18
I didn’t look back as I followed Eliza through the den and up the darkened staircase, though I could feel Holiday’s eyes on my back from her station on the couch. There was a part of me that hoped she reallywasjealous, even though I knew that made me an asshole. There was a part of me that hoped this hurt her.
Eliza put a finger to her lips as we crept down the hall past her parents’ room. The click of her bedroom door sounded very loud. I wondered if she could hear my heart beating; it felt like my chest was moving visibly, like I was some kind of romance-novel heroine in a dress with a lacy bodice. If I had to guess, I was definitely the more nervous party here; still, I felt like I had to at least ask. “Have you ever—” I broke off, feeling myself blush. “I mean—”
“Done this before?” Eliza smiled. “Yes, Linden. I have done this before.” Then, looking at me carefully: “Haveyoudone this before?”
I nodded, thinking for a moment of Greer’s narrow single room before I pushed her out of my mind once and for all. I didn’t wantto be thinking about Greer. I didn’t want to be thinking about Holiday. I didn’t want to think about anything but Eliza and how soft her skin was, the smell of the hollow at the base of her neck.
Once it was over, we stayed in her bed for a long time, listening to the storm rage on outside. The wind was shrieking like an animal being tortured and the rain was lashing against the windows, but it was cozy being cocooned in the soft sheets and fluffy duvet, Eliza’s head heavy against my shoulder. Our bare ankles brushed underneath the covers, one of her long legs tangling around mine.
I trailed my fingers up and down her arm, waiting to relax, but no matter how hard I tried to ignore it, I couldn’t deny that there was a part of me that felt…not right. As much as I tried to push it out of my mind, I kept thinking about what Holiday had said back downstairs in the library:a super-dramatic rivalry. An accident. Gone from school two days later.
Holy shit, what waswrongwith me? I was suddenly suspicious of Eliza now that we’dslepttogether? That was gross, and probably misogynist. Either way, it made me basically the worst person in the world.
So why couldn’t I chill the fuck out?
Eliza, for her part, seemed completely unconcerned, propping herself up on one elbow to look at me. “Serious face,” she observed, reaching out to run a finger along my brow.
I nodded at the window as the wind let out a particularly hair-raising yowl. “Just hoping I don’t go flying naked into the Atlantic when the roof of your house blows off, that’s all.”
Eliza grinned. “Pretty dark talk for a guy who just got hurricane-laid.”
That made me smile. “You know,” I said, reaching out and lacing my fingers through hers, “you’re not wrong.”
“Cheer up, Linden,” she instructed, flopping backward into the pillows. “It’s not so bad. Actually, for the first time all summer, I have to say it kind of feels like everything’s working out the way it was meant to.”
“Oh yeah?” I raised an eyebrow. “What, like you and me?”
Eliza laughed. “Don’t flatter yourself, bro,” she said, but then she shrugged. “Yeah, us, maybe. But other stuff too.” She held her elegant hands up, counting on her fingers. “My family being back together after what was, frankly, a huge boner of a year. Getting this amazing chance to go to Paris. And even everything that happened with Greg, like…” She trailed off. “I don’t know.”
I felt myself get very, very still. “What about him?” I asked quietly.
Eliza wrinkled her nose. “I mean, don’t think I’m a terrible person for saying this, but he kind of got what he deserved, right?”
“I—” My voice cracked. I cleared my throat, trying for all the world to sound normal and not like a person whose heart was suddenly flinging itself against his rib cage like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story. “What do you mean?”
Eliza shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said again. “I’ve just been reading a lot about the law of attraction, right? If you’re a good person, and you put good out into the world, good will come back to you. And if you’re a piece of shit, eventually that catches up with you too.”
She could have just been talking generally, I reminded myself. And it’s not like her having a bone to pick with Greg was news tome. Still, I couldn’t get Holiday’s warning out of my mind. Every time I remembered the smug expression on her face back in the library, I felt a fresh surge of anger rise up inside me like a riptide. What did she think she was doing, trying to poison me against Eliza? And what wasIdoing, letting it work?
Except Holidayhadn’tlooked smug, actually. She’d mostly just looked…sorry.
Eliza reached out and picked up her phone, glancing at the screen for a moment before setting it facedown on the nightstand and smiling at me. “I’ll be right back,” she said, shimmying back into her shorts and tank top and padding off in the direction of the bathroom. “Don’t, you know. Get blown naked into the Atlantic Ocean.”
“I’ll try.”
Once she was gone, I glanced at the phone. Glanced away again.
Glanced back.
It was a massive invasion of her privacy, I reminded myself. And as far as I was concerned, she wasn’t even a suspect.
I literally dug through Wells’s underwear drawer with my bare hands,reminded a voice in my head that sounded suspiciously like Holiday’s.And you’re telling me you’re going to get squeamishnow?
I reached for the phone, then hesitated, casting a furtive glance in the direction of the bathroom. In another second the screen was going to lock and I wouldn’t be able to get in without a password. “Fuck me,” I muttered, and plucked it off the nightstand.
Eliza’s background was a photo of all the Kendricks on the beach—from earlier this summer, I guessed: the sun setting behindthem, all of them showing off their healthful-looking tans and impressive orthodontic work. I tapped the icon for messages and scrolled through her texts as fast as I could, looking for—what? A detailed confession? A quick selfie she’d snapped with Greg’s unconscious body on the steps of the August House pool? I paused with my thumb on Doc’s name, then stopped myself before clicking through to read whatever messages the two of them had sent to each other lately. Thatdefinitelywasn’t what I was after, I told myself firmly. I wasn’t a total douchebag, the kind of guy who would invade her privacy just for shits.
