“And the name on the card?” he asked, sounding bored.
“Meredith Duke. Do you need me to spell it?”
“Nope. Got it.”
No, I didn’t ask to use it for pizzas, but I figured it would be fine; it’s what Meredith always did for my parties. When she wasn’t mad at me.
Plus, saving my popularity was a total emergency.
I was confirming the order when I heard the doorbell ring.
“’K, so then I’m all set, right? I have to go, thanks, ’bye.”
I hung up the phone and ran.
6 7
I opened the door to a hauntingly familiar sight that I hadn’t seen in over a year.
Liam, on my doorstep, hair mussed the way it always was, clothes casual but perfect, skin perpetually tanned from actual sun instead of the fake bake I used. The only difference was that he wasn’t smiling at me like he always used to. And that was a big difference.
It wasn’t until he spoke that I realized I’d been staring at him with my mouth open.
“Got a sec?” he asked, in a tone I didn’t quite recognize.
“Uh, yeah, I guess, I’m just setting up for the party.” Then I remembered the cooler in the garage. “Actually, if you could help me move something—”
“Sure, but let’s talk first.”
He stepped into the house, and in the split second when he stood next to me and
didn’t
look at me, I started feeling panicky. It was disconcerting how accustomed I was to seeing him in my house, and at the same time how completely out of place he seemed. It was like seeing the president in his old elementary school classroom.
Except
that
I
was the reason Liam hadn’t been back.
The reason he didn’t
want
to come back.
I was so distracted by how intimidating he seemed that I forgot to wonder why he was there, wanting to talk to me.
I followed him into my living room. When he sat, I sat.
“What’s up, Liam?” I always felt like a suck-up when I talked to him nowadays, despite my efforts to seem casual.
He still wasn’t looking at me. “The party, Bridget. I just want to make sure you’re not planning any kind of embarrassment for Anna.”
Instantly all the unresolved feelings from our breakup con-gealed in the pit of my stomach.
“
Anna?
The new girl?” As if I didn’t know. “I’d never—”
6 8
P A I G E H A R B I S O N
“Yes, you would.” His tone challenged me to object.
I knew if I did, he’d walk.
Instead, I asked, “What’s with you two, anyway?”
“Does that mean you
were
planning something if she showed up here?”
“Oh, come on, Liam, I’m not the wicked witch. I can be civilized, you know.” I thought of the drink-spilling trick I
wasn’t
planning for Anna’s shirt later on. The trick that involved me giving her a shirt of mine to wear, and it being too small and therefore unf lattering on her.
(And me, but I wouldn’t tell her that.)
“Listen,” Liam said, “I’m just saying that I don’t think you should do anything. I know you’re probably pissed about her being so well-liked already and stuff, but don’t take it out on her.” He sounded like a grown-up talking about high school drama. Maybe that should have told me something, but it didn’t.
“I don’t understand why you’re so worried about it.”
He hung his head, and answered into his hands. “Because she’s a nice girl, and I know you.”
…
are not
was what he was saying.
That wasn’t true.
It
wasn’t.
“You don’t know me. Not anymore.” I felt the petty
I’m-still-not-over-it
words come out of my mouth, and any of the cool I did have left me.
“Whatever, I know the social homicide you’re capable of committing. Just don’t do it.”
I clenched my jaw. I hated when he talked to me like a child.
“I won’t,” I said, and he finally looked me in the eyes.
I smiled, and held up my hand like a Boy Scout. “Bitch’s honor.”
6 9
Some part of me hated that I had to play that role even with him.
He looked at me for a moment, and I felt the chill in my chest soften my expression. Just for that moment, we were
us.
The old us, where I was just goofy and outrageous and he was indulgent. Where we were real with each other. Sometimes I missed that. Sometimes I wanted to just throw down the crown I wore at school and be his again.
But that would be foolish. He wouldn’t take me back anyway.
I was shaken from my reverie when he cleared his throat and asked, “All right, what do you need me to move?”
“Cooler.”
“What did you do, load it before putting it outside?”
