keep for himself. Avery wanted what Ryan wanted: to own a woman’s body. To control her any way he could.
“No,” she says again, and this time it comes out in a raw, hurt whisper. “No. No. No.”
But the world doesn’t care what Lulu has to say about it—whether she hates it. If it seems like it’s trying to kill her. Good, it’s probably thinking. You weren’t tough enough anyway, then.
Lulu knows what she wants, now: to look the indifferent universe in the eye, defiant, and triumphant and recklessly, impossibly, alive.
Despite it. Despite everything.
Lulu looks around at the orange grove, her little tiny oasis of quiet in the big busy noisy city night. She remembers standing here with Owen, plucking fruit from the trees, letting their heaviness tug them off the branch and into her open palms. That was when she first started to understand that she was really, really going to lose him. That was the day after she met Cass for the first time. That was a different life, she thinks, and yet here she is again, her bare feet in the same earth.
The world is indifferent to her, and that means she can do whatever she wants as long as she’s in it.
“Fuck you,” Lulu says to the night. She wipes her eyes on the sleeve of her sweater. She turns and goes inside.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
BEA DRESSES LULU up for the party. That’s the condition: Lulu will go with her, but only if Bea is responsible for her outfit, and for driving, and for making Lulu feel like less of an ass for being there.
“Act like everything’s normal, right?” Bea said when she proposed it. “And, like, fuck anyone who wants to mess with you.”
“Didn’t you say I shouldn’t do things I didn’t want to do?” Lulu replied.
“Ugh,” Bea said. “Technically, I did.”
But Lulu doesn’t want to be home alone, so she lets Bea put her in one of her dresses—something loose and flowy, which turns perilously tight and short on Lulu’s curves—and get her in the car. She’s actually almost looking forward to it by the time they arrive. Whatever it is when she gets there, at least she’ll know. It can’t be as bad as she’s imagining. Right?
Even thinking that was asking for trouble, she realizes, when she walks into Jules’s house and the first person she sees is Sloane.
“Um,” Bea says.
Jules introduced them. Jules introduced them at that party in August. He’s how Sloane came into her life in the first place, so Lulu should have known. She shouldn’t have been surprised, but Lulu’s been so distracted that she forgot to worry about this single particular thing, so of course this is the thing that’s happening. Sloane Mori is sitting on a couch next to Patrick, drinking what looks like a rum and Coke.
She sees Lulu and she smiles and then she looks away, and Lulu has no idea how to respond. She knows what she wants to do, though, which is what she does: walks into the den where they’re hanging out, sits down in one of the chairs, and pours herself a drink. She swallows it in two gulps and makes herself another.
“Hey-o, Shapiro,” Patrick says. “What is up.”
“Feel you, girl,” Sloane says. “That’s exactly the mood. Also. Um. Hey.”
They haven’t seen each other since That Whole Thing happened. They haven’t spoken since they came downstairs at the party where they met, and one of the boys said, “Rude of you to let the internet watch, but not the people who are actually here.”
For an infinite, split-second moment, Lulu didn’t know what he meant; then he held up his phone, and she did. She fumbled her phone out of her pocket and deleted the video, and even then, fingers shaking, nausea roiling through her, she knew, instinctively, that she was already way too fucking late.
“Hey,” Lulu says to Sloane now.
Bea comes and balances herself on the arm of Lulu’s chair. She nudges Lulu with an elbow. “Bartender,” she says. “Make me one?”
“Sure,” Lulu says.
She busies herself pouring while Bea introduces herself to Sloane, as if she doesn’t know who she is. Rich shows up and distracts Bea; Jules and Cristina Vega and Faye Samson arrive with him, and then there’s more people to say hi to and drinks to pour and sip and distractions, and somehow Lulu is at a party, a party with Sloane, and it’s—fine, she thinks. Somehow it seems like everything is actually kind of almost fine.
* * *
Bea disappears with