“I told you to leave me alone, Georgie,” Margot tossed over her shoulder in a warning tone.
“I can’t!” I shouted back just before her feet touched the shore. “I can’t, okay? No matter what you do or say, I’m always going to be here for you!”
The cool wind swept straight through my sweater, sending a chill down my spine. Waves crashed behind her, roiling and violent, the storm in the distance flashing with lightning.
“You’re pitiful!” Margot screamed, a sea gust sending her hair in twelve different directions. “Everything is about you! All the time! When will you stop being so needy?”
I laughed then, loud and sardonic and wheezing. “It’s about me—” I gathered a breath. “Because you don’t talk! You refuse to tell me anything!”
Something flickered across her features, but she shook her head and desperately tried to calm her hair.
“You know what, Margot? You don’t just get to waltz back into my life and act as if there isn’t a giant, seven-year-wide black hole between us!” My fingers curled into my palms until my nails bit flesh. “If anyone’s selfish here, it’s you,” I practically spat.
Her head flew back with an outrageous bark of laughter. “Oh, that’s just rich! This is about thatpact, isn’t it?”
I didn’t notice the tears streaming down my cheeks until my eyes began to burn.
“What’s so wrong with that?”
It was all I could manage without my voice wobbling.
“We’re not nine anymore, Georgie!” Margot threw her hands in the air. “What did you expect?!”
“I expected mybest friend—” I hiccupped— “To at least have a conversation with me before announcing she was leaving to the entire town!”
It felt like my chest cracked open as the next words burst from my lips: “And you know what? I tried to support you! I really did! But that gets a little hard when all four of your closest friends suddenly stop returning your calls.”
I clawed at the woven fabric above my heart, a wretched sob wracking through me. Margot began to reply, but I cut her off. The dam broke open, and neither of us could stop it.
“And when you all dropped back into my life, it was for my grandmother’s funeral! Guess what? Not one of you looked me in the eye that day,” I all but snarled, ignoring the curls that whipped across my face and got stuck in trails of tears. “None of you stayed. The closest thing I had to a mother died, and you all walked away—without a word!” A dry, bitter laugh tore out of me before devolving into another whimper.
I felt Margot’s arms wrap around me before I saw her. She didn’t say a word for a moment as I crumpled into her and openly bawled on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she began to mumble into the side of my head over and over.
It hadn’t been long before my weeping ceased. Beneath the roar of waves steadily stretching closer, I heard the shake of her voice. I grabbed her shoulders and pushed her away from me to take a look at her.
Margot, perfect, always-together Margot, had thick streams of black down her cheeks.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, watching as she shimmied away and tried to fix her face.
“It’s New York. It’s—” Her body wracked with a silent sob. She looked up at the sky and fanned herself. “I gotfired, Georgie.I’m a failure.” Margot landed knee-first in the sand, her voice having cracked over the last words.
I crouched beside her, sniffling, and made an attempt to fix her hair. “What happened?”
Her dark brown eyes shone as she looked up at me, lipstick cracked and faded as her mouth twisted downward. “I— it’s so embarrassing.”
“As if you haven’t seen my most embarrassing moments.” I let my haunches sink into the sand and tucked my knees to my chest, disregarding the water steadily encroaching on our spot.
Margot twisted to sit next to me. “I submitted myownnovel. It got rejected.”
“And then they fired you?”
“I—” She dropped her head into her hands. “No, I… kind of freaked out and flew to Bluebell Cove without letting anyone know.Thenthey fired me. Today.”
My eyebrows flew to my hairline. “Oh, so you…”
Margot groaned. “Yeah. I majorly self-destructed.”
