Chapter 22
22
S unlight glints off the calm waves so brightly that my eyes burn despite the barrier of my sunglasses.
I stare toward the beach, a stretch of sand that appears to be nothing more than a thin tan strip from here. Bracketed by shades of blues. The vastness of the sky overhead and the spread of the sea surrounding me. The only dots of other colors are the boats around us and the striped umbrellas on the beach.
“You look serious.”
I half smile at Bridget as she takes a seat beside me. “Not serious. Just appreciating the view.”
“It is amazing, huh?” She swipes a hand across her forehead, catching the strands getting blown around by the breeze and tucking them behind one ear. “Doesn’t make me miss New York—that’s for sure.”
“Poor Chase.”
Bridget shifts beside me. “Actually, we broke up, so I doubt he’d care.”
“You did ? When ? Why ?” I fire the questions at her rapidly.
“On the Fourth of July. Fran knows because she and that actor she met at Proof were with us.” She looks away, toward the horizon. “We fought all the time. He worked crazy hours at the restaurant. Anytime someone left a complaint, he’d be in a bad mood for a week. Plus, one of the waitresses had a huge crush on him, and I think something happened there.” Bridget frowns, then glances back at me. “I wanted to tell you, but I also wanted to forget about it during this trip. Focus on Chloe. And I figured you had enough to think about with the whole, uh, Cal thing.”
“I’m sorry, Bridge.” I nudge her shoulder with mine. “You can always talk to me, no matter what else is going on.”
“I know.” She pauses. “You’re handling it well, you know. Way better than I would have. You and he seem … good.”
“We are,” I reply. “It is good.”
We’ve been in Saint-Tropez for four days. Spent most of that time on this sailboat, enjoying the summer weather and stunning scenery. Each evening, we’ve gone to a different nightclub in town to dance and drink. Cal, Bridget, and I are the only ones who’ve gone home alone every night. Cal and Bridget were expected, as the two in relationships. Me? I’ve tried to flirt but been tempted to claim a headache and leave early every night. The only thing stopping me was that I was worried it would set off a chain reaction of everyone fretting about my health again. It took a couple of days for them to stop asking about my previous injuries.
The best part of the trip has been that things with Cal feel the most normal they’ve been since before we started dating junior year. It feels like a former version of our friendship, as relaxed as it is with Tripp and Jasper and Hugo.
I know I’m not the only one relieved about it.
“I heard Theo invited Charles.”
The sound of his name is an unpleasant shock. I’ve been doing a decent—more like mediocre—job of pretending he doesn’t exist.
I didn’t expect to see him after Chloe’s wedding. But the fact that he turned the invitation down is extremely irritating. And evidence that we’re on different wavelengths. Because I—despite my convictions that we were a several-times-in-one-night kind of fling—would have happily spent this week leaving nightclubs with him. While he opted to stay in England and work .
It’s the dismissal in my grandparents’ hallway all over again, except worse.
Because now, I know what the full experience is like. And because he took care of me, then danced with me in the moonlight.
“I guess.”
“You guess?”
“That whole thing with him was … nothing.”
Bridget laughs. “Nothing? Lili, the guy begged you for a date. Drove you to the hospital. None of that’s nothing.”
“He did not beg me for a date. And a cab driver would have done the same thing.”
“He made a bet he was sure he’d win. And unless you paid him to drive you, it’s not the same thing.”
I exhale. Denial hasn’t done much for me. “Okay, it was something. It felt … different with him. That something that’d been missing before? It wasn’t missing with him.”
She nods. “So, call him.”
“I don’t have his number. And even if I did … I wouldn’t know what to say to him. He lives in England. I live in New York. Even if he wanted anything, how would that work?”
“Your private jet would probably help.”
I scoff. “I’m being serious, Bridget.”
“So am I. You make it work if you want it to. Neither Chase nor I wanted to. Chloe and Theo did and look at them now.” She shakes her head. “I can’t believe Chloe is married . Makes me feel old.”
“Me too. My mom got married when she was twenty-five.”
“And your parents are still together. That’s impressive.”
Bridget’s parents got divorced when we were in middle school. So did Jasper’s and Fran’s. It was a collective rough patch.
“Maybe we should take a trip to Vegas when we get back home,” Bridget muses. “Or to Canada. Meet a hunky hockey player.”
I roll my eyes. “I can’t. I have interviews next week.”
One could result in a trip to Canada, ironically, but I don’t tell her that. She’d probably try to tag along.
She sighs. “Yeah. I should probably see if the gallery is still standing.”
Bridget manages a modern art gallery in the West Village.
She taps her glass of iced tea against mine, then drains it. “I’m going to swim. You coming?”
“In a bit,” I answer. “Just going to soak up a little more sun.”
“’Kay.” Bridget stands, stretches, then dashes to the back of the boat.
I finish off my glass, too, then lie back flat and focus on nothing but the sun’s warmth.