Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet (9781476763248) (38 page)

I knew him now. Not just what he'd done, what he'd been. I knew him. The immature boy who felt neglected and misunderstood by the people he'd once cared about, who couldn't own up to his own mistakes, who was too scared to think there'd ever be anything good out there for him so he decided to just commit to being bad instead. I always knew George and I were similar. And after everything, I'd started to worry our similarities went beyond what I even knew.

But George was stuck in the role he'd felt life had laid out for him.

I wasn't.

He shifted uneasily, eyes twitching to Mary, to the phone in my pocket, finally back to me.

“And here I thought I'd just get a good slap. It's what your devoted fans wanted, you know.”

I crossed the ground that was left between us, realizing I'd moved
closer at some time during all of this. I put my hand on his face, and he flinched. I remembered all the times I'd felt the scratchy surface of his skin under my palm, in a different context, different life, and I wondered if he was remembering all the times he'd felt the warmth of my hand on his face and realizing what he'd lost.

“That'd be easier, wouldn't it?”

He swallowed any words he might have had to say and reached out, running his fingers along the chain that dangled from my neck. He started to pull, to lift the rest of the necklace up from under the collar of my shirt, to see if it was his, I had no doubt.

I caught his wrist and his gaze shifted from the necklace back to my face. He was softer now. Curious. Lost. But it was too late for that.

“No. Now you're the one who gets to question everything.”

I let his hand drop from mine, falling effortlessly back down to his side.

I turned my back to him, to his world, and this time, I was the one who walked away.

I don't know what to say about all of that. I don't know if it was right, or if there is a “right” for something like this. I don't know if I'll regret things I said, or didn't say, in a week or a month or years down the road. I don't know if closure—if that's really what this was—is going to make much of a difference when I start dating someone else (for real, this time) or if things will just feel uncomfortable and a little scary until one day they don't anymore.

The only thing I know is that I feel kind of . . . okay.

For now, right now, I feel okay.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Mary asked after we'd been on the road for a few minutes.

“I don't think so,” I told her. “Not yet. Thank you, though.”

We drove along a little bit farther, no sound other than occasional music coming from other cars who passed us by with their windows down and their radios booming. Ours stayed off.

“You did good, you know,” Mary finally spoke again. “It's fine if you don't want to talk about it. But you did good.”

I smiled. “No pleading for my shitty ex-boyfriend to take me back, so call it a win.”

“Those abs were like a beacon of danger, drawing sailors into a miserable death upon jagged rocks,” Mary continued. “It takes strong willpower to resist.”

“I think you're mixing your lighthouse and siren metaphors,” I said. And hey, I totally just called Mary out on something having to do with reading and books!

“I don't know if I like this pays-attention-in-class version of Lydia,” she said.

“Tough luck.” I considered telling her about my plans for school then, but I wasn't sure it was a conversation I wanted to launch into right after dealing with George. I did feel okay, that's the truth, but I was a little exhausted. This joking around felt nice after those few minutes of confrontation and the hours of anxiety leading up to coming here, and coming to see Mary in the first place. College talk could wait for a little while.

“So . . . then . . .” Mary started hesitantly. “About before . . .”

I blanked for a minute, then turned away from Mary to hide the grin that popped up on my face.
Before
. Right. I was wondering when we'd get around to this.

“We just talked about George,” I said, doing my best to sound confused.

“No.” She sighed. “I mean . . .
before
. At the apartment.”

“You mean our fight? We're good now, aren't we?”

“Oh my God, Lydia! Violet!”

“Ohhhhh, Violet.” I saw Mary take a small breath of relief, thinking she wasn't going to have to spell it out for me after all. Sorry, cuz. “I'm glad you guys are still friends.”

One of the stories we'd read in Gothic Lit this summer mentioned a basilisk, which is this super creepy snakelike creature that can turn people into stone just by staring into their eyes. Mary jerked her head toward me and I decided there was a pretty good chance her mom's side of the family may actually be descended from these creatures. Yeesh. Maybe it was time to stop messing with her.

“Wow, you just took your eyes off the road for like, three whole seconds. This must be serious.”

She didn't say anything, refocusing on the road, and I felt kind of bad. I could see her eyes twitching toward me every other second, waiting to see what I would say next.

“Do you like her?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Is she nicer to you than Eddie?”

“Yeah.”

“Then, good.”

I kicked my feet up on the dash and picked at some loose threads around a hole on the knee of my jeans. Mary paused, then glanced over at me. A much shorter, less stone-inducing glance this time.

“That's it?” she asked.

Crap, did I do that wrong? I made a big deal when she started dating Eddie, should I have made a big deal about this?

“I can do more if you want this to be like, a whole thing.”

Mary shook her head. “No, that's okay, I don't, I just . . . it's not like a phase or anything.”

I couldn't stop myself from laughing. Is that what she was worried about? That I wouldn't take her seriously? Well, any less seriously, anyway.

“Mary. You play the bass and just moved to San Francisco. I'm not assuming this is a phase.”

“Stereotypes!” she yelped, but I totally saw her mouth kind of half twitch into a smile. And I mean, this is Mary we're talking about. That's as good as squealing in glee, really.

“When the combat boot fits . . .” I teased, and she rolled her eyes.

I'm happy for Mary. Yes, okay, a part of me is relieved that something turned out okay even after I abandoned her to move to a new city by herself, sure. But I'm also glad she's not holing up alone in a dark vampire cave crunching numbers and reading books until she slowly loses her mind and starts hallucinating demons as friends or some other completely likely scenario. My family might worry about me, but I worry about them, too. And Violet's certainly no me, but if Mary's added her to the very short list of people she can stand to be around without wanting to paint them into some grotesque murder scene diorama, then there's gotta be something good about her.

