Chapter Twenty-Three
The Tower Debacle
Wilder
“It’s a tower,” I say, wholly unimpressed.
“No,” Cash argues. “It’s a historical marker.”
It might be a historical marker, but it’s lame.
I shield my eyes from the sun and look up at the looming tower. It’s brown, appears to be covered in dust, and the sun is burning down like it’s heating the desert through a magnifying glass.
Maybe in the spring or fall it’s a cool tower. But right now, it’s the thing that’s keeping us from the Pacific Ocean.
“It’s just a tower,” I grumble as Ingrid’s hand finds mine and she tugs me along.
“It’s a moment,” she says, her smile bright and wide.
Cash seems to agree because he high-fives her.
Again.
He’s been high fiving her ever since we parked. And listen, I don’t consider myself a body language expert the way Jill claims to be after watching her social media reels, but Cash wants to touch her. Why the fuck else would he be trying to high-five her?
Fucking creep.
“Construction on Bert Vaughn’s Desert View Tower started in 1922,” Cash reads off his phone like the arrogant asshole he is. “Did you guys know it overlooks the Imperial Valley?”
I scoff. “No, Cash. We didn’t.”
He ignores me, but I don’t miss the way his jaw tenses as we walk to the door.
“How tall is the tower?” Ingrid asks.
“Seventy feet,” Cash instantly answers as he offers her a stupid smile.
Seriously? He’s about to meet Britta and he’s still hung up on Ingrid? I don’t get it.
Then again, maybe I’m not supposed to.
“You want to check out the gift shop?” I whisper to Ingrid.
She raises an eyebrow. “Are you buying me a souvenir?”
My thumb runs over the promise ring I gave her last summer. “I could be talked into it.”
Her eyes narrow. “How romantic.”
“I’m going to head up the tower,” Cash tells us. “You sure you and your fear of heights don’t want to make the trek, Wild?”
Over my dead body.
“I’m good,” I say.
Ingrid giggles, and Cash whips his head in her direction.
“You should climb with me, Ingrid,” he says to her.
My grip tightens on her hand.
She swallows hard. “I’m going to stay with Wilder.”
Predictably, Cash’s face falls. And Ingrid clocks it instantly.
“Send me a picture from the top?” she asks him.
I resist the urge to roll my eyes.
“Yeah, of course,” Cash answers. “I might even send you a video.”
We all know how Cash feels about videos.
“As long as it’s not of your dick,” I mutter loud enough for only Ingrid to hear.
She playfully slaps me in the arm. “Behave, Wilder.”
“Never,” I say back to her.
And by the way she looks at me, I know she’s thinking about the video we made last year. The one that Cash found on her phone.
“You know,” I say as she wraps an arm around my waist and we head inside, “we are long overdue for making a video.”
She shakes her head and laughs. “One is good. Don’t push your luck.”
“Come on,” I let out a teasing whine. “A hotel in California? We could cherish that memory over and over and over—”
“I’ve got it,” she says as she tilts her head to the side.
Thankfully, Cash and his stupid facts about the Desert View Tower are out of sight.
“Are you worried Cash is going to get lost up there?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. “No. I’m more worried he’s going to meet Britta and decide he wants to go to Johns Hopkins.”
I frown. “Medical school?”
Ingrid shrugs against me. “He’s thinking about it.”
Why didn’t he tell me?
Better yet, why is he telling her?
Is this what he’s been rambling about in the car when I was ignoring him?
“You two friends now or something?” I hate how jealous I sound as the words leave my mouth.
She sighs and picks up a strangely shaped object, staring at it like it’s the most interesting thing she’s ever seen.
“Ingrid,” I say.
“It’s complicated, Wilder.”
“How?”
She lets go of my waist and stands in front of me.
“You spend four years talking to someone every day,” she begins.
“Seeing them at school. Hearing about their family problems one day. Their hopes and dreams the next.” She stops for a second and runs a hand over her face.
