“I can’t,” he said at last. “There’s something I gotta do today.”
“What?” I asked as he carefully got up and moved away from me.
“It’s nothing big,” he said. “Just something I need to take care of.”
I sat there, stunned. Spence was starting to dismiss me so easily these days. It hurt more than I could say. “More secrets?” I said meanly.
He looked away from me again, toward his car. “I gotta go. Tell Britt to hang in there. I’ll call you later.”
With that, he was gone and I was left to wonder what the hell was happening to us.
COLE PULLED OVER AND PUT a hand on my shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “Lily, what happened?”
I shook my head and covered my eyes with my hand, beyond embarrassed. The trouble was that I couldn’t stop crying. I missed Sophie so much, and part of me wanted to call her immediately to comfort her, but then I remembered how heartbroken I’d been because of her and it was all so conflicting.
“Hey,” he said. “Come on. Tell me what’s wrong?”
I gulped back a sob and held out my phone to him. He saw the screen and his brow furrowed. And then it rose, as if he’d suddenly put it together. “Your best friend just split up with your ex?”
I swallowed back another sob and nodded vigorously, wiping at my cheeks and trying so hard to pull myself together.
Cole handed me the phone, then twisted in his seat to reach into the back. He came up with a small box of Kleenex. “Here,” he said, offering it to me.
I took a tissue and hid my face while I dabbed at my eyes. “I don’t even know why I’m crying.”
“Maybe it’s because, as long as she was dating your ex, you could be mad at her and not miss her, but now that she’s split with him, it’s not making you as angry and it means you can miss her for real now.”
I stared at him, a bit surprised. “Wow,” I said. “If it doesn’t work out for you with the FBI, maybe you should give psychology a try.”
He grinned. “It’s not that hard to figure out, Lil. She’s been your best friend for how long?”
“Eleven years.”
He nodded knowingly. “Do you know Chris Borgus?”
I furrowed my brow. “No. Should I?”
“I’ll make the intros next week. He’s been my best friend since we were in sixth grade. If he broke the bro code, I think it’d be really hard, but I’d still be his best friend. I mean, Lily, eleven years is a lot of history to try and forget. No way can you just shrug that off like it’s no big deal.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I really do miss her, Cole.”
“Then call her.”
I turned my head to look out the window. “I don’t know if I’m ready to do that yet.”
“Okay, so text her.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not that simple.”
“Sure it is,” he said. “I mean, what’s the harm? Yeah, what she did was really shitty, but she seems sorry. I don’t know; if it were me, and we’d been friends for eleven years, I’d probably forgive her.”
I heard what Cole was saying, and it made a lot of sense, but I think I was still a little too hurt to just forgive and forget. Tucking the phone away, I said, “Maybe later.”
Thankfully, Cole let it go, and we got back under way. He stopped just a minute or two later, across the street from the same house that’d brought on a panic attack—his grandmother’s place. I started to feel anxious just looking at it.
“I can go in alone if you want to stay here,” Cole offered.
“Nah,” I said, not wanting to look like even more of a wimp. “I’m cool.”
Cole got out and I followed after him, looking over my shoulder to see if anybody was watching us. He didn’t seem at all nervous; he just headed up the drive like he owned the place, and undid the latch on the gate that let us into the backyard. When we reached the back porch he moved aside a planter and retrieved a silver key.
“Ta-da!” he said.
“What if she comes home while we’re in there?”
“She won’t,” he said. “She works a ten-to-four shift on the weekends at CVS. And even if she did come back, we could always sneak out the front door. Come on, we’re cool.”
We entered the house and I immediately took note of the gloomy interior. Every shade in the place was drawn, and the hum of the air conditioner could be heard from the kitchen to the left. Cole pointed to the doorway leading to the family room.
“How about I wait by the door?” I suggested. I couldn’t help it; I was super-nervous about trespassing.