“Well. Yeah,” I said, in a loud and flat tone that would’ve appalled Jane, who had crafted heroines that were much better at exertion than me. “Good party.”
It was not a good party. I could think of at least fifteen parties I had been to that were better than this party, and that included one in sixth grade where I was struck with a stomach bug halfway through and threw up repeatedly in Ashley Price’s bathroom until my parents could come and get me.
On that fucking idiotic statement, I departed.
A pair of footsteps pounded after me, and I braced myself for another encounter with Ezra. But this time it really was Foster.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t come out on time. It’s just Gwin kept talking and she had my arm in this death grip, and then she didn’t even want to ride with us anymore. She left with Taylor and Jessica and—”
“It’s fine,” I said, as we motored down the sidewalk.
“It’s not. I’m sorry.”
I wrenched my car door open.
“Are you mad at me?” Foster said.
“No.” Once inside the car, the sense of urgency in me began to subside. “No, I’m not mad at you.”
I had lost Cas and Ezra in the same night. I stood up to Stanton Perkins, I feared for my life, I ruined my party dress. All at once, I was too tired to cry. So I just rested my forehead against the steering wheel and squeezed my eyes shut.
Foster touched his head to my shoulder, a strange sort of hug. And I was comforted, somewhat.
32
A night like that warranted nothing but sleep—a heavy, all-consuming sleep that would wash away the immediacy of it all. But it wasn’t as refreshing as I had hoped, and when I saw Foster’s face the next morning, it read as if his sleep had been as restless as mine.
We sat on the couch for most of the day, playing video games and watching crappy TV. I looked over at Foster at one point and wondered who I would’ve spent a day like this with before he was here. Cas, maybe. But not even Cas could be pinned down for this long. Foster was content to hang out with me for any amount of time. It was kind of funny—the thing that had annoyed me so much about him in the beginning was what I dearly appreciated now.
Gaming and marathoning reruns were a pretty decent distraction, but I couldn’t keep last night out forever, and eventually it began to slip in. Cas came first. Fresh indignation welled up in me at the thought of his expression as we stood outside the gym, but there was also embarrassment, and some kind of hurt. There’s no way to break up if you never dated someone in the first place, but that’s a little how it felt. Maybe not necessarily as final as a breakup, but something had changed between us, intrinsically. I didn’t want to think about it too much, didn’t want to pick it apart, because it made me sad.
But pushing Cas to the back of my mind just drew Ezra into the forefront. Ezra, with that inexplicable look of concern. Ezra, who was patient with Foster, who didn’t question it when we needed him. Yet I wrote him off immediately when he probably needed us.
What did he say on the bleachers that day? You’re easy to talk to. It was an offshoot of what Rachel had told me: You’re good at talking to people. I mean, that was a patent untruth right there. If I were so good at talking to people, I would’ve just talked to Ezra after the Lake Falls game. I would’ve talked to Lindsay about Homecoming.
Lindsay, golden last night in that gorgeous dress. I realized that she had extended the offer that day at the mall, the offer for us to room together, even knowing that I was planning to go out with the guy that she liked. She had treated me better than I had ever treated her, never holding her feelings against me, never begrudging me her regard.
Each revelation made me want to sink deeper into the cushions of the couch. Eventually I would soak right into the fiberfill, a puddle of regret.