All We Ever Wanted(63)

“How?” she said, shrugging while she kept her hands on the steering wheel.

“It just is,” I said.

“How?” she said again.

I swallowed, feeling myself cave to her stronger personality and my need for her approval. Without Grace, I really had nothing at Windsor—and we both knew it. “If I tell you something, do you promise not to tell anyone?” I asked, knowing that it never worked that way, and maybe hoping that it wouldn’t. That she might tell Mr. Q or a guidance counselor or another close friend. That the truth might come out.

“Of course,” she said.

“Okay. So. Here’s the thing.” I paused, taking a few deep breaths. “Finch didn’t take that photo of me. And he didn’t caption it. And he didn’t send it to anyone.”

She looked at me, her eyebrows raised, then returned her eyes to the road. “Who did?”

“Polly,” I said. “From his phone.”

I expected a complete transformation—or at least a softening—but instead she slapped the steering wheel and started to laugh. “Oh my God! He told you that?”

“Yes.”

“And you actually believe him?”

“Yes. I do, actually,” I said, delving into the rest of the details. How he wasn’t trying to get out of trouble; he just wanted me to know the truth. That he was willing to take the blame for Polly because he was genuinely worried about her stability.

“Wow, Lyla. I thought you, of all people, would have more street smarts than this,” she said, shaking her head.

   “Why would I have street smarts?” I said, my face burning. “Because I grew up on the wrong side of the river with a single dad who makes furniture and drives Uber?”

“What the heck does that mean?” Grace snapped back.

“Never mind,” I said because I knew I might be overreacting. Maybe I was reading too much into the expression. Maybe Grace simply meant that I usually had good instincts about people. Maybe it had nothing to do with any of that other stuff—and those were just my paranoid, insecure issues. “Can we just drop it?”

“Yeah. Sure. We can drop it,” Grace said, going all passive-aggressive on me as she cruised along in her pretty white Jeep. “No problemo.”



* * *



—

BUT SHE DIDN’T drop it. Instead, about twenty minutes after I got home, when I’d already been doubting myself, and doubting Finch, and generally feeling like shit, Grace sent me three photographs of Finch’s car parked in the driveway of a big brick house, along with a text that said: Look who went straight to Polly’s.

My heart sank. After all, it was one thing to text his ex, it was another to go over to her house the second he dropped us off. I still wasn’t convinced that Polly hadn’t taken the photo of me, but I decided that it really didn’t matter. Either way, it seemed pretty clear that they were working as a team, and that Grace was right. The Luke Bryan tickets were a bribe of some sort. A last-ditch effort to win me over.

I scrolled back through my text thread with Finch, starting around one o’clock, when he’d first asked me what kind of music I liked.

A little bit of everything, I’d written back, trying so hard to be cool. I kept reading, cringing at myself, wishing that, at the very least, I’d played a little harder to get.


Finch: Top 5 fave artists?

Me: That’s too hard!!! So many!

Finch: K. Just 5 ur listening to lately?

Me: Walker Hayes, Bruno Mars, Jana Kramer, Jason Aldean, and Kirby Rose (new artist, but love her).

Finch: Cool…So mostly country?

Me: Yeah.

Finch: What about Luke Bryan?

Me: Love him.

Finch: He’s playing tonight. Wanna try to go?

Me: Seriously?

Finch: Yeah. Why not? Let me see if I can get tix.

Me: OMG. That would be amazing!

Finch: Got four tix. Wanna go with Beau and one of your friends?

Me: Yes! I’ll ask Grace!

Me: Grace is IN!

Finch: Awesome. Did you mention Polly?

Me: I told her y’all broke up.

Finch: But the rest of the stuff?

Me: No.

Finch: Thx. Don’t want the drama. Have enough already!



I scanned the rest of the thread, which was a discussion of logistics about the concert, followed by my final text, which I’d sent from Grace’s driveway, thanking him. He had yet to reply to that one, of course. Picturing him with Polly, maybe hooking up, or maybe just laughing at me, I told myself I had to do something. At the very least, I had to let him know that I wasn’t as stupid as he thought. My mind raced with all the things I could say to call him out, but I played it a little safe, settling on a snarky Having fun?

   I stared at my screen, waiting. Seconds turned to minutes. Just as I was about to give up and take a shower, my phone rang. It was him. My hands shaking, I answered with a snippy hello.

“Hi,” he said, sounding oblivious.

“Where are you?” I asked as I sat down on my bedroom floor.

“In my car,” he said. “On the way home.”

“On the way home from where?” I said, hugging my knees with my left arm as my hair formed a protective curtain around me.

“I just dropped Beau off. We ended up going to The Flipside,” he said, lying so easily I got a chill. “Why do you ask?”