“In what world would that turn out okay?”
“What happened between you two?” Kit asks, and Leti subtly shakes his head, freezing when I catch him doing it.
“A lot,” I answer, and when she continues waiting, I add, “Too much.”
“Were you in love?”
The answer is that we were. The answer is that I still am. I love him, and I hate that, and if I could shut it off, I would. Part of me wants him to be happy, in his own place with his new life, but the other part of me hopes that he can’t sleep, can’t eat, and never gives his heart to anyone else. I hope that when the next girl tells him she loves him, he tells her to go home. “Who wants another margarita?”
That night, after I’ve drank enough to forget about Joel and everyone else has drank enough to stop bringing him up, Leti and Rowan both wrap me in a cocoon of arms. They do it as a joke, and we all giggle, but no one pulls their arms away, and eventually we fall asleep like that. In less than thirty-six hours, I’ll be moving home, and next semester, Leti will be graduating. The cocoon is precious, a memory not yet a memory, and we hold on to the night for as long as we can.
In the morning, I wiggle out of my tight spot between them still feeling more like a caterpillar than a butterfly. I crawl over an unsteady mountain of pillows, slip through the exit of our fortress, and find Kit groaning in the kitchen.
“I can’t believe we packed away your coffeemaker,” she says, her layered black-and-blue hair wild and untamed. Her lashes are so thick and dark that they frame her eyes even without eyeliner or mascara, and I hate her just a little for it.
“Let’s wake up Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming so we can go to IHOP,” I say.
I’m walking back toward the fort when Kit replies, “I love their pancakes.” My mouth tips up at the corners, and I know with absolute certainty that we found the right girl for the band.
After pancakes, Adam, Shawn, and Mike show up at my apartment with the moving van and start loading my stuff into the back—my bed, my dressers, my boxes and boxes and boxes of shoes. Not all of this stuff is going to fit into my room at my dad’s, and I wonder if maybe I should get my own apartment back home. Maybe a roommate. Hopefully not a weird one like I had at the dorms. If I can find the band a kickass guitarist, I should definitely be able to find myself a not-weird roommate, right?
Considering Rowan will still be here, over three hundred miles away, I can’t imagine liking anyone I’d be living with. She could be the most amazing person in the world and she’d still feel counterfeit—I’d always hate her for not being Rowan.
“What’s wrong?” Rowan asks as we watch Mike and Shawn carry my dresser into the van. Leti and Kit are taking a break on the grass, and Adam is sitting in a basket chair waiting to be loaded, smoking a cigarette and looking downright cozy.
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
I sigh, and she turns her gaze back toward the boys. There’s no point in telling her I’ll miss her. I’ve told her a thousand times.
“Me too,” she says, and she bumps her shoulder against mine.
I wish she was the only one I’ll miss, but looking out at the boys, I can’t help thinking that I’ll miss them too. And I can’t help knowing that one of them is missing.
Chapter Twenty-Six
PACKING AWAY MY glassware was our first mistake. Forgetting to buy Solo cups at the store was our second. Now, everyone is passing around a collection of liquor bottles and soda cans. We’re all sitting on the empty hardwood floor of my apartment, boxes of pizza in the middle of our circle and a cake Rowan won’t let me stick my finger into hiding in the fridge.
“To getting an A on that marketing final,” Shawn says, toasting a bottle of tequila in the air.
“To fashion school,” Leti adds, toasting a bottle of vodka.
“To drinking straight from the bottle,” Adam quips, toasting a bottle of whiskey.
I chuckle, and Rowan toasts a hard lemonade in the air. “To Dee.”
I smile and steal the tequila from Shawn, holding it out toward Adam. “To Adam, for being the only not-corny person here.”
He laughs and clinks his bottle to mine, and we both take big gulps.
“To everyone who bothered to work today,” Mike adds, and Rowan laughs and toasts her lemonade bottle to his beer bottle. Adam laughs too because he knows Mike is referring to him. For the most part today, Adam did a miraculous job of looking like he was helping without actually doing anything.