Boy Crazy (13 page)

C
assie took a deep breath, blew it out, and then pushed open Greta’s bedroom door.

She’d felt like such a fraud when Greta’s mother had opened the door, welcoming Cassie and Keagan as if Greta had never stormed away from that party earlier that night. But Cassie had headed upstairs to Greta’s room anyway, knowing that it was the right thing to do, no matter how much she wanted to fast-forward through this part. She didn’t want to face Greta’s anger—she’d been avoiding it all summer—but she knew she had to if she ever wanted to fix things with Trey.

Keagan was right on her heels, so Cassie had no choice but to walk through the door. Greta was standing over in the corner of her room, the contents of her
closet spread out around her in a semicircle. Her eyes flew to Cassie’s, and Cassie winced when she saw her friend had been crying. Greta’s mouth tightened.

“What are you doing?” Keagan asked, easing around Cassie and walking over to perch on the edge of Greta’s bed.

“I am organizing my closet,” Greta said, very matter-of-factly. Almost defiantly.

“You sure are,” Keagan said softly, staring at the jumble of shoes and mostly dark-colored clothes.

Cassie’s guilt intensified. When they were kids and Greta’s grandmother had died, Cassie had found Greta organizing her mother’s kitchen cabinets an hour after returning from the funeral. But that had been a long time ago, and it had been the only time Cassie had ever seen Greta cry before now.

“Greta,” she said, “I can explain.”

“You can explain,” Greta repeated. Her throat worked a little bit. “You don’t have to explain, Cassie. I get it. All that ‘catching up on your sleep’—you were lying. You were sneaking around with Trey Carter.” Her voice cracked.

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” Cassie admitted. She could feel Keagan’s gaze on her too, and wanted to sink into the floor. She would have given anything in that moment to disappear.

“God, Cassie,” Keagan murmured, obviously also
disgusted with Cassie. Cassie couldn’t believe how awful she felt. She kept on feeling worse too, no matter how often she thought,
This is it—this is the absolute worst I could feel.

“How could you?” Greta demanded, her composure finally cracking. “How could you get together with him?”

Cassie shrugged awkwardly, feeling the tears prick at her eyes. She couldn’t tell Greta what it had been like. That she loved him and even now wanted to run out and find him and figure out a way to make everything okay. That it was less
how could she
and more
how couldn’t she
, and how none of it mattered anyway because of that horrible look in Trey’s eyes when he’d walked away from her.

“It just happened,” she said instead. “I know what you told me—”

“He’s a bad person!” Greta shouted at her. “How many times do I have to tell you? Why would you go out of your way to get with someone like that? I’m the one who’s known him for years, Cassie. You’ve known him for what? A couple of months?”

“Greta—”

“I don’t know what’s worse,” Greta continued, and her chin trembled, though Cassie could see she was fighting back tears. “That you completely ignored what I told you, or that you decided you had to lie about it.
The old Cassie would never have done something like this!”

Cassie sucked in a breath, knowing Greta was right. But the old Cassie also wouldn’t have dared to do half the things she’d done this summer. So how could she wish New Cassie away? And how could she tell Greta that New Cassie was just Cassie’s version of Greta, anyway?

“You shouldn’t have lied,” Keagan chimed in then, still in that low murmur. “That’s never okay.”

“I didn’t know what to do,” Cassie said after a moment. “You were so sure that Trey was this awful guy—”

“Because he is!” Greta cried. “Do you think I just said that to be funny? Or did you think I was just randomly begrudging you a perfectly good hookup? He’s a user! He’ll tell you anything you want to hear to get what he wants and then when he does, he’s gone.”

“He’s different now,” Cassie said, feeling confused. She wanted to make things better with Greta, but she also felt like she had to defend Trey, even if he never spoke to her again.

“Guys like that don’t change,” Greta said bitterly. “They just learn how to hide it better.”

“I asked him about it, Greta,” Cassie told her, trying not to get angry, though she could hear the edge in her voice. “It’s not like I didn’t listen to you. I asked him about his junior prom.”

Greta gaped at her for a moment. Then her arms crept around her torso, like she was hugging herself.

