Heat of the Moment (18 page)

“You want to talk about doing the wrong thing? You hooked up with me when you had a boyfriend!”

“You kissed me!” I say. “What was I supposed to do?”

“You kissed me back,” he says. He shakes his head. “Did you ever stop to think that not everything is completely black and white, Lyla? That things are complicated, that they can exist in gray areas?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I say, trying
to sound haughty. But my voice is faltering. Is it true? Do I not know how to let things exist in gray areas? A flash of Quinn and Aven, standing on the lawn outside of school, me telling them to get the hell out of my life hits my mind. Was that another way I lived in black and white? Refusing to be friends with them, cutting them out of my life when maybe, just maybe, we could have worked it out?

Beckett reaches out and grabs my purse. He reaches into it and pulls out my phone. “This,” he says. “I'm talking about this.”

He holds it up, showing me the email I wrote to myself four years ago.

Before graduation, I will . . .
learn to trust
.

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“It has to do with everything! You have to learn to trust people, Lyla. You said so yourself.”

“I do trust people!” I say. “I trust people who are worthy of being trusted.”

“Oh, like Derrick?” he asks. He throws his head back and laughs. “God, you are so naive, Lyla. What do you think Derrick was doing all day when you couldn't find him?”

“He was with his friends.” I point my chin in the air, daring him to tell me different.

“Yeah, he was with his friends,” Beckett says. “But Juliana was there for part of it, too, Lyla. I'll bet he didn't mention that to you, did he?”

I swallow. “That's a lie. You're lying just to hurt me.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because that's what you do, Beckett! You lie just to hurt people. Like Katie. I'm sure you're lying to her, too.”

“And you're so honest, right, Lyla? You kissed me back on that beach. You kissed me and you had a boyfriend and you pretended like it didn't mean anything to you, but it did.” He shakes his head. “Trusting someone doesn't mean everything's perfect, Lyla. Learning to trust means that you trust people even when they're not perfect, even when things get messed up.”

“You don't know what you're talking about,” I say, trying not to cry.

“You have no idea what's going on with me and Katie,” he says. “Yes, I came into the club with her last night. And the only reason I hung out with her for as long as I did was because I was sad about you. I thought you'd gone back to Derrick, that I wasn't going to ever get to spend time with you again.” He shakes his head. “I fucked up. That's what I do sometimes, Lyla, I fuck up. Everyone does, even you, even Derrick.” He shakes his head. “But it's what you do in those moments—that's what real trust is about. You talk about the problems, you work through them.”

I'm so mad I can hardly speak. How dare he stand here and talk to me about things he knows nothing about? How dare he talk about the things that I've done wrong, the
things that were wrong in my relationship with Derrick? He has no idea about anything I've done with Derrick, or how I feel about him, or if I trust him or not.

“How dare you stand here and judge me,” I spit.

He shakes his head again, and now his face doesn't look mad or intense anymore. It just looks sad. “That's the thing, Lyla,” he says. “I'm not judging you. And I wish you could see that.”

We stand there, face-to-face in the hallway, and I have that sensation again, that sliding-doors-moment feeling, like the ball is poised over the net and it could go either way. That if I say the right thing, that if I let my guard down and tell him he's right, I could get what I want.

But then it passes by, and I realize just what I'm looking at.

A guy who doesn't care about me.

A guy who doesn't care about anything but himself.

“Give me my phone,” I say.

He holds it out and I take it from him.

I make it back to my room before the tears start.

I LIE ON MY BED, CRYING AND FEELING SORRY
for myself, for what seems like forever but is really probably only an hour. I'm crying about everything. About Derrick, about Beckett, about myself. About this dumb wasted trip that I spent so much time looking forward to. About how stupid I was to listen to anything Beckett had to say, about how wrong I could be about my feelings. I was going to have sex with Derrick! I was going to lose my virginity to a guy I ended up breaking up with. How could I have been so wrong? And if I
was
so wrong, then how can I trust myself when it comes to anything else in my life?

Was my email right? Do I really need to learn how to trust people, including myself? Was Beckett right about me? Do I only look at things in black and white?

I think back on my relationship with Derrick, wondering if there were any signs that I missed.

