My eyes flickered down to her lips, and I stepped back, catching myself and forcing distance before I lost control and kissed her. “Well,” I said, “I’ll be seeing you on Tuesday.”
“Unless Cat grabs me to interrupt your work before then,” she laughed.
“All too possible,” I said. “Goodnight, Alyssa.”
She smiled wider, her cheeks flushing a little pinker. Probably the cold. “Goodnight, Jade,” she said, and it bouncedaround in my mind the whole drive back, where Cat at least had the decency to pretend nothing had happened. At least, for now—we could only have a one-sided conversation while I drove, so she talked random gossip and about the latest series she’d been binge-watching while we drove back to her place, and it was only once we stopped in her driveway that she turned to me and gave me a long, loaded smile.
“All right, get yourself out of here,” I said, and she just smiled wider.
“You deserve to be happy,” she said. My face betrayed me—I could feel I was blushing, even as I tried to scowl.
“Thanks? I’m glad to know you’re not planning to sabotage my life. Now get a move on, I’m tired and want to get home and sleep.”
She smiled wider—she could see right through me, but she didn’t push it, and she left the car and headed inside.
And like the fucking idiot I was, I put on that stupid Taylor Swift album Alyssa had been listening to when I first saw her, while I drove back to my house. And when I got back to my house, I didn’t even go to sleep like I said. I was exhausted, but my heart was wide awake, and I wound up at the candle-making table, and I took out the scents that felt closest to the components of her perfume.
I’d get the blue dye figured out later. I needed to make sure it was exactly the right shade.
Chapter 17
Alyssa
Iwas a terrible friend. I thought I was doing a good job—that I’d made a breakthrough for Jade and Daniela, and now that they were talking again, I’d be happy to see them happy together.
Instead, I was feeling petulant. Every time I saw Daniela texting, I got the same surge in my chest knowing what her goofy little smile was about, and I was so embarrassed and disappointed with myself over the fact that I was upset about it. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. It wasn’t like they stopped paying attention to me—Daniela made me an even nicer meal the next day, and she was positively glowing the whole time, a smile that could light up the room, and she gushed to me about every little thing, from work to community drama to her latest TV series to how things were with Jade, but my brain could only fixate on the last part.
It wasn’t even like Jade stopped talking to me, either—we still texted nonstop, and the next day, Cat showed up to pick me up and take me for another surprise lunch for Jade. And I felt like I was punishing myself when I suggested bringing Daniela. Cat gave me a skeptical look when I did, standing on the frontporch, looking at me weirdly enough that I wondered if I mixed up my signs.
“I think Daniela’s probably busy,” she said. I frowned.
“I mean, she’s been working, but she can take a lunch break too…”
“I don’t want to distract Jade from workallday with a whole party. Just the two of you would be nice.”
And I wasn’t sure why that triggered some kind of panic reaction in my gut, but it did—like being alone with Jade would be a betrayal of Daniela that I couldn’t square, and so I insisted until Cat relented. I wasn’t sure what Cat’s argument was about, anyway, because Daniela was ecstatic to go, and when we found Jade at a roadside inspecting damage to a guardrail system, I felt guilty about the fact that Jade looked at me the longest out of the three of us. And I felt guilty about the fact that I was happy about it.
Was I just lonely and wanted attention? I knew I’d been short on friends back in Boston, especially while I was with Sawyer, but I’d never thought I’d be the type to revert to middle-school dynamics and get petty over my friend spending time with someone else. When we all sat together on the grass with a picnic blanket that Cat always carried in her car, and I saw Daniela sitting close to Jade, the two of them talking and laughing, Daniela making flirtatious little comments that were just deniable enough to slip under the radar, I felt like it was ripping something out of me.
And yet, like morbid fascination, I couldn’t look away. I smiled along with the conversation, but I didn’t follow most of it, because I was transfixed on the distance between Jade and Daniela, on every little look Daniela gave her. I felt like I was losing my mind, because I couldn’t stop thinking about Daniela kissing her. Picturing it. What kind of creep pictured her friends making out?
I felt like something had been scooped out of my chest by the time we were back at Daniela’s house, and I spent the rest of the day staring blankly at my laptop, not seeing anything. When we had dinner together, she smiled softly at me, and it made me want to cry.
“It’s nice,” she said. “Seeing everyone again, you know? I’ve missed this.”
“Yeah… you and Jade especially seem really happy.”
She laughed, waving me off. “Don’t give me false hope, okay? I’m still seeing where things go with me and her. I’m just enjoying getting to chat with her and Cat again. Thanks, Alyssa,” she said, giving me the sweetest smile in the world, and it broke what little bits of me were left. I forced myself to smile.
“I think you two have a chance together,” I said. “She probably needs to take it slow. But I can tell she really cares about you.”
She looked down at her plate, poking shyly at her food. “I’m not going to get my hopes up too high… but that would be nice. I’d missed her. And it was my own damn fault, turns out.”
“There’s no sense in blame. She’s just happy to see you again.” Happy to be with Daniela again. Happy to hold her hand and gaze deeply into her eyes and sigh dreamily thinking of Daniela.
“Yeah. Guess so.” Daniela raised her glass towards me. “Here’s to that. Gang’s all together.”
I forced a laugh as I met her glass, and when I got back to the bedroom that night, I wound up lying there staring up at the ceiling, through it and out to eternity, asking myself what was wrong with me.
