So Over It (2 page)

“Sure it is.”

I rolled my eyes and stepped on the gas a little heavier than necessary. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Implying I look extra nice for something. For some-
one
.” Lisa’s eyes widened. “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.” But a smile toyed with the corners of her mouth.

“There’s nothing going on with me and Eli.”

“I didn’t say there was.”

“I leave on Thursday.”

“That’s like sixty-two hours from now.”

I considered this.
Sixty
-two? “Seventy-two.”

She blinked rapidly, the way she always did when sorting things out. “But it’s three days from now. Three times twenty-four is—”

“Seventy-two.”

Lisa shook her head. “Whatever. My point is, in sixty- or seventy-two hours you’ll be saying good-bye to Eli. Maybe forever. Shouldn’t you, like, make those hours count?”

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. These were the moments when I missed Connor the most. He’d been a great moral compass. Lisa and Madison would have no qualms about encouraging me to make my last hours with Eli “count.”

Of course, Lisa and Madison hadn’t broken my heart. Score one for them.

“I’m not interested in hooking up,” I said as I turned down Madison’s street.

“Might be just what you need. It’s good for the complexion, they say.”

“Who says?”

“
Cosmo
.”

Of course.
Cosmopolitan
was the closest thing Lisa had to a Bible.

“Well, my complexion’s fine.” But as I pulled into Madison’s driveway, I double-checked in the rearview mirror.

Lisa glanced at the in-dash clock. “Is it just me, or are we always having to wait for Madison?”

I killed the engine. “Punctuality isn’t her thing.”

Lisa pulled a cigarette from her purse. I might have asked her not to, but with Hawaii so close, I didn’t want to bicker. “If you’d have told me six months ago that I’d be hanging out with Madison Embry . . .”

“Same here.”

Lisa propped her feet up on the dashboard. I opened my mouth to tell her to move her stinky feet, but what did I care? The car would be Abbie’s once I left.

“It all seems so stupid now,” she said with a flick of her lighter. “Shutting Madison out of the group these last few years.”

“Not much of the old group left.”

She gave me a funny look. “Sure there is. It’s just Jodi and Alexis who are out.”

True. Jodi now spent her time with Connor and other youth group friends. I didn’t know much about Alexis. Except she didn’t want to hang out with Lisa, who’d unintentionally stolen her most recent boyfriend; Madison, who’d stolen her first boyfriend; and me, whose only crime was hanging out with said girls.

“Finally,” Lisa said as Madison jogged down the front steps of her modest brick house. As best she could, anyway, in her platform sandals.

Madison slipped into the seat behind Lisa. “I know I’m late. Sorry.”

“We expect it,” Lisa said.

In the rearview mirror, I saw Madison stick out her tongue.

“I’m sure the guys will be late too. I think Eli and John were playing disc golf,” I said.

This time when I glanced in the rearview mirror, Madison grinned at me, wicked. “What?” I said flatly.

“It’s just so sweet that Eli fills you in on his every move. What a good boyfriend.”

Madison and Lisa cackled.

“He’s
not
my boyfriend.” Did they even hear me over their immature giggling? “I said, he’s not my boyfriend.”

“You sure spend a lot of time with him,” Lisa said.

“Because we’re friends, okay? We were friends for three years before we dated, and we’re friends now.”

“Does he know that?”

“Of course he knows.”

“Is that why he kissed you?”

I hesitated, mentally replaying the kiss that had started me down this road. The familiarity of his mouth on mine, his hands in my hair, the sticky taste of rum and Coke.

“That wasn’t anything,” I said. “He’d recently broken up with Jodi and I’d just broken up with Connor. It was about—”

“Attraction,” Madison said.

“I was going to say ‘comfort.’”

Lisa snickered. “As in Southern Comfort.”

I slanted her a glare. “He may have been drinking, but I wasn’t. I told you, I—”

“Gave that stuff up,” the girls said along with me.