I nodded sheepishly. He shook his head with a smile, and muttered my name. “Ah, Bridget. Where is it?”
“Garage.”
He immediately turned and headed toward the garage. The garage with the side door I used to sneak him in through when we were younger. A moment later, he came through the kitchen with the cooler, the veins on his forearms raised.
“Deck?”
I nodded again and f litted to the sliding door to open it for him. I leaned on the doorframe and watched him put the cooler down. After setting it neatly against the fence of the deck, he walked toward me, stopping in front of me.
“Anything
else?”
I felt a little winded as I hurried to try and think of something else I needed him to do.
I couldn’t. “I don’t think so.” When he kept looking at me, I added, “But thanks.”
“All right then, I guess I’ll see you later.”
My heart skipped a clichéd beat.
7 0
P A I G E H A R B I S O N
“Literally, later? Like, you’re coming to the party?”
Wow, did that sound desperate. But I had to make sure. He rarely came to my parties, and it was often only when I asked him to personally.
He gave a single laugh, “Yeah, literally.”
“’K, then.” He was coming. He thought Anna was coming.
Was that because he was
bringing
her? Or because he just assumed she’d heard about it like everyone else? I decided it had to be the latter. “Oh! Bring your bathing suit!”
“Aw, no, Bridge, does that mean
you’re
going to be swimming? Are you going to do any ‘awesome new tricks’ you learned?” He laughed a real laugh, and I knew he was remembering the embarrassing episode I’d had at the pool when we were eleven. And the front-toothless school picture that had followed. It still hung in the front hall.
I narrowed my eyes at him and smiled playfully. “At least I didn’t pee in the pool,
Wee-um.
”
“I was like five,” he said coolly, and opened the front door,
“and I was trapped in the deep end.”
“Ha.” I felt my uncreative response end the moment.
Liam gave a short laugh and started down the front steps.
“Okay, see you later,” he said again, then added, “literally.”
He pulled on the key lanyard that hung from his front pocket and got into his black SUV.
I watched him go and not look back.
Then I turned back to the house and went in. I closed the door and walked absentmindedly into the kitchen to make a sandwich so I wouldn’t be so hungry that I’d pig out on pizza at the party.
It was always weird seeing Liam. Probably weirder for me than for him, I guessed. Though maybe it shouldn’t have been.
I mean, we’d known each other forever.
7 1
We’d met in elementary school, and as kids he’d been my number-one advocate, no matter what the situation. When I was bullied, he was there standing up for me. When my mom died, he was there comforting me—which isn’t an easy feat for a child.
When we were younger we’d spent every recess, every lunch period and every bus ride together. Once we were a little older and had a little more independence, we walked to and from school together and still went to lunch together.
He was the best part of my day for a really long time. And he stuck by me, even when I was stupid enough to be friends with the girls who planned the Outdoor Ed event.
It was in high school that our relationship changed.
We’d been repainting my room—which I insisted upon doing myself, and not with the help of Todd the Professional—
when a moment came upon us. I don’t know where it came from, or who initiated it. All I know is that one second we were squirting each other with a spray bottle of Rust-Oleum, and the next we were kissing.
For the rest of the summer, we’d been entirely blissful together. I didn’t see the girls I’d been hanging around with (it was mostly an in-school friendship), and I felt more like myself than I had since I was a kid.
He thought I was fun and wild (I knew because I asked him why he liked me every two and a half seconds), and I thought he was super cute, strong, funny, sweet…
We spent the days at the pool or walking his dog (I didn’t have one of my own, thanks to Meredith’s stupid allergy), and the nights on the phone or watching movies. In the wee hours of the morning, when we would sometimes still be on the phone, we would sneak out and meet each other in the field between our houses. We’d lie on the thin-bladed grass and stare up at the sky, watching as the sunrise turned from 7 2
P A I G E H A R B I S O N
orange to purple to blue, and talk about everything we could think of.
How we were still able to come up with new topics for that long, I have no idea.
Now it felt like we had nothing to say at all.
I left my just-made and uneaten sandwich on the counter and set off to lose myself in party decorating.
