Chapter 20
Anya is speedwalking away at an Olympic sprinter kind of pace while Mari struggles to keep up behind her. Meanwhile, I streak out of the convenience store, leaving Wes behind as I frantically run after them. “Anya, Mari, please! Wait a second!”
Once Anya realizes I’m not going to let them go that easily, she pivots furiously in the gravel road, sending an entire dust cloud up around her. “What the shit, Soraya?”
“Okay. I know you’re surprised.” I hold my hands up in surrender.
“Please give me a chance to explain.” I quickly realize I do not have the right words whatsoever, but I make my best effort anyway.
“Um—so, to start off, I realized that Wes just happened to be vacationing here with his fraternity brothers too.”
“Happened? Just HAPPENED? Don’t treat me like I’m stupid. Nothing JUST HAPPENS when it comes to you and Wes, Sora.” Anya’s face is turning a shade of beet red I’ve never seen on her before, and she’s so mad she’s trembling.
“I was trying to find a time to tell you, Anya.” I do my best to calm her, keeping my voice steady, to no avail. Mari averts her gaze to avoid making eye contact with me. She doesn’t seem angry, just hurt. I’ve been the cause of a lot of that lately.
“So to catch up—you’ve been hanging out with Wes this entire time?” Anya asks.
Queasiness washes over me. I press my eyes tightly shut and pray to every single god I can think of that if there is a way to teleport, this is the moment they rain that magic down upon me.
I don’t know how I’m going to explain all of this.
“Not the entire time. Only when you guys don’t want to go out.
The dead time. It hasn’t interfered with our plans at all. ”
“Wait—was he the entire reason you wanted to come here? The reason for this whole trip? Why you refused to start in London or Paris?” I can see the wheels in Anya’s head spinning as she strings together the sequence of events.
She has smoke coming out of her ears; she’s livid. She thinks she’s been played.
“That’s not it at all,” I say pleadingly. It’s true that I had begged to align our time on the Amalfi Coast with Wes’s, but our grad trip had nothing to do with that. And no matter what I say, nothing will make that believable.
“Don’t deny it. You pushed and pushed for us to start here.
And now it’s obvious that was only so you could be with Wes.
All your texting in the airport. All your texting this entire trip.
All your mood swings.” Then Anya starts laughing, which makes everything so much worse.
“Wait. Was he why you were in such a horrible mood earlier? Was it because you couldn’t start this little date earlier?
” Anya is waving her hand wildly. She points to my outfit.
“You left the room in a grungy hoodie. What happened to your clothes?”
“I was wearing this underneath,” I say, my voice small.
“I should have known. It’s always about Wes.” Anya bends over, shaking her head. “Unbelievable.”
I look pleadingly to Mari, but she is still standing there, looking crushed. Hurt.
“I’m sorry, guys. I really, really am. To both of you. I should have been honest.” I am starting to shiver, and I cross my arms over my chest to try to control it. But nothing I’m saying is making things better.
“I missed Lorena’s graduation for this, Sora,” Mari says. “I asked to leave a few days later, and you said it would mess everything up. But that was all because of Wes, wasn’t it?”
My stomach drops. “You didn’t miss it completely,” I say meekly. “You still streamed it. You saw it.”
“You know that’s not the same, right?” Mari asks, her voice flat.
I scuff the toe of my shoe against the pavement. “Yeah, I guess not.”
“Do you realize what I had to do to make this trip possible? Do you know my mom picked up almost ten extra shifts so she could buy this flight for me? You obviously don’t, because you don’t think about anyone but yourself.
You bulldoze everyone in your path until you get your way.
” Anya’s voice is cracking. “I worked so hard to go on this trip so I could spend time with you two before we go off to school. But I guess we were just your filler companions.”
My throat is tight, but I attempt to defend myself at least a little.
“You have to know that’s not true. I didn’t know that about your mom, and I care so much about this trip with you guys.
That’s why I fought so hard for us to do this together.
I was never trying to take away from the time we scheduled with one another. ”
“Why do you think only the things you care about matter?” Anya asks.
“I don’t! How do you not see that?” I had tried telling them.
I had wanted there to be an option other than lying.
But they had me totally backed into a corner.
“What else was I supposed to do? Every time I tried to bring it up, all either of you would do was roll your eyes or pretend to puke. Fine, he did something shitty a whole year ago, but what about how I felt about it? All you would ever do was demand that I get over it, right now, this minute. And I get it, I’m a buzzkill whose inconvenient feelings are ruining the vibe, but I’m the one who has to deal with them after both of you are gone, and neither of you were willing to listen.
So okay, when the only person I have to talk to about how I felt showed back up, I wanted to give it another try.
If it was a different guy, you wouldn’t care at all!
” But no one is responding to me anymore.
“Anya? Mari?” I’m standing in front of them, practically begging for forgiveness, but they are looking resolutely away, jaws set.
And then, because things of course can’t be bad enough, Wes jogs up to join the fun with the box of condoms in a small paper bag. “Hold up. Why is everyone yelling?” His grin fades once he gets close enough to read the room.
“Oh, hey, Wes.” Anya eyes the bag, whose contents everyone now knows. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“Um. I feel like I’ve missed something.” He looks around.
“We were just a little surprised to see Sora with you is all,” Mari says, voice dripping with hurt.
Wes takes a step toward them like he’s confident in his ability to defuse the situation. “Okay, I know you guys have never been my biggest fans, but since Sora and I have been lowkey together for the past few months I kind of figured you’d gotten over it?”
Oh, God. I bury my head in my hands and groan.
“What?” Anya’s eyes are bulging and her red face is becoming a bruised purplish blue. “ ‘Lowkey together’? What does that even mean? This has been going on for months?”
“I’m going to stop talking now.” Wes takes a step back once he realizes the hole he’s dug us.
“Is this true, Sora?” Mari asks. She’s never looked more intimidating.
Wes stands there, hands shoved in his pockets, probably assessing how big of a dick move it would be to turn around and leave me to the vultures. He averts his eyes to avoid making eye contact.
I fess up. “Yeah. Wes and I have been hanging out. It’s not like I wanted to keep it from you, but it’s also not like I could ever get a word in.”
“I can’t even with you right now, Sora. I’ve lost count, but this amounts to hundreds and hundreds of lies,” Anya snaps.
“I’m sorry! I just couldn’t think of how to tell you where it wouldn’t make you both upset.
” I pause. I want to add that clearly this situation is a perfect example of me being right, but all signs suggest saying that aloud would not help.
“You are my two best friends. Don’t leave things like this. ”
To my surprise, it’s not Anya who gets in the last word, but Mari. “Yeah, well. You say that. But best friends don’t lie.”
I stand there, stunned. “Don’t you dare quote Stranger Things to me right now,” I say.
I mean to show my hurt, but it instead sounds like I’m yelling.
It’s because of all the blows I’ve just been dealt that the one from Mari hits the hardest. We’ve been watching the show together every year since we were kids, piled with blankets in Mari’s living room.
But instead of responding, they leave. Anya’s arm is snug around Mari’s shoulder as they stomp back toward the hotel.
I don’t chase after them.
I feel sick. This is different from any of our other fights. There will be no making up in thirty minutes. There will be no laughing about it before bed like we did about the bus ride. Of all the situations I’ve ever found myself in, this is the one I’m least likely to talk myself out of.
Where can our vacation—and more importantly, our friendship—even go from here?