P.S. I Like You(61)

As I sat on my bed with my notebook, I laughed at myself. At the idea that this song would win. That it would become world-known just because I entered it into a contest. The chances of that were slim to none. But even with those odds, I couldn’t do that to Cade. I liked him too much.



All Monday morning I kept my eyes out for Cade. I wanted to see him so I knew everything worked out fine with the hotel, with his stepdad. Since he was no longer writing me letters, I had to count on an actual sighting to check up on him. But I hadn’t seen him at all. In Chemistry I hoped and prayed that there would be a letter. That now that finals were over, he’d write and tell me that he was sorry he’d stopped writing, he’d been too busy studying, or too busy with school responsibilities, or something. Some really good excuse as to why he’d stopped.

But as my hand searched in vain underneath the desk for a letter it never found, my heart dropped another degree. He’d either found out that I was the letter writer and was giving me a very big hint about how he felt about that, or he was just moving on—Cade always did have a short attention span.

It didn’t matter. He didn’t matter.



“What do you want for lunch today?” Isabel asked.

I tugged on my zipper that was stuck at the bottom of my hoodie. “I don’t know. Something hot. I’m cold.”

“They should have a soup cart here. That would be awesome.”

“In Arizona?”

“Okay, for the month of December, they should have a soup cart here.”

“Agreed.”

I growled as my zipper refused to budge. I was blindly following Isabel wherever she was leading us, her shoes in my peripheral vision as I messed with my zipper.

“What do you think Sasha wants?”

“Huh?” I looked up to see Sasha on a course straight for us, her face a mixture of anger and sadness. I wasn’t sure what to do with that. She had a bundle of papers in her right hand and it took me a moment to place them but I knew before she reached me that they were my letters. All the letters I’d written to Cade. How had she gotten them?

“You make this impossible,” Sasha grunted. “You’re so weird.” She shoved the letters into my arms and a few fell to the floor. “I can’t be that.”

Isabel helped me pick up the scattered letters as Sasha marched away.

“What was that about?” Isabel asked in surprise.

“These are my letters.”

“How’d she get them? Did Cade give them to her?”

My stomach twisted into a knot. I had no idea.

I opened my backpack and started to shove my letters in with his that I kept there. I stopped, gathered both his and mine, and held them out for Isabel. “Will you just take these? Can we have a bonfire at your house after school?”

She gave me a sad smile. “If that’s what you want.”

“It is.”

She opened her backpack and I dropped them all inside. I needed him out of my life once and for all.



Cade was standing by the minivan talking to my mom through the open window when I approached. I felt like I had on the same angry/sad face that Sasha had been wearing earlier.

“Hey, Lily,” Cade said when I opened the side door.

“Hey.” I got in and closed it.

He looked confused. “Well, it was nice talking to you, Mrs. Abbott. Wyatt, I’ll see you Thursday.”

“Okay!” Wyatt said.

Then Cade looked at me. “Truce expired?”

“Yep.” I could do this. I could go back to ignoring him again when all I really wanted to do was ask him if he got in trouble with his parents Friday night after the hotel incident. If his stepdad got kicked out of the golf club. If he was doing okay.

He backed slowly away from the car and my mom rolled up the window as she pulled away.

“I have no idea what you have against that young man, Lil,” Mom said, “but it needs to stop.”

I nodded. “It’s stopped.”





I showed up at Isabel’s house half an hour later. I’d thrown on a black T-shirt to symbolize what, I wasn’t sure. When she opened the door though, her expression was one I didn’t understand—guilt mixed with sadness mixed with something like hope.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“What? Why?” My right eye started to twitch. What was she going to confess to now?

“I read them. I shouldn’t have. They were private. But I did.”

I let out a breath. “Iz, I didn’t know it was him when I was writing them.”

“I know.” She took me by the hand and led me to her room where all my letters were stacked neatly on her desk. “We can’t burn these.”

“What? But I wore black.”

She laughed. “These letters, Lil … It’s no wonder you fell for him.”

“I didn’t … ” I started to protest, but I couldn’t lie. “I know.”

“But he doesn’t know he’s been writing you?”

“No.”

“He thought that was Sasha?” She pointed at the letters.

“I’m pretty sure.”

“Then he’s an idiot. Those sound nothing like Sasha. Those letters are so you. He fell for you.”