I attempt to swat the top of his head, missing by a mile as he continues forward. “Or maybe you can be quicker? You know, and move out of their way?” I try my best to mock him, but it only makes him laugh.
He hangs on tighter to my knees as Mia and Shep head toward us. But this time I’m ready for her. She’s flailing off Shep’s shoulders in five seconds flat. We do this several more times and the score is tied 3–3, when I taste the sting of something nasty in the back of my throat.
“Hey, guys, I don’t feel so hot, I think I need to head in.” I cover my mouth and pat Finn gently on the head. “Can you let me down?”
“Ah, come on, Slo, one more! Just one more!” Mia yells as Shep holds up one finger with a puppy-dog face. “You can’t leave this in a tie!”
I press my fingers firmly against my stomach and wonder if I’m imagining things. Nope. I’ve gotta go in. I can feel the bile rising in my throat.
“Come on, Sloane, I know you’ve got this!” Finn moves toward the tower of the other two, and the sway of his movement is what seals the deal. I turn my head and chuck up my entire dinner.
“Oh, shit,” Finn mumbles, lowering me down into the water and tucking out behind me. Thank God for the waves that quickly erase any trace of my puke from around us, although we all swim a few cautious feet away.
“Looks like the fish will be eating good tonight,” Shep jokes. “I think I actually saw a whole marshmallow come out.”
“Hey, not cool,” Finn says, shaking his head. I feel his hands around my waist as I bob in front of him. “You okay?”
My face burns with an intense heat I can only pray he doesn’t see. I sink under the water with all intentions of drowning myself.
So much for the summer of Sloane.
Date: Sun, 9 June 23:17:49
Subject: I’m sorry…
From: [email protected]
Slo—
I didn’t get to say good-bye. Fuck, this isn’t how I wanted to leave things between the two of us. I made a mistake, Slo, a huge mistake. And I don’t even know why I did it, why it even happened. But I need for you to give me another chance. I’m sorry. So very, very, sorry. Please tell me what I can do to make this better? I’ll do anything, I swear. Anything.
I love you…
—T.
The e-mail came in late last night, followed by a string of text messages—he even called and left a voice mail. But I couldn’t get myself to open the e-mail until now.
It’s early morning, a light breeze is drifting in through the open doors to my lanai and I can hear the ocean beyond that in the distance. The lull of the waves is what gave me the courage to click on his name in my in-box. But after reading his e-mail, I so badly want to go back to before. To before everything. To before I got it. I’d at least settle for going back to before reading it, so I could delete it and not have to hear his words replaying over and over in my head. But who am I kidding? There’s no way I’d have the courage to do that. At least not yet.
Tyler has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, just like Mick. I met him on the first day of kindergarten when, instead of going to sit at the table with the other boys, he had nodded their way with a cocky grin—well, as cocky as a kindergartner could have—then came over and sat in the seat right next to mine. Little did he know that once he’d picked his seat, he was stuck there the entire year. Stuck at a table with both Mick and me, while all his friends sat together without him. But instead of letting it bother him, he spent the year making sure I knew he was there. And he did that every year thereafter, too.
But if he’s so sorry, then why can’t he tell me why he did this? Why can’t he explain why it happened not once, but twice, instead of constantly stumbling over his own words without a clear explanation?
Not that I’d forgive either of them any easier, but if they’d only done it once, I’d maybe understand it was a mistake. That maybe they were so drunk, they had no idea what was happening, until it was…happening. But twice?
I don’t even know when they did it the second time or where they were—where I was. But I can’t help thinking there’s something more going on here. That maybe there’s something between the two of them I failed to notice.
Staring down at my cast, I try to clear my head of all things Tyler. Because it hurts to keep spending so much time thinking about it. About him. And about her.
One part of my brain wants to rationalize why they did what they did. How Mick could so blatantly step over that line and destroy a friendship fifteen years in the making. How Tyler could throw away everything we had. Not just the last year, but the last decade and then some. It makes me wonder if there’s something wrong with me, if both my best friend and my boyfriend decided I wasn’t worth it, after all the times I’ve been there for the both of them. And now I realize how little I mean to her. How little I mean to them both.
Especially for them to do it twice.
God, if only I’d stayed at that party. Maybe things would’ve turned out differently. I know Mick has never had it easy growing up with her controlling mother, the pressure insane to never settle for anything less than the starring roles in ballet, not to mention maintain perfect grades. Freshman year, when Mick had landed a perfectly good B-plus in English, her mom had grounded her for a month to make her focus on getting it back up to an A.
It’s because of her mom that Mick is the way she is. She doesn’t stop until everything she wants is compartmentalized into perfect little spots in her life. Which now includes Tyler.
But why did it have to be my boyfriend?
I guess what bothers me the most is that I didn’t even know Mick had a thing for Tyler—or the other way around.
It hurts to my very core, and it makes it hard to breathe. It feels like I could lose control at any moment and the air will stop being there like it is for everyone else. And I absolutely hate that feeling of being out of control.
My phone vibrates across my desk, and I look at the screen to see who the text is from. So many lately have been from Tyler, so I’m surprised when I see a different name come up on the screen.
Hey, it’s Luce. Still open on those swim lessons? Let me know…
Sure am. You free today? Say around eleven? You can come over here.
U bet! Address?
I send her my address and offer to pick her up, but she tells me she can get a ride no problem.
And then I suddenly panic. Because what if she’s getting a ride from her brother?
I still can’t believe I threw up on him. I mean I’ve had some pretty impressive moments in my life, like that time Mick and I were walking down the sidewalk in front of DaVinci’s—one of the popular hangouts for all the kids at school—and I walked straight into the pole of a stop sign. You’d think that wasn’t as mortifying as it sounds, but DaVinci’s has an open counter that faces the sidewalk, so when the weather gets nice, you can eat your pizza and people-watch. It’s the place to see and be seen. So of course pretty much the entire junior class witnessed my head-on collision with metal. I can still hear the pinging sound echoing in my ears and see Mick rushing to my side to see if I was okay. I was so grateful when she waited to laugh until I did.