Of course, when we first met, I kind of thought that maybe he wasn't smart enough for me. Okay, that's not true. He was smart. He
is
smart. He gets good grades and he studies and he's responsible. It was more like . . . we didn't vibe intellectually. Like when we were talking, a lot of times I would feel like I wanted to debate or talk about something a little more in-depth, and he wouldn't really do that with me. Or when we'd watch funny movies—he'd always be laughing at the physical humor parts, the stuff with people tripping or falling all over themselves, and I'd be laughing more at the sarcastic dialogue.

One kind of humor isn't better than the other, it's just that it was a little weird that we didn't find the same things funny. Actually, not weird, just kind of . . . I don't know, disconnected.

I sigh and roll over so that I'm looking up at the ceiling. I stretch out my toes. The housekeeping team must have come this morning, because the sheets feel clean and scratchy. I hate brand-new scratchy clean sheets. I prefer my sheets slept on for a day or two, so that they're broken in. These sheets feel foreign.

My whole body feels foreign. My brain is a mess. It's like a trapeze, going back and forth and out of control. I can't stop thinking about everything in my life, about how maybe it's all been a lie.

I'm lucky that I'm still a child. Yes, seventeen is pretty
grown up, but you're really not allowed to make that many of your own choices. Can you imagine if I'd been allowed to choose a career? Or a husband? I'd probably be married to Derrick and having an affair. It really is a miracle I haven't just dropped out of school. I'm obviously completely insane. And it's making my brain race.

The door to my room opens and Aven walks in.

She glances at me, then crosses the room and throws herself down on her cot. We both just lie there for a moment, in silence. After about ten minutes or so, I'm starting to think that maybe she's fallen asleep. I'm just about to look over and check when the room door opens again and Quinn walks in.

She also throws herself down on her bed. But unlike Aven, she doesn't stay silent.

“Why are you guys just lying here?” she asks.

“I'm sad,” Aven says.

“I'm wrecked,” I say.

“Life's a mess,” Aven says.

“I want to go home,” I say.

“Me too,” Quinn says. “To all of the above.”

I want to ask them what's wrong, but it's like some kind of unspoken rule that I can't. It's none of my business. We're not friends anymore. And besides, the last thing I want to do is start confiding in Quinn and Aven about what happened between me and Derrick. And me and Beckett.

“You know what?” Quinn says, propping herself up on her elbow. “This is ridiculous.”

“What is?” I want to add,
Us being in the same room together?
but I don't want to hurt Aven's feelings or start a fight. I've had enough fights in these past few days to last me quite a while, thank you very much.

“That we're in Florida, and we're just sitting in this room. We should be out having adventures.”

“Sounds exhausting,” I say.

“Sounds depressing,” Aven says.

Quinn stands up and throws a pillow at me, then another one at Aven. “Get up,” she says. “We're going out.”

I sit up and look at her incredulously. “The three of us? Like,
together
?”

She tilts her head. “Do you have anyone else to hang out with?”

“No, but . . .” I trail off, trying to decide which is worse. Sitting here in the room feeling sorry for myself, or hanging out with Quinn and Aven. I'm surprised to find that hanging out with Quinn and Aven actually doesn't even sound bad. It sounds kind of fun. Suddenly, I miss them. I miss them so bad it hurts.

“I'm in,” Aven says happily, jumping out of bed.

“Me too.” I stand up, and as I do, I get a look at myself in the mirror over the desk. Wow. I look wild. My hair is all flat on one side, probably from sleeping on a lounge chair.
My clothes are wrinkled, my face is blotchy, and my eyes are bloodshot. I look like I'm about two seconds away from mugging someone and/or robbing a bank. “But can I wash my face first?”

“Of course,” Quinn says.

I wash my face and brush my hair and change into a red-and-gray-patterned sundress. I slip my feet into my flip-flops and then head back out into the room.

“Okay,” I say. “I'm ready.” I grab my purse off the chair and slip the strap over my shoulder. I realize I've done this dozens of times—made Quinn and Aven wait for me before we go somewhere. It feels so natural, it's weird.

