The Love That Split the World(40)

“Still,” Coco says. “Rachel? You guys are, like, friends. Or at least in the same friend group. And I know you were upset. Everyone’s talking about how you snuck away from the party after.”

Ouch. So she hasn’t mastered Mom’s sensitivity training yet, but at least I know she cares. “Believe it or not, that was about something else. Or at least, it wasn’t just about him and Rachel. There was more to it.”

She scrunches up her mouth in thought. “It’s okay to be mad at her. I would be.”

“I’m not mad at her,” I insist, but I have no idea if I’m lying. “Rachel and I haven’t been close in a long time. It’d be weird if I expected her to choose me over Matt.”

Coco rolls her eyes. “Whatever. She used to come over all the time. Girl code stands.”

The strange thing is, that sounds like something Rachel would’ve said a couple of years ago. She’s always been tough and blunt—the type of teammate who wouldn’t hesitate to tell you you “sucked” at turns in second, or leapt like a grandma in need of a hip replacement—but she also has this enviably commanding confidence and fierce loyalty to her few select friends.

When Matt and I first broke up and Kara Van Vleck expressed interest in dating him, Rachel told Matt that Kara was being treated for a contagious flesh-eating bacteria. It was a completely appalling thing to do to Kara, and I doubt Matt believed it, but that was the sort of messed-up way Rachel showed love, even after she’d been so pissed at me for quitting dance, accusing me of being too good for anything other than the Ivy League. When I found out she was the source of that particular rumor, I’d felt a similar pain to the one I felt the night I broke up with Matt: like I’d realized how much I’d always love someone at the same moment I realized that person and I might never fit together again.

Maybe that’s why I’m not mad at Rachel. Because Rachel can’t help but make it known when she’s trying to hurt you, just like she makes it known when she cares about you. The look on her face, in that horrible moment at Matt’s house, told me she was horrified that I had walked in, upset that I had seen them together, distressed that she’d been caught with Matt Kincaid. She hadn’t meant to hurt me, but that almost hurt worse. Rachel, it seemed, still had the inclination to protect me. Matt did not.

“I don’t know what Rachel and I are anymore,” I tell Coco, “but we’re not enemies.”

Coco nods silently for a few seconds, then stands. “Anyway, I wanted you to know I’m on your side. About the whole Matt thing.”

“Thanks.” I manage a weak smile, and she turns to go. “Hey, Coco?”

“Yeah?”

I’m not sure how to say this without it getting back to Mom and her putting the pieces together, which I don’t feel ready for, but I want Coco to hear it. “Sometimes you change your mind about a person,” I tell her. “Or your feelings for them change, or they change, or, I don’t know, you just want to make a different decision. And that’s always okay. You don’t owe anyone anything. You know that, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?” she says.

“I mean, like with Matt. I wanted to date him, and then I didn’t want to anymore, and some people made me feel guilty for that. As if he just deserved whatever he wanted, and I was being selfish for not giving it to him.”

“Are you talking about sex?” she asks matter-of-factly.

“No,” I say. “Yes. Kind of. I’m talking about everything: dating, kissing, sex. All of it. You never owe another person something, no matter how nice they are to you. Relationships aren’t transactions.”

“Mom already covered all this,” she says, “in the grossest, most uncomfortable way you could imagine. I thought I was prepared for it, but you honestly can’t imagine how bad it was.”

“Oh, trust me,” I say. “I can. I got that talk immediately after my first date with Matt.”

Coco scrunches up her dainty eyebrows and crosses her arms. “I guess you get more of it than me and Jack, huh?”

“More of what?”

“That Mom-the-psychoanalyst crap.”

“I hate to break this to you, but I’m pretty sure I’m the origin of that particular alter ego.”

Coco glances over her shoulder at the door then lowers her voice. “You mean ’cause of Grandmother.”

Wow, right there, out in the open. It’s the first time Coco’s ever brought my alleged hallucinations up to me. “Yeah, her,” I say. “And just the whole adoption thing. Perhaps you’ve noticed our expansive library on that topic.”

Coco rolls her eyes. “Sometimes I think Mom just cares too much.”

“We’re lucky,” I reply, thinking about Megan’s obscenely rich but virtually absent parents, Rachel’s single mom who’s worked the night shift as long as I can remember, Matt’s dad screaming at him from the sidelines during football practice despite Coach’s pleas for him to leave.

“I know,” Coco relents, turning back toward the door. “But still. Like, give us some room once in a while. Maybe don’t try to tell me about sex while I’m eating a bagel.”

I laugh. “Hey,” I say, stopping her again. “Thanks again. For being on my side.”