“Bro?” Beau said, now angling it toward Finch.
“I’m good,” Finch said, looking distracted as he read something on his phone. “Can’t you see I’m driving precious cargo here?” He gave me a little smile but then turned back to his phone, texting with one hand.
As I glanced out the window, Grace suddenly piped up from the backseat. “Well, if she’s precious cargo, then you should probably stop texting and driving.”
Her voice sounded harsh, and it made me glance over at Finch. Looking busted, he immediately dropped his phone to the seat, then tucked it under his left thigh. A weird vibe settled over the car before I cleared my throat and said, “She was just kidding.”
“No. I’m not,” Grace said. I glanced into the backseat and gave her a panicked look, but she continued, all preachy and pissy. “Texting and driving kills more people than drunk driving.”
“God. Grace. Chill,” I said under my breath as I looked at Finch to gauge his reaction.
“Nah. She’s right,” he said, giving me a little wink and one of his awesome smiles. “Bad habit. I’m really sorry, girls.”
* * *
—
“PRECIOUS CARGO?” GRACE said about fifteen minutes later, after we’d been dropped off at her house and were alone in her driveway. She opened her mouth and made a gagging sound.
I knew she was quoting Finch, but I had no clue what her point was, and why she’d gone from carefree party girl to complete buzzkill in a span of three miles and ten minutes, totally ending the night on a bad note.
“What’s with the one-eighty?” I said. As we walked toward her car, I typed a quick text to Finch, thanking him again for the tickets.
“Well. Let’s just say I’m good at reading texts over people’s shoulders.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said, stopping to stare her down. “I’m not trying to hide anything.” I held up my phone, showing her what I’d just written. “I just thanked him for the tickets. Since you kinda forgot to.”
“I’m not talking about your phone. I’m talking about Finch’s. I saw him texting Polly,” she said. “In the car. He was holding the screen away from you, but I could see it all.”
My heart sank as I asked her what, exactly, she saw.
“Well. I saw Polly’s name. I saw an ‘ILY.’ I saw a kissy emoji. And I saw the word lame.”
“Lame?” I said.
“Yeah. Lame.”
“What was he calling lame?” I couldn’t resist asking, just as it occurred to me that it might be a who, not a what.
“I don’t know. Does it matter? You fill in the blank. Lame concert. Lame date. Lame night. Lame effort to pretend to break up with someone and like someone else so that she’ll get you off the hook next week.”
“Okay. First of all,” I said. “He could have been calling a lot of things ‘lame’ that had nothing to do with us….Second of all, they did break up.”
“Doubtful,” Grace said, adjusting the strap of her Miu Miu cross-body bag. “Highly doubtful.”
“Oh my God, Grace. Because he texted her? What do you want him to do? Block her?” I said. I’d never been in a serious relationship, but I saw how breakups worked. In most cases, it seemed that couples didn’t just go cold turkey. They often kept talking or fighting or begging or getting temporarily back together only to re–break up, in some combination.
“I didn’t say he had to block her. But typically after you break up, you don’t tell that person that you love them. And you don’t throw shade at the girl you asked out on a date. I mean, shit, Lyla. He used the word lame.”
“Well. Maybe he feels sorry for her….Maybe he’s worried about her….Maybe he still loves her on some level….”
“Yeah. And maybe he and Beau just set your ass up. With Luke Bryan tickets.”
“God, Grace. It was a fun night. A really fun night.”
“Yeah. And I bet Finch is still having fun. I bet he’s on his way to see her right now. I bet she doesn’t even know he went out with you tonight. Or maybe she does, actually. Maybe she’s in on the whole plan.”
“Okay, look,” I said, glancing down at my phone. “It’s ten-forty. I gotta get home. Are you okay to drive?”
“Yeah. I took, like, one hit,” she said. “I’m totally fine.”
“I didn’t mean that. I mean…your foul mood. Why are you so pissed at me?”
“I’m not pissed at you. I’m pissed at them,” she said, our shoulders now squared toward each other as we stood behind the new white Jeep her parents had just given her for no reason at all.
“Them? So now you’re mad at Beau, too? Because you seemed pretty into him all night.”
“I’m not into him,” she said, making no moves to get in her car. “Besides. That was before I saw the text calling us ‘lame.’?”
“He called us lame? Or you just saw the word ‘lame’?” I said.
She didn’t answer, just kept staring at me.
“Look, Grace. This curfew thing isn’t just a loose suggestion. My dad means it. You want me to just call him to get me? He’s probably out driving anyway….” I usually avoided mentioning my dad’s side job, even to Grace. But at that moment, I really didn’t give a shit about appearances of any kind.
“No. I’ll take you,” she said, finally getting in her car.
As I got in beside her, I inhaled the new car smell and felt a wave of resentment. Although I never held Grace’s money or nice things against her, they all irritated me now. Along with her shitty, cynical attitude. Maybe she, with her music industry dad, could take a night like this for granted. There were plenty more sweet concerts with front-row seats in her future. But she wasn’t going to rain on my Luke Bryan parade. At the very least, I wanted tonight to be a good memory.
We drove in silence for a few minutes, before she cleared her throat and said, “I’m sorry, Lyla. I just don’t want you to get hurt. More hurt.”
“I know,” I said. “But it really is more complicated than you realize.”
“How?” she said, shrugging while she kept her hands on the steering wheel.
“It just is,” I said.
“How?” she said again.
I swallowed, feeling myself cave to her stronger personality and my need for her approval. Without Grace, I really had nothing at Windsor—and we both knew it. “If I tell you something, do you promise not to tell anyone?” I asked, knowing that it never worked that way, and maybe hoping that it wouldn’t. That she might tell Mr. Q or a guidance counselor or another close friend. That the truth might come out.
“Of course,” she said.
“Okay. So. Here’s the thing.” I paused, taking a few deep breaths. “Finch didn’t take that photo of me. And he didn’t caption it. And he didn’t send it to anyone.”
She looked at me, her eyebrows raised, then returned her eyes to the road. “Who did?”
“Polly,” I said. “From his phone.”
I expected a complete transformation—or at least a softening—but instead she slapped the steering wheel and started to laugh. “Oh my God! He told you that?”
“Yes.”
“And you actually believe him?”
“Yes. I do, actually,” I said, delving into the rest of the details. How he wasn’t trying to get out of trouble; he just wanted me to know the truth. That he was willing to take the blame for Polly because he was genuinely worried about her stability.
“Wow, Lyla. I thought you, of all people, would have more street smarts than this,” she said, shaking her head.
“Why would I have street smarts?” I said, my face burning. “Because I grew up on the wrong side of the river with a single dad who makes furniture and drives Uber?”
“What the heck does that mean?” Grace snapped back.
“Never mind,” I said because I knew I might be overreacting. Maybe I was reading too much into the expression. Maybe Grace simply meant that I usually had good instincts about people. Maybe it had nothing to do with any of that other stuff—and those were just my paranoid, insecure issues. “Can we just drop it?”
“Yeah. Sure. We can drop it,” Grace said, going all passive-aggressive on me as she cruised along in her pretty white Jeep. “No problemo.”
* * *