Chapter 39
“What’s up with you?” Juliet asked.
“Nothing,” squeaked Lily.
“Yes there is, you’re all smiley and dreamy. What’s going on?”
Big breath.
“Well. It’s like this. Um. Okay, Dorian and I …”
“No!”
“Are …”
“You are not!”
“Actually, kind of, yes we are!”
Juliet squealed, Lily squealed, and they hugged and stared at each other in amazement that such a thing could possibly be true.
“But how? When? Why? This is outrageous—I thought he was the worst!”
“So did I! This is the thing—I was wrong!”
“You’re never wrong.”
“Well, okay, I made some assumptions from which I drew some incorrect conclusions and on top of that, I was just stupid!”
The words rushed out in a torrent as Lily explained in how many ways Dorian was actually not the stand-offish, stuck-up, avaricious, arrogant monster she had previously thought.
“I can hardly believe it!” said Juliet.
“Please, you have to,” laughed Lily. “If you don’t believe me, no one else will. Everyone thinks he’s so terrible—completely unjustly, I have to add—that I’m going to need your help to convince them otherwise.”
“But how did it happen exactly? You really didn’t like him. When did you realize that you did?”
“I don’t know. It seemed to happen gradually, but I think it might have been the moment I turned down his offer of a private plane!”
Juliet was always ready to see the best in people. She stood by Lily that evening on the deck in front of absolutely everyone—Aunt Lizzie, Uncle Fitz, Aunt Jane, Uncle Charles, Lydia, Rosie, and all the cousins—as they announced they were both going up to the cliff house for dinner.
“Ugh. Why?” groaned Lydia. “I mean, of course I know why for you,” she added, looking at Juliet, “but you’ll just be in the way,” she said to Lily.
“Dorian,” Lily announced a little too loudly, “has invited me.”
Lydia made a face.
“So? Who cares what he wants! Bloody movie star.”
“Lydia,” warned Lizzie.
“Well, he is,” Lydia mumbled. “Thinks he can have whatever he wants. Lily, if I’ve taught you anything this past year, and I hope I have, it’s that you don’t have to let guys like that boss you around.”
“I want to be with him.”
“No you don’t.”
“Yes I do!”
Rosie and Kat squealed and started peppering her with questions.
Juliet jumped up and down and clapped her hands, and Uncle Charles said, “Wait, who are we talking about here?” All the while, Lydia ranted at full volume that no daughter of hers was going to sell out for fame and money, and anyway if it was official, why wasn’t it on the socials?
He must just be using her for his own convenience and she was having none of it.
But her ranting was lost in a fresh round of squeals as the lightning-fingered Rosie found Dorian’s latest post—two pippi shells on the smooth sand at the north end, bathed in golden afternoon sun.
And if you looked hard enough, the two shells made the shape of a lopsided heart.
“So,” bellowed Lydia. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“But he’s following her!” squealed Rosie.
“I follow lots of people.”
“Dorian Khan doesn’t follow anybody.”
As the younger ones tried to explain to the older ones the significance and intricacies of who followed whom and how this sign most definitely meant nothing but love, Lily snatched Juliet’s hand. They escaped up to the cliff house together and didn’t come back home until the moon was very high.