“What, she can dish, but she can’t take it?” Lex flops back on the grass and flings one perfectly sculpted arm over his eyes. “Typical.”
Harper gathers up her humiliation and channels it into rage. “You’re such a fucking phony, it makes me sick, Lex. Like, just embrace that you’re Daddy’s little sociopath. You think it’s some big joke that I’m apparently a princess? Um, talk about irony? Look at this stupid, overdone party. You’re trying way too hard to prove you’re not this pampered prince, but face it... You are what you are, and it’s not the blue-collar hero of your pathetic dreams.”
Oof.
I realize I’m sitting up, completely tense and in full peacemaker mode, ready to break up this fight before it tumbles past the point of no return.
“Hey, c’mon, stop it right now.” I use the loud, no-nonsense voice my sisters call The Headmistress.
“So, it’s cool if your boyfriend just, like, insults me to my face?” Harper demands.
Tessa holds her hands up, surrender-style, and Lex smirks, happy to fan the flames. “Well, if the truth just happens to be an insult...” he begins.
I don’t let his insinuation sit long enough to boil over again.
“Enough!” I yell, pointing a warning finger at Lex. Harper opens her mouth to say something else, but I shoot her one of my Don’t you even think about it looks, and she closes her trap faster than Marnie when she’s in deep shit, waiting on me to shovel her out. “I’m so sick of listening to you two squabble. You know what? The truth is...we’re all phonies. Every one of us.”
Tessa balks. “I am not a phony.”
“Really?” I’m not looking to make this whole situation explode, but I’m not a big enough person to let Tessa’s comment slide. “So, you’ve always loved horror flicks?”
She presses her lips together and studies her perfectly maintained cuticles. “I mean, they’re important to watch. For cultural reasons. I mean, you can’t just, like, ignore an entire genre of cinema,” she mumbles.
“You almost threw up during The Babadook. I watched you keep your eyes closed through most of Midsommar.” Just hearing the title is enough to make her grimace. I get it... Even bringing that movie up gives me the chills, and I’ve been watching Jason movies with Duke and Dani since I was in kindergarten. “You did it because you didn’t want Logan to think you were a wimp, and that’s fine.”
“That’s called exposing yourself to new things. It’s completely different,” Tessa protests. “That’s not being a phony!”
“It is if you pretend that you like the thing you actually hate just so you can impress someone you look up to.” I make sure my voice is gentle enough not to start a nasty brawl but firm enough to get my point across.
I’d expect Lex to be on my side about this, but, as usual, he’s as loyal as a double agent.
“So, are you the phoniest one of all of us, AJ?” He laughs when he says it, and once I go from being the enforcer to the butt of the joke, everyone relaxes a little. Even Harper smiles.
“Why do you say that?” I wonder if he knows me better than he lets on or if he’s just that good at bluffing.
“What do you even like, AJ?” He grabs my ankle and drags me closer to him. With my foot between his hands, he starts a massage I don’t ask for or want. There’s a particular rage I feel when I’m simultaneously irritated with him and turned to putty in his hands, and that rage burns white-hot through me right now. “School? Nope, I don’t think you like school. You just like getting good grades, making the teachers and your parents happy. Do you actually like any of your twenty thousand after-school activities? Nah. You just like the shiny trophies and all those bullet points on your college résumé.” He slides his thumb up the center of my foot and presses hard along the arch. My toes crack, and the flash of discomfort is countered by the incredible release of tension. “I don’t even think you like me.” His eyes glisten the way they always do when he feels challenged. He drops his voice to a purr, like some jungle cat. “I don’t think you even like them. You just like being in charge of everyone.”
“I definitely don’t like you right now.” I try to kick at him, but his fingers close around my other ankle with a tight bite. He has me shackled. “Let me go.”
“Tell me something you like.” He stares at me, his fingers tight on my skin. My friends have gone quiet, waiting.
I look up at the purpling evening sky and think about the sun setting over the ocean, like a perfect ball of orange cantaloupe melting into the water.
I think about Duke taking me for long walks on the beach with our metal detectors, how we’d fall to our knees and dig like puppies when we heard the telltale beeps, never knowing if it was a bottle cap or a diamond ring we were about to unearth. I think about dancing on the wide back porch of my dad’s old house, my feet on the tops of his mud-encrusted boots; I think about making up synchronized-swimming dances full of flips and underwater handstands with Dani, while her favorite station blared on the crackly outdoor speakers for hours; and then, as my brain flips through Florida memories, I think about Jude Zeigler, my childhood nemesis and full-time sparring partner at my dad’s shop in Florida.
I try to imagine Jude here, at this party, scowling at everyone, his dark eyebrows low and judgy like they always are. Jude has a code of behavior that’s ironclad, and deviations don’t sit well. He would have confronted Lex about how ridiculously romanticized he made working a menial-labor job sound—because that’s Jude’s authentic life. He’s worked as hard as an adult since we were in middle school.
Jude Zeigler can be irritating as hell, but he is who he is, completely, and there’s something super attractive about that. Especially when I compare that to Lex’s mind games and drama.
“You know what I like? I like guys who respect boundaries.” I pull up and shove at Lex’s chest, knocking him back on the grass. He grins, totally in his element when the drama is dialed all the way up. “And I like leaving a party before it totally sucks...which means I should have walked out of this one about an hour ago.” I stand up, and Lex slow-claps as I stalk back to the house, shivering in the cool Michigan dusk.
“Hey, AJ!” Harper chases behind me, Tessa at her heels. “That got weird quick, huh?” She beams as if she bothered to defend me or defuse things when I came to her defense against Lex, and for a long second, I honestly don’t know if I even want to respond to her.
I finally decide not to start some big drama before we all leave for the whole summer. It sucks that I can’t always be honest with my best friends, but this is the way it’s always been. When we disagree, it can get ugly fast—but I know they’ll always be here for me as much as they can be. I sometimes wish I could include them in every aspect of my life, but I just can’t. It’s fine. No friendship is perfect.