Dylan couldn’t look at her.
Not in the face, or the eyes.
Not anywhere, really, because if she started looking now that sheknew, she’d never stop.
Cherry.
The name was a firework in her chest.
“I…I’m not feeling so great, actually,” she said.
“Oh,” Ramona said. “What’s wrong?”
“Just a headache,” Dylan said, keeping her eyes averted. “Would you mind if we called it a night?”
“No, that’s fine,” Ramona said. “Let me text Olive and Marley.” She got out her phone, wandered back to Logan, far enough away that Dylan could watch the two of them together. He leaned closer to her, like a moon in her orbit. Said something that made her laugh and made April roll her eyes.
Soon, Olive and Marley joined them, Logan disappeared, and they all piled into Ramona’s car again, though Dylan insisted on April sitting in the front.
“More room for your ass,” she’d said, making April laugh, but really, she just couldn’t sit near Ramona. Not right now. She needed to think, to remember, to figure out how the hell she’d missed it these last two days.
Ramona was Cherry.
HerCherry.
The girl she’d thought about a million times over the last eighteen years, her literal happy thought when shit went sideways, when her parents disappeared for days, when they got divorced then got back together, when Blair gave her shit on the set ofSpellbound, when…when…when…
As Ramona pulled up in front of Dylan’s small bungalow on the east side of town, the lake mere steps away, Dylan barely got out athanksandgood nightbefore she was hurrying to her front door, ripping off her blond bob just as the tears started to swell into her eyes.
Inside, she pressed her back against the door. She could feel her pulse thrumming in her neck and tried to take a deep breath. But before her lungs fully settled, her phone buzzed in her pocket.Laurelflashed across her screen.
“Hey,” Dylan said into the phone, grateful to have something to distract her from her heart, which currently felt as though it had claws and was scraping away at her rib cage.
“Hey yourself,” Laurel said. “How’s it going?”
Dylan sighed, slid down the door until she was sitting on the floor. “Ask me tomorrow.”
“That bad, huh?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. First day on set didn’t go as I planned.”
“I heard.”
Dylan thunked her head against the door. “Great.”
“Look,” Laurel said. “You’re just in your head. Find a way to get out of it. Go out and do something fun. Lay on the beach. Play Frisbee.”
“Frisbee.”
Laurel laughed. “I don’t know, what the hell do people do in a small town on summer vacation?”
“They go bowling.”
“Jesus.”
“It’s not so bad,” Dylan said, running her hands over the skirt of her dress. “Pretty fun, actually.”
“Wait, you went bowling?” Laurel asked.
