One Night That Changes Everything (20 page)

“Actually,” I say, standing up suddenly. “Um, I want to go to Perk.”

Kate looks at me like maybe I’m crazy. “O-o-okay,” she says slowly. “Are you sure? Because we could have a drink here, I have tea and coffee, and there’s a vending machine downstairs if you want something cold.”

“I’ve just really been craving one of those herbal teas they have at Perk,” I lie.

“I have herbal tea!” Kate says in delight. “I have tons of—”

“I really want THE KIND THEY HAVE THERE,” I say a little too forcefully. “It’s organic and caffeine-free.” Kate looks taken aback. God, it’s hot in here. Seriously, how can she stand it? I feel like maybe I’m going to faint.

“Um, okay,” Kate says. She looks at me very strangely and then walks slowly over to her closet. “Let me just get ready.”

She pulls a sweatshirt over her head, then changes into jeans and slips her feet into a pair of comfy-looking slides. She redoes her ponytail and then looks at me. “Um, ready?”

“Yes,” I say, not so sure. “I’m ready.”

We ride the elevator down to the lobby in silence. But I can feel Kate stealing little glances at me out of the corner of her eye. Kind of like she might be really worried about me.

When we get to Perk, I order a peppermint moccaccino, and then lead Kate to a table near the front of the store. The
place is pretty empty, actually, and I can see Clarice and Marissa in the back, at a table for four. And to my surprise, the table is full. There are two guys sitting with them who look like college students.

Also, Clarice and Marissa are wearing baseball hats. The guys they’re with are bareheaded, and I’m willing to bet that somehow Marissa and Clarice convinced those guys not only to sit with them, but probably to let them wear their hats. Probably for camouflage or something. Unbelievable.

“I thought you wanted an herbal tea,” Kate says a little testily once we’re settled in at our table.

“What?” I ask. “Oh, yeah, I changed my mind at the last minute.”

“You changed your mind? About a drink that you were just dying for a few minutes ago?”

“Yes,” I say. I’m too distracted to come up with a plausible excuse, mostly because my eyes are darting around the café, looking for a familiar face. Tyler didn’t tell me to sit in a specific seat, so I’m assuming that wherever is fine.

“Eliza, are you okay?” Kate asks. She looks at me with concern.

“I’m fine,” I say, plastering a smile onto my face.

“No, I’m serious,” she says. “Are you okay? Do you need me to … you know, maybe, ah, call someone?”

“Someone like who?” I ask.

“Someone like a therapist or something,” she says. “I’m sure we still have Dr. Ronson’s number around somewhere.”
Dr. Ronson is Kate’s old therapist, who she went to see when her best friend Gwen moved away. Kate was thirteen and got so upset about it that she wasn’t eating as much as she used to, and my mom got all freaked out and thought maybe Kate was getting an eating disorder. So she sent her to Dr. Ronson, which was kind of ridiculous. Kate saw her for a few months and then seemed to get better. My mom thinks Dr. Ronson’s some kind of miracle worker, but honestly I think Kate just needed some time.

“Dr. Ronson?” I ask. “Why would I need to see Dr. Ronson?”

“Because you’re acting really weird,” she says. “You’re all … I don’t know … flustered. I thought you were getting over the whole Cooper thing, you seemed a lot better last time I saw you, but now …” She trails off, like she can’t believe I’m on such a downslide. If only she knew the half of it.

“Um, no,” I say. “I don’t need to talk to Dr. Ronson.”

“There’s no shame in therapy, Eliza,” Kate says. “I mean, it helped me.” Her saying that breaks the weirdness between us, and we both break into giggles. Kate pretty much thinks Dr. Ronson was full of crap, too, even though, like I said, my mom never stops singing her praises.

I relax a little bit. This is Kate. She’s my sister. She loves me. It’s going to be okay. But then I look up and see Tyler. He’s walking through the door at the other end of the café and is loping toward us, his strides long and easy. He’s wearing a pair of jeans and a hunter green pullover. He looks fresh and put together, even though it’s after three in the morning.
I guess fucking with people and manipulating them doesn’t really do much to tire Tyler out.

For one horrible second, I think Tyler is going to sit down with us. Instead, he takes the seat behind my sister. She can’t see him, but I can. He gives me a wink, then pulls a book out of his back pocket and starts to read. Which is so ridiculous, since I’ve never seen Tyler with a book. Ever. And that includes schoolbooks.

