24. Serena
Serena
When I get back to the house, I’m sweaty, sexually frustrated, and thoroughly exhausted.
Graham clearly had no interest in me after finding out about my history with Alex, which only added to my dissatisfaction and fear. Somehow, I eventually managed to fall asleep.
When I woke up the next morning, the sun shone merrily through the thin material, and Graham was packing up our things.
Everything was wet. Despite all the talking the night before—during which I even told him about my history in the foster care system—the walk back down the mountain was just as awkward as the walk up.
Now, after carefully parking Lillie’s minivan on the street, I haul my camera bag up to the front door and push inside, expecting to find Grayson and Sid in the living room, Lillie in the kitchen, maybe some commotion, people fighting over the remote.
But the house is weirdly dark and quiet. It’s rare that all my roommates are out at the same time. They could be seeing a movie or something, I guess. The dim hallway and quiet remind me, for a moment, of what it felt like to come home to Alex’s place.
My place. Our place. The house we rented together. The one that was supposed to be a precursor to the rest of our shared life.
I pause, close my eyes, expecting to feel that familiar rush of grief and pain, the twisting sensation that comes each time I remember the break-up. Each time I think about all my things on the lawn, just another chapter in the saga of not being wanted.
But it doesn’t come.
In fact, I feel more thinking about Travis. How he left me in that hotel room and hasn’t answered any of my texts since then.
There’s a creak on the stairs, and I’m pulled from my thoughts, opening my eyes and finding a familiar brunette in the low light of the windows, looking out at me like a ghost.
“Bianca!” I sputter, surprised.
“Serena,” Bianca says, her mouth slightly open, like she forgot that I live here too.
For the first time in a long time, I’m not catching her on her way out.
Bianca is perpetually put-together, which means that even though she’s not dressed in designer clothes with her hair straightened, she’s still wearing a matching silk pajama set, her hair braided neatly into a heatless curling rod.
Face pink, scrubbed of make-up, she still has the kind of fine bone structure that makes her look dainty and perfect. I’ve always been jealous of that. I stare at her for a long moment, thinking it’s been long enough that I almost forgot what she really looked like.
“Hey,” I finally say, dropping my bag and stepping forward to pull her into a hug. “You’re not on your way out, are you?”
“No,” she breathes, shaking her head against my shoulder. “Sorry. Things have just been so… busy.”
Throughout college, and then after moving in here, we rarely went more than an hour without texting or sitting next to each other talking. Now, I feel like I have no idea what’s going on in her life. It’s the longest I’ve gone without really talking to her.
The hug is brief. “Shit, sorry, I probably smell terrible.” I laugh, remembering my bug spray and muddy boots from the walk back down the other side of the mountain. “What are you doing now? We should do a movie night. Pride and Prejudice?”
Bianca stammers for a second, tucks her hair behind her ear, then glances up at the staircase like it might be able to tell her the answer. Finally, looking back at me with a strange expression, she says, “Oh—okay. Yeah, let’s do it.”
Once the plan is in place, we fall into our roles.
I take a quick shower and haul all the pillows and blankets from my room into hers.
Bianca microwaves the popcorn—I always manage to burn it, somehow—and I dig through the bottom cabinet until I find my secret stash of special movie M&Ms. They’re a little old, but they’re still tasty.
Then we’re sitting in her bed, her laptop perched at the end of the mattress, playing the opening credits to our all-time favorite movie.
“So,” Bianca says, as the field appears on the screen, sun shining golden over grass. “Where were you coming in from? No offense, but you really did smell like shit. Are you, like, getting into nature photography or something?”
Yesterday, if someone had asked me that, I would have laughed out loud at the idea. Now, even with a sore and tired body, the whole episode feels… worth it. Even with the storm that nearly made me crap my pants, it was worth it to see those waterfalls.
Especially to see Graham standing beneath them, looking up at me like I was the sun.
“Uh, earth to Serena?” Bianca’s eyebrows raise, and she adjusts her criss-cross position to look at me better. “What is that look? What are you thinking about right now?”
Suddenly, I’m hit with everything my best friend doesn’t know.
It’s like our constant connection blinked out the day after Alex threw my things out on the lawn—she hasn’t heard about Travis, the fancy hotel rooms, Ryan and the delicious food.
