to the living room to find Dad
gone and Rachel sitting on the couch, tapping on her phone. She smiles when she sees me and pats the spot next to her. I flop down and pull a blanket over my legs, settling in for some long-awaited sister bonding. Fergus joins us a few seconds later, curving his plump body against my thigh.
“Amir just sent me this.” Rachel tilts her phone toward me, and I lean in to get a closer look at the screen. It’s a selfie shot of Amir, leaning back on what I assume is a headboard, shirtless with a crooked smile on his face. The picture only shows him from the shoulders up, but still. I feel like I’m intruding on an intimate moment.
“Oh my God, Rach,” I say, pushing her phone away.
She laughs and gazes at the picture again. “He’s hot, though, right?”
He definitely has something, an indefinable quality that makes you want to stare at him. “Are you guys serious?”
“Depends on what you mean by serious. But if you’re asking if I love him, the answer is yes.” She places her phone on the coffee table and curls her legs beneath her body. “What about you and Eli?”
“What about me and Eli?”
“Same question. Are you guys an official thing? Are you in love?”
Images flash through my mind—Eli’s smile, his easy laugh, the way his eyes go dark when he wants to kiss me. “I don’t know,” I say. We still haven’t said the words. I’ve never been in love before, so I’m not sure if that’s what I’m feeling, or if it’s just a very strong fondness. All I know is that I like having him around.
Rachel flashes her dimples. “You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?”
I cough, taken aback. “Rach,” I hiss, glancing at the hallway to the bedrooms. Now different images are flipping through my head—Eli’s mouth on my skin, the sculpted contours of his body, the way his arm muscles swelled as he hovered over me. My face burns as I remember the details of Wednesday night, the two of us together on this couch and then, ultimately, in my bed. “Well, you’re sleeping with Amir.”
She nudges my leg. “Yeah, and I told you about it, like, the next morning. Unlike you. The detailed text you sent me afterward must not have gone through, I guess.”
The Girl You Thought I Was Page 18