The Lies About Truth(52)

I wiped her tears away, understanding the intimacy of secrets.

“You were hurting too,” I said. “And you left me out of it. Hid it.”

“We all did,” she said.

“The real scar was that you and Gray chose each other instead of me,” I told her.

“And you chose Max.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Gina pushed herself into a sitting position and lay against the headboard. I did the same. And when she placed her head on my shoulder, I leaned my cheek against her hair.

“Sadie?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever wonder what life would be like if we’d all just gone for ice cream together or didn’t go to the beach at all, or if Trent hadn’t chosen that moment to break up with me?”

“Every day.”

We don’t have a time machine.

“I don’t know what would have happened, but I know what did,” I said.

She knew too.

Once upon a time, there were four friends, two couples, who stopped being friends before they stopped being couples. Little questions niggled the back of their heads like splinters buried in the skin. Questions of trust and intention. Who loved whom the most? What if he wasn’t the best person for her? What if she wasn’t?

No one talked about the questions, because talking ruined plausible deniability. Talking burst the bubble of innocence. Talking ended the happily ever after.

These were the truths they believed.

And they were lies.

They should have talked while there was still something to say.

“Look,” I said. “I don’t know what Gray told you, but you need to know, Trent loved you. That wasn’t a lie.”

She used my sheet to wipe her eyes. “It sure feels like it.”

“You know Trent. He was an explorer,” I said, trying to take what I knew about his feelings for Callahan and explain what he’d told me. “That’s what he was doing. He was so uncertain of what he wanted, but certain that he loved you both. He was confused, and scared, and didn’t want to confuse or scare you until he had his head wrapped around his feelings.”

“You’re positive?”

“You know I am. Love is just messy sometimes,” I said with certainty.

Love, unlike relationships, wasn’t simple math. Trent understood he couldn’t be in a relationship with both Callahan and Gina, but he couldn’t stomach changing the way he felt about either.

“How am I going to tell her, Sadie May?” he’d asked.

“I don’t know.”

He hadn’t known either, but on June 29 last year, he’d taken the first step toward breaking her heart. In a terrible way, his last act had been incredibly brave.

“He wasn’t trying to hurt you any more than you were trying to hurt me,” I said. Her head bobbed against mine in understanding.

Gina zipped her necklace charm back and forth, biting her lip. “Still hurts.”

“Of course it does.” I touched her hand, stopped it mid-arc. “But at least you can grieve the real thing now. Grieve it all the way to the end.”

“So can you.”

We both sank deeper into the pillows, exhausted by the efforts of verity.

“Can we find a way to be friends again?” she asked. “I don’t want to do this without you anymore.”

“I hope so. I don’t want to do this without you, either.”

Forgive Gina. A posse ad esse.

I had a question for her, but I needed to clear up one more thing first. “Have you been putting letters in my mailbox?” I asked.

“No.”

It was a simple answer and I believed her. There was no reason to lie now, and she wasn’t even curious. I leaned against her, relieved, and Gina opened her eyes.

“We’re okay.”

“On the road to it,” I confirmed.

She exhaled and then kissed my cheek, just above Nameless. “I’m gonna go home and sleep for a week,” she said, crawling out of my bed. “My soul is tired.”

“G, would you do me a favor?”

Her face lightened considerably. “Anything,” she said.

“I want to go to St. Augustine. To the Fountain of Youth. Will you go with me?”

“I’ll go anywhere you want.”

Now I was the one with bread crumbs.

She squeezed my hand, I promised to call, and she went home to rest her soul.





CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE


Max didn’t respond to calls, texts, or emails.

The next morning, he wasn’t in the hammock with a book and he didn’t come to his window when I pecked on the glass.

I made a blanket fort in my bedroom, reread Peter and the Starcatcher, and prayed my phone would buzz. He’d said he’d call.

He didn’t.

He’d felt closer when he was in El Salvador.





CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR


There was still no word from Max the next day as Mom and I cleared away the breakfast dishes. I’d tried everything I could, short of banging on his door and demanding that Sonia tell me where he was. Silence was the price of keeping secrets.

Mine piled up like dirty laundry.

At Mom’s insistence, our little family planted ourselves like spokes on a wheel around the kitchen table. This talk smelled of pancake syrup and Clorox.