guy cheated on me while we were on a break, if he so much as looked at another girl, no. He’d be donzo.” She chewed on her straw. “But Jeremy’s not some guy. You have a history together.”
“What happened to all that talk about scarring him?”
“Don’t get it twisted, I hate him to death right now. He effed up in a colossal way. But he’ll never be just some guy, not to you. That’s a fact.”
I didn’t say anything. But I knew she was right.
“I could still round up my sorority sisters and go slash his tires tonight.” Taylor bumped my shoulder. “Hmm? Whaddyathink?”
She was trying to make me laugh. It worked. I laughed for the first time in what felt like a long time.
chapter ten
After our fight the summer before senior year, I really thought that Taylor and I would make up fast, the way we always did. I thought it would blow over in a week, tops. Because what were we really even mad about? Sure, we both said some hurtful things—I called her a child, she called me a crappy best friend, but it wasn’t like we’d never had a fight before. Best friends fought.
When I got home from Cousins, I put Taylor’s shoes and her clothes in a bag, ready to take them over to her house as soon as she gave me the signal that we were done being mad at each other. It was always Taylor who gave the signal, she was the one who initiated making up.
I waited, but it didn’t come. I went to Marcy’s a couple of times, hoping I’d run into her and we’d be forced to talk things out. Those times I was at Marcy’s, she never came. Weeks passed. The summer was almost over.
Jeremiah kept saying the same thing he’d been saying for all of July and most of August. “Don’t worry, you guys will make up. You guys always make up.”
“You don’t get it, this isn’t like before,” I told him. “She wouldn’t even look at me.”
“All of this over a party,” he said, which pissed me off.
“It’s not over a party.”
“I know, I know—hold on a sec, Bells.” I heard him talking to someone, and then he came back on the phone. “Our hot wings just got here. Want me to call you back after I eat? I can be quick.”
“No, that’s all right,” I said.
“Don’t be mad.”
I said, “I’m not,” and I wasn’t. Not really. How could he understand what was going on with me and Taylor? He was a guy. He didn’t get it. He didn’t get how important, how really and truly vital, it was to me that Taylor and I start off our last year of high school together by each other’s side.
So why couldn’t I just call her, then? It was partly pride and partly something else. I was the one who had been pulling away from her this whole time, she was the one who had been holding on. Maybe I thought I was growing past her, maybe it was all for the best. We’d have to say good-bye next fall, maybe it would be easier this way. Maybe we’d been codependent, maybe more me on her than the other way around, and now I needed to stand on my own feet. This is what I told myself.
When I told this to Jeremiah the next night, he said, “Just call her.”
I was pretty sure he was just sick of hearing me talk about it, so I said, “Maybe. I’ll think about it.”
The week before school started, the week I usually came back from Cousins, we always went back-to-school shopping together. Always. We’d been doing it since elementary school. She always knew the right kind of jeans to get. We’d go to Bath & Body Works and get those “Buy Three, Get One Free” kind of deals, and then we’d come home and split everything up so we each had a lotion, a body gel, a scrub. We’d be set until Christmas, at least.
That year, I went with my mom. My mom hated shopping. We were waiting in line to pay for jeans when Taylor and her mom walked into the store carrying a couple of shopping bags each. “Luce!” my mom called out.
Mrs. Jewel waved and came right over, with Taylor trailing behind her wearing sunglasses and cutoff shorts. My mom hugged Taylor, and Mrs. Jewel hugged me and said, “It’s been a long time, honey.”
To my mom, she said,