Her voice is calm and deadly. Will scrubs his hands through his hair. “Of course not,” he tries. “That’s not what I’m—”
Lilly shakes her head. “This was a mistake,” she says, leaning hard on the suitcase as she struggles to zip it shut. “I mean, of course it was a mistake, I knew it was a mistake from the literal first time we met when you were objectively very rude to me, but—”
“Lilly—”
“I need to go be with my family right now,” she announces sharply. She turns a frantic circle around the bedroom, yanking at the bedsheets and tossing throw pillows onto the floor until she finally finds her phone sitting on the edge of the dresser. She stuffs ithastily into her pocket, then heaves the suitcase up with two hands even though it’s a roller and clomps awkwardly toward the door. “I’ll catch up with you later. Or... not, I guess. I mean.” She drops the suitcase, yanking at the handle until it extends. “Probably not.”
“What does that mean?” Will asks. “Lilly, you can’t just—at least let me help you—”
But Lilly is already gone.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Lilly
She says a hasty goodbye to Charlotte as she throws her bag into the trunk of the Honda, her blood thudding wildly in her ears. “I’m sorry specifically and generally,” she promises, wrapping her arms around Charlotte and squeezing, “and I am so sincerely happy for you guys.” She slides into the driver’s seat, turns the key in the ignition. “Also, um. It’s possible Will Darcy might or might not be squatting in your guesthouse.”
Charlotte’s eyes widen, whipping her head around to look. “Wha—?”
“I love you!” Lilly hollers. “I’ll call you from the road.”
She steps on the gas, lower lip trembling, her thoughts a noisy, poisonous whirl inside her head: Will. Joe. Olivia. Junie, rail-thin in New York City. The house slipping away in front of her eyes. She can’t keep a single bad thing from happening. She can’t save a single person she loves.
Kit and Mari hopped a last-minute flight from Burbank; Lilly scoops them from the airport before speeding across town and fetching Olivia from the Parker, where she’s checked into a suite they 100 percent cannot afford while a dozen paparazzi camp on the street outside. She wears the robe and a pair of sunglasses right out to the car.
“I’m not talking about this,” Olivia announces, sliding into the passenger seat.
“That’s fine,” Lilly promises. “You don’t have to.”
“But I don’t regret it, for the record. I’m a modern woman, and I own my sexuality. Anyone who has a problem with that is just in shackles to our Puritan, patriarchal culture.”
“I’d hardly call performing a sex act on a bartender at a culturally appropriative music festival a feminist act,” Marianne volunteers from the back seat.
“Fuck you, Mari!” Olivia whirls on her. “Nobody asked you!”
“Easy,” Lilly says, holding a hand up. “We’re going to figure this out together. As a team.”
“There’s nothing to figure out,” Olivia insists. “It’s not a big deal. I don’t even care.”
Lilly and Kit exchange looks in the rearview. On the one hand, if this is how Olivia wants to handle it, Lilly’s not about to tell her otherwise. She knows the value of the stories you tell yourself as much as anyone else.
On the other...
“Olivia,” she says, as gently as she can manage, and that’s when Olivia starts to cry.
“I liked him,” she admits in a small voice, throwing her hands up like she’s disgusted by the very thought of it. God, she is so impossibly young. “I thought he liked me, too.”
“I know,” Lilly says, reaching across the gearshift and squeezing Olivia’s shoulder. Mari reaches forward, stroking a hand through her hair.
***
By the time they finally get back to the house Olivia is snoring in the passenger seat and there’s an unfamiliar sedan parked in the driveway; as Lilly’s pulling her bag from the trunk of the Honda the front door opens and a man in a suit comes striding down the walk—her father glowering behind him, Cinta following at his heels. The stranger nods once at Lilly, and she lifts a hand in automatic greeting, then immediately lowers it, glancing back at Dominic and feeling pretty sure she just did something wrong.
“Who was that?” she asks.
“Nobody,” her father announces, loud enough that the guy can certainly hear him even as he’s pulling out of the driveway. “An empty suit, that’s who!” He stomps back into the house, the door slamming behind him hard enough that Lilly can feel it in her jaw.
“An appraiser,” Kit says quietly.
