Anne’s car came into sight, heading up the driveway toward us. She parked, then hopped out, carrying a notepad and a stack of folders. “Oh, Ben,” she said, “thank you for meeting me on such short notice! This is all so nuts, I know.”
“It’s fine,” he replied, not looking at me. He nodded at Anne. “You want to talk inside?”
“Whatever’s good for you.”
He bent down, grabbing the guitar, then went up the stairs. Turns out, there is a clear distinction between pretending to ignore someone and actually doing it. I was very aware, right then, of the difference.
That wasnotwhat I thought you were going to say,he’d told me. Now I wondered what he had been expecting.
A few minutes later, when I went to the porch, Liz was still on her feet, circling the table as if doing measured laps.
“… meet with the Tides at three.” I recognized Jonathan’s voice, now on speaker. “They’re trying to round up enough boats for the shuttle.”
“Are we sure the vans can’t make it up the driveway?” Anne, who was now in the living room, called out.
“Positive.”
Anne thought for a second. “So we get people to the dock and they walk up.”
“You’re forgetting it’s steep,” Liz warned her. “And will be hot.”
“So we need a shuttle from the shuttle.”
“Maybe golf carts?” Jonathan asked.
Liz snapped her fingers. “Yes!”
“I’ll talk to the Tides people.”
I looked back into the living room. Anne and Ben were seated on the floor, by the big window facing the lake. “Okay,” she said, pulling a pen from her messy bun and centering the pad in her lap. “Music for the ceremony. Go.”
He unbuckled the case, taking out his guitar. “What do you have in mind?”
Before he could answer, my phone rang. Hannah. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me,” she said. Like it hadn’t been ages. Like she was my friend, not Colin’s. “Do you have a minute to talk? I have Nalini here too.”
“Hi, Finley,” Nalini chimed in.
“Um,” I said. “Actually—”
“I mean, everyone has a freak-out in college at some point,” Nalini said now. “Leave it to Colin to do it ahead of everyone else.”
“The boyisadvanced,” Hannah agreed, and they both laughed. “And we get that he handled things really badly with your breakup.”
“Totally,” Nalini said. “But you still care about him, obviously. So what do you think we should do?”
On the porch, Jonathan was still on speaker, now saying something about ministers. Meanwhile, in the living room, no voices. Just the sound of Ben playing, chords and a melody. I wished it was night and I was walking around the Egg toward him.
“Finley?” Hannah asked. “You there?”
I was. At the same time, it felt as if there was a landline cord wrapped around me like one of Kasey’s bouquets. Tightening, slowly, as it pulled me back, back, back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Weallsaw it, Finley,” Clark said. “Right on the lips.”
Lana groaned. “Will you stop?”