But then I start to wonder if this is really a good idea, if Quinn's offhand comment about us all going somewhere together is going to end up turning into some kind of horrible disaster.

Quinn and Aven and I all glance at each other nervously, and I can tell they're thinking the same thing I am. But what are we supposed to do? No one wants to be the one to call the whole thing off, the one who has to admit she's so petty she can't hang out with the other two for the day.

Because to admit that would mean you were still invested. It would mean your feelings were hurt, that they were hurt so bad you couldn't even stand for us all to be together for even a day. And that would be admitting you cared.

And the three of us have spent the past two years pretending we don't care at all.

Of course, it's a lie.

But no one wants to be the first one to break.

WHEN WE STOPPED BEING FRIENDS, IT WAS
October of sophomore year, which somehow made it worse. The beginning of the school year wasn't supposed to be when you got into a huge fight with your best friends. The beginning of the school year was supposed to be when you figured out exactly how you were going to spend the next ten months, which classes were going to be hard, which teachers were going to give you a hard time, and which boys you were going to crush on.

October was not a good time for you to get into a fight with your friends. It was also not a good time for your parents to announce they were getting divorced, but that's what happened.

It was all very
not
unexpected.

I mean, I wasn't an idiot. My parents didn't fight, but they also didn't even really . . . talk. My dad had been sleeping in
the guest room for pretty much as long as I could remember. And so when they sat me down and told me they were separating, I knew what it meant—they were getting divorced.

I wondered if they'd waited to separate until I was almost out of the house, but I didn't want to ask. It was way too depressing to think about my parents wasting their lives waiting for me to be old enough to handle them getting a divorce when I didn't even care if they got divorced in the first place.

So I just shrugged and said it was fine. And it was. There was no question about who I would live with—it would be my mom. My dad and I weren't close. It wasn't like we hated each other or anything. He wasn't a mean father. He was just never really around. He was a surgeon, but it never felt glamorous to me, or exciting. It just felt kind of blah. He worked long hours, but he didn't do the kind of lifesaving surgeries you'd see on television, the kind where they wheel someone in at three in the morning with a gunshot wound and everything descends into chaos.

He did routine things—gallbladders, appendixes, maybe an intestinal obstruction. He worked to the point of exhaustion, and even though I knew he'd always wanted to be a doctor, I don't think he was satisfied with his life. At all.

Anyway, my parents told me not to worry, that my dad was taking a job in New Hampshire but that he was going to have a house there and I could visit him whenever I wanted.
That's what they said—whenever I wanted. Not anything specific, like every other weekend, or some Christmases. I said that sounded good, and then my dad went back to work and my mom and I ate dinner and then I did my homework and went to bed.

It was two in the morning when I heard it. Crying, coming from the living room. At first, I thought it was my mom. She could be emotional about things sometimes, and I figured she must be feeling bad about the divorce.

I put on my slippers and crept down the stairs. But it wasn't my mom. It was my dad. He was still in his scrubs, sitting there on the couch, the same couch where they'd told me they were getting divorced just a few hours before.

His head was in his hands and he was sobbing.

I wanted to turn around and go back upstairs—it felt weird, like I was intruding on a moment I shouldn't have been seeing. I knew there was no way my dad would have ever wanted me to see him crying like that.

But it was too late. He'd seen me.

“Hey, Lyla,” he said.

“Hi.” I moved awkwardly back and forth from foot to foot. “Um, are you okay?” I thought about offering him something—tea or a piece of cake—but it somehow felt wrong. How could I offer my own father tea and cake in his own house while he sat there crying on the couch? The whole scene was very weird.

“No, no, I'm fine.” He looked at me then, with the saddest look in his eyes. It was actually quite shocking. I'd never thought of my dad as someone who could look that sad. Hell, I'd never thought of him as someone who could show any kind of emotion. “Lyla,” he said. “I'm sorry I haven't been more of a father to you.”

“It's okay,” I said. “You've been a great father.” It was a lie, of course—he hadn't been a great father, but really, what else was I supposed to say? You had to tell your dad he'd been good to you when he was sitting in the living room in the middle of the night crying. And it wasn't like he'd been horrible—he'd never yelled at me, never hit me, had always made sure I had food and clothes and whatever else I wanted. When it came to fathers, I knew a lot of people who were a lot worse off than I was.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I haven't been. And now . . . now you're grown up, and I'm just . . .” He started to sob again, and I just stood there awkwardly.

