Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend (38 page)

“But . . . why
are
you here?” I asked, hoping she didn’t take

that to mean I didn’t want her there. I did— I just would have pre-

ferred a little more advance warning, that was all. “Did some-

thing happen back home?”

“Oh my god,” Sophie groaned. “There is
such
boy drama.” I was

more than happy to forget my own drama, and listened, rapt, as

she told me about the dramz back home. Things had fallen apart

with Blake the barista, so she had hoped to get back together with

her ex, Doug, until she’d gone to a party earlier that night and

seen him there with some “Hartfi eld High hussy” and had gotten

fed up with everything and decided to get out of town for a while.

Hence the late train to the Hamptons and the cab to Hallie’s.

“I’m so done with boys,” she declared defi nitively. I nodded,

but since I’d heard this many, many times before, I didn’t put

much stock in it. “But what about you?” she asked, raising an

eyebrow at me. “What’s up with you and that cute guy? I sensed

sparks . . .”

“Josh?” I asked, hoping she didn’t mean Reid. Even though he

seemed perfectly nice, he was someone I didn’t exactly want to

have sparks with.

“Yes,” Sophie said, then frowned. “Although does that Reid

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guy look familiar to you? Because I swear I know him from

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somewhere.”

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“No,” I said, but remembered the way he had looked at Sophie,

like he had recognized her too. “But maybe you’ve seen him around

Putnam? He knows Josh from boarding school, but I don’t know

where he lives the rest of the time.”

“Maybe,” Sophie said. She shrugged. “But anyway. Josh.

Spill.”

I took a breath, not really sure where to begin. “Well,” I started.

“Okay. I mean, he’s really nice . . .”

Sophie smiled. “Good! You need someone nice. And he’s
really

cute, Gemma.”

It was such a relief to hear someone call me by my real name

that I almost gave Sophie a hug for saying it. “He is,” I said, im-

ages of Josh coming unbidden into my mind— reaching for my

bag on the train, being so nice when I looked like a mess post-

babysitting, the way his eyes fl uttered closed just before he fell

asleep. However, a second later, reality intruded. “But I don’t know

if it could ever work,” I said. “His whole thing is about trust. His

last girlfriend really hurt him, she cheated on him and lied to

him . . .”

Sophie looked outraged. “But you wouldn’t lie to him!”

“I’m lying to him right now,” I reminded her. I suddenly re-

membered the look that Josh had given Sophie when he thought

she was me. There was
such
loathing in it. I pushed away my

sandwich, feeling a little queasy. “Remember, he thinks I’m

you?”

“Oh, right,” Sophie said. She thought a minute, then shook

her head. “But like you said, you’re not
being
me. You’re being

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you, just with a different name. It’s not such a big deal.”

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I nodded. It was what I’d tried to ask Josh when we watched

The Princess Bride,
and even though he had said pretty much the

same thing, I wasn’t sure I could let myself believe it. “Maybe,” I

said, but without much hope. Sophie suddenly leaned forward,

studying my face. “What?” I asked, worried I had panini crumbs

all over it.

“You like him,” Sophie said, sounding surprised. “I can tell.

I mean, you
really
like him.”

Since I’d had basically had the same revelation with Hallie

just an hour before in her kitchen, there seemed to be no point in

denying it now, and I just nodded.

“Wow,” she said, nudging me with her foot. “That’s great.”

“Really?” I asked, leaning closer to her. “But what about the

mourning period?”

Sophie waved this away. “Forget about
Cosmo,
” she said. “If

you fi nd someone you like, you have to go for it. That’s like a rule.

And it’s about time you liked someone new.” She picked up her

fork, but didn’t eat anything, just pushed her discarded cilantro

into a pile. She cleared her throat and then asked, “Um, Gem?

What did you do to this Hallie girl? What was terrible enough to

warrant all this?”

I looked at my best friend and realized that I had to tell her.

But I also knew that I wouldn’t be able to do it if I had to see the

trusting look on her face slowly become one of shock and dis-

gust. I stood up and nodded toward the beach. “Want to go for a

walk?”

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Sophie and I walked the beach together, and I was silent at

fi rst, trying to gather my thoughts, rearrange all the pieces of

a story I’d never had to tell to anyone before— a story I’d never

even admitted out loud— into some kind of order. And even

though Sophie could be the most impatient person on earth (I’d

once seen her curse out her phone when a page wasn’t loading

fast enough) I didn’t feel any of that from her now. I knew, some-

how, that she’d walk with me for as long as it took to be able to

tell her. The moon was almost full in the sky but there were dark

clouds passing it, cutting off its brightness every few minutes

and throwing us into darkness.

I waited until one of these moment before I started speaking,

haltingly at fi rst, about that summer— about the separation,

coming to the Hamptons, becoming fast friends with Hallie—

and how everything had fallen apart with the revelation that our

parents were together. I told her how my evil side seemed to take

over, how I was soon doing things I never would have been able to

imagine. When I got to driving away from Hallie and realizing

that my dad might have accidentally given her the notebook, I

heard Sophie draw in a sharp breath. But she didn’t say any-

thing, and I pushed on to the end of the story— to trying to fi nd

out about the Bridges, then meeting them here and pretending

to be her. I took her through everything that had happened up

until earlier that night.

