Lucy and I are on our own private stretch of beach, necks sandy as we stare up at the sky. We found this spot a few days ago while we were wandering around, shoes dangling from our fingertips as we stumbled through the dunes. Trying to escape the crowds that, despite the cold weather and biting sea breeze, never really seem to dissipate around here.
There’s a faint crackle of fireworks somewhere to the north of us and the crashing of waves down by our feet, though it’s too dark to see how close we are to the water. I hear a sloshing to my left and turn to the side, vaguely register Lucy’s outstretched arm holding the bottle of wine she snagged from my parents’ pantry.
“Happy New Year, Margot.”
She wiggles the bottle in my direction, the sudden sound of her voice making me realize we’ve been lying in silence for a long, long time: ten minutes, maybe twenty, quietly comfortable in each other’s presence.
“Happy New Year, Luce.”
I grab the bottle and take a pull, the sweet bite of rosé making my skin prickle. We’re bundled up in sweatpants and sweatshirts, two knit blankets spread out between us, but still, it’s cold out here. We should have brought hot chocolate or something. Spiked it with Bailey’s.
Lucy has been in the Outer Banks for about a week now, the two of us sleeping feet-to-head in my bed, even though my parents have two perfectly acceptable guest rooms they made up for her the second they realized who she was. After we left Levi’s, we had walked back into my house to find my mother doing laps around the living room until she heard our entrance and stopped abruptly, clasping her hands tight behind her back like we had caught her stealing. I tried to ignore the hot flash of embarrassment that shot up my chest at the thought of her spending the entire hour since Lucy’s unexpected arrival running around in a flurry of nerves: collecting the dishes, lighting candles. Barking out orders and madly fluffing the throw pillows like Lucy might take one look at their lumpy physique and shake her head, disappointed in us all. Once we settled in, though, it turned into a slow, lazy week the way the holidays usually are and I actually found that I didn’t mind it. Thanks to my mom’s incessant questioning, I’ve learned more mundane details about Lucy’s life in the last seven days than I have in the last seven months combined. She grew up with cats, apparently, even though she thinks she might be allergic. She doesn’t have any extended family—no aunts, no uncles, no cousins—and even though I warned my mother not to ask too much about that, about how she grew up, she still found a way to pepper in her nosy inquiries, feigning ignorance when I shot her looks across the table.
“How about a boyfriend?” she had asked the other night, the four of us sitting close in the dining room. I could see my dad’s shoulders hunch instinctively; the small cough he’d let slip, like something was caught in his throat. “A pretty girl like you has to have one.”
“Mom,” I warned, but Lucy just laughed.
“It’s fine. I had one in high school, but it didn’t work out.”
I heard Maggie’s voice in my ear then, that hiss on the lawn as we watched Lucy lie out there. “I heard she blinded her boyfriend in high school.” It felt like just another rumor at the time, one of the countless wild tales some student made up about her to feel relevant, but still. I felt myself leaning forward, not wanting to miss a word.
“His loss,” my mom said, spearing a piece of broccoli.
“Yeah,” Lucy said, averting her eyes, her voice suddenly sounding too clipped. Too strained.
“He didn’t … he didn’t hurt you or anything, did he?”
“Mom, seriously.”
“Margot, honey, we’re just having a conversation.”
“It’s fine,” Lucy said again, cutting into a chicken thigh. “No, nothing like that. At least, not physically.” She smiled.
“Truth or dare,” Lucy says to me now, and I feel myself blink. I brush off the memory along with a streak of sand on my cheek before rubbing both arms with my hands to warm them.
“Truth,” I say at last, another pop going off somewhere in the distance. A flash of light, a faraway cheer.
“That’s new for you.”
“Yeah, well, if I said dare you’d dare me to go skinny-dipping and I’m not trying to die of hypothermia.”
Lucy laughs, an open-mouthed snort that’s cut short by another slug from the bottle. She shakes her head, wipes her lips on her hand, and plops it down in the sand between us.
“You’re not wrong about that.”
I’m quiet as she thinks, fingers tickling at her chin until she flips to the side and rests her head on her arm.
“What’s your New Year’s resolution?”
“I don’t really have one,” I say, and that’s the honest truth. I’ve never been that kind of person. There have always been things I’ve wanted to change about myself, things I’ve disliked, but until I met Lucy, I could never imagine waking up one morning and just actively choosing to be somebody else. Shedding my insecurities like a too-small skin, leaving them behind. Outgrowing my old self and simply morphing into someone new.
“You have to have one. Just pick something.”
I take a minute to think about the past year, such a drastic detour from my life thus far. I can’t even believe that, 365 days ago, I was still living in the dorms with Maggie, cocooned in a cradle of junk food and mediocre movies to keep myself from having to think too hard about everything I had lost. So maybe that’s my resolution: to never go back to that place again. To never lose anything else so completely. And I don’t just mean Eliza; I mean myself, too. I had no idea how fragile I was back then, how my very being was held together by such a perilously thin thread. Because before I was with Maggie, I was with Eliza. I hadn’t lost her yet. We were still best friends, still doing everything together. We were still counting down the days until Rutledge when we could both finally be free … but was I happy back then? Was I, really? I don’t actually know. I never tried to change the things I didn’t like about myself, fix the things that needed to be fixed. Instead, I just latched on to Eliza, zeroing in on all the places she was full where I was hollow and hoped that if I lapped them up for long enough, they’d pool their way in and fill me up, too.
“I want to be different,” I say at last, the only way I know how to put it.
“Different how?”
“I don’t know,” I say, rolling over now, too. “I’m sick of being weak, I guess. Of being … malleable.”
“I don’t think you’re weak.”
“Lucy, come on.” We’re both quiet, nothing but the roar of waves between us. I want her to say something, to crack some kind of joke to break the tension, but instead, she stays silent. “You saw how I was last year.”
I’m grateful for the dark right now, the cover of night, so she can’t see the warm flush creeping into my cheeks. We’ve never really talked about this before: her choosing me, the anomaly of it. How it just doesn’t make sense, no matter which way you twist it.
I grab the bottle from the sand, surprisingly light in my grip, and take another drink.
“You were going through something.”
“I was always like that,” I say, shaking my head. “Even before Eliza. I was always too cautious. Always letting people walk all over me.”
“Well, I like you the way you are, but I know you have it in you to be different. I’ve seen it.”
We’re both silent, memories from Halloween flooding right back. The way I had stood up by the fire, interrogated Levi as soon as I saw him emerge through the shed, my accusations fierce and unafraid. Later, shivering on the kitchen floor, a hatred so pure and razor-sharp it sliced straight through the silence, surprising us both.
“It should have been him.”
“That wasn’t me,” I say now. “I was angry—”
“It is possible to be both,” she interjects. “Radically both.”