I froze. All at once, I could hear nothing. I was terrified. I wasn’t ready for this. I never would be.
“Trey!” my sister shouted.
He turned around with an enormous smile that vanished when our eyes met. He went pale, and I must have, too. I was sure we looked like two ghosts there in the crowd. My whole face felt dead.
“My God, it’s been forever since I’ve seen you. I didn’t even get the chance to thank you for your help with the house on Petit Prince. It’s looking gorgeous.”
They hugged.
“I just did my little part. It was really your husband’s idea.”
Trey. Hearing that name made me dizzy, like I was tumbling over a cliff. He wouldn’t stop looking at me, and I couldn’t, because everything that wasn’t him had disappeared. I took a step forward. Then another. I felt like I was walking over a bottomless ravine and could only breathe easily if I reached the table.
“Harper, aren’t you going to say hi to Trey,” my sister said, giving me a slight shove that had the force of an atomic bomb.
“Yeah, uh, of course. Hey, Trey,” I barely managed to say.
“Hi, Harper.”
I tried to close my eyes and trap the sound of him saying my name, so I could hold onto it forever, deep in my heart.
“Why don’t you have a seat with us?” Hoyt said. “We were just about to order drinks.”
“Yeah, man, stay a while. There’s room for both of you,” Scott chimed in.
Both of you.The sight of Trey had so stunned me that I didn’t noticeher: a woman with long dark-brown hair. She was incredibly beautiful.
“Harper, sit beside me, babe. That way we can make some space for them,” Dustin said.
Trey’s eyes darted over at him and then back at me. I saw he was tying up loose ends, and I wished the earth would swallow me up. I wanted to scream at Dustin to shut his damn mouth for once. To tell Trey there was nothing between that imbecile and me, that there never would be, and he didn’t need to worry about it.
But I didn’t. What was the point?
Trey wasn’t mine anymore. I had left him five months ago, and he had clearly gotten over it. Probably he was just looking at Dustin out of curiosity. I had assumed he was hurt, but he was probably just struggling to believe I’d gone back with such a loser.
“Thanks, but we’ve got movie tickets and we’re running late,” he said.
“Ah, that’s too bad,” Hoyt replied. “You’ve been a hard man to get ahold of lately.”
“Work, work, work, you know how it is.”
“Cut the excuses. Let’s hang out some time. Actually…” He snapped his fingers as he remembered something. “You know what? I’m taking Megan to Petit Prince next week. Hayley’s leaving us the house. You should come along. Both of you. It’ll be fun.”
It was agonizing, thinking of him taking her to the island. Our island. Our secret. I could tell Trey was looking at me as my brother talked. That he was nervous. The girl sensed something between us, too. I could tell by her face. She seemed to know things about me, and the possibility that Trey had talked about me, about us, made things even more uncomfortable.
“I don’t think I can. Sora and I…”
“Trey, don’t make me beg,” Hoyt insisted.
“I’ll call you.”
It was all I could do not to take off running. I needed to escape that pain that was drilling into my chest—the pain, the insecurity, the anguish, and still worse, the jealousy. I was so jealous it burned.
Seconds later, Trey said his goodbyes and left the restaurant holding hands with the girl. I got away from Dustin, taking the chair across from him and making sure my father noticed. And he did. We stared at each other a long while. I don’t know where I got the courage. Maybe because I wasn’t entirely myself. Something in me was vanishing.
I spent the rest of the night in a fog and was the first one to stand when Dad said he was tired and ready to go back home.
We didn’t exchange a word on the way back to Léry, and even in the hallway on our way to our rooms, all he managed was a curtgood night.