“Dad,” I said finally. “Seriously, please, you don't have to feel bad.”

“Lyla,” he said again, and this time, he looked up at me, desperate. “Come with me.”

“What?”

“Come with me. To New Hampshire. Please. I can't . . . I can't be alone. I have this house, this big house, and I just . . . you should come. To live with me.”

I didn't know what to say. It was a ridiculous request. Of course I wasn't going to come and live with him. I hardly knew him. And he hardly knew me. But what are you supposed to say when someone asks you something like that? So I told him I would think about it.

He went to sleep after that, and the next morning, Saturday, I told Aven what had happened.

We were eating pancakes at IHOP after hanging out at the mall, and she stopped, mid-syrup-pour.

“Are you going to go?” she asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “I'm . . . thinking about it.” The thing was, I
was
thinking about it. I hardly knew my dad, but my mom and I didn't have the best relationship either. It seemed . . . I don't know, like an opportunity. I'd just broken up with a guy—this loser named Marco Price who made out with me and then pretended it never happened, which, in my deluded tenth-grade brain, felt like a breakup and not what it really was—a blow-off—and I felt like I needed to get away from things.

“Please don't tell anyone about this,” I said.

“Of course not.”

But she did tell someone. She told Quinn.

Aven said she thought when I said not to tell anyone, Quinn wasn't included. But she was. Because Quinn's mom was friends with my mom. And Quinn told her mom. And Quinn's mom told my mom that she was sorry to hear
I was moving to New Hampshire with my dad.

And my mom freaked out on me.

She started crying and screaming, and begging me not to go. I told her I wouldn't. But I was mad. Mad at Quinn for telling her mom, mad at Aven for telling Quinn.

Of course, neither one of them had any idea I was upset. I blew off all their texts and calls for the whole day because I didn't trust myself to talk to them.

Looking back, that was a mistake.

When I got to school on Monday morning, they were waiting for me outside.

“Yo,” Aven said. “Where you been?”

“Yeah, we were trying to get in touch with you all day yesterday.” Quinn was texting on her phone, and when she looked up, she must have seen the look on my face. “What's wrong? What happened?”

My plan had been to play it cool. To greet them with a calm indifference and then go from there.

But instead, I exploded.

“How could you tell her?' I yelled at Aven. “I told you not to tell anybody!”

“What?” She frowned and looked confused.

“You told Quinn! What I told you about my dad.”

“Lyla, I didn't think you meant Quinn! All three of us tell each other everything.” But I could see the look of doubt that was crossing her face, the slight tiny bit of guilt that
let me know that she knew, at least on some level, that what she'd done was wrong.

“Wait, just calm down,” Quinn said. “Lyla—”

But it was too late. I had spent all weekend being calm, but it turned out it was just a facade. I was like a serial killer who had spent the weekend in waiting, acting detached before unleashing a torrent of hurt on people. I'd thought I was taking time to figure out how I felt—but really I was just letting things simmer until I was ready to boil.

“You,” I said, turning to Quinn. “How could you have told your mom?”

She got that same look on her face, the same look Aven had just gotten. “How did you know that?”

“I know that because she told my mom! And now my mom is freaking out!” I was yelling at the both of them now, loud enough that a couple of people were starting to notice. If I pushed it much further, a teacher was probably going to come outside and break it up. I almost wanted that to happen, I almost wanted a bunch of people to stare at us and for us to make a scene. I wanted the two of them to have something happen to them for what they'd done, and getting in trouble at school seemed as good of a punishment as anything.

“You told your mom?” Aven asked, turning to Quinn. “Why the hell would you do that? Your mom has the biggest mouth in the world.”

“She does not,” Quinn said, putting her chin in the air. “And I had no idea she was going to tell your mom.”

