My nose filled with an embarrassing amount of fluid. “God, Caleb,” I said, sniffing. “You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”
“Hey,” he said softly. He lifted his arm, hesitated, then dropped it. “You okay?”
My smile fooled neither of us. Instead, I cracked open the mints and offered him two, since that’s what we’d both always had.
Our flight was delayed only twenty minutes, but I still felt crabby by the time we boarded. When we got on the plane, my carry-on handle jammed. I shoved my addiction-Soulmail-documentary research notebook into my armpit and slammed the handle repeatedly, working up a sweat. All I could hear were the people behind me, sighing and shifting weight as I plugged the narrow aisle. Finally, the handle slipped back into its socket.
As I squatted to hike the suitcase into the overhead compartment, Wells rose. “You should ask me,” he said, loud enough for Natalie to roll her eyes. “No need to bother your knee.”
“I’m fine,” I lied. I clenched my quadriceps and flexed my foot, trying to shake it out surreptitiously.
He grinned down at me, and something in my chest squeezed. I wasn’t sure what it was. A mathematician could make equal cases for past affection, current resentment, jaded hope for the future.
I clutched my notebook and lifted my chin to meet his gaze square on, thinking,I dare you to hurt me again. His blink was an answer, long and slow.
Which was, of course, the shockingly clear picture that was posted online and picked up by AP News before we even landed in Hyannis.
Twenty-Three
We left Caleb at his parents’ house. When his mother opened the door to greet him, I shrank into the seat and hid my mouth with my hand. Behind it, I stuck out my tongue, buoyed by the rush of something secret and childish.
Caleb and I might’ve seemed like an unlikely match, but two sad kids in close proximity never were. In high school, I was on the newspaper staff, ran precisely one season of freshman track, and joined the dance club; he was the president of the chess club and the debate club, and dabbled in the posh sports like tennis and cricket that you had to pay extra for.
He was drawn to my parents, especially my mom. I hated to admit it now, but as a kid—before I’d figured out that his home was ice-cold—I was drawn to his parents’ way of life. They whisked Caleb off to visit fancy places, they never fought about money (practically the only thing my parents ever truly argued about). The only significant length of time Caleb and I spent far away from one another was the year his parents renovated their cottage into a larger estate. They’d moved back in after three months, though, because Caleb couldn’t bear being away.
Caleb’s mom wasn’t horrid until we got a little older. When we were young, even after Sabrina died, she’d made us fun snacks, baked croissants, let us run in the sprinkler. Now, I could see she had all these designs about appearances.
Wells made the outsider mistake of taking the main roadthrough town, which at least meant we were treated to the views of my favorite places on earth, punctuated by Wells tapping the brakes every four seconds. Finally, we parked on the familiar crushed-shell driveway.
Natalie was the first one out. She stretched her leggy limbs on the burned-grass lawn like she’d been pretzeled into a box for a year. Wells bounded from the driver’s seat to unload the luggage.
The engine ticked in cooldown. I propped the passenger door, reveling in the warm air brushing my skin. As I reapplied lip SPF, I deselected airplane mode from my phone just before my weekend plan of stashing it for good. I wanted to go dark.
A deluge of notifications—more than my new standard—jammed my lock screen. I frowned. It seemed early for these since the special didn’t air until later tonight. A blip of worry snaked in my core. I tapped one, navigating to the offending article.
Soulmail Sweetheart Spotted With New York Beau: Olivia Jane Adler and Wells Stratton, Together the Whole Time!
When the image loaded, I groaned. Someone had posted a plane picture of us on social media, and for whatever algorithm-godlike reason, AP News had leapt on it. In the shot, Wells, his smile rakish and engaging, towers over me, his palm pressed against my suitcase in the overhead compartment. He was the portrait of a rom-com lead in a competitive streaming service holiday movie. His hair even had the right percentage of flop. My chin jutted toward him, what I’d thought was a dare instead giving off the appearance that I was petulant, coy, besotted.
Outside, I shaded my eyes and showed the screen to Wells. “Have you seen this?”
He squinted. “A text from Marta Jenkins, PR?”
I swiped the notification and returned the image to him.
His blue eyes blinked intently. “No,” he said. He set the suitcase down, squeezed my shoulder. “But see how good we look together?”
Soulmails, I reminded myself. This man was my soulmate. Even if my body’s new normal seemed to be that it gravitated to my past.
Despite the uneasy feeling that came with being breaking entertainment news, the second I keyed the code into the cottage door, my knotted gut unwound. The wood-paneled walls were still painted a creamy white, the couches worn and welcoming. The wooden barometer was on the shelf beside two golden cranes from the traveling antique store. Family lore was that I had picked them out during an “adventure” with my aunt, when reality was she used to schlep me around because I’d always been stowed with a relative during Sabrina’s episodes.
The shingled house was plopped right beside the beach parking lot, but even with all the windows shut—which they wouldn’t be the rest of the time we were here, as far as I was concerned—the ocean sounded, interrupted only by seagull caws and the rise and fall of voices walking from town to the beach. The hydrangea bushes that lined the front porch roasted in the sun, blue and purple globes waving in the sea breeze beneath the wooden rocking chairs. Before long, August would come for them, turning them crispy.
Out back, a charcoal grill was parked under a wooden overhang that housed my favorite outdoor shower on earth. It was better than Wells’s parents’ fancy Hamptons one, the one that drained onto stone and had a showerhead that mimicked a silver tree branch but had the equivalent water pressure of aleaky faucet.
Natalie squeezed my hand, a warm pulse. “Even if I’mthird-wheeling right now, I love it as much as I always have,” she whispered.
“You aren’t,” I mouthed back.
