The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett(73)

I turned back to face him. But I had no idea what to say. What was I going to do? Accuse him of liking another girl more than me?

“I want you to see me the way you see her,” I blurted.

“You mean Lizzie? Hawthorn, you two are very different people.”

“Clearly,” I said, stealing another glance at her painting.

“And you’re awesome,” he said, stepping closer to me. “You know I think you’re awesome.”

“But you mean awesome like you want to have my perspective on the world. Not awesome like you want to date me.”

“Are they exclusive?”

I crossed my arms and stared at him.

“Come on,” he said. “It’s not like you went into this situation thinking of romance. You just wanted to find a werewolf.”

“And what did you want? What do you want?”

Enzo sighed. He looked like he wanted to be somewhere else. “You know what I wanted. I wanted to believe Lizzie was alive. That she left on her own and her disappearance had nothing to do with me.”

“You used me to make yourself feel better about your missing girlfriend.”

“Jesus, Hawthorn. Yeah, I used you, OK? We were using each other.”

“And now where are we?”

“Standing here arguing about whether or not I like you as much as you think I should.”

At that moment, I hated him. I wanted him to accidentally slam his hand in a car door. I wanted his ice cream to fall off the cone and onto the pavement on a really hot day. I wanted him to read a really great mystery, only to find someone had ripped out the end pages where it was solved.

“Yeah right, Enzo. The starving artist in you is eating this up. You look for conflict so you can have something to be philosophical about. For all I know, people are right, and you actually did kill Lizzie—just so you could let the guilt torment you.”

“Not cool, Hawthorn.” His expression darkened.

I knew I’d crossed a line but couldn’t bring myself to care.

“Yeah, well. There are a lot of uncool things happening right now.”

Enzo sighed again and ran a hand through his hair. “This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen. I feel like I’m in high school again.”

I was angry, but the other emotion slowly creeping up bothered me more. Hurt. I felt like I might cry, and it probably showed on my face, and I resented Enzo even more, because he could see it.

“Hawthorn, you’ve got it in your head that I’m supposed to, I don’t know, be the hero of your story. But I’m not. Life doesn’t work like that, OK? You need to let people be who they are, not who you want them to be. Stop making everything so complicated.”

“And you must think you’re uncomplicated then, is that it?” I asked. “You mope around, acting like no one in the world could possibly understand you. I never know what you’re thinking or if you’re even thinking at all. Instead of telling me what’s happening in your head, it’s like you’re waiting to be asked, only sometimes, I don’t even know there’s a question.”

“How very poetic,” Enzo said dryly.

That’s when I should have left. Or before then. Really, I shouldn’t have gone to Enzo’s apartment in the first place. But it was too late for any of that. We stared at each other for a long time, and I could feel my anger fading, and then I was just left with sadness. My lip trembled. I blinked, trying to push back the tears that were threatening to spill.

The thing about crying is that I didn’t do it in front of other people. It would only draw attention to my weaknesses, and I hated making myself that vulnerable. I guess for most girls, it’s different. I see them crying in the bathrooms at school all the time, which makes me feel awkward, as if I should say something, but I don’t know what. I’d even seen Emily cry when she got a rejection letter for the fancy private school she was trying to get into. But that was different, because Emily was my best friend then, and it only mattered that I was there for her, even if I didn’t have the words to fix anything.

So there I was, on the verge of tears, and crying in front of Enzo seemed like a huge defeat. There was no going back and pretending like his feelings for me didn’t matter.

“Hey,” Enzo said, not sounding angry anymore, “don’t get upset.”

“I’ve been upset.”

“You know what I mean.”

I shrugged. I tried to find something to focus on other than him. I found a spot on the carpet where something had spilled a long time ago and directed all of my attention to it.

“Come here,” Enzo said, but I didn’t move, and he ended up stepping toward me instead. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight.”

He wrapped his arms around me. Stiffly, I let my head rest on his shoulder. I was uncomfortable. I wanted to leave. But I let him hold me for a minute, then I let him put his hand under my chin and tilt it up, and then I let him kiss me. I kissed him back. It wasn’t as magical as the first time, but all of the harsh words between us started to melt away. The next thing I knew, he was pushing me back onto the bed and climbing on top. His hands were touching me everywhere at once. When he started to take off my clothes, I let that happen too.

? ? ?

The thing about sex is that before you have it, people tell you that your first time is going to go one of two ways. The first possibility is that it’s going to hurt, a lot. The second is that it’ll be mind-blowingly awesome, like all the awesome that’s ever existed in the universe crammed into one moment.