“Oh yeah?” she asked, her voice clouded with sudden emotion. “And what did he say?”

“He said he was a jerk back then, but sitting out his last season of lacrosse made him rethink a lot of stuff,” Cassie said, ignoring her instinct to protect Trey’s secrets. Cassie thought maybe if she gave Greta all the information, Greta would revise her opinion.

“I can’t believe you would fall for something like that,” Greta snapped. “He’s a liar. And he’s made you one too!”

“Okay, enough,” Cassie said, her temper kicking in. “I shouldn’t have lied to you. I didn’t want you to be disappointed in me. But I don’t understand why you’re so anti-Trey.”

“Because he’s disgusting!” Greta cried. “Which you would see if you weren’t completely under his spell like everyone else!”

“No, he is not,” Cassie retorted. “You don’t know him, Greta. Not like I do—”

“It was me.” Greta interrupted Cassie in a ragged voice, and then her face crumpled. “I was the girl he was supposed to go to the prom with. It wasn’t some random story I heard.
It was me.
”

Keagan sucked in a loud breath. “Greta!” she whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Cassie couldn’t move. She couldn’t look over to see Keagan’s shock. She couldn’t seem to do anything but stand there, frozen in place. Her heart sank toward the floor. She felt hot, then cold, then hot again.

And suddenly everything made horrible sense. Why Greta had been so violently opposed to Trey. Why Trey had continued to pursue Cassie even when she was ignoring him—he’d already known what things Cassie might possibly have been hearing about him. Why Trey had so easily agreed to keeping things secret, and why he hadn’t minded that Cassie might have to work to trust him—something that, in retrospect, other guys might have gotten upset about.

“Why didn’t you just tell me that?” Cassie asked when she was sure she could speak without her voice cracking. “I would never…Why didn’t you say it was you?”

“Why would you keep a secret like that?” Keagan chimed in, her voice troubled. “You told me the story when it happened. Why lie about who the girl was?”

“I don’t know.” Greta was still hugging herself. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks, and she made no move to wipe them away. “It’s like I can’t let myself think about it that way. And I didn’t want you to know what a loser I was back then. He humiliated me.”

“Greta…” But Cassie didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to think. She could kind of see why
Greta hadn’t wanted to say that it was her, because the whole story was at complete odds with the tough, confident image she projected. In fact, Cassie had a hard time believing that Greta could be this hurt, all this time later.

But she was crying.
Greta
was crying.

“I believed him,” Greta said. She wiped at her eyes finally, her hands balled into fists. “I believed everything he said to me. And after he humiliated me, I knew I’d never let anyone hurt me like that again. Ever. I can’t bear to watch him do the same thing to you.”

“Greta—” Cassie began again, but Greta held up her hands.

“I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t. Please.” She looked over at Keagan, still sitting there on the bed with her eyes wide. Then she looked back at Cassie and her eyes filled up again. “I just want to be alone.”

Cassie moved toward the door, Keagan beside her, not wanting to leave Greta like this but not knowing what else to do. Cassie looked back over her shoulder when she got to the door, and wasn’t surprised to see Greta staring after her.

“I’m sorry he hurt you,” Cassie said softly. She swallowed. “I’m sorry I did too.”

W
hen Cassie woke up the next morning, the first thing she did was roll over and check her phone. But there were no messages from Trey.

She collapsed back against her pillows and hated herself. She was such a terrible friend that, even now, Trey was her first thought instead of Greta. Cassie groaned out loud and then pulled herself out of bed. It was already past ten thirty, but even the extra sleep and the fact it was her day off didn’t help her mood. She dragged herself into the shower, then downstairs to the kitchen. Her parents were both at work and Cassie had the house to herself.

Yay.

She dragged a box of Cap’n Crunch down from the
cabinet and took it with her to the couch in the family room, where she curled up in a ball, shoved the sugary cereal into her mouth, and tried to pretend she was fine.

But she gave up after a round of channel surfing, when the Cap’n Crunch was starting to cut up the roof of her mouth. And then there was nothing to do but think about the disaster her summer had become. Maybe it was a good thing that it was almost over.

