“Like you?” she shoots me a pointed glance.
“I pay attention to what’s important to me. Everyone has an agenda. Your coincidence is someone else’s plan,” I grin back at her, “you just don’t know it.”
She pinches her eyebrows together, “It was a coincidence, though. Meeting Bowen was a coincidence.” She’s trying to make it make sense, but it’s not working. “If I hadn’t answered the phone in my room, if I hadn’t gone down to the lobby at the exact time I did, I never would’ve met Bowen. And I wouldn’t be sitting here now, watching my life fall apart and feeling sorry for myself.”
I shoot her a side-eye, “I think you’re allowed to feel something after busting out a window to escape captivity. But I know what it’s like to obsess over what you think you should’ve done and when.”
“OK,” Brett pauses, taking in my words, “what kinds of things should you have done that you didn’t?”
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Evie
High School
For a brief moment in time, Bo is all that matters.
I feel myself starting to obsess over him like he’s this pillar of energy that I feed off of like a plant needs water. And it’s both terrifying and exhilarating, because I’m not like that, I don’t need a guy. I’ve never needed a boy to make me feel important. But I start to need him, because now I talk to Bo about anything and everything, and it seems like he can’t get enough of it, either.
At first, I don’t know why I’m so scared to tell Hildy about it. Maybe it’s because sometimes it’s hard to tell what’ll set her off. She’s my best friend, but I’ve seen what can happen when she feels slighted by someone, especially when it comes to relationships—hers or otherwise.
Or maybe it’s just because Bo is Bo and I am me and we live in different worlds where the only thing we share is Hildy. I’m also not one to rock the boat. I don’t want things to change.
But things do change, whether we want them to or not.
The day comes when I click on an email from UCLA and I immediately drop to my knees. I literally drop to my knees right in the middle of my kitchen because I made the softball team and they’re offering me a scholarship, paid in full. I’m going to college on the west coast and all the work I put in and all the choices I’ve made up to now have paid off. Not a day later, I’m bombarded with texts and DMs from the softball girls I met when I visited campus last fall. As if they have to convince me of anything.
I’m in. I’m so fucking in, in every sense of the word.
When I find out, I text my mom, I text my dad, I text Colson and Dallas, I text Hannah, and then I straight up drive to Hildy’s house and run screaming across her lawn. I burst into the house like a lunatic, shoving my phone in her face while I continue hyperventilating.
Hildy screams. I scream. We jump up and down like five-year-olds at Disney World.
She knows how much all of this means to me. And so does Bo. He knows all of it because I’ve spent hours talking to him about how much I want to play ball and how scared I am that I won’t get to. He tells me it’ll happen and I need to quit worrying, that everything will work out how it’s supposed to. Bo doesn’t say things like that. But, now, he says things like that to me.
Except, now, I don’t know whether any of it was true. Because when Bo walks through the door and sees Hildy and I losing our shit in the kitchen, he just stands in the doorway like a statue, watching us, his expression unchanged.
And he stays that way.
Suddenly, all his texts stop, all his calls stop, and his continuous presence abruptly ends, replaced by the way things used to be. Maybe I downplayed the possibility of UCLA so much in order to steel myself for rejection that he didn’t believe it would actually happen. So, now, Bo acts like he hates me to make himself feel better. Except he never sticks to it. There will be moments, flashes of time where he forgets that he’s supposed to be angry with me and, soon, I never know which Bo I’m going to get.
Then, a couple weeks later, something else happens, something totally unexpected. And everything changes—again. My unassuming and well-ordered life feels like it’s descending into chaos. Except, this time, I can’t tell anyone about it. Bo’s not speaking to me and there’s no way I can tell Hildy or Col. The only one I tell is Hannah, and she’s the only reason I’m not going completely insane right now.
It’s stupid, but I also hate the uncertainty of the next couple of months. Are we still going to see Evanescence this summer? I don’t even know if we’re still going to prom together. You’d think that would be the last thing on my mind, but it’s not. And it’s like the mere act of thinking about it brings about turmoil, even while I’m sitting in English minding my own business.
“I showed Bo Garrison a picture of my dress. He said it was hot.” I stop scribbling notes about Midsummer Night’s Dream when I hear Asher Avery’s voice across the aisle. “Then he asked if I had a date yet.”
“Does he have one?” someone asks from behind her.
I glance at her out of the corner of my eye, my heart pounding with dread.
“I don’t think so,” Asher ponders, “he’s supposed to be at Leland’s tomorrow and asked if I’d be there.” She smiles salaciously, “So, I guess we’ll see…” I shudder at the sound of her sing-song voice overflowing with innuendo.
After another five minutes, I just get up and leave to sit in my car and cry until the end of class. Bo doesn’t even have to tell anyone he dumped me because I don’t exist anymore.
I start spending more time up in Dire Ridge at Dad and Christy’s house on the weekends. Being with Col and Dallas and stepping into their life makes me forget my problems, if only for 24 to 48 hours until I have to go back to Canaan for school on Monday.
I wish Col went to my school. I wish I could tell him half of what’s happened, but he’s still angry about what Bo did the last time they raced. I’d rather stand in the kitchen eating brownies out of the pan with him, anyway.
“Fuck him,” he seethes with disgust, “the only reason he even made it to the bridge is because no one wants to face the wrath of Pappy Garrison.”
“Yeah,” I mutter, picking a brownie out of the pan, “he can be a dick sometimes.”
Col shoves a brownie in his mouth, “Y’all have a fight?”
“No,” I sigh, “I think he’s—” I cut myself off, but not before I realize I’ve already said too much.
When I look up, Col’s chewing his fudgy mouthful of brownie, staring at me. I’m about to blurt out some idiotic attempt at damage control, but then I see the corner of his mouth curl ever so slightly. I know that look, the one he usually has when he’s messing with me.
“You know...” I say slowly, furrowing my brow, “but how do you know?”
“Lucky guess,” Col shoots me a side-eye, “you almost let yourself get arrested so you could ride with him after the race, it’s not fucking rocket science.”
Part of me is glad he figured it out. At least some of it, anyway.
“Are you mad?” I ask apprehensively.
“No,” he shakes his head, “I’m not mad. But if you just told me that you wanted a guy who drives fast cars, I could’ve found you someone better.”