Bianca doesn’t even know that my money problems are, at least temporarily, solved.
A grin—the kind you get when you have really good gossip to share—tugs at the corners of my lips. I shrug, “I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you.”
“Well, now you have to.”
So, I do.
Because Travis is ignoring me and nothing actually happened with Graham, I tell her about Ryan. I describe literally running into him while working. The way he’d looked at me, flirted with me. I tell her about seeing each other again in his cafe, then him hiring me for the bakery opening.
“Does Lillie know?” she asks incredulously.
I bite my lip, shake my head. Things have been so hectic since I realized who Ryan was that I haven’t had a chance to tell her.
Bianca throws her head back and laughs, “I hope I’m here when you tell her. She is going to kill you when she finds out you’ve been keeping it from her.”
“I haven’t been keeping it from her,” I defend, shrugging a shoulder. As if Bianca hasn’t been in and out of the house constantly, too. “I’ve just been… busy, I guess.”
“Busy with Ryan!” Bianca teases, turning her full-wattage smile on me. “Lillie will forgive you. I’m just happy you’re moving on from Alex.” There’s a pause, then she glances up at me, “You are moving on, right?”
For some reason, it feels like the answer to that is important.
“Yes,” it’s a definitive answer. Easy to say, and I really mean it.
Bianca reaches for my hands, holding them like we’re two sisters making a promise.
“I was actually just thinking, when I came in today, that thoughts of him and what he did—they don’t even really hurt anymore.
Like, I think my life is actually better without him in it. ”
“Of course it is,” Bianca says, voice warm, squeezing my hands, her brown eyes serious, deep pools. “You two were not meant to be together. It’s good that you’re moving on.”
Of course she’d say that. Bianca has always been an advocate for moving on and being an independent woman. Not settling. Not letting a man—or anything else, for that matter—occupy space in your mind if he doesn’t deserve to be there.
I nod, thinking of our differences. How hard I’d worked to be the right woman for Alex, when it was never going to be truly possible. Two unmatched peas just can’t be in a pod together, or something like that.
Bianca is still smiling at me. Maybe it’s the fact that I miss her, or maybe it’s this moment, so close and warm, but I decide to tell her about everything else I’ve been doing. All the ways I’ve been keeping busy without Alex there at my side.
I start with the day after Alex broke up with me, what it was like barging into Travis’s office. How I’d thought for sure he was going to fire me. I tell her about the hotel launch and the luxury room, all our roommates here reacting to the fancy card at the door, delivered right into my hands.
And then, skating over the best details, I tell her about what happened in that hotel room with Travis. How good it felt to be wanted like that. His experienced hands, his body, a different sensation altogether. How, suddenly, sex felt like less of a chore and more like something I really wanted.
Then, since I’m on a roll, I tell her about where I was last night.
The hiking, the mountains, the gorgeous photos I can’t wait to edit.
How much I wanted Graham to touch me, and how insistent he was on being loyal to his brother.
When I finally come up for air, I expect her to be giving me a shocked look, or laughing hysterically, but she’s not doing either. Instead, her brow is slightly wrinkled.
I knew to expect it, though. As much as Bianca chafes against her family’s expectations, she still comes from old money. She still carries with her an affinity for old, traditional values, even if she doesn’t say them out loud.
“Wait,” Bianca pauses, swallows. “Travis like… Travis Oakley? And Graham Oakley?”
“Yeah,” I focus on the popcorn, trying to find the warm M&Ms at the bottom of the bowl and pull them out without crushing them.
“When you asked about me getting into nature photography? I guess it’s kind of true.
I was hired to take some pictures of this place, this, like, grotto.
Graham is lobbying to get it protected, turned into a National Park. ”
I tell her more about the trip up the side of the mountain with Graham. How protective he was, and how he comforted me through the storm. I get so distracted by describing the feeling of being in the grotto that I don’t see the expression on Bianca’s face change slowly.
“Wait,” she says, shifting away from me, brows drawing together. “So are you… Graham, as in Alex’s brother? Right?”
I shrug, give her a chagrined smile before returning my attention to the M&M hunt.
I feel like a younger sister admitting her shenanigans to the older one.
“I mean, we didn’t do anything. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want him to touch me.
