Chapter Nine
Though leaving Tyler felt like a necessary evil, and it hurt like absolute hell, I had no choice but to pick up and keep moving.
With the rest of junior year still ahead of me and senior year looming on the horizon, I was ready to buckle down and at least focus on my academic future, since it felt like the only thing I had any control over at the time.
I was still reeling from the soul-shattering heartbreak of ending things with Tyler and swiftly losing Delia and all our mutual friends in the process. In that moment, all I really needed—or wanted—was a friend.
Jack filled that space, being kind and warm and friendly and funny at a time when it felt like I needed it most. We slipped into our rapport easily, and the fact that we seemed to be two of the most overly ambitious students at Becker High helped.
We’d chat after school and sit together while he did his chemistry homework and I would ink my upcoming study schedule into my planner.
He was always commenting about how neat my handwriting was, or how I always had a planner sticker for everything.
Soon we transitioned from library study sessions to occasional coffee shop meetups, discussing the best interview prep strategies—which became weekly hangouts, and then talks over dinners.
By the time I was invited as a plus-one to a fundraiser his family was attending, we’d unofficially been “together” for a little over a month.
I got to borrow one of his sister Isabelle’s dresses, a deep green gown with a structured bodice beaded with delicate crystals that took my breath away and was easily the nicest garment I’d ever put on my body.
She’d discarded it as so last season but it still made me feel like a princess, heart swooping and soaring every time the lush emerald hemline brushed the floor.
The feeling of self-confidence was so nice that it didn’t even bother me that my lips didn’t tingle with fireworks after our first kiss.
Jack and I were standing outside of the venue waiting for the valet to bring back his car when he’d leaned forward, brushing his hand against the small of my back, splaying his fingers and pulling me closer.
As he pressed his lips to mine gently, it should’ve felt perfect.
It should’ve felt movie-worthy—him in his sharp tux, me in a gorgeous ball gown, the cold air of the night swirling around us and contraband champagne on our tongues and music floating out from the ballroom, the stars sparkling above our heads.
It definitely felt nice. I wouldn’t lie about that—but I do remember feeling a quick surprise in my chest when I didn’t experience the zinging my lips felt after Tyler first kissed me in his Jeep, his tongue tasting like Coke slushy and buttery popcorn.
Not long after Jack and I got together, I “officially” drifted out of my old friend group’s orbit—mainly because they were still friends with Tyler, which made things extra awkward and painful—and into the bubble of Jack and his friends, who took me in, albeit with lukewarm acceptance.
The first time it really stood out to me was at the next senior house party, which I’d managed to score an invite to.
The party was pretty much everything I expected—a lofty McMansion belonging to some other senior, packed to the gills with people pouring out of doorways and alcoves, making out in dark, smoky corners, spilling various punches on the carpets, and clinking giant handles of liquor on the kitchen island.
Jack had squeezed my hand and smiled at me confidently as we wove through the crowds, coming to a stop in the kitchen. I watched carefully as he poured a cup of Sprite, adding a light splash of vodka and holding it out to me.
“A little more, please,” I said primly, and his eyebrows shot up in surprise. Me too, buddy. For someone who had never had vodka in their life up until that point, I was feeling pretty bold—and desperate to fit in.
“Will do.” Jack nodded appreciatively as he poured some more into the cup.
“Didn’t strike you as a doubles kind of girl, Olive Austin.
” He held the cup out to me as an offering, and I took a generous sip, swallowing down the carbonated burn and doing my best not to choke in front of a room full of people.
“There’s a lot you still don’t know about me,” I wheezed, blinking the tears out of my eyes before they had a chance to fall. Jack just looked impressed, nodding.
“Yeah,” he murmured, eyeing me up and down with a newfound appreciation in his expression. “I’m looking forward to finding out.”
The night was a weird push and pull that I wasn’t quite used to, where I was invited into conversations between Jack and his friends but didn’t understand the references or have anything to contribute.
Eventually, some drunk guys swaying over at a Ping-Pong table challenged Jack to beer pong with his buddies, and after giving my hand a squeeze and giving me a quick kiss on the cheek with a “Just hang with Siena and Rio, okay? I’ll be right back,” I found myself on my own in a corner with two heavily made-up senior girls, eyeing me suspiciously.
