You’re hard to read,he said.
False. I’m actually incredibly easy to read. Everybody thinks so.
Will shook his head, and the distance between us narrowed.Not me, Josephine. The more of you I see, the more I discover I don’t have a clue.
I didn’t realize you were looking.
I was, and I wasn’t.After another moment he added,I was. While I told myself I wasn’t.
Our noses grazed, and my skin felt like it was caramelizing. My joints were unbolting, my body going limp. The hand Will had dug into the sand came to my knee.
Kissing,Will said, voice like gravel,when we’re both drunk, a couple hours after your grandmother died and my girlfriend dumped me, would be an incredibly stupid thing for us to do. Right?He did not sound at all confident in his own theory.
I don’t know,I said.I just want to feel less horrible right now.
Fair enough,Will concluded, and his lips met mine.
I’d kissed exactly two boys before: my first boyfriend, when I was fourteen and dating a seventeen-year-old senior, and then a Sea Island fling last summer.
None of those kisses felt likethis.Intense, desperate, greedy, emotional.
When our mouths slid together, Will made an immediate noise, halfway between a groan and a growl, that elicited an immediate noise fromme,halfway between a gasp and a sigh. His lips were warm. Theytasted perfectly salty and sweet, like an Ocean Spray candy. We kissedso gently,nervous but highly eager, two drunk teenagers who wanted to dive into each other’s skin. Will breathed softly as he broke from my lips. His cool raspberry breath danced along my eyelashes. His mouth traveled down the side of my face, hovering and then sucking on the place where my jaw met my neck. I climbed onto his lap and his sandy palms went straight to my exposed lower back.
Slowly, we were developing a language.Kiss here. Touch here. That feels good. This feels better.
Wolf whistles from the bonfire were what broke us apart.
We turned toward the sound, our chests heaving. And even from that distance, we could see Zoe’s furious gaze dancing in the firelight. She had no context. She didn’t know Will was single. She didn’t know I was heartbroken, desperate not to feel my emotions, desperate to replace them with something tactile. All she knew was she’d confided her deepest insecurity to me—that girls used her to get to her brother—and I’d thrown it right back in her face.
“Soooo yeah,” I conclude, downing the rest of my mimosa. Cami is looking at me with alarmed eyes from across the table, her whole body leaned in. “That was pretty much the stupidest conversation I’ve ever had, followed up by the stupidest decision Will Grant and I collectively ever made. Followed by the stupidest drunk three-way fight I’ve ever partaken in. Zoe was equally intoxicated and screamed at both of us for like ten minutes straight before we got a word in edgewise. Obviously, it ended badly.”
“Josie,oh my God,” Cami says.
“I know. I’d claimed to be such a good friend. But in that moment, I didn’t evenconsiderhow much what we did would hurt Zoe’s feelings.”
I’m flustered just remembering the aftermath. A silent car ride back to Tennessee in the morning. Confused parents. Sobbing and crying and feeling like the world was ending, like I was getting hitfrom all sides. Oma’s funeral, then two tense months of school leading up to graduation. I was devastated by the universe, disappointed in myself, for losing my oma and Zoe in one night.
Cami calls the waiter over and we order two more mimosas.
“Josie, baby.” Cami tilts her head. “I’m sorry you had to find out in those circumstances about your oma. That was a bad situation waiting to happen. Did Zoe not come around and understand it was a drunken mistake?”
“The last thing she said to me was that I shouldn’t speak to her again,” I admit. “I wrote her a letter apologizing and delivered it to her mailbox the Sunday before we started back at school. I tried to explain that I cared about her friendship more than anything and what happened between Will and me was simply because our emotions were running high. I didn’t tell her about my oma, though. I remember thinking it would have been a guilt trip. But the next day in study hall, Zoe kneeled by my desk to sayI’m really sorry about your oma.Which means Will told her. But she didn’t say anything else, then walked off quick as a whip. I got the message. My letter didn’t change Zoe’s mind about our friendship.”
“What about Will?” Cami asks. “Did you ever talk to him again?”
“I avoided him at school. He tried to talk to me the next week, but I told him it wasn’t a good idea.” I can still recall the confusion on Will’s face when I’d walked away.
Not a good idea.
Oh my God.I’mthe one who said it first. He simply repeated the sentiment to his boss ten years later.
“Maybe this reunion is fate,” Cami says. “Maybe Zoe wishes things had evolved differently.”
“She’s had ten years to reach out,” I say.
“And you?” Cami asks.
“And me what?”
