It’s Oliver.
And he’s written just one word in response.
Yes.
I mumble some excuse about having stuff to do, which elicits a quirked eyebrow from Mia.
Then I hurry upstairs and text him back.
Avery Park. Eight o’clock?
OK, he texts back.
* * *
—
An hour and a half later, I wait anxiously in the parking lot of my favorite park. Our favorite park when we were little.
I’m starting to think he’s not going to come when a gray car pulls up a few spots away from mine.
I walk toward his car and wait while he climbs out.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
We walk silently into the park.
“Remember the tunnel?” I ask.
“Of course,” he says.
“Wanna go through it?”
“Okay.”
I go flying through it first, then Oliver has a turn.
We are both grinning when we come out the other side.
“It never gets old,” he says.
“Oliver, I’m sorry,” I blurt out. “For what happened that night. You were right. About Will. About everything.”
“No, listen,” he says. “It’s your life, you were right. I had no right—have no right—to comment on any of it.”
“But you do,” I insist. “You’re my friend. And friends tell each other the truth.”
The word friend hangs in the air between us.
Oliver tugs at the back of his hair. “Right,” he says. “I just don’t think it was my place. Maybe Lacey…”
“This has nothing to do with Lacey,” I say. “This is about you and me.” I take a step toward him. “I feel like it has been about Lacey for way too long.”
“So what do you want it to be about?”
“You and me,” I say.
His eyes widen as I step even closer. “Yeah?”
I nod, and suddenly our faces are inches apart, our breaths intermingling. He breathes on me. I breathe back on him. Then suddenly, annoyingly, predictably, the fear hits me.
I freeze. “You said you didn’t want to have to care about someone else.”
Oliver closes the gap between us again. “It’s too late for that. It’s been too late for years.”
My heart kicks faster at his words, and I feel something in me release, feel the fear evaporate from my shoulders.
“What about Mason?” he asks.
“He’s…he’s dead,” I say, voice breaking a little.
“Eden, if you still need time…if you need to get over…”
“I don’t think I need time. I think I’ve wasted too much time,” I say. “Obsessing about what Lacey was doing, obsessing over Will. We leave for college in a few weeks. I don’t want to waste any more time.”
“Are you sure?” Oliver asks, his lips tickling mine.
“Positive,” I say. Then, “Oliver?”
“Hmm?”
I take a deep breath and something like courage fills my lungs. “I’m going to kiss you, okay?”
“Yes,” he murmurs against my lips, and then our lips meet and his skin is touching mine and my arms are around his neck. One of his hands grips my waist and the other is in my hair. And I think, This is what it feels like to be kissed.
This is what it feels like to be alive.
* * *
—
When I get home, I’m going up the stairs when I hear a sound. Breathy and broken and low, coming from my parents’ room. Dad is still at the hospital, so it can be only one person.
I turn right at the top of the stairs, on my way to my room, but then something makes me stop. Without my permission, my feet are backpedaling and then I’m standing at her door, which is open just a crack. Through it, I make out a lump in my parents’ bed. I push the door open wider and pad into the dark room.
The sobs don’t stop when I come in. I don’t think she’s noticed I’m here.
Not until I’ve walked all the way to the left side of the bed. Not until I’m climbing in beside her, still in my work clothes. She turns to face me, surprised, but she doesn’t say anything.
She looks at me and her eyes say a million things, and mine do too.
She closes her eyes and I run my hand through her hair, just like she used to do for me when I was little, when I was afraid of the dark or monsters under my bed, when I couldn’t sleep or when I was sick. When I’d made a mistake in a skating show and she sat beside me comforting me, promising me there would be other recitals, other chances. All along, I remembered her wanting me to be the best, always the best, but somehow I forgot that she still loved me when I wasn’t.
We stay there, side by side for hours, her sobs becoming softer, quieter, until she falls asleep.
And then I do.
THREE WEEKS LATER
I’M TRYING NOT to cry.
My car is stacked up with pillows and a comforter and all the clothes I wear on a regular basis, and my room looks empty, stripped bare, and I heard Sam asking Mom if she could move into my room.
Before I was even out the door.
Mia went back to school last week and now my parents stand watching me load up my car, with Sam in between them. With Dad’s health issues, my parents actually agreed to let me drive to college alone.
I’m seriously rethinking my decision not to drive up to State with Oliver when he left two days ago. I wanted to spend as much time with Dad as possible before I left.
I wrestle my laundry basket in on the other side of the car from them, where they can’t see my eyes starting to well, and then hurry back inside and upstairs to get the last of my stuff. I realize I’ve seriously misjudged the weight of the last box when I can’t manage to lift it on the first two tries.
“Do you need a hand?”
I jump at the sound of Lacey’s voice behind me.
“No, I think I’m good,” I say, staring at her like she’s a stranger. She does look like a stranger. Her hair is cut in an asymmetric bob.
“Your hair…,” I say.
“I know,” she laughs, touching it self-consciously. “My one beauty. Can we talk?” she asks.
