One mile. Two.
I’m drowning in the quiet.
We don’t speak the entire forty minutes it takes to get back to my house. And when he pulls up to the curb and I get out, he follows. He follows me down the driveway, through the back gate, along the raised beds he built for me, up into the tree house that he’d repaired countless times.
I scrunch myself in the corner, and he sits across from me, the silence as bruising as a hailstorm. I think about the last time I was up here with him, how I don’t regret it, even though I probably should.
There are still gingham curtains, crudely sewn, hanging from one of the windows. They flap gently in the midafternoon breeze, their lace edging ratty and yellowed.
“Do you remember when we met?” I ask him.
He looks up, startled. He rubs his thumbs over his bent knees, straightening one leg out slowly. The hem of his jeans brushes my calf.
“I do,” he says. “Mina had been talking about you for weeks. I remember being glad she’d made a friend, that she was talking and laughing instead of crying. You were so quiet at first, you held yourself so still, sort of like Mina’s opposite.” He laughs. “But you were always watching her. I knew I could count on you, that you’d help her. Looking back, I feel so stupid, not realizing the two of you…” He lets out a huff of breath, not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. “It’s weird to think she and I had the same taste in girls. Is that why she never told me?” Trev’s hands knot together. “Because of you?”
We both know the answer, but I can’t bring myself to say it. “I wanted to tell you about me,” I say instead. “But I couldn’t without telling you about her. I’m wrapped up in her, Trev. I never learned how to love anyone else because she was there and we were us. We were always just us, and I couldn’t break that without breaking me. Without breaking her.”
“She wanted to hide,” he says. “And you went along with it, because you always did.”
“She was scared,” I say, as if I need to defend her.
But I know I don’t, not to him. He’s telling the truth, too. Mina led, and I followed. She hid, and I was her shelter. She kept secrets, and I guarded them. Mina lied, and so did I. Sometimes we were downright ruthless to each other. For once, it isn’t some cotton-candy idea of her; it’s who she was, in all her maddening, heart-squeezing truth.
“What about you?” Trev asks abruptly. “Were you scared?”
“Loving her was never scary. It was never wrong. It was where I fit. But I wasn’t raised the way you two were, and she thought I had a choice. Because I didn’t like only girls. Because I had…” I can’t finish that sentence.
But he does it for me. “Because you had me.”
I nod, the only thing I can manage.
And he’s right—I had. Trev’s been waiting for me all this time. Between boyfriends, breakups, fights, and more than two years of an addiction I managed to hide until it ate me up, he’s been there, waiting. I know exactly what that kind of love requires.
Because I’d been waiting, too.
Just not for him.
I wrap my arms around his shoulders, press my forehead against his temple.
His hands cup the back of my neck; our foreheads slide together, noses brush. I know he won’t kiss me, know he’ll never make a move again. This is up to me and me alone.
I know I can’t kiss him, know I have to draw the line here and now, because I can never love him like I loved her, and he deserves that. Deserves better than me and the empty imitation I can offer.
So I swallow back the tears and the words in my throat, the ones I can’t say, that I wish I could.
If it hadn’t been her, it would have been you.
52
TEN MONTHS AGO (SIXTEEN YEARS OLD)
I can’t stop crying as I slip through the back door of the Bishop house. “Mina? Mina, are you here?”
When she doesn’t answer, I open her bedroom door without knocking. She’s sitting on her canopied bed, legs crossed.
She doesn’t ask me what’s wrong.
She’s been waiting for me.
We stare at each other, silent, and I suddenly understand why she looks so guilty. Why she has to force herself to meet my gaze.
She knows.
She’s the one who told my parents where to find the drugs. And the prescription triplicates I’d stolen from Dad’s office.
The betrayal swamps me. I want to punch her. Grab a handful of her hair and pull until it rips out in my hand. Punish her the way she’s been punishing me all along. Is this her new solution—get me sent away so I won’t be a temptation?
“I had to tell them, Sophie,” she says.
“No.”
“I had to.” She gets up from the bed when I start to back away from her. “You don’t listen to me. You won’t talk to me. You need help.”
“I can’t believe you did this!” I’m almost out of her bedroom, horror coursing through me.
“I had to!” She chases after me and yanks me back into her room, slamming the door behind me, locking us in.
My balance, always precarious, is thrown off and I stumble, knocking into her.
“You told me you were getting off those pills,” Mina hisses, all hints of apology or guilt erased now. Her fingers bite into my arm, and I squeeze her wrist tight where I’m holding on to her, because this is what we’re good at: hurting each other.
“I lied,” I say. I drawl it out right in her face.
She goes white, letting go of me so fast, I’m reeling. “How could you do this?” she demands. “Stealing from your dad? That’s not you. You could have killed yourself, taking so many pills!”
“Maybe that’s what I wanted.”
Mina makes a sound, inarticulate and feral. Then she pushes me.
She puts her weight into it, pushes me like she would a steady person. No more careful touches, no arm looped through mine. Now is the time to make me fall, twist me up, ruin me for good.
I topple, but I bring her down with me, reaching out at the last second and dragging her to the carpet. My hands are in her hair, and I pull. Her nails dig into my shoulder.
“Don’t you dare say that,” she gasps. “Take it back.”
“No.” I buck beneath her; she’s half sprawled on top of me. I can’t breathe around the feeling. Her hands press down on my shoulders, pinning me to the floor. My back aches, my leg twisted at a bad angle, but her eyes burn into mine. She won’t look away now. I can’t, because I’ve never seen her this way before, like this is the most dangerous thing she’s ever done. She leans down, so close I can feel her breath against my skin. Her hair spills across my shoulder, brushing my neck.
“Take it back,” she says again.
I lick my lips and shake my head. My final dare.
Mina breaks, and the space between us is finally gone.
She kisses me, and even now I’m amazed that it’s her instead of me who concedes.
“Take it back,” she whispers into my mouth, and my breath hitches, my body hitches, rises up to meet hers when her palms slip underneath my shirt, touching the fragile skin around my belly button.
I trail my hands down the sides of her face, kiss her hard, tongue and teeth. This has never been soft or sweet; we’ve always been more than that, sharpened by time and want, our secret war finally won.
I start to say please, but I really want to say her name, pressed against her lips, mouthed along her collarbone, so I do, murmuring it like a mantra, like a thank-you, like a blessing.
Her hand pushes farther up my shirt. She brushes her knuckles against me, underneath my bra, and I let my body arch into her.