The taller one, who I assumed was Siena because someone called her name from across the room earlier, raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow in my direction, her shiny blond hair glistening in the strobe lights.
“Jack’s new boo?” she asked, her tone sounding like she’d tasted something sour. Next to her, Rio’s riot of dark curls shook as she snickered, bangles jangling as she (poorly) hid her laugh behind her hands.
“You’re the one we’ve seen around with him in the library, right?
The one with that super-big planner?” Rio’s tone was just as rude, curling her lip in distaste.
While I’d never particularly cared about what people thought of me before, somehow the way they were speaking about me—like being organized and hanging out with Jack even though I was a junior was something to be ashamed of—set me off.
Even though I was younger, I wasn’t dumb. I clenched my jaw and raised my chin, a newfound determination raging hotly through me—or maybe it was just the vodka burning through my bloodstream. Jack invited you here, I reminded myself. You’re his girlfriend, and you have every right to be here.
“Yeah,” I heard myself saying, though everything sounded a million miles away with the crowded room and the thumping music and the alcohol making everything fuzzy at the edges. When did I almost get to the bottom of this cup? “I’m his…I’m his girlfriend.”
Siena’s brow arched even higher, and Rio snickered again. “Really?” she mused, perplexed. “I don’t think Jack Cameron’s ever dated a freshman before.”
White-hot rage and embarrassment blinded me temporarily, and all I could hear was the crinkle of the Solo cup as I pressed it deeper into my fist. “I’m a junior, and Jack and I have been together for—”
“Jesus, you two,” a third voice interrupted us, and I turned to see a willowy girl with long, bright red hair down to her waist push into our semicircle.
“You don’t have to be so rude to the new girl all the time.
It’s a tired look.” She turned her back on Siena and Rio, who stood gaping, and flashed me a warm smile.
“Ignore them. I’m Mira. Also a senior, but way less likely to bite your head off. ”
I liked Mira instantly. She accepted me into the fold of her friends at the party, bringing me around and introducing me to some other seniors—all way less hostile than Siena and Rio, who were still standing in their corner whispering to each other furiously—and she even refilled my drink a few more times, eventually switching my vodka Sprite for water when it was becoming clear that the world was starting to tilt around the edges.
“So,” she said as we sat on a bench in the backyard, the cool night air kissing our skin as we watched Jack and his buddies dominate the other team in beer pong. “Is this your first time at a senior party?”
“Yeah,” I slurred, eyes struggling to follow the Ping-Pong ball as it dipped in and out of plastic cups of foamy beer.
I couldn’t help but think about the first time Jack had invited me to a senior party, back when I’d turned him down because I was with Tyler.
Even though I’d felt jealous in the moment when I skipped the party for our movie night, wondering what was happening there, in this particular moment I realized that maybe I wasn’t missing out on much at all.
Except for Mira, who seemed pretty okay.
Her eyes tracked my movements, and when our gazes locked, she gave me a sad smile. “It’s hard trying to fit into Jack Cameron’s world, isn’t it?”
My cheeks immediately pinkened with the embarrassment of being seen. “It’s all right. He’s…he’s really great, so it makes the rest of it worth it.”
Mira just hummed, giving me an unimpressed shrug. “If you say so. Seems exhausting, if you ask me. I heard his family’s rich and intense. Like I said, has to be tiring.”
It is sometimes is what I didn’t say, though I was surprised at how insistently the words pushed at my teeth, dying to get out.
But that was then, and this is the unfortunate now, crammed in a too-small seat on an airplane next to my ex for the next god knows how long (actually, the pilot knows how long, but the TV screen in front of me turned off and I’m too stressed right now to turn it on and check the map), so may as well let it all out, right?
“So, yeah,” I sigh into the cramped space as I finish my recap. “That’s how things have been going with me lately. Welcome to the unfortunate reality that is my life.”
Tyler’s silent next to me, mulling my words over until I get to my last sentence. When I do, his eyes snap to mine, sending a jolt of electricity down my spine that startles me. What the heck was that?