God—it was torture, being stuck in a tent with him all night. ”
When I glance at Bianca, she’s staring at me, mouth pinched.
“What?” I ask, pulling my head back and dropping a piece of popcorn back into the bowl, confused.
“I just,” she pauses, swallows, and gestures at me with an upturned hand. “Don’t you think it’s kind of… a bad idea? To be involved with all three brothers?”
I laugh, shrug one shoulder, feeling uncharacteristically loose about the whole thing.
Maybe it’s endorphins from the hike. Maybe it’s finally being around the one person who makes me relaxed.
Maybe it’s the fact that for the first time in a long time, I’m getting a taste of sexual satisfaction.
“Well, I’m not exactly involved with Alex anymore, am I? ”
Bianca sucks her teeth, then looks at the laptop, where Kiera Knightly is dancing. For a moment, we watch the movie together, but it’s tense. Awkward. I’d thought she would give me some shit, but this is a bigger reaction than I expected.
Finally, like she’s been holding it in, Bianca blurts, “Don’t you think it’s going to be kind of… messy? With Alex? If you’re fucking both his brothers?”
I’ve never really liked the word, and now, it comes out of Bianca’s mouth with a particular venom. She might as well have asked me if I like being a whore.
Pushing away from her, I turn on the mattress and press my back against the cool wall. “Why should I care about Alex’s feelings? He obviously didn’t give a fuck about mine.”
Bianca frowns and picks at the fringe of her blanket. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea. Sleeping with three guys at once. Especially both of Alex’s brothers. It just seems a little petty. That’s all.”
An angry laugh bubbles out of me, “And, what? You don’t think I have a right to be petty?
He ruined my Nana’s record player. I haven’t even heard from him since he decided to be done with me and dump my shit on the lawn.
He’s a coward and an asshole. I’d sleep with his mom just to get back at him, if it’s something I was into. ”
I’m breathing hard now, anger bubbling up inside me, and Bianca is looking at me like I’m a child who just doesn’t know any better.
“I get that you want to hurt him, but I just don’t think you always have to go with the nuclear option, Ser,” Bianca spits, frowning harder and ripping more threads from the blanket. “Like, you don’t have to act out just because things didn’t go your way.”
I jolt, awkwardly, out from under the blankets and to the end of the bed, heart racing. I stand up by Bianca’s feet, glowering at her.
“Didn’t go my way? That’s a fucked-up thing to say to me, Bianca.
” Now, the anger is starting to boil, and my voice comes out loud, clipped.
Harsh. She knows my history, knows about the dumpster fire.
How I was tossed from home to home, how I struggled to be perfect.
To earn love. At best, it was a careless thing to say, and at worst, it was a targeted attack.
“Hey,” Lillie says, knocking and poking her head in the open door, like a concerned parent. “We just got back. Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” Bianca grits, crossing her arms and glaring at me.
“I don’t think it is, actually.” I glare right back at her. “Bianca is calling me a slut for having some fun, even with everything I’ve been through.”
“I never said that!” she stands, too, pointing at me, “You’re putting words in my mouth!”
“Or reading between the lines,” I hiss back, “trust me, after all this time, I’ve gotten used to all the passive-aggressive WASP-y comments.”
“Fuck you, Serena.”
That makes me blink and stumble backward into Lillie, who puts her arm around me. Georgia edges into the room as well, while Sid and Grayson hover in the doorway.
“Let’s all take a breather,” Georgia says, holding her hands out like a mediator.
“Yeah, get out of my room,” Bianca spits.
“Oh, gladly!” I reach over, ripping my blankets off the bed, which happens to send the popcorn bucket crashing to the ground. Bianca says something about me always causing a mess, but Lillie is guiding me out, and Georgia is murmuring something low and fast to Bianca.
I don’t turn back. I barely make it into my bedroom before bursting into tears.
“Oh, hey,” Lillie says, pulling me into her arms, rubbing her hand over my back soothingly. “It’s okay. All friends fight sometimes. Honestly, I’m shocked you guys have never had a fight here before.”
I’m too upset to respond, but if I could, I might tell her that Bianca has never looked at me like that before. I might tell her that I feel like I don’t even know her anymore.
And I might tell her that it feels like there’s something important Bianca isn’t telling me.