Open Road Summer(60)

“I’m . . . ,” he begins, and I can’t guess the next word. “Single”? “Dating someone”? “In a relationship”? “I don’t know what I am.”

“Smitten?” Dee suggests.

“Shut up,” he says, laughing embarrassedly. “But yes.”

“And I approve,” Dee adds.

Zoe arches a perfectly stenciled eyebrow. “Is that all I’m going to get out about this secret relationship?”

Matt’s tone stays friendly but firm. “It’s new. I don’t want to jinx it.”

“Well, well,” Zoe says. “Lucky mystery girl.”

Despite the tabloid chaos and the fact that my best friend freaked out on me not ten minutes ago, a sheepish smile spreads across my face. That boy just does it to me.

There’s still a remnant of a smile when they walk offstage, and I start planning what I’ll say to Dee. She bursts through the door much sooner than I expect, with no Matt in sight. I sit up, awaiting some kind of direction, but Dee leans back against the door with an exhale that whooshes into the air. She’s exerted the last of her energy by remaining poised on the talk show.

“I’m so sorry about before.” She shakes her head, eyes closed.

I blink. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not,” she says, but I’m not sure if she means her behavior or the tabloid situation. The soft arc of each eyebrow turns to a flat line, and she slides her back down the door until she’s crouched on the floor. I move from the couch to the floor beside her, leaning my back against the door. I expect her to cry, but she doesn’t. I almost wish she would because her silence—her resignation—feels even sadder. It’s like watching a boxer take his final punch—no fighting back, no tears. Just lying there, done.

She sighs, stretching her legs straight out. “I don’t mean to complain, because I know I’m so lucky. But, I swear to God, Reagan, every once in a while it’s so damn hard that I want to pack up and go home.”

In desperation to fix this, I confess in a breathless slur, “I texted Jimmy. He’s not dating Alexis Henderson.”

“I should have known that,” she says after a moment. “Alexis Henderson, ugh.”

“He only wanted to know if you were okay.”

Dee snorts. “Did you tell him I’m an emotional basket case?”

“I said things aren’t great, but you’re tough.”

She stares down into her lap. “He already knew that.”

Yes, I imagine he did.

“And anyway, it’s not just Jimmy. It’s everything.” Dee sighs, eyes following an invisible path on the ceiling. “You know, I don’t even recognize myself sometimes. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror—the clothes, the makeup, the hair—and I think: Who is that? It’s all happened so fast that I’m always on to the next thing before I have a chance to process.”

She pauses to take an uneven breath in, and I give her a discerning look. “Hey. You’re still Dee under all that Lilah.”

This gets a lip purse—not quite a smile.

“You want to know something embarrassing?” She presses her horseshoe charm between her thumb and pointer finger. “I really, genuinely thought Jimmy and I would get married after high school. Like my parents did.”

“I know.”

Dee shakes her head, unsurprised that I already knew. “It feels naive and pathetic now, and I think it’s the reason I can’t regain my balance. For so long, I had these images of how my life would look—marrying Jimmy under the oak tree on his grandpa’s farm. Buying a house with some fenced-in acreage for pets. Having my brothers over to watch movies and eat junk food. Now my life is changing so quickly. I keep searching for new images of my future, and I can’t see anything—it’s like a line of blacked-out Polaroids.”

She stares down at her lap. “Sometimes I think about flying home, showing up at his doorstep, saying I’ll do whatever it takes. But this is my dream, and I get to live it. I’m not walking away.”

In anyone else, I’d admire the determination to not need someone. But, even as their breakup approaches a full year, Dee and Jimmy belong beside each other in my mind. Secretly, I’m like a kid in denial about her parents’ divorce. I still believe they’re a set—a package deal.

“Sometimes I worry that no one other than Jimmy will ever really love me. I worry that anyone I meet for the rest of my life . . . their idea of me will be colored by all this Lilah stuff. Jimmy loved me before anyone else saw me, even when I was”—she whispers this, as though it’s new information—“shy and awkward, with crazy hair. Those things are still a part of me, and I want someone who loves all of it. Do you think I’ll find that?”

“Of course you will.” The words leap from my mouth, mostly out of instinct to comfort her. But the thing is: I believe it. I believe she’ll find someone who loves the real, cranky-when-she’s-sick-or-hungry, laughs-like-a-twelve-year-old Dee, this girl whose presence in my life has made up for so many absences. I believe someone—maybe Jimmy, maybe someone else—will realize that Lilah Montgomery, the perfect girl on magazine covers, has nothing on Dee.

She shrugs, trying on a smile. “If not, I guess I’ll just buy an apartment overlooking Nashville, and you and I can live there together like those two crazy ladies in that documentary, the ones with scarves on their heads and lots of cats.”