My mouth goes dry. I thought they were going to send someone else, you know, some dumb freshman lackey of theirs who would just spy on my conversation and report back to them. I had no idea it was going to be Tyler himself, staring me down like some kind of … snake or something.

“So what is going on, then?” Kate asks. She blows on her coffee. “If you’re not upset about Cooper, then what is it?”

“Well,” I say. I take a deep breath. “The thing is, I have to tell you something.”

“Okay.” Kate puts her coffee down, folds her hands in front of her, and waits.

Okay. Deep breath. “Okay, so … do you remember Miguel Contador?” And as I’m saying it, I have a wonderful thought: What if she doesn’t even
remember
him? Kate’s had so many boyfriends since then, maybe he’s just totally inconsequential. Maybe she doesn’t even
care
about him, maybe now that she’s with Brian (her totally perfect and very cute boyfriend who she met over the summer at freshman orientation), she thinks Miguel is just some old high school guy that she can’t even remember!

“Of course I remember Miguel Contador,” she says. “He was my first love.”

I frown. “Miguel was your first love?” Is she serious?

“Yeah,” she says.

“But I thought … I thought Brian is your first love?”

“No,” she says. “I mean, Brian is the first guy I’ve ever seen myself being with forever,” she says. “And I do love him. But Miguel was my first love.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head.

“No?” Kate repeats, looking confused.

“Yeah, no,” I say. “You didn’t even like Miguel Contador, don’t you remember?”

“No,” she says, shrugging. “I mean, yeah, maybe at first I was a little nervous because he was so good-looking.” She takes a sip of her coffee. “And I knew he liked me a lot, and I wasn’t sure if I really liked him, or if I just liked the idea of him.”

But I’m not listening. “What about that guy, you know, um, Dane or whatever? Maybe he was your first love,” I say desperately. And I’m not sure if it’s my imagination, but I think I see Tyler smirk. What a jerk. I mean, he’s not even turning pages. Of his dumb fake book.

“Blane Carver?” Kate asks. “From seventh grade?” She laughs. “No, Eliza, Blane Carver was not my first love.”

“But he was your first kiss,” I point out.

“Yes, he was my first kiss,” she says. “But it was during a game of spin the bottle, and honestly, I didn’t even really like
him. I just wanted a boyfriend, so when he asked me out later, I said yes.”

“Okay,” I say morosely.

“Anyway, what about Miguel?” she asks. “Did he … he’s not dead, is he?”

“Oh God, no; he’s not dead,” I say. She looks so upset and nervous, like she doesn’t know what’s coming, but most of all I can tell she’s concerned about me, and … ugh. This. Is. So. Hard.

It’s the only secret I’ve ever kept from my sister. Ever, ever, ever.

“I need to confess something to you,” I say.

“Okay,” Kate says. She has her hands folded again, not touching her coffee, and she’s looking at me seriously. I take a deep breath and decide to just go for it.

“I … I kissed Miguel,” I whisper. I don’t mean to. Whisper it. But it just … I don’t know … doesn’t come out at normal volume.

“What?” Kate asks. “What did you say?”

“I said,” I say a little louder this time, “that I kissed him. Uh, Miguel,” I clarify just in case she missed it.

“Oh,” she says quietly. She takes a small sip of her drink and then regards me across the table. “When?”

“One night,” I babble, “when you guys first started going out. It was at that party we had, when Mom and Dad were in San Antonio or something, and we’d gotten ready together beforehand. Me and you had, I mean, not me and Miguel, and
you said you weren’t sure if you really liked him, and I just … I felt jealous.” Kate isn’t saying anything, she’s just looking down into her coffee. “And actually,” I keep going, because I don’t really know what else to do, “I didn’t kiss him, he kissed me, but I … I didn’t stop him. And I never told you, so in a way, that’s even worse than if I had kissed him.”

“Why are you telling me this now?” Kate asks, her voice quiet.

“Because I couldn’t keep it a secret anymore?” I try.

“Because you couldn’t keep it a secret anymore?” Kate repeats.

“I felt guilty,” I say. I reach across the table and try to take her hand, but she yanks it away. We sit there for a second, not saying anything. “Say something,” I finally say.

“I don’t know what to say,” she says. She takes a sip of her coffee, then looks at me over the top of her cup. “Tell me,” she says, looking me right in the eye, “
exactly
what happened.”

