White Rabbit(18)
“I gotta run,” he announced in an unnaturally thin voice. “See you later.”
And then he was out the door. I was so thrown by what had happened, my thoughts such a maelstrom of hope and glee and confusion that I couldn’t concentrate on anything Mr. Cohen asked me for the next ten minutes. I ended up choosing one of the photos at random, my heart smashing around my ribcage like a wrecking ball.
*
That was only the beginning. After that first amazing kiss, Sebastian was always finding excuses for us to be alone together, pressing his mouth to mine the second we had a little privacy, and not stopping until both of us were lightheaded and short of breath. He wasn’t ready for people to know yet, and begged me not to tell anyone about us. Eager to make him happy—and not especially anxious to deal with the added attention such news would bring me—I promised him it would be our secret.
In a way, the clandestine nature of our relationship made it even more exciting. The coded glances in public, the way his foot would find mine under the table during meetings for the Front Line, the way we’d arrange to request bathroom passes at the same time so we could meet behind the theater and make out—all of it felt supercharged and sexily dramatic. It bothered me that Sebastian still flirted openly with girls, even right in front of me, because I knew he still actually liked girls; but I also knew why he felt the need to do it, and I believed all the things he said to me in private—how special I was, how happy I made him, how good he felt when we were together—and so I plastered over my jealousies and let myself fall into him.
It feels pitiful to admit it, in retrospect, but I never thought he would dump me—not the way he did, and certainly not so he could get back with Lia again. He’d told me so many stories about their squabbles and embedded resentments that I honestly thought he’d worked his way free of their mutually destructive relationship for good. And to find out about it like I did, to have to hear it from the ecstatic mouth of Ramona fucking Waverley and not even from Sebastian himself … it tore me in half.
So it’s with malevolent pleasure that I look forward to seeing him confront Lia now—to watching him face her with the fact that she’s been cheating on him with Arlo. I’m not proud of it, but it’s the truth.
The Santos family turns out to live in a tidy Cape Cod–style house on the south side of town, in a neighborhood of similar homes that all seem eerily desolate. It’s just midnight as we pull up, and even on a national holiday, there are precious few signs of life. Light, however, flickers in one of the dormer windows facing the street, and Sebastian shifts apprehensively behind the wheel. “That’s Lia’s room.”
“So she’s here?”
“Looks like.”
We all stare out from the Jeep. Suddenly, I’m wondering what we’ll do if she refuses to speak to us; she has no reason to give me the time of day, and if she’s been seeing Arlo behind Sebastian’s back, she probably isn’t too eager to face him, either. A glance up and down the street shows me no signs of the tattooed miscreant’s motorcycle, so at least he doesn’t appear to be here with her.
From the backseat, April violates the silence of our indecision with a grousing sigh. “Are you waiting for her to come out and confess, or what?”
“Text her,” I instruct Sebastian. “Tell her you’re out front.”
With obvious dread, he pulls out his phone and thumbs in a message, which I read over his shoulder: Need to talk. Can you come outside? I’m at the curb.
He sends it and we wait, watching the flickering light, seconds stretching into minutes. From the backseat, April murmurs in a devious undertone, “Maybe she’s avoiding you.”
Sebastian tries again. Lia it’s B and I’m outside your house. I’m not going home till you come out here.
“Are you serious?” I ask him incredulously. “You sound like a stalker—she’s gonna call the police!”
“Not if she killed Fox,” April interjects, but I’m already grabbing the phone from Sebastian’s hand and typing in a message of my own.
I know where you were tonight. Either you come outside or I bang on your door till your parents wake up and I tell everybody.
A half second after I put the phone back in Sebastian’s hand, the light in the dormer window vanishes. Three more minutes pass—during which time I picture her doing everything from calling Arlo for help to slipping into some MILFy lingerie to greet her cuckolded boyfriend—and then the front door eases open, and Lia Santos starts down the front walk.
She’s one of those girls who’s so wildly beautiful that it’s almost frightening—all bee-stung lips and smoky eyes and flawless brown skin; even the way she moves is impressive somehow. Wearing a rumpled T-shirt and cotton running shorts, her thick, black hair swinging loose in her face like velvet curtains, she still looks like she’s storming the runway at New York Fashion Week, and there’s unmistakable fury in her stride as she approaches the Jeep.
“Stay in the car,” I command April. “Don’t let her see you. We don’t want anyone to know you’re awake yet.”
“I get it.” She frowns peevishly, but ducks down out of sight as Sebastian and I open our doors.
Lia, who was clearly not expecting her boyfriend to have company, draws up short when she reaches the end of the walk, standing in the darkness that pools between streetlights. “What the hell do you want?” she hisses, her arms and shoulders tensed. Then, recognizing me with a startled look, “And what the hell is he doing here?”