You Say It First - Katie Cotugno Page 0,38
the table and shooting Harrison a look as he swooped in for a sample. She knew Colby thought she was a ridiculous person, some spoiled duchess who sauntered around in a hermetically sealed bubble and had no idea how the world actually worked. And yeah, he was impossible sometimes—infuriating, even, in ways Meg wasn’t entirely sure she’d ever be able to overlook. Still, she’d thought they’d come to some kind of unspoken agreement, all those nights on the telephone. She’d even—God, this was embarrassing—thought maybe they were sort of flirting. It sucked to realize it hadn’t meant anything to him at all.
She was making change for a sophomore on the swim team when Emily trotted up to the side of the line. “How’s it going?” she asked, ponytail swishing cheerfully. Then, frowning across the booth: “Harrison, dude, seriously. That’s so gross.”
Meg snorted, wiping her sticky palms on the back of her jeans. “It’s been going pretty much like that, actually.” Then she grinned, buoyed by the sight of Em in her skinny jeans and student council hoodie, a pair of hearts in Overbrook blue and yellow painted on each of her cheeks. “You’re not working?”
Emily shook her head. “Industry downturn in the lemonade business,” she said solemnly. “They cut me loose. What about you? Done soon?”
Meg glanced at the clock on her phone, trying to ignore the sinking sensation in her stomach when she saw there still wasn’t anything from Colby. God, she needed to get a life. “Another couple of hours,” she reported. “Mason was floating around here somewhere, though, if you’re looking for company. He doesn’t have a shift until tomorrow.”
“Yeah, he said something about that.” Emily nodded, frowning a little. “Are you okay?” she asked quietly. “Like, besides the inherent personal trauma of being stuck in a confined space with sprinkle-snarfer over there?”
Meg laughed. “I’m okay,” she lied.
“Are you sure?” Emily pressed gently. “You look sad.”
“I do?” Meg shook her head, weirdly surprised that Em had noticed, which was dumb—after all, they always knew when stuff was going on with each other. She remembered the weeks after her parents split, when Emily had prowled around her like a lioness protecting a wounded cub, somehow able to magically intuit exactly what Meg needed at any given moment: a cliché and vaguely antifeminist rom-com watched in silence, the gross but admittedly satisfying distraction of a pore strip, a midnight trip to the Sonic drive-thru for cherry limeade and deep-fried mac and cheese balls. Occasionally, she’d needed all three at once. “I’m good,” she promised now, pulling a fresh cider doughnut from one of the boxes and handing it to Em on the sly. “I mean, I’ll be better when I no longer have to stand here and bear direct witness to Harrison breaking every health and safety code in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but generally fine.”
Emily nodded, like Fair point. “Listen,” she said, breaking the doughnut in two and handing half of it back so they could share