If I Can't Have You

If looks could kill I swear Sadie’s fierce eyes would give me a heart attack. “That’s okay,” she says coolly. “I have other plans.” A smug grin tugs at her lips and she waves at me. I assume by the look on her face and the way she said, “I have other plans,” she means that she has plans with Drake. And I feel like I’m about to go crazy on her.

“Jesus, kiddo,” Dad huffs. But I can barely hear him. I can’t take my eyes off of Sadie and the phone that’s glued to her palm. Is she talking to him? Is she? Is she? Is she? Or is she just saying it like that because she knows it will get under my skin and eat at me like a flesh eating parasite. Dad pries my hand off his arm. “Robin, sweetheart. You really need to cut those fingernails. They’re like claws.”

I face dad and he’s examining bright red crescent shaped marks on his forearm from my nails. “Sorry, Dad,” I mutter under my breath and try to look around him to see if Sadie is still on her phone, but I can’t see her. She’s disappeared from my view.

Whit shrugs and looks out the passenger window and dad leans into the car again. “Well you two be safe okay?”

“We will daddy.”

He kisses my forehead and then I back the car out of the driveway.

In Paradise all the town shops are so bunched together. One right next to the other, kind of like the beach house we come to every year. And it’s nice that everything is so close. One because then you don’t have to walk far to get to where you want to go and two because it’s extremely hot and you don’t have to spend too much time in the blazing heat. There’s like a ten second time span in between walking from one shop to the next.

After we park the car, the first shop we go into is a swimwear shop. It’s a small cubicle of a store with the girls swimwear on the right half and the boys on the left. When we enter Whit flashes me a look with an excited gleam in her eye. “Do I smell a sale?”

My eyes focus on the back of the store and there’s big read sign hanging over and few racks that reads; 25 percent off. “You’ve got a good sniffer there, Fido.”

Whit doesn’t hear me. She’s already walking with a pep in her step to the back of the store.

While Whit peruses the sale rack, I thumb through a few of the racks in the front of the store, but every bathing suit I pick up has like a zillion dollar price tag. I pull out a skimpy white lace bikini and examine the contents of it. Seriously, who wants to pay a hundred bucks for some string and two fabric triangles that barely cover your nipples? Not me, that’s for sure.

I make my way to the back of the store and Whit has a few suits in her hand while she continues going through the rack. “I see you’ve found some stuff,” I mutter and skim the sales rack. I’m over the shopping trip and it just started. I wish I would have just stayed cooped up in my room for the day.

Whit faces me and holds up a neon orange bikini. I frown and point to it. “What is that?”

Whit glances at the bathing suit then back at me. “Um, a two piece bathing suit. You should buy one sometime, Ms. Speedo.”

“I’ll pass. It’s way too loud for my taste.” The last thing I want to wear is a neon orange bikini. “It reminds me of an orange caution cone on a construction site.”

Whit scrunches up her face and places the suit back on the rack. “Good point.” When Whit turns back around her eyes widen and her mouth drops open.

I start turning. “What?”

Whit grabs my arm and squeezes before I can twist all the way around. “Don’t turn around.

“Is it him?” I lower my voice, and a flash of worry sparks in my eyes.

“No,” Whit says. “It’s w

orse. It’s her.”

Sadie.

What about her damn plans? She probably just said that to avoid riding with us. Not that I really care. She’s the last person on the planet I’d want riding in a car with me right now. The sound of metal scraping against metal throbs in my ears as Sadie looks through a rack of swimsuits. “Whit, we have to get out of here,” I whisper.

There a huge part of me that wants to confront Sadie, but when I think about it I really have no right to. I mean I do, but I don’t. Sadie and I aren’t friends anymore so how would she know that I’ve been head over heels for Drake for the last three years. Then again, she saw us at the party together. If she couldn’t tell by the way I acted around him that I was interested in him than she had to be really drunk. Or maybe she didn’t care that I was interested. Some girls thrive on that you know.

But Whit doesn’t give me any time to confront her. A nanosecond later she’s stuffing the swimsuits in her hand back onto the rack and yanking me out the door before I can give Sadie a second look.

Outside the store Whit places both of her hands on my shoulders and looks me in the eye. I meet her gaze and exhale as a million questions pound through my brain and my heart begins to dislodge from its cavity. I focus on the sidewalk, staring at a few loose rocks. I can feel the tears building, ready to fall, drop from my eyes and dampen the cement.

Whit shakes me. I look at her and pain ripples through her features. She embraces me. “I’m so sorry,” she says apologetically. “I shouldn’t have made you come today.”

I back away from her and wipe my tears away with my wrists. “Its fine,” I sniffle. “Honestly, I didn’t think it would be this difficult.”

All I can think about is the way their limbs were tangled together and the way Sadie was kissing Drake. So deep. So passionate.

“What? The shopping trip?”