“No,” Bri said, her voice quiet. “We were starting to do the list when he told me how he felt. And I hadn’t wanted to admit it, but . . . I’d been feeling the same way too.”
I closed my eyes for a second, still trying to get this to be a reality I could deal with—that Bri and Wyatt had been together, in secret, for half the summer.
“Oh my god,” I said, sinking down to the floor, feeling like my legs were not really up for holding me at that moment. My eyes strayed over to her bed—it was messy, the sheets rumpled, and I knew for a fact that Bri made her bed, hospital corners and all, every morning. “Are you sleeping with him?”
Bri just looked at me—I could see the answer clearly written across her face. “Bri.” I suddenly thought of the day on Palmer’s roof, how quiet she’d been when we were talking about guys and bases, keeping this secret from all of us. Keeping it from Toby. “What about Toby?” I asked, feeling like this just kept getting worse.
Bri shook her head and let out a short laugh, the kind with no humor in it whatsoever. “Right,” she said, and I could hear her voice was tight, and higher, the way it was when she was getting emotional and didn’t want to show it. “Because of course this is about Toby.”
I just looked at her. “Well . . .”
“It’s always about Toby!” Bri yelled this, her voice reverberating in the room.
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” she asked, her voice still raised. “You found out I’m sleeping with Wyatt and your first thought was about Toby. Not me. I don’t get a morning at the diner where we all get to talk about it. I don’t even get to be with him in public, because of Toby. Because we need to protect her.” Bri brushed her hand across her face. “Nobody ever cares about making things easier for me. It’s always about Toby. It’s like I can’t even see myself sometimes when I’m with her, and I just . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she sat down on the bed, pulling her knees up underneath her.
I pushed myself off the floor and walked over to sit next to Bri on the bed. “Okay,” I said, hearing the question in my voice. I felt like I was so without a plan and so beyond anything we’d ever experienced that I had no idea what to do from here, how we should proceed. My first, automatic thought was that it should be Toby here, doing this, before I realized how crazy that was. “So tell me about it.”
Bri gave a trembly smile as she looked at her hands. “It’s . . . He’s . . .” She looked up at me. “You know he’s the first thing I’ve had that’s mine? Just mine? In, like, a decade? And it’s good.” She took a shaky breath. “It’s great. He’s so different when you really get to know him. He’s actually really funny, and he’s got such a good heart. And he gets me,” she said, more quietly now. “He sees me. I make him laugh, and . . .” Her smile got wider. “We just . . . work.”
“I’m glad for you,” I said. “I am,” I added quickly when she shot me a look. And I was—I was thrilled that Bri had fallen for someone she really liked. But there was almost no way to separate this from who it was she had fallen for. “It’s just . . .” I knew I didn’t have to say it. The underside, the shadow, of everything Bri was saying was that Toby was out there, not knowing any of this.
“I never wanted to hurt her, Andie. That’s the last thing I wanted.”
“I know that,” I said, my voice quiet.
“But . . .” Bri pushed herself off the bed and paced over to the window. “They never even dated. It’s not like he’s her ex, or anything. She has this crazy crush on him, but Wyatt told her that he’s not interested. And still she has this claim on him. And at some point . . .” Her voice faded out, and she bit her lip.
“What?” I asked, keeping my voice soft, thinking back to Clark, in the car, in the rain.
“At some point,” she said, then took a big breath. “It was like I was putting my happiness on hold for something that only existed in Toby’s head.” She stared at me with something like horror. “Oh god, I have to tell her the truth, don’t I?”
I let out a long breath. “Well . . .” Sitting between us, the elephant in the room, was that this had been a secret. That the only reason I knew—the only reason we were having this conversation—was because I’d caught them. That this might have been a different conversation if she’d told Toby before anything had happened with Wyatt. But now . . .
I played this through to the end, and it hit me. Just what this meant, really. For all of us. Because there was no way we got out of this, as a group, still okay. Even if Bri and Wyatt came clean now, I didn’t see Toby getting over this any time soon. If she found out by accident, it would be the same thing—but probably worse. There was no way out of this, unless . . .