“He’s the first boy I ever saw naked and… the first one to leave me heartbroken.”
She wasn’t that heartbroken, if memory serves.
“I don’t want to fight with him,” she makes clear. “I want us to co-exist peacefully. Without the sarcastic comments and drama. And it sort of feels like we’re there.”
“But?” I raise an eyebrow, ignoring the sirens going off in my head.
“But I loved him and now I don’t.” She exhales. “It’s complicated. I still remember what it felt like to hold his hand and text him I love you every single night before bed.”
“So,” I say, confused, “you still have feelings?”
“No.”
“I don’t know what to do with everything you just said,” I tell her honestly.
She licks her lips. “I was just thinking how sad it is that two people can know each other for years in a way that no one else does. Then, one day, you’re strangers.
I…” she trails off as her fingers find mine.
“I’m terrified, Wilder, that one day you and I will be strangers.
And I think that would be a thousand times harder than trying to make sense of Cash and me. ”
I swallow hard. “We’re never going to be strangers, Ingrid.”
Tears fill her eyes. “You don’t know that. None of us know that.”
Yep, she’s spiraling.
Over a guy who left her for Europe after his mom framed her dad for embezzlement and is now awaiting trial in a jail cell.
“Not every relationship ends,” I remind her. “What about Jason and Jill?”
She scoffs. “My parents are weird. They’re an exception. Not the rule.”
“But what if they aren’t?” I press. “What if they’re proof that if you work really hard at it, relationships can last a lifetime?”
“Isla always gets left,” she quickly adds. “What if…”
I hear what she’s not saying. What if I leave for New York and don’t take her with me?
“I’m not leaving you,” I say. “Not ever. Where I go, you go.”
She gives me a reassuring smile as I wipe a tear off her cheek. “Where you go, I go.”
I pull her close in the middle of the oddest gift shop I’ve ever been in and kiss her softly.
“When it comes down to it,” I murmur against her lips, “there is no me without you.”
“But what if you die?” she whispers.
“I’m not dying,” I say, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. “And neither are you. We’re going to live a very long, happy life together.” I tell her as Cash’s voice echoes down the stairs.
“Wild! Ingrid! I got video!” he yells.
“And apparently Cash is going to haunt that long happy life forever,” I groan.
Ingrid chuckles as she lays her head against my chest.
“I don’t want to be the third wheel in your stupid bromance,” she mutters with a quiet laugh.
“He’s the third wheel,” I reassure her, but I know she doesn’t believe me.
“I’ll send the video right now,” Cash says, a little too loud.
Ingrid starts looking at a table of clay pottery while Cash fumbles with his phone.
“What’s going on?” I quietly ask him as his face turns bright red.
“Uh… n-nothing,” he stutters.
I know him well enough to know he’s lying.
“You send a nude to someone?” I jokingly ask him.
“No,” he groans as he looks at me. “But I think I got sent one.”
“By who?” I ask, shocked.
His eyes widen. “Britta.”
“No way,” I whisper-yell. “Did you get your first nude?”
“Shhh!” he chastises me as Ingrid shops a few feet away.
“I’m proud of you, Cash,” I tell him as I slap his back. “This is a rite of passage.”
“I just don’t think it’s… appropriate since we’ve never met in person.”
I chuckle. “Even after everything you’ve been through, you’re still stick-in-the-mud Cash Allred.”
“I resent that statement,” he snaps. “Take it back.”
“No.” I scrunch my nose as his nostrils flare.
“You better.”
“Or what, Cash?”
He shoves his phone back into his pocket. “Or I’ll kick your ass, Wild.”
I laugh. “Yeah, okay.”
Without warning, he lunges straight for me.
Somehow, I manage to dodge him.
But the table Ingrid was looking at—the one with clay pottery—takes the brunt of Cash’s anger.
“What are you doing?” Ingrid shrieks as she steps back from the mess.
Cash has broken nearly every single piece of pottery.
A gift shop worker rushes over.