“Okay.”
Neither of us speaks for a moment.
“So I hear you and Oliver are…”
“We don’t need your permission,” I spit, not willing to listen to her complain about us hooking up.
“No, no,” she says. “That’s not what I meant. I didn’t even mean to bring that up.”
“So what do you want to talk about?”
“Us,” she says. “I hate how everything has gone. I hate…I wish it wasn’t like this.”
“You lied to me. For, like, two months,” I say.
“I know, and I’m sorry,” she says. “But you lied to me too.”
The kiss that never happened.
“That was different. I didn’t think…If I’d known about you and Will, I’d never have done it.”
“Why did you do it?”
“It was just an impulse thing. I’m always freezing up, freaking out, and the night Will died I did it again. I hated myself for it.”
Lacey nods. “So…what happens to us?”
“I think you were right. That we needed space, that we needed to know how to be apart.”
She opens her mouth and then shuts it. “I didn’t mean…I want us to still be friends.”
“I don’t know, Lacey,” I say after a moment. “What kind of friends do that? Lie to each other, keep secrets, leave each other?”
“Shitty friends,” she says. “But shitty friends aren’t the same as lost causes.”
I squint at her. “How long did it take you to think of that one?”
>
“A while,” she admits with a laugh. Then, more seriously, she adds, “Maybe we can try again.”
“Maybe,” I say, and I want to try and I will try. Still, there are all the things we’ve done to each other and then there’s college and new friends and new places, new lives that don’t include each other. Lacey and I have always ended up together, but for the first time, I’m not so sure we will.
I reach into my pocket and pull up something on my phone, then turn it over to her.
“Our list,” she says when she sees it.
Go on a road trip.
Get a tattoo.
Go skinny-dipping.
Do something dorky like sneaking into a movie. Steal something.
Fall in love.
“I’m finishing it today. I did it all except one.”
“Which one?” she asks.
“The road trip.”
I decided not to count the drive to Camp Rowan as a road trip, because it was about skinny-dipping and a two-for-one felt like cheating.
“Holy shit,” she says, eyes wide. “You got a tattoo?”
Her jaw drops when I roll up my jeans and show it to her. “Holy shit,” she says again. “What does it mean?”
“Life goes on,” I say, and she glances up at me like she understands it, why I chose it, what it means.
“Wow,” she says. “And number five?”
I nod. I think about telling her the full story. That for a while I thought it was about Will, for a while I thought the whole list was about Will.
Number five is kind of still in progress, and it’s about me. And Oliver.
But mostly about me.
Lacey crosses her arms over her chest now.
“So you’re all set for college, huh?”
“Yeah. When do you leave for LA?”
“Next week,” she says. “I found this place that I’m going to be renting with a group of girls.”
“You’re not staying with your dad?”
“No, uh, things didn’t work out with that.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and she nods.
“Can I…can I give you a hug?” she asks. Without waiting for my answer, she wraps her arms around me, and I hug her back. We stay like that, frozen, fourteen years and a moment in time.
“I’ll miss you,” she says, letting go.
I’ve missed you this whole summer, I think, letting go.
A few minutes later, Lacey helps me maneuver the giant final box down the stairs, and then she gets in her mother’s car and drives away.
Mom, Dad and Sam are still standing beside my car, ready to see me off. I wonder what it will be like with just them. It seemed impossible at first, that it was just four of us without Mia, and then it became normal, like everything does.
Their new normal will be something that won’t include me.
I hug them goodbye and the tears finally come.
I promise to drive safe, to call when I arrive, to take care of myself.
Then finally I am behind the wheel, starting the car, on my way to my newest and biggest adventure yet.
I take a deep breath and drive away.
Number one: go on a road trip.
I don’t turn on the radio or call Oliver or anyone else throughout the drive.
I keep myself company.
And it’s not so bad.
So many thanks to my editor, Julia Maguire, for believing in this story. It wouldn’t be what it is without your insight and guidance. Thank you also to my agent, Suzie Townsend, for your wisdom and for being there every step of the way.
I’m indebted to Angela Carlino for this gorgeous cover. Thank you also to everyone at New Leaf Literary and at Random House and Knopf, especially Artie Bennett and Jake Eldred.
I once saw an author thank their family for still claiming them, despite the toll the book-writing process takes (all the zoning out mid-conversation, the canceling on you to write, the forgetting to call you back, the crazed, sleep-deprived ideas that never sound as good out loud). Thank you, family, for still claiming me. I love you.
Last but not least, thank you to every single person who picks up this book. You make this job worth it—and a whole lot less lonely.
Cassandra Williams
Sarah Everett was born in West Africa but currently resides in Alberta, Canada. When she is not writing, she can be found reading, watching tennis, or exploring her love of science. She has a soft spot for rom-coms and pop culture, and has weirdly specific tastes in licorice. She is also the author of Everyone We’ve Been.
saraheverettbooks.com
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No One Here Is Lonely Page 28