Lucy
“You good to get home on your own?” I ask Erica at the front door as she gets onto her bike. “I can give you a ride.”
“I’m okay,” she says. “Promise.”
I glance up at the sky. The sunset behind her is a mix of pinks and blues, all cotton-candy colors that meld together to create something totally new and spectacular.
On any other day, I’d suggest we go down to the Club and watch it to completion with ice cream cones in hand.
But today is not a normal today. Today is the day Pelican Island has been thrown into chaos.
“Text me when you get there.” I lean against the doorframe as Erica nods and puts on her helmet. “Are you sure you’re okay?” I ask. “You know you can tell me anything.”
Erica lets out a low and shaky breath. Her skin is sallow and the hollows beneath her eyes are dark. We’ve been together for hours, but she’s barely said a word, ducking out to use the bathroom more than usual, not really watching the Gossip Girl episodes I put on, even though it’s her favorite.
“I know,” she says. “It’s all so overwhelming.”
“I love you, Er,” I say, pulling her in for a hug.
She’s limp under my touch, and part of me wants her to stay.
There’s clearly so much going on beneath the surface.
But part of being in a family of girls is knowing when to stop pushing, when to let someone come to you, so I let her go and watch her ride off on her bike.
“Text me!” I call after her, and she puts up one hand without turning back.
Inside the house is quiet, save for Mom yammering on the phone. She’s been toggling back and forth between calls with Sally Godwin and Paula Silver, and even had a call with Deirdre Vreeland.
“We never thought Justin did it,” she whispered, giving me a death stare when I rolled my eyes at her.
All I want to do is flop down on the living room couch, get Millie on one side, Frankie on the other, and press play on the next episode of Gossip Girl, but there’s a bubbling in my stomach, anticipation building, because even before we heard the news about Justin, I knew what I had to do today, and I’m afraid if I don’t do it, I’m going to chicken out.
It’s only been three days since the Fourth of July parade when I learned Ethan lied to Billy about when he and I first kissed.
Three days of avoiding Ethan, telling him I had the stomach bug, sneaking off to work early so he wouldn’t see my car leave the driveway.
Three days of fending off offers for him to bring me Popsicles or lemonade or just sit with me and rub my back.
But enough time has passed that I finally know what I want to do.
What I want to say. Up in my room, I look at myself in the mirror and apply my usual mascara, dab blush on my cheeks.
My curls have gotten wild over the past few weeks, and I can’t remember the last time I did a deep conditioning treatment, which I used to perform every other wash like clockwork.
The corners of my mouth dip into a frown, and for a moment it feels like a fissure has appeared in my chest with the intent of splitting it in two.
I hold my breath and send a text to Ethan. Bonfire? The beach is about as far as my parents will let us go right now.
Yes, he writes. See you in two.
I step into the hallway at the same time Millie does, and when she sees me, it looks like she’s hit with a wave of relief.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Can we hang for a while?” she asks, her voice small. I know that tone, the one that says, Don’t leave me. We don’t have much time. But if I don’t do this now, I don’t know when I’ll get my nerve back.
“Later, okay? I’m just meeting Ethan for a bit.”
Millie grips the stair railing like she’s trying not to fall over.
“Okay?” I say again.
“Okay.”
I give her a quick hug and peck her on the cheek. “I’ll be back soon.”
Skipping down the stairs, I feel her eyes on me, but I don’t turn around for fear of staying put.
Outside, the temperature has dipped, and I’m hit with a waft of seaweed and ocean so salty, it almost makes me stop.
A wet towel is draped over one of the pool loungers, likely from Frankie forgetting to put her stuff away.
But I don’t have time to clean up her mess now.
I rush forward, to the grass, the blades damp, tickling my ankles, and by the time I reach the sand, a wave of nerves has begun to swell in my stomach.
“There you are!” Ethan says. I’m ambushed in a hug so tight, I’m nearly knocked off my feet.
The usual comfort I feel with him is gone, replaced by nerves, and that’s when I realize that nothing about this night is normal.
“You haven’t returned any of my calls or texts or anything. I was starting to freak out.”
“Sorry,” I say. “Been a little crazed.”
“Seriously.” Ethan shakes his head, and I can smell his soap, the scent of fresh laundry, of his home, so familiar to me it’s almost like my own. “Here.” He leads me over to the fire pit where he’s already lit the kindling and set up a few blankets.
