Note passed between Olivia and Britt in tenth grade:
OLIVIA:Mia told me that she thinks Zander’s looking really cute lately. They’d make an awesome couple! Please tell me he’s feeling the vibes between them, too.
BRITT:No, I don’t think so.
OLIVIA:Oh no! Really? Maybe you should encourage him to consider Mia. She’s such a doll.
BRITT:I know! I really love Mia. But I don’t think her personality is quite right for Zander. They’re not a fit.
Note from Britt to Carolyn in tenth grade:
Here’s the check to cover the cost of Zander’s soccer camp this summer. Thanks for agreeing to keep this between us. I don’t want him to know that I’m paying for it. And I don’t want my parents to know that I’m paying for it, either. They think I’m spending my allowance on practical things like clothes.
Chapter
eleven
Now that she, Willow, and Nora had hauled theZander wantsto dateyoupossibility out of the shadowy back closet of their sisterhood, Britt was finding it hard to concentrate on anything else while in Zander’s presence.
They’d left Ricardo’s, driven halfway home, then pulled off the freeway in Gig Harbor for lunch. They were now polishing off their meal from a picnic table at Sunrise Beach Park. A view of Puget Sound, Vashon Island, and majestic Mount Rainier preened before them.
Britt kept her focus affixed to the setting, because each time she’d looked at Zander today—while driving to Maple Valley, while talking with Ricardo—she’d wondered whether her sisters’ theories could be true.
I mean, theycouldbe true. But were they?
Willow and Nora had made an outstanding case, after all. They’d pointed to behavior of Zander’s that supported their argument.
It’s just that every time she began to think they might be right about Zander, she started to feel dizzy ... as if nothing about her world was quite as she’d trusted it to be. As she’d wanted it to be. As she’d set it up to be.
If Willow and Nora were right about Zander, that meant she’d been wrong.
She knew Zander much, much better than her sisters did. Before he’d left on his Grand Tour, she’d hung out with him constantly. She’d texted with him endlessly. She’d shared her truest self—all of her hopes and frustrations and weaknesses—with him. She’d been on the receiving end of his words and body language a hundred times more often than Willow and Nora had.
She’d concluded that his feelings for her were the same as her feelings for him.
It was true that he’d sacrificed for her in a million ways. But she’d sacrificed for him, too. That’s what friends did. Her motives hadn’t been romantic, so why did his motives have to be romantic? Couldn’t he have done what he’d done for her in the name of friendship?
Yes.
Buthadhe?
It’s possible—and this is what had been keeping her awake the last two nights—that she’d concluded that his feelings mirrored hers because that conclusion had been the most convenient for her.
The idea that Zander loved her: scary and thorny.
The idea that Zander felt friendship toward her: easy and safe.
She had the sinking sensation that she’d been willfully wrong about him. Because that’s what had made her comfortable.
Inwardly, she groaned. She certainly wasn’t comfortable anymore. She didn’t know what to think about Zander. Nor did she know what to think about her new preoccupation with thoughts of kissing him.
She took another bite of the cold rice, chicken, and curry salad she’d made early this morning. Britt wasn’t one for picnic lunches stored in decorative wicker baskets. She was one, however, for power lunches stored in her oft-utilized hiking backpack. In addition to the salad, she’d packed sliced fruit, a baguette and butter, and bottled waters for the two of them. For dessert, she’d included her latest attempt at the troublesome peppermint truffle recipe.
She chewed critically. The next time she made this chicken curry salad, she’d add a pinch more curry and extra green olives. And what was it about the flavors of baguette and butter that paired so deliciously? The taste of both were simple on their own. Bland bread—springy on the inside and crispy on the outside. Bland butter—creamy and salty. Together? Perfection.
“I believed Ricardo.” Zander scooted his plastic dish and fork away from him, indicating he’d finished eating.
“So did I.” Smoke wisped from the chimney of one of the homes on the far side of the water. “When we came up to him and explained that we were friends of James he reacted exactly the way I imagine someone who’d lost touch with an old friend would.”
