I’m not about to argue with her, so I slide in and we pull away from the curb, a car honking behind us.
“So what happened?” Jeremy asks.
I tell them I didn’t find anything to incriminate anybody. And how Kendall and Seth found me instead. “So it was all for nothing. And now Seth is pissed at me.”
I expect them to laugh, or at least say I told you so. But neither of them do.
“I’m sorry,” Gen says, and Jeremy lifts his hand like he’s going to give my arm a squeeze but then thinks better of it and puts it back on the wheel.
We’re all quiet as we inch slowly back up through Manhattan, toward the Holland Tunnel.
“So why did you think his dad may be involved?” Gen asks then.
I hesitate.
This past year, ever since Jeremy and I broke up, I thought there was no one left on my side. And then Seth came along. And despite everything, he became the one person I could count on.
And now?
I look over at Jeremy’s profile. Look into the rearview mirror and catch Gen’s eyes.
What if my old friends are the people I should have trusted all along?
I remember thinking there was a tenderness in Seth’s eyes that night in the clearing. That that’s when it started between us, this weird, unnamable thing that bound us to each other.
But what if I’m remembering that wrong, too? What if there was no look in his eyes? What if it was just the cider?
How much can we really trust our memories?
So I tell them. About the phone I found. The messages on it. Patrice, who was no help at all. The gunshots in the woods. Seth’s car.
(Would Seth have sabotaged his own car? So we’d have to spend the night together? And get close again? Did he book that place with only one bed on purpose?)
Jeremy and Gen listen to everything in silence. We’re well out of the city by the time I’m done.
“Holy shit,” Gen says.
Jeremy shakes his head. “Why don’t you just take that phone to the cops?”
I knew Jeremy would be Mr. Do the Right Thing. “Because there’s no names on it, nothing to prove that it was even Fiona’s, much less that the guy she’s texting is Harold Montgomery.”
“Where is it?” Gen asks. “Can we see it?”
“I left it at home.”
A pause. “You really shouldn’t leave it where anyone can just find it.”
“No one even knows it exists.”
“Not even Seth?” Jeremy asks.
I shake my head. Then hesitate.
He did see it in my waistband that day. I thought he’d assumed it was the phone he’d given me. But I don’t actually know for sure.
A little while later, Jeremy decides to pull over at a rest stop on the side of the highway so he can grab something to eat. I’m actually surprised he’s lasted this long without food; he eats more than anyone I know.
“You guys coming in?” He looks from me to Gen.
“I’m not hungry,” I say.
“Me neither,” says Gen.
He gets out, leaving the two of us alone.
“Jeremy and I hooked up once before you ever got together,” she says.
I’m startled. I twist around in my seat to look at her. “What?”
She nods. “Summer before junior year. You were at Fiona’s recital. My mom came home drunk, and I was upset, so I went to Jeremy’s, and we started drinking and it just…happened.”
I don’t know what to say except, “Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because he wanted to keep hooking up. And honestly? So did I. But I said no.” She looks me in the eye. “I didn’t want it to mess up what we had.”
By we, I understand she means the three of us.
“I…never asked you to do that,” I say.