“Great.” My voice is raw, and I hope he doesn’t notice the tension in my jaw, the fear in my eyes. As we settle down onto the sand, he rests one hand on my hip and smiles, leaning forward, closing his eyes. His lips are pursed, wanting. But I don’t meet them, and he stops midair, confused.
“Everything all right?”
I try to remember my words, the monologue I practiced. But when I look at him, my mind goes blank, and all I say is this: “I know about Olivia.”
“What about her?” Ethan cocks his head, his face wide open.
“The reason why she broke up with me sophomore year.”
“Because she was moving, right?”
“No.” I try to keep my voice even. “Because she thought you and I hooked up in Anguilla.”
“Why would she think that?”
“You tell me.”
Ethan purses his lips but doesn’t say anything, which only infuriates me more.
“I saw the postcard,” I say. “The one you wrote to Billy. She found it in his room.”
He nods slowly like he’s considering the information. “And?”
“Excuse me?” I cross my arms over my chest, plumes of rage rising in my stomach.
He drops his hands by his sides, and his shoulders inch up toward his ears. “I should have told you,” he says, “but it was such a long time ago.”
The shock is so sudden, so abrupt that it takes me a moment to realize he’s not denying any of it, not a word. He lied in order to get what he wanted. To get me.
“How could you do this? You knew how upset I was, and you made that happen. You caused it.”
“I’m sorry, Lucy.” He reaches for my waist again, and I pull back, away from him. He doesn’t sound sorry. In fact, he sounds like he doesn’t care at all, like he’d prefer it if we wrapped up this whole conversation fast so we could hook up or search for shooting stars.
“I don’t understand how you’re being so whatever about this,” I say, scrambling to stand. “Our whole relationship was founded on a lie.”
Ethan lets out a laugh, then runs both hands through his hair, his face turned up to the sky.
“What is so funny?”
“You,” he says, getting to his feet. “You’re being so hypocritical.”
“Me?” I ask, shoving my thumb into my chest. “How am I a hypocrite?”
Ethan raises his eyebrows at me like he’s waiting for me to say something, and all of a sudden, the bottom of my stomach drops to my feet, my sense of gravity shaking. He knows.
“Yeah, Lucy,” he says. “I found out about Penn.”
A force slams into my chest, and I try to find something to say.
“I know you got in and you’ve been lying to me.” He takes a deep breath, pushing air out through his teeth.
“Did Olivia tell you?”
“Olivia?” Ethan bowls over and presses his palm to his forehead. “Jesus Christ, you told Olivia and not me? No wonder you’re so mad about something that happened two years ago. You’re not over her. You were never over her.”
“That’s not the point.”
“You’re not even denying it!”
“Of course I’m over her,” I say, ignoring the pulsing in my gut. “But right now, I’m mad at you. This is about us.”
“Yeah, well, I’m mad at you, too, Lucy. You didn’t tell me about one of the biggest decisions of your life. You made it without me.” He pauses like he’s catching his breath.
“How did you find out?” My voice is small, but I try to keep it steady even though panic is creeping into my throat.
“I called the housing office to try to see if we could get on the same floor,” he says, his voice lower. “I thought I was doing something nice. Something that would make you happy. But when I gave them your name, they said they didn’t have a record of Lucy Gold in their database.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. It’s a gesture that in another life I would have thought of as sweet but now feels like one that comes with a collar and a leash.
“Then what?” I ask. “Did you go through my email or something?”
“It took me two minutes to find your acceptance letter,” he says.
“What’s wrong with you?” I’m yelling now, but I don’t care who hears, who knows what Ethan did. “Ever since we got together, you’ve done everything to keep me yours. God, you couldn’t even let me live in another dorm.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter anyway because you won’t be there.”
“Ethan, you lied to me.”
“And you lied to me. For weeks. Every single day. I gave you so many opportunities to tell me the truth.”
“So many opportunities?” I ask. “When did you do all this sleuthing?” He shakes his head once and I say it again. “How long have you known?”
“Right before Billy died.”
More than two weeks.
I should be sorry. But the only emotion bubbling up is disgust—disgust that he lied for so long, and disgust that he didn’t have the courage to confront me about college. Yes, I should have told him. We are both in the wrong. We both messed up.
But Ethan’s a coward, and I’m the one who doesn’t want to move forward, so I’m going to have to be the one to break us. I drop my shoulders and steady my breathing as the words crystallize in my mind.