I adjusted my grip on the steering wheel and ignored their snickers. What would they say if they knew I’d been drinking too? Oh, they wouldn’t really care—not like Connor would—but I’d been denying it for so long that I couldn’t stand the thought of coming clean. And what really mattered was that I hadn’t touched a drop since that horrible, drunken night with Eli. I cringed—okay,
one
other time. Prom night. And, okay, graduation too.

“Well, if being a good girl is what makes Eli Welling turn his head, I might just have to reform,” Madison said.

I didn’t answer, not quite ready to admit that I’d abandoned my fantasies of ever being a good girl.

2

“I bet they don’t have Sheridan’s Frozen Custard in Hawaii,” Eli said as we all lounged in the bed of John’s truck.

Lisa pointed her spoon at me. “Somehow I think she’ll survive.”

I savored an enormous bite of my caramel pretzel crunch concrete. “I don’t know. I wonder if we could figure out a way to ship custard.”

Sheridan’s had been our hangout for the last couple summers. It was modeled after those old-timey ice cream places, where you walked up to the window to place your order, but figuring out where to eat was your responsibility. They only had a couple benches, which were always occupied except in the dead of winter. Connor and I had usually opted for the grassy slope that faced the road. These days, I usually ate with my back to the hill, to the memories.

Eli’s hand clasped my bare knee. “Well, I don’t feel sorry for you.”

“Gee, what a great pal you are,” I said, and we smiled at each other.

When Eli put his mind to it, he could give one of those mesmerizing smiles that would make a girl forget her first name. He used it on me then—the dimples, the crinkled eyes. We’d known each other for four years, and its effect on me had only slightly dulled.

“Hey, guys.”

I turned away from Eli. At the end of the truck stood Connor, Jodi, and Chris, Connor’s younger brother. Also probably my future brother-in-law if things between him and Abbie stayed the same.

With Connor’s gaze fixed on me, I suddenly felt very aware of Eli’s fingers curled around my knee, of the non-space between us. I knew how it looked. I could read it in Connor’s face, and a rush of satisfaction came over me. What’d he expect? That I’d just wait around for him to figure stuff out so we could be together?

“Mind if we sit with you?” Jodi asked. She gestured to the chaos surrounding Sheridan’s. “There’s, like, no good place to sit.”

John glanced at Eli but said, “Sure.”

Connor and Chris seemed hesitant, but Jodi appeared to have no qualms about climbing in the back of the truck with me and Eli and everyone else. She smiled at me. “How was the movie?”

I saw curiosity on the faces of the others but ignored it. “Predictable. How about you guys?”

“I liked it.” Jodi shrugged and turned to Connor and Chris. “Didn’t you guys?”

“Yeah, it was fine,” Connor said.

Chris mumbled something inaudible. It wasn’t unusual for him to be so quiet, especially around people he didn’t know well. But I’d rarely seen Connor so subdued.

Eli gave my leg a familiar pat. “We’re all just talking about Skylar going to Hawaii. Did you guys know she leaves Thursday?”

Connor picked around his sundae and didn’t seem inclined to answer. Jodi’s warm smile turned polite. “Yeah. Pretty sweet.”

Lisa said to Jodi, “You heard from Alexis at all?”

Jodi shook her head. “I’ve called her a couple times, but it’s always pretty awkward. And she never calls me. Guess she’s done with the whole lot of us.” She smiled at something and looked at me. “You’ll never guess who she’s been hanging around with.”

“Who?”

“I’m not even sure if you’ll remember him. Aaron Robinson?” Did she notice how stiff Connor, Eli, and I went? Eli’s fingers turned wooden against my knee and Connor’s bite of ice cream dangled midair, forgotten.

“Uh, kinda.” I sounded surprisingly normal.

“I guess they met up at a party or something. He goes to Florida State now but is home for the summer.” Jodi shrugged. “She sounded happy.”

“Good. I . . . That’s good, I guess.”

“Not that I approve of her partying and stuff, of course.” Jodi had clearly misinterpreted my bumbling.