When I’d fi nished, Sophie didn’t say anything for a long moment,

just looked out to the water. When she turned back to me, though, I

could see in the moonlight that she didn’t look judgmental or dis-

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gusted, like I’d been afraid of. Instead, she just looked sad.

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“Gem,” she said, shaking her head. “You should have told me

this years ago. I can’t believe you’ve been carry ing this around

the whole time.”

I just blinked at her for a moment, not quite able to believe

that this was her reaction to my darkest secret. “You mean . . .

you don’t think I’m a horrible person?”

Sophie shook her head so hard her dangly earrings jangled.

“Of course not,” she said. “I think that you were
eleven
and scared

and doing the only thing you knew to do. In fact, I think it’s

called transference. I’ll have to ask my parents, but . . .”

“Soph.” If you didn’t stop Sophie quickly when she got on a

shrink- theory kick, you could be listening to jargon for hours.

“Right,” she said. “Sorry. I mean, yes, it sounds like some of

the stuff you did got out of hand. But you were a kid. And I think

you’re doing a good thing here, trying to make it right.”

I gave her a half- smile at that. I was still a little amazed that

this was Sophie’s reaction. But telling her didn’t make me feel

like a huge burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I knew

that I wouldn’t get to feel that until I told Hallie the truth and

she forgave me. “I hope so,” I said. “I mean, I’m trying to do the

right thing out here, and be a good person, but—”

“Wait,” Sophie said, stopping short. She just stared at me for

a moment, head tilted, like she was putting something together.

“Oh my god, I get it now.”

“What?” I asked, baffl ed.

Sophie made a vague, circular gesture with her hands. “The

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Teddy of it all! Is this why you were with him for so long? You

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wanted to be around someone who was a do- gooder? You thought

that would make up for this?”

“No!” I said immediately, even though she wasn’t that far off.

This was the problem with having a best friend— they knew you

really
well, sometimes better than you wanted them to. “Of

course that wasn’t the only reason. Teddy’s amazing. He’s smart,

and cute . . .”

Sophie just shrugged. “He’s okay. You could do better.”

I shook my head at that. “Well, of course you have to say that.

As my best friend, I think you’re obligated. It’s in the handbook.”

Sophie smiled, and we started walking again. “I’m just glad

you’ve moved on,” she said. “With this Josh guy. It’s a good thing.”

I dragged my feet through the sand as we walked, thinking

about this. Was I
really
over him? Did the fact that I was able to

admit I had feelings for someone else mean that I was going to

put Edward Callaway behind me for good? I wasn’t sure.

But something in Sophie’s tone had given me pause. It was a

tone of voice I knew well— it meant she knew more than she was

telling.

“Why is it a good thing?” I asked her. “If I’ve moved on?”

She stopped walking and looked down at the sand, drawing a

crooked heart with her bare foot, then scrubbing it out with her

toes. “It’s just . . .” she started, then looked up at me. “If you weren’t

thinking about this new guy, I wouldn’t tell you this.”

“What is it?” I asked, feeling my heart start to beat hard.

“I think Teddy went on that trip you guys were supposed to go

on together,” she said. “To El Salvador?”

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“Colombia,” I said automatically. “Wait, what?”

Sophie nodded. “I was at the beach and ran into that weird

vegan guy—”

“Reginald,” I supplied, and Sophie nodded. Since I hadn’t heard

from Reginald once since the breakup, I had a feeling he’d picked

Teddy’s side, something I ultimately wasn’t that upset about. All

Reginald’s shirts seemed to have messages on them about how

great it was to be a vegan and how terrible it was that you weren’t

one too.

“Right,” Sophie said. “Anyway, he was saying how he’d gotten

a postcard from Teddy, and something about his volunteering . . .”

She shrugged apologetically. “I wasn’t really listening. I was

mostly trying to get out of talking to him.”

This was a common response to Reginald, but that’s not what

I was thinking about at the moment. Teddy had gone on the Co-

lombia trip? He’d gone
without
me? When he’d talked to me about

getting my deposit back, I only assumed that he was getting his

back too.

“Oh my god,” I said as a sudden, terrible thought hit me. “Do

you think he went with her? That girl with the neck tattoo from

the pizza place? Do you?” I stared hard at Sophie, who wasn’t an-

swering fast enough.
“Do you?”

“So . . . not really over him then?” Sophie asked, looking at

me carefully.

I opened my mouth and then closed it again when I didn’t

come up with any kind of answer. A breeze blew in off the water,

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faster now, and it was staring to get chilly. “We should go in-

side,” I said, glad that we weren’t that far from Bruce’s.

Sophie nodded and we walked up to the house together. When

we’d brushed the sand off our feet and stepped inside, I closed

the glass door, shivering once again as I looked out at the in-

creasingly choppy water.

I made sure the door was latched before I turned and headed

upstairs. Because from what I could see, it looked like there was

a storm coming.

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When I woke up the next morning, the fi rst thing I heard

was the rain. It was pounding against my window, and as I