“Neither one of you can keep a secret!” I screamed. “You realize now that both my parents hate me, right?” It was an exaggeration, of course. Neither one of them hated me. My mom had been upset, yeah, but I'd told her that I'd just said that to make my dad feel better, that Quinn and Aven must have gotten the story wrong.

I hadn't said anything to my dad, because he hadn't brought it up since the night we talked in the living room.

“Look,” Aven said. “We all need to calm down.”

The bell rang, signaling the beginning of first period, and we all looked at each other. “We can talk about this at lunch,” she said. “We'll blow off afternoon classes. Unless . . .” She took in a deep breath. “Unless you want to go somewhere now?”

Quinn looked at me and nodded. “I'm in.” It was a huge thing for her to want to skip class, which showed me how much she wanted to talk and work this out. Quinn hated doing things that were against the rules.

I wavered. For a moment, I wanted to talk to them. I needed them. They'd been the only thing that had ever been constant in my life. With my parents, everything seemed so . . . fragile, like it could be torn in half at any moment. And obviously I'd been right about that, since they'd been so glib about their divorce.

But I was too hurt. I didn't want to sit down and talk to Aven and Quinn and have them explain the ways they'd disappointed me. So instead I shook my head. “I don't want to go,” I said. I was about to add “maybe later” but instead I said, “Stay out of my life.”

And then I walked into school.

Later, when I got a group text asking if I would talk to them that afternoon, I ignored it. I just wanted to forget about both of them, to pretend like nothing had happened. They called and texted for a while after that. But I just ignored them. I knew, on some level, that I was isolating myself because of my parents' divorce. I just didn't want to deal with it. I thought that eventually I'd respond to one of their texts, that we'd make up, that everything would go back to the way it was. I thought I'd end up forgiving them. But by the time I was ready, they'd stopped trying. And I didn't know how to make it better.

We come up with two rules for the day.

No talking about our fight. We all agree that the last thing we want to do is start rehashing everything that happened between us. No personal questions.

No talking about the emails we sent.

“This might be awkward,” I warn them as we step out onto the sidewalk in front of the hotel.

“Not any more awkward than sleeping in the same room,” Quinn says.

“True.”

We spend the first part of the morning walking on the beach, collecting shells until our pockets are overflowing. Then we stroll along Ocean Boulevard in Siesta Key, stopping at the farmers' market and buying gorgeous light-blue widemouthed glass bottles, which we pour our shells into.

“This reminds me of how we always used to buy the same things,” Aven says as she corks her bottle. She holds it up to the light, letting the sun glint off the glass.

“We're not supposed to be talking about the past,” I say, but there's a lump in my throat. I do remember when we all used to buy the same things. We weren't the kind of friends who didn't want anyone else to have what we had. We liked being the same.

“You wanna get lunch?” Quinn asks, ignoring Aven's remark.

“Sure.”

We head to an outdoor restaurant. Everything on the menu looks amazing, so we order a bunch of appetizers to share.

“No sour cream on the fish tacos,” Quinn says when we order, glancing at me. “Right?”

I nod. I don't like sour cream. And I'm glad she remembered.

“Can you believe this?” Aven asks, as we sip our frozen virgin strawberry daiquiris. “Did you ever think we'd end up sitting here together at the end of this trip?”

“No,” Quinn and I say honestly.

Aven takes a deep breath. “I know we're not supposed to be talking about the past, and you don't have to give me any details, but . . . did you guys do what your emails said to do?”

I open my mouth to protest, to tell her we're not supposed to be talking about that stuff, that we
shouldn't
be talking about it. First of all, we made a rule, and second of all, it's a slippery slope. If we start talking about one thing, we're going to start talking about everything.

But then I figure, why the hell not? Let Aven ask me all the questions she wants. Do I really have anything to hide? “Yes,” I say, looking directly at Quinn, daring her to stop me from answering. “Did you guys?”

“Yes,” Quinn says, raising her chin in defiance.

“Yes,” Aven says.

I wait for them to elaborate, to tell me what happened, but they don't. Even Aven keeps quiet.

When we finally start talking again, we make stilted small talk. But slowly, things start to loosen up, and by the end of the meal we're laughing and joking, gossiping about our classmates, talking about celebrity fashion, and debating whether Quinn should cut her hair.