“I’m sorry.” I sniffled and then blew my nose in one of the tissues Jessica had given me.
After leaving Vaughn I’d hurried home in tears. But to get to my car I had to pass Antonio’s and Iris was out cleaning the windows. She’d tried to get me to talk to her, but I ran away like the melodramatic teenager I’d currently reverted to. Concerned, Iris had called Dahlia, who’d then called me. I told her not to come over.
She’d given me that.
For a while.
Dahlia, Jess, and Emery appeared early that evening with tissues, cake, and wine. My sister was nowhere in sight.
We’d had privacy for me to blubber about what had happened with Vaughn. Again.
Emery’s brows were drawn together in consternation. “So . . . he told you he loved you but you’re not willing to give him a chance?”
“Exactly.”
“There has to be more to it than that,” Dahlia mused.
“Of course there is,” I huffed. “But let’s not forget this is a man who has been hostile to me for years, had sex with me, said it was a mistake and we didn’t ‘fit,’ and then veered between hostile and jealous for weeks—oh, after disappearing entirely—and then manhandled me into a room, jumped me, screwed me, proclaimed he loved me, but refused to tell me why the change of heart.”
“I would say telling you he loved you was a step in the right direction though,” Jessica said.
“Only marginally,” I argued. “He won’t tell me why he’s been acting the way he has, or why it was so hard for him to admit he wanted a relationship with me. I mean, he’s acting like loving me is some goddamn big sacrifice—actually used that word—but he won’t even tell me why! How the
hell am I supposed to have a relationship with someone who won’t talk to me?”
“Bailey, this is you,” Dahlia said. “You stick in there, you fight for the people you care about, you wear them down until you’re their confidante. Why is Vaughn different? Why are you so scared to fight for him? Because we all know you’d wear him down eventually. The man looks at you like you’re his last supper.”
I stared from one friend to the next, reading the confusion, concern, and curiosity in their eyes. No one but my father and Ivy knew about the boy who broke my heart, not until I’d mentioned it to Vaughn. I’d held the memory close, hating how vulnerable it made me feel, made me seem. But I could never make them understand my fears without sharing that piece of my past.
“The summer I was nineteen this college guy whose family had spent the summer in Hartwell for years started to notice me. I was hanging out on the beach with Ivy, Iris’s daughter, she was home from UCLA for the summer. And this guy was there with a friend who’d come down from Manhattan. Ivy liked the friend and I liked him. He said it was his last summer in Hartwell because his family was selling their summer home there, so he’d decided to stick around for a while since it would be the last time.
“He was different from the boys I grew up with. Different from the boys I crushed on, like Cooper and Jack.” I smiled at Jess, having already confessed to her about my schoolgirl crush on her fiancé. “He was handsome but in this perfect Ralph Lauren catalogue kind of way. And he was funny and charming, and he loved to spoil me. He didn’t take life too seriously, and I needed that then. I wanted to be with him and to do that I agreed to keep our relationship a secret. He told me his parents wouldn’t like it if he spent too much time with one girl because they were afraid a girl would distract him from college.
“He was the first boy I slept with. We spent nights lying under the stars talking about everything. It wasn’t some shallow summer romance,” I tried to explain. “Not to me. He told me about the pressure he felt from his parents, how they never told him that they loved him and only gave praise when he measured up to their expectations. He was lonely. And scared. And I wanted to be the one person in his life that loved him no matter what. So I told him that and he told me that he loved me, too. And the sex was great. It was passionate. It was everything I thought love was supposed to be.”
I smiled, grim. “So imagine my horror when he came to me at the end of the summer and told me that he’d gotten carried away, that he didn’t love me, that it was a mistake, that we were too young. He told me that his parents would never approve because I was a townie. I wasn’t good enough. He transformed in front of me into this person I didn’t recognize. And then he left. I never saw him again. To make matters worse, Vanessa had a crush on him and I didn’t know until it was too late. My relationship with her was already going downhill and it just fell apart after him.”
Jessica took hold of my hand, anger burning in the depths of her hazel eyes. “He was a coward.”
“Yes, he was. But no matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise, he changed me. I used to think I was special. Maybe in a cocky way, maybe I was a little arrogant.” I smiled ruefully. “But I was popular and loved, living in an extraordinary town, and I felt extraordinary, too. But I let him take that away from me, and I let him make me afraid of allowing myself to be that vulnerable to someone again. Meeting Tom was great because I knew I could love him without losing myself in him. I knew I was safe with him because I’d never feel that passionately about him . . . But Vaughn . . . he isn’t safe.”
“Oh, sweetie.” Dahlia sighed. “Vaughn’s a grown man. He’s not some stupid kid who is afraid of his parents.”
“Then why won’t he tell me anything real about himself? Sure he’ll talk about his mom and his dad and his freaking grandparents, but God forbid anyone should ask him something real about himself.”
“Why don’t you make him?”
Because I’m afraid if I do, I will fall in love with him.
That was the truth. It had been bubbling up inside of me, trying to force its way to the surface ever since Vaughn’s first rejection of me when we had sex.
I knew if he hadn’t rejected me then, I would have given him a chance.
The girls waited patiently on an answer I was too scared to voice out loud.
When it became clear I had no answer for them, Jess spoke. “What about the other thing he told you? About Vanessa and Jack Devlin?”
Em winced at Jack’s name, and I felt guilty. Had I actually tried to suggest something happen with her and Jack?