“You know I have to meet her now,” I pointed out.

“You've met her a dozen times.”

“First of all, today definitely doesn't count unless you consider her hand being up your shirt a casual wave in my direction—” Mary groaned and probably would have buried her head in the steering wheel if the earlier multisecond glance my way hadn't already fulfilled her reckless driving quota for the year. “And B, I need to remeet her properly, as your girlfriend. I have to give her the cousin talk.”

“That's not a thing,” Mary immediately countered.

“It is
so
a thing.”

“Nope.”

“Are you having safe sex?”

“Oh my
God
, LYDIA!”

The car swerved a little and I was glad the highway wasn't packed today. But . . . I was also glad to have provoked dangerous driving in Mary twice in one day. Imaginary self–high five!

“I know, like, everything about girl-on-girl sex. I can give you pointers, if you want,” I continued, and Mary didn't even have to look at me for me to feel her confusion. “What? I got stuck on a weird YouTube spiral once.”

“This was a bad idea.”

“You love me.”

“I'm reconsidering.”

I dug my phone out of my pocket and quickly tapped out a text.

“What, no comeback?” Mary challenged.

“Pause,” I responded. A second later, my phone dinged and I grinned. “Well, I hope you're also reconsidering my heart-to-heart with your new GF, because we are all meeting up at the Rusted Tip in two hours.”

Mary groaned. “How did you even set that up? Wait.” She glanced over at my phone. “How did you get Violet's number?”

“I took it from your phone before you moved, duh,” I said. Seriously, how has she not come to expect this by now? “Don't worry, I've never texted her before. But you didn't think I would let you move to a new city without backup ways to contact you, did you? What if you disappeared and nobody knew where you went and it turned out you'd gone hiking and a bear had eaten your phone and you were trapped in a cave somewhere, camouflaging yourself to look like the rocks and the
only
person who knew where you'd gone was Violet? Hmm? How else would we ever find you again?”

“You took the whole band's phone numbers, didn't you.” It wasn't even a question. Much better.

“Uh-huh!”

“And here I thought you'd at least vaguely deciphered the meaning of the word ‘privacy,' ” she complained, but I could hear the acceptance in her voice as well. Mary needed a little delving into her personal bubble, or it would always stay in place, protecting her from all the cool stuff in the world. Like me! And I was certain Violet had delved into her bubble, too.

Okay, that does not sound the same as it did in my head. Retract. Full retraction on that one.

“Sometimes a little invasiveness doesn't hurt,” I responded. Then, after a beat . . . “You like Violet.”

Mary grunted quietly, which I took to mean agreement.

“You like me.”

“Debatable.” That's a yes.

“So you probably want us to like each other,” I concluded.

Mary sighed one of the most dramatic sighs I'd heard from her, and I knew victory was mine.

“Fine,” she conceded. “But no talking about sex . . . girl-on-girl or otherwise.”

“Yay!” I couldn't stop from clapping excitedly. “I will be on my best behavior. Promise.”

“Why doesn't that reassure me whatsoever?” Mary muttered under her breath.

I reached over and flipped on the car radio, letting it land on an indie rock station. Mary let me have the music on the drive up, but I'm pretty sure she'll need her own jams on the way back. I wonder if there will be more for us to talk about later. Ooh, I wonder if she's told Lizzie. I'll have to find out. Someone needs to keep an eye on Mary when I'm not around, after all, make sure she doesn't get up to too much trouble. Or that Violet doesn't turn out to be another Eddie. What is with Mary and people in bands, anyway?

Better bands than swim teams, I guess.

I wonder where future architects fall on that spectrum of “people who turn out not being that good to date.” Though it's silly to lump everyone from one activity group into one type-of-person group. There are probably overlapping traits that draw people to whatever activity, but there are more levels than that. People are complicated, and not all the same. Duh. But as shitty as it can be sometimes, it's kind of fun peeling back those layers and figuring out what and who they are, and even why.

And then? Well, then you're really getting somewhere.

“Hey, Lydia?” I turned toward her and waited for her to go on. I was getting too lost in my psychology thoughts, anyway. “I know today was a lot, but I'm glad you're here.”

I shifted my gaze out the window and onto the road ahead of us. The sun was starting to set off to my right, and the sky was turning all sorts of amazing colors. I'd always loved the night—at home, it was the time for parties and secrets and things you could forget in the morning if you wanted, and in New York, it had been quiet and thoughtful—but I realized I'd never paid much attention to the transition the world took to getting there. It wasn't the same as watching the sunrise. But there was something just as beautiful about this.

“Yeah. Me, too.”

By the time we got to the bar, we were half an hour later than I'd told Violet we would be, but it was still pretty early in the evening, so we grabbed a couple of drinks in record time compared to how long it always took at Carter's (I told you, bar karma), and made our way toward the back, where Mary said Violet was waiting for us. It was a pretty low-key bar. A bit more “private library” than Carter's, that's for sure. There was a small, currently empty stage over in one corner, and I wondered if the Mechanics played here sometimes. Oh, and if so, would we get free drinks for being with the band? That'd be pretty sweet. Definitely a point in her favor, if so.

I spotted Violet—or rather, I spotted her hair first, and then Violet—hanging by herself in a red leather booth underneath a creepy
black statue of a horse head on the wall. She didn't notice us, or even seem to be looking around for us, and I couldn't decide if I disliked that she wasn't eagerly looking out for Mary to get here, or if I admired that she wasn't super clingy and/or was attempting to seem chill and not anxious about us hanging out.

“Hey,” Mary said as we reached the booth. Violet looked up, finally noticing us, and grinned at my cousin.

“Hey!” she responded, moving over for Mary to scoot in next to her. “Sorry I didn't see you, I was going over some new lyrics in my head.”