Cassie couldn’t believe how badly Trey had hurt Greta—and how badly
she
had hurt Greta. It was one thing for Trey to tell Cassie that he wasn’t the jerk he’d once been, but Greta was the one he’d been a jerk to. Greta. Not some nameless, faceless girl whom Cassie never had to see cry. No wonder Trey hadn’t mentioned any of that. Cassie would never date someone who had been with one of her friends. That was just icky. And someone who had broken her friend’s heart? No. Way.

Cassie knew that she’d hurt Trey too, which made her feel even worse about herself. How had that happened? How had she managed to hurt everyone, all by trying not to disappoint anyone? Her mother always said that honesty was the best policy, quoting that cliché over and over again like she wanted to embroider it on a pillow or something, but now Cassie could see the wisdom of it.

If she’d only been completely honest from the beginning, none of this would have happened. If she had admitted her feelings to Greta, she would have heard the
whole Trey story. She wouldn’t have let Trey convince her to go out with him, so she would never have fallen in love with him. He would never have fallen in love with her. So no one would have been hurt when Cassie kissed that guy last night. And with all of that averted, Cassie never would have lied to her friends.

Cassie stretched her legs out along the couch and switched the TV over to HBO, but she couldn’t concentrate on reruns of movies she’d been bored with years ago.

Cassie knew then that she had to face the truth. She might have hurt Trey by kissing that guy, but it was obvious from Greta’s story that he would have hurt her eventually anyway. She believed that he’d changed, but how much? Not enough to tell her that Greta was the girl he’d hurt back before his junior prom. Not enough to tell her the one thing that would have made her think twice about getting together with him. So how far off the mark was Greta about him after all?

Greta had been there for Cassie since they were little kids. This summer was supposed to be all about the three of them breathing life back into their old friendship. And Cassie knew that they’d done all that—until Trey got involved.

Not that Cassie could blame it all on Trey. She’d been the one to lie and sneak around. She’d been the one to totally wimp out on telling her friends about him, because
she knew they wouldn’t like it. Greta had said something about Trey making Cassie lie, but the sad truth was that Cassie knew he’d had nothing to do with that.

That had been one hundred percent Cassie’s choice.

Not very girl power-y of her. In fact, it kind of made her feel sick to think about. She’d wanted to be strong like Greta, but she’d been too chicken to do the truly strong thing and tell the truth.

Cassie got up, brushing Cap’n Crunch dust off her lap and telling herself it was time to stop moping. Summer was almost over anyway. She’d made a lot of mistakes, but she didn’t have to keep making them.

Starting right now, she could grow up.

Cassie found Greta up in her room again. This time, Greta was lying across her bed when Cassie walked in, though the moment she saw Cassie she jumped to her feet.

“You can’t just walk in and out of my house whenever you feel like it,” she said angrily. “It’s one thing if we’re supposed to be friends. But friends don’t lie, or sneak around, or—”

“I messed up.” Cassie said it simply and shrugged, letting her hands fall against her sides. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to—it all just kind of got out of control.”

Greta blinked. She glanced away from Cassie for a
moment, then looked back at her, her eyes filling with tears again.

“Of all the guys in L.A….” she managed to say.

“I wish you’d told me from the start,” Cassie whispered. “I never would have gone near him. Not that it’s your fault.”

“Maybe it is,” Greta said, sniffling. “I hate anyone feeling sorry for me. But maybe if I hadn’t pretended I had no feelings about him in the first place…” She shook her head.

“I feel awful about what I did,” Cassie said, almost afraid to say it, because what if Greta never forgave her? “Not just Trey.” Her pulse pounded when she said his name, but she was proud of herself for not stuttering or anything. “Not just him, but lying to you. I just…I was so afraid of not living up to what you wanted me to be.”

“What do you mean?” Greta looked bewildered. “How did I want you to be?”

“I don’t know,” Cassie said, shrugging helplessly. “Like you. So…pulled together and cool. No one ever messes with you. No one would dare. You’re so…fearless.”

Greta let out a hollow laugh. “Yeah,” she said, “that’s me.” She rolled her eyes.

