I should not be followingTheo out of the resort, but I am so tired ofshoulds.
Whycan’tI have fun?
Whycan’tI be irresponsible?
I hate missing Emma.Hateit. This is her week and I want to be here for her and see her for more than five minutes at a time. But there are forty people coming to dinner tonight.Forty. Parents, grandparents, the bridal party, aunts, cousins… It might be a family dinner, but it’s still a lot of people.
I tell myself I’m helping Theo stay away from Chandler, which is better for Emma, whom I seeall the time. That she had agreatday todaybecauseI handled all things Theo-related.
But I also feel an utter thrill at knowing I’m doing something I shouldn’t do. Somethingforbidden. Somethingdangerous.
Something with potentially life-altering consequences bigger than me losing my bikini top in a pool.
Something that would give my mother a heart attack and a half.
And that makes it all the more appealing.
Not because I want her to suffer. But becauseI want to live. And I can’t live in the fear of the world that I was raised to cower in.
It’s happening.
I’m having my rebellion. And now that it’s started, I can’t stop it.
Nor do I want to. This can’t wait until next week.
It has to happennow.
Theo stops next to a red convertible. “Climb in.”
“Are you serious?”
He dangles the keys.
My jaw is on the pavement. Aconvertible? “When did you get—”
“Airport. When I landed.”
“But we took—”
“Ride share to and from the clinic? Even I won’t drive when I can’t see, and no way was I letting you behind the wheel of this baby.”
He says it with the same flirty grin he was aiming at Claire earlier.
The one that reminds me of the smile he aimed my way when he nudged me into doing my cannonball.
“Because I have a horrible driving record?” I say likeoldLaney, and I immediately want to take it back.
But he grins wider. “No, because she’s built forspeed. None of that granny driving you do.”
I look at the car again. Red. Shiny. Top down. A feral black cat peering at me from the passenger seat’s foot well.
And then I look at Theo again.
“I didn’t steal the car,” he says.
There’s cheek in his words, there’s something else too. Like he expectsdid you steal the caris the top question in my head right now, because it’s the first thing I would’ve asked him in high school.
But he’snothigh school Theo. And I’m not high school Laney.
