“Okay, now you’re definitely telling me to get wasted.”
“I am not,” Mom protests. “I just recognize that you’re becoming an adult. You’re going to make your own decisions, and I know you’re a smart girl, but everyone makes some mistakes. I want you to know you’ve got me, no matter what. You can always count on your dad and me.”
“So you want me to get pregnant, or . . . ?”
Mom crosses her arms and gives me a stern look. “Be good,” she says, turning down the hallway.
Beau picks me up at nine, about an hour after Mom and Dad take off for their date night and twenty minutes after Abby’s mom picks up Jack and Coco to drop all of them off at the movies. He honks from the driveway, and I run out to find him looking unbearably good in worn-out jeans and an equally aged plaid shirt.
“Ready?” he asks when I climb in.
“As I’ll ever be.” Truthfully, just about the second we parted ways last night I started worrying that we’d get separated again, but now that we’re together that seems impossible. I feel like we’re anchored together.
We drive out past the high school to the Dillhorns’ fancy neighborhood of mini-mansions, with its own golf course and country club. The party’s already going full force, music blaring and cars parked all the way around the circular driveway at the top of the hill. “My version or yours?” I ask Beau. I felt that sinking sensation in my stomach awhile back, but it had been so subtle I’d thought I imagined it.
He closes his eyes for a second. “Mine.”
“How do you know?”
“I told you, you belong here more than anyone else,” he says softly.
“You did.”
“Your version of the world feels different,” he says. “It feels like you.”
I laugh. “When did it change?”
Beau shrugs. “They’re so alike sometimes it’s hard to tell.”
“I guess I’m holding up my end of the deal so far,” I say. “I came to your Union.”
“So I shouldn’t drink tonight?”
“Only beer,” I say. “Beer doesn’t count.”
I hop out of the car, following him around the expansive lawn to the glowing blue pool and patio behind the house. The back doors are open to the kitchen, people spilling from the keg on the counter inside all down either side of the pool to the deep backyard, moths fluttering around the mounted lights, their fragile wings vibrating with the music.
Beau’s hand slides around mine, and he leads the way through the crowd toward the patio furniture on the far side of the pool, where half the football team is crowded around, drinking and sharing joints, their girlfriends perched in their laps.
Beau clamps a hand on one of their shoulders, and my heart nearly stops when Matt turns around, the blond girl in his lap jumping up to let him stand. I’m doubly stunned when I recognize the blonde as Megan.
Oh my God. They’re together. In a parallel universe, my best friend and my ex are together. That had to have been who Matt was at the theater with that day.
“Hey, man,” Matt says, clapping Beau on the back, and I desperately fight to get my facial muscles, heart rate, and nausea under control. Seeing Matt with Rachel was one thing, but this is something else entirely.
“Wanted you to meet someone,” Beau says. Matt’s and Megan’s eyes both wander over to me. Megan’s hair is cut short, her eye makeup more generous than usual and her hoop earrings bigger, but she’s undeniably the double of the Megan I’ve known for years. And this Matt looks identical to the one who gave me a ride to NKU a few days ago.
“Hi,” I say, holding a shaky hand out to Megan first. “I’m Natalie.”
I don’t know what I’m expecting. Some flicker of recognition maybe, some sign that she’s aware we were born to be best friends, but I don’t get it, and I feel like my heart’s collapsing. Megan smiles politely. “Meg.”
I turn to Matt next, trying to compose myself. When our eyes meet, his soften immediately and his mouth drops open, a blush spreading rapidly up his neck as his gaze roves over me. “Hey,” he says, taking my hand.
When his eyes drift back up to me, I’m stunned by what I see in them: not recognition, exactly, but something that shouldn’t be there, not in this Matt Kincaid: softness, connection.
Beside me I’m aware of Beau’s eyes dropping to the ground, and I let go of Matt’s hand as fast I can. Megan’s noticed Matt eye-fondling me too: She crosses her arms and lifts her eyebrows as she looks out across the yard. “Excuse me,” she says. “I think I need to pee. Or take a shower. Puke. Something in the bathroom.”