“I was so excited to be back in L.A. this summer,” Cassie said. She held her hands together in front of her. “I would hate to think that I ruined everything.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Greta said, wiping at her nose. “Of course you didn’t ruin everything. We’ve been friends since we were babies.” She aimed a watery smile at Cassie. “I think we should blame boys. They cause all the trouble.”

Cassie pictured Trey—his tender smile and the way he’d touched her face—and smiled back at Greta as best she could. She had wanted Trey as much as he had wanted her. If he
had
been playing her, she’d been more than happy to play right along.

Well, a white lie never hurt anyone, right? Not really.

“Too true,” she agreed.

Greta called Keagan and she came over with the contents of her parents’ freezer. The three girls made their traditional gigantic sundaes and crawled out onto the roof of Greta’s house to wolf them down.

“Ugh,” Keagan said around a mouthful of chocolate. “I hate drama and tension and fighting. This is much better.”

Greta and Cassie made assenting noises and then looked at each other quickly—almost shyly—as if to confirm it.

Cassie put her bowl aside and gazed at the view from the top of Greta’s house. The red tiles were warm in the
sun, and warm beneath her bare feet. To the north, she could see the Hollywood sign. It was clear enough today that she could even see the snowcapped peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains, far in the distance. Usually, the view made her feel peaceful. Today she just felt kind of sad.

Better, but sad.

“Trey was the first guy I really fell for,” Greta admitted, wrapping her arms around her knees. “I mean, I
really
liked him. I was so excited when he asked me to the prom. I hardly knew what to do with myself.”

Keagan sighed. “I know what that’s like,” she said.

“Me too,” Cassie agreed. She shoved aside the part of her that hated that Greta’s big story of betrayal was about Trey—
her
Trey. She had to get over it. “I won’t even tell you how pathetic I was about my ex. I basically followed him around like some love-struck fool. It’s really embarrassing to think about, actually.” She shook off unwelcome memories of Daniel.

“And I was even more excited when we hooked up, because I thought it was the start of something,” Greta said. She shook her head and then looked at Cassie. “You said I was fearless. When really I’ve been afraid the whole time.”

“What do you have to be afraid of?” Cassie asked. “You’re Greta Crocker. This city is yours.” She held out her arms to encompass the whole of Los Angeles.

“Seriously,” Keagan said. “I’ll never forget the way you
took Zachary down in that coffee shop. It was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. I would never be able to do that!”

“I’ve made not getting close to guys my, like, life’s work,” Greta said. “And on the one hand I think it’s okay for girls to act like guys sometimes. Because that’s only fair. But on the other hand, maybe I was just doing that because I was afraid. Because the one time I let a guy get close, he played me.”

“That’s a pretty good reason,” Cassie said in her defense. Secretly, she couldn’t help wishing it had been anyone but Trey who had done this to Greta.
Forget him,
she ordered herself. Greta was more important.

“Maybe,” Greta said. “But maybe it would be better to take it on a case-by-case basis.”

Keagan set her bowl next to her on the roof and wriggled her toes out in front of her like she was tickling the air.

“And maybe,” she said, “kissing random boys is fun. And kind of an art. And you’re an artist who needs to practice her craft.”

All three of them laughed.

“I like the way you think,” Greta said approvingly.

“I love you both,” Keagan said gently, looking at Greta for a moment and then at Cassie. “But maybe next time you can both remember that keeping stuff all hidden and secret ended up blowing up in everyone’s face.”

“Yeah,” Cassie said, with a rueful grin. She wished she
could reach back through the summer and change everything so no one got hurt—but she knew, somehow, that she wouldn’t do it even if she could, because she couldn’t bear to think about a world in which she’d never kissed Trey. She was pathetic. “We should remember that.”

“I love you guys,” Greta said, flopping back against the red tiles.

They all smiled at one another. And Cassie knew that whatever else might happen, this was what mattered the most. The three of them together, and happy. As it should be.

“I love you guys too,” she said. “I’m going to miss you when I leave for—”

She cut herself off when both Keagan and Greta shrieked at that.

“What?” she asked, her heart thumping. “Was there an earthquake?”

“Total summer foul,” Greta told her, grinning. “Never mention the end of it. What are you, crazy?”