By seven o’clock, I had worked diligently to get the party set up. It was important to me that this party be perfect, that it help to reassert my reputation.
The streamers were hung and laced through the lattices, the strings of twinkling white Christmas lights were twisted around the tree branches, the food was set up and covered, the cooler was filled and a big bucket of ice was waiting to be filled with beer.
This party had to be amazing. Had to be big. People had to have fun. And the only way to ensure that everyone had fun was to have alcohol. Lots of it. It just worked out perfectly that Meredith and my dad weren’t home and that we didn’t have to be sneaky about that part.
I had given Michelle one of the two credit cards Meredith had left behind for emergencies and told her to convince her brother to get a bunch of beer for the party, and reminded her to get it at the grocery store. Meredith would quickly figure out what I’d used the card for if Beers & Cheers showed up on her transaction summary.
I was standing in my closet, looking hopelessly at the limp abominations on the hangers, when the doorbell rang.
“Come in!” I shouted. I heard the front door open and then two pairs of footsteps coming up the stairs.
“Hey, Bridget!” Jillian said, plunking herself down on my cushy bed.
7 3
“Hey,” I replied, and then looked at Michelle, who was holding a six-pack of Corona in each hand, “Do you need help bringing in the rest of the beer? Jillian, why don’t you help her?”
I was, after all, busy. I turned back to my closet. There was a moment of silence before I heard Michelle’s quiet voice.
“The
rest
of the beer?”
I froze, the creeping, hesitant feeling of realization wash-ing over me. I turned to Jillian. “Tell me there’s a ‘rest of the beer.’”
Her already wide eyes widened more as she pulled her eyebrows into a desperate, worried expression. I looked at Michelle. She was biting her lip, and had the same expression on her face as Jillian.
I gave a humorless laugh, before shaking my head.
“What the hell is
wrong
with you, Michelle? God, it’s like you’re stupid or something. One minute you’re telling me you’re all insecure about
everything
and the next minute you’re ruining my party.” I looked into her eyes. “Great job. Seriously.”
“But Bridget, you just said to get some beer, you didn’t say how much you—”
“I gave you Meredith’s credit card and told you to get beer for the party, how is it
not
obvious that you’re going to need more?” I spoke quietly, but I was livid. And I was worried, too. I had been depending on the alcohol to make the party a success. Depending on it to give me the confidence to try and get Liam back. “And if you had
any
question about it, why didn’t you just call and
ask?
”
“I tried! You didn’t pick up!”
“Liar,” I said, and then remembered my phone lying on the f loor of the garage where I’d left it when I was filling the cooler with soda. I hadn’t seen it in hours.
7 4
P A I G E H A R B I S O N
“I’m sorry, it was stupid—” Michelle started.
“You’re right, so why are you still here?”
She looked up at me, looking a little panicked.
“What do you mean?”
“I
mean
why aren’t you driving back to get your brother to go buy more?”
I saw a glimmer of relief on her face, before a new fear seemed to take hold.
“Um. Well, he’s not at home.”
I laughed again, “I’m sorry,
what?
Your brother has been sitting in that stupid gaming chair since we were like, six, what do you mean he’s not home?”
“He went out with a friend—”
I didn’t let her finish. “
God,
Michelle. Now what the hell are we going to do?”
Jillian piped up. “I might…have an idea.”
“What?” I asked, crossing my arms. I was
not
optimistic about anything Jillian might come up with.
“What about your dad’s bar?”
“I can’t use that stuff, he’ll kill me.”
“Are you sure he’ll notice?” Jillian asked.
“Am I sure he’ll
notice?
Yes, I’m sure he’ll—” I had an idea.
“Ooh, but you know who won’t notice?
Your
dad. He drinks like, all the time, he’ll just think he drank it and buy more.”
I saw that she regretted the idea now that it was being turned on her. “I don’t know, Bridge.”
“Oh, stop it, we both know you’re going to do it, so just go so you can come back. Just fill the rest of the bottles back up with water when the party’s over. To him it will probably taste just the same. I’ll try and take a little of my dad’s, too.”