For the first time since we left the hospital, he turns to squarely meet my eyes. “A mistake,” he finishes for me, consequently driving a stake through my heart.
“Right…” I get out of the Jeep. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
I’m halfway to the door when I hear, “Alice.” I turn and find him chewing on his bottom lip. “Thank you”
“No need for that.”
“You are…” He gives me a funny, frustrated look, shakes his head. “Sorry. Thank you.”
Big Deal: a nude beach?
By now, these random texts are no longer cryptic.
Me: Do I have to go full-on nude, or can I start topless and ease into it?
Big Deal: …
Big Deal: …
Big Deal: you can ease into it.
Me: Then, yeah, why not.
Big Deal: you’re full of surprises.
Me: Good ones?
Big Deal: great ones.
In the days that follow, our friendship is back on track. Even though there’s a marked carefulness in the way he treats me that did not exist before. We both seemed to have recovered from the kiss without injury. Well, at least I pretend to have recovered. In reality, I’m living in a constant state of frustration and longing for more.
I had a friend in high school who liked to enter sweepstake contests. Anything that had a prize attached, she would enter. She won once. An all-expense-paid trip to London which included a first-class plane ticket and a four-night stay at a five-star hotel.
Her mother was a single parent who worked in a department store. Not only was it her first time out of the country, but it was also her first time out of the state. When she returned I asked her how it went. I expected her to be over the moon, regaling me with details sure to turn me gecko green with envy. Instead, she said it was terrible and depressing, that winning the trip was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. Up until that point, she’d been happy with vacations at the Jersey shore. Her life had been complete, fulfilling. The trip showed her what she was missing out on. She said she wished she’d never gone.
That’s what kissing Reagan is to me. My imagination didn’t even begin to do the reality of it justice. And now I’m stuck knowing two things. The first is that nothing and no one will ever compare, and the second is that he’ll never be interested in me as anything other than a friend. I was a mistake, a lapse in judgment because he was feeling vulnerable.
Chapter 20
Alice
“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” Reagan asks as soon as I answer my phone. It’s the third time he’s asked me this same question in the last two weeks. I’m seriously tempted to say I’m busy even though I’m lying in bed, staring aimlessly out the window into a cloudless blue sky.
I couldn’t afford to go home and Aunt Peg and Wheels hit the road. They’re in Vegas. I declined their invitation to go with them. He knows this. He also knows I turned down Dora’s invitation to go to San Diego and have Thanksgiving with her family. He knows Zoe’s in Cabo with her mother, and Blake went to New York to visit her sister. He knows all those things because we spend way too much time together. Neither of us voices out loud that two people who aren’t dating shouldn’t be spending every spare minute together but he hasn’t brought it up, so why should I.
“Reading.”
“Good. You’re coming with.”
“Where?”
“To my parents’ for Thanksgiving dinner.”
He said he wasn’t sure whether he was going. He didn’t want to deal with his father riding him about bailing Brian out again. Apparently the hospital had contacted his parents that night and they had refused to get involved. Nice, right?
Brian never did show up the following Thursday at the clinic. Even worse, Reagan didn’t seem at all surprised or upset by it. He said he’s been disappointed so many times it doesn’t even smart anymore.
“No––”
“I’m picking you up in twenty minutes,” he says, speaking over me.
There is no way I’m going to Dr. and Dr. Reynolds’s house of horrors in Beverly Hills. No way. I don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out it’ll turn into a disaster. “No.”
“Yes.”
“Reagan––”
“Alice––”
I fight the smile pulling my lips apart. “I’m really into this book.”
That’s a lie. A stone-cold lie. I’m really not. Not even a little bit. My mind has been wandering for hours. Turning onto my side, I stare at the contents of my open closet with trepidation. There’s nothing in there even remotely appropriate. “And I don’t feel like getting dressed.”
And that’s the truth. The God’s honest truth. The last thing I want to do is attend a fancy dinner with Reagan’s uptight parents. “I was going to order Chinese takeout and watch Elf.”
“Great fucking movie.”