“Aw, you were pining,” I say, and pull Charlie toward me so our hips are aligned. A few kids stare at us as they pass, their jaws reaching for the ground. I flip them off behind Charlie’s back. Because if there’s one thing I’m not afraid of anymore, it’s my arms around Charlie.
“I was not,” she says. Then she sticks out her tongue at me. “Okay, maybe a little.”
“Well, maybe I was too. Just a little.”
She smiles and I smile back and it all feels so goddamned good, I never want to leave this spot outside the school, the rest of the world swarming around us.
“Ready?” Charlie asks, breaking the spell, her eyes flitting between Hannah and me. Immediately, my smile falls and Hannah audibly sighs.
“No,” she says.
“Not even close,” I say.
But Charlie takes Hannah’s hand and holds mine a little tighter. “You are.”
We walk into the school like that, skirts and plaid and interlaced fingers. Eyes and whispers follow us, but I try to ignore them.
Until I see Alex waiting by my locker.
“Um . . . give me a minute, okay?”
Charlie follows my gaze and stiffens, but I squeeze her hand before releasing her.
“Sure,” Hannah says, and then she wraps her arm around Charlie’s shoulders and leads her toward Hannah’s locker down the next row. “It’s okay,” I hear her say to Charlie, and it all makes my throat tighten, how much we need one another, how much we try to take care of one another and be honest with one another now, no matter who’s more damaged or hurt at one time or another. Last night I even called Hannah to tell her what Alex thought he might have seen that night at the lake and what the state attorney said about it.
I was shocked to hear Alex had already called her.
She was pissed, but I don’t think it was about Alex. It was about our world, about the ways it ignores us every day. Still, it was the kind of angry that we both welcomed. The kind that made us feel solid and visible.
“Hi,” I say as I reach Alex. He shifts his bag higher on his shoulder and looks at his feet.
“Hey.”
Then we just stand there, a cloud of awkward and mistakes billowing around us.
“I don’t . . . I don’t know what to say, Mara. I’m just really sorry.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t mean to use you. But you’re right. It was fucked-up.”
I look at him, so gentle and earnest. He comforted me when no one else could. “It wasn’t. It was what we needed. Both of us.”
He nods and takes a deep breath and looks out at the crowd of kids running to their lockers and classes, his lips mashed together so tightly I’m sure he’s holding in some tears. He’s lost a lot too. His lifelong best friend and, maybe on some level, his ability to trust another person, just like Hannah and I. I don’t want him to be another casualty of Owen’s fuckup. I just don’t.
“You and Charlie?” he asks.
I swallow, my mouth suddenly dry. “I think there might always be a me and Charlie.”
“Yeah.” He takes a deep breath, nodding at the floor tiles. “I get it. I do.”
“Hey,” I say, reaching out to take his hand. “You helped me. You did. And I still need that and I still want to hang out. Whatever we were to each other, it was something, you know? And I don’t want to lose that something, that friendship part of it. Would that be okay?”
He finds my eyes, watching me while a tiny smile lifts one corner of his mouth, there and then gone. “Hell yeah, it would.”
I hug him, then press a chaste kiss to his cheek. When he releases me, he smiles—?real and hopeful—?before offering a little wave and weaving in between the bevy of students, joining up with a few of the less despicable orchestra kids. He disappears around the corner and I feel this weird amalgam of relief and sadness. Hannah comes up next to me, her shoulder pressing into mine.
“All good?”