“What in the world—”
“I’m sorry,” Cash quickly says as he stands. “I’ll buy it all.”
He pushes past me as Ingrid’s hand wraps around my forearm.
“What happened?” There’s nothing accusatory in her voice, but I feel guilty.
Sometimes, I forget beneath that rich boy exterior, Cash is insecure. Sensitive even.
Fanny made sure Cash looked great on the outside, but she destroyed the inside every chance she got.
“I was just messing around and he took it the wrong way,” I tell her.
She takes a sobering breath. “I’ll be outside.”
I walk over to the smashed table and pick it up, hoping to salvage what I can from the pottery collection. But Cash’s tumble into it has ruined mostly everything. Only a few small objects remain.
Carefully, I collect those pieces, then set them on table I’ve righted.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” an older woman says as she fusses with the broken pieces. “We’ll get this cleaned up.”
I swallow hard. “I’m really sorry.”
“It happens sometimes.” She waves me off with a swipe of her hand. “Your friend seemed very excited to be here. I’m sure he feels terrible.”
I feel terrible. I can’t imagine how Cash is doing.
“I can clean this up,” I say quietly.
“No need. I’ll grab the broom.”
Not sure what to do, I shove my hands into my pockets and head outside.
Ingrid’s standing off to the side, her hands on her hips as she stares in the great abyss that is Imperial Valley.
“Hey,” I say to her when I reach her.
She takes a deep breath but doesn’t say anything.
“Are you ignoring me now?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. “No.”
“What are you doing then?”
“I’m thinking,” she says, as if the answer is obvious.
“You’re mad,” I guess.
“Not mad,” she returns as she faces me. “I just…” she trails off as her hand lands on her chest. “I think this road trip was a bad idea.”
“It was an accident back in there,” I try to smooth things over.
“We’re a mess, Wilder. You, me, and Cash. We’re messy, and I miss last summer when it was just you, me and a bucket list.”
“I miss it, too,” I agree.
“I don’t know what to do with all of this.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
She exhales. “What if we were wrong?”
I frown. “About what?”
“What if we’re the assholes?” she rephrases. “We hooked up when Cash was in Europe, and I didn’t even feel bad about it. I just… we’re not good friends. Not to him.”
My head drops. She’s right.
Even if Cash broke up with Ingrid, and he left, I was still his best friend. And she was the person he was in love with.
Still is in love with.
That long happy life we want together, I’m starting to think Cash can’t be a part of it.
Not like this.
“What do you want to do?”
Ingrid sighs. “Find a white-haired scientist who built a Delorean time-traveling machine, go back in time, alter history so reality today is far less complicated.”
“Did you just tell me the plot to Back to the Future?”
She gnaws on the inside of her cheek. “Marty McFly never got it right. Why would we?”
“We can’t change the past,” I say. “We can only try to do better now.”
“I’m supposed to be the wise one here,” she grunts. “I’m supposed to have the good advice. That’s how it was last summer.”
I smile. “Maybe this summer, I’m supposed to be the wise one.”
“I hate that this summer sucks,” she sighs. “Isla’s going to be a single mother. Fanny is going on trial. Cash is meeting a long-distance pen pal and we’re having less sex than we’ve ever had.”
“It’s not all bad,” I say. “Except for the less sex part. That is torture.”
She purses her lips. “Let’s make that video in California.”
“Didn’t you say something like, ‘Don’t push your luck’?” I remind her.
“Ugh.” She rolls her eyes. “I want last summer back.”
“I’ll see if I can find a white-haired scientist to make that dream a reality,” I tease her.
She reaches for me, hugging me tight. “We’re shitty friends, aren’t we?”
“The shittiest.”
“Do you think he’ll forgive us?”
I shrug before kissing her.
Cash did some pretty shitty things last summer. But so did we.
Maybe this trip wasn’t about trying to escape from Isla or Archibald or NYU.
Maybe it was to show Ingrid and me that Cash’s anger—or whatever he’s feeling—is more justified than either of us are willing to admit.