“Right.” I had to get out of there. Had to collect my thoughts. Stupid Sheridan’s for not having a public bathroom I could excuse myself to.

“Skylar, I almost forgot,” Connor said. “Your iPod’s in my car.”

I felt like Lois Lane being rescued by Superman. If Superman were five-foot-seven with auburn hair and an absurd amount of running pants in his closet.

He jumped down from the truck and held out his hand to help me. When his fingers clasped mine, security enveloped me. And when I landed and he released me, a fresh wave of loneliness came.

We walked away from watchful eyes, not speaking, not even glancing at each other until we reached his Tahoe. I sank to the gritty blacktop, not caring if I ruined my skirt. Connor crouched beside me, hovering in my space bubble but not touching.

“Thanks for getting me out of there,” I said.

“I don’t know if I need to say this or not, but I had no idea about Alexis and . . .” He wouldn’t say his name. We never spoke it. “Jodi hadn’t told me.”

I waved away his remark. “I assumed.”

“Well.” Connor took a deep breath, then exhaled long and slow out his nose. “Will you call Alexis?”

“I don’t know.”

“It seems like it’d be a good thing for her to know. What happened, I mean.”

“I know.”

Images of that night spun around my head—Aaron’s dark eyes, his mouth close to my ear as he whispered, “Let’s find somewhere quiet,” the flashing numbers of the alarm clock in the spare bedroom.

I came back to the present when Connor’s fingers grazed my wet cheek.

“Sorry.” I wiped away the evidence of my inner turmoil. “We should get back to the others.”

“Hey.” His hand caught my arm as I attempted standing. “Take your time, okay?”

I glanced in the direction of our friends. “They’ll get suspicious.”

“So? We don’t owe answers to anyone sitting in the back of that truck.” He tugged at his collar. “Unless you and Eli are . . .”

“No.”

“Because when we showed up, it kinda looked like—”

“I don’t care what it looked like. We’re just friends.”

Connor nodded. He wiped his wet fingertips on his athletic shorts. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

The question threw me. I blinked at him. “What am I doing tomorrow night?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “I thought we could maybe hang out before you leave. It’s been awhile.”

I laughed humorlessly. Of course.

“What’s so funny?” Connor asked, his face creased with a frown.

“It’s just so typical ‘Connor.’ I’m totally unappealing to you until you see me shedding a couple tears. Suddenly you’re swooping in to save the day.”

His frown deepened. “It’s not like that.”

“What’s wrong with Jodi? Is she too stable? Too sane? Doesn’t need you quite as much as she used to?”

Connor’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “It’s not like we broke up because I stopped loving you. I felt like I needed to be there for Jodi, and you made it perfectly clear that wasn’t an option as long as we were together.”

“Yeah, call me crazy. I don’t like my boyfriend hanging out with girls who are so clearly after him.”

“You could’ve trusted me,” Connor said in a low voice. “You admitted you had feelings for her.”

“Not like my feelings for you.”

I could no longer keep my voice cool and detached. “You chose her.”

Connor gripped my hands. “I’ve never regretted a decision like I do that one. Please, Skylar.”

“Please what?”

“Don’t go to Hawaii. Or at least don’t stay. Come back when Abbie and your parents do.”

“You’ve got no right to ask me that.”

“Maybe not. But I still want you to stay. I want you to be around this summer.”

I pulled my hands from his. “I’ve been around since March. You could’ve done something then.”

“I tried a couple times. You never wanted to talk to me.” “That’s because I’m over you.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m over all of it.”

And I turned and marched away before he could say anything to convince me otherwise.

“What’s wrong?” Eli asked as I put space between us.

I finger-combed my hair as I scooted away. “We should go back to the party. Lisa and Madison will wonder where I am.”

“They’re big girls. I’m sure they’re fine without you.” He grinned and moved to close the gap between us. “I, on the other hand—”

“Stop.” I pressed my hand to his chest, keeping him at a distance. “This has to stop. This thing with us.”

“And it will.” He brushed my cheek with the back of a crooked finger. “On Thursday.”