So I tell her. Well, as much as I can remember. When I’m finished, she doesn’t say anything for a while, just plays with the stir stick in her coffee and stares at the ground.

“Did you ever hook up with him again?” she asks finally, turning her gaze back to me.

“No!” I say, shaking my head vehemently. “No, I
never
hooked up with him again, once I realized you actually liked him, I—”

“Oh,” Kate says bitterly. “You didn’t hook up with him
after you realized I actually liked him? So when I told you I wasn’t sure how I felt about him,
that
was an okay time to kiss him? Even though he was my boyfriend?”

“No,” I say again. Tears are filling up my eyes, the same tears that have been threatening to spill for the past hour, only this time they do, running down my cheeks in two salty rivers.

“Eliza, why are you here?” Kate asks, apparently not moved by my tears.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she says, her voice getting louder. “That you call me in the middle of the night, you insist we come down here, and then you tell me that you kissed my boyfriend and then kept it a secret for years!”

“
Ex
-boyfriend,” I point out. “Not that him being your ex makes it any better, it doesn’t, and I’m so so sorry Kate I just—”

“Stop,” she says, standing up.

And then she turns on her heel and walks out of Perk. I look up, sure I’m going to see Tyler sitting there with a big smirk on his face. But he’s gone. He must have stuck around just long enough to hear me tell Kate, then took off to avoid the fallout.

I pick a napkin up off the table and blow my nose. And then Clarice and Marissa are there,
sans
baseball hats. Their arms are around me and they’re hugging me even though I’m a big, sniffling, crying mess.

“What can we do?” Marissa asks.

“I dunno,” I say, sniffling. “Can you guys just let me cry for a few minutes?”

“Totally,” Clarice says.

And so they do.

3:57 a.m.

For some reason, I start to think that maybe this is it. That maybe they’re all done with me. It’s late, I can’t imagine anything worse than telling my sister about Miguel, and so after I’ve cried it out and we’re leaving Perk, I’ve somehow convinced myself that the night will be over soon.

“She’s going to forgive you,” Clarice says. “I just know it. Y’all are the closest sisters, like, ever. I know it’s going to be okay.”

“Maybe,” I say, taking another sniff. “But maybe not. I mean, what if nothing is the same after this?”

“It
will
be,” Clarice says, putting her arm around my shoulders and pulling me close.

“I hope so,” I say. We all stand there for a second, not
saying anything. “Well,” I say morosely. “I guess the good news is they’ll probably give me my notebook back now.”

“Why do you think that?” Marissa asks.

“Because,” I say. “They just made me do the most horrible thing they could possibly make me do,
and
it’s the end of the night.”

“Well, that depends on who you’re talking to,” Marissa says. “It’s four in the morning, which to some people is when things are just starting to get going.” She pulls out her cell phone and checks the screen, and then I get it. She doesn’t want anyone insinuating that the night is over, since Jeremiah still hasn’t called her, and so she doesn’t know if she’s still going over there or not.

“Well, if we’re talking about having to do a bunch of things to get your secret notebook back, I would say that four is definitely the cutoff, wouldn’t you guys?” I ask.

“I guess so,” Clarice says, shrugging. “Hey, where are we going?” We’re walking through the streets of Boston kind of aimlessly. The city’s pretty dead now. And pretty cold. I shiver and wrap my arms around myself as we walk.

“I don’t know,” I say. I stop and look around. “I guess we’re just going to wait.”

“For what?” Clarice asks. “My feet hurt.”

“For Tyler to text,” I say. “So that he can tell me where to pick my notebook up.”

I cross the street without waiting for the sign to change to
WALK
and jump over the puddles. “When did it rain?” I ask.

“While we were in Perk,” Clarice says. “Which is another reason I’m having such a hard time walking. The roads are so slippery.” A cab goes flying by, its headlights making rainbows on the pavement.

“Um, Eliza?” Marissa says. “I hate to be the one who says this, but, uh … what if they don’t give you your notebook back?”

I frown and stop dead in the middle of the sidewalk. Clarice, who’s been staring down at her shoes as she walks, slams into my back. I take a step forward, but then luckily catch my balance before I end up falling face-first onto the pavement.

“Why would that happen?” I ask.

“Because I wasn’t watching where I was going,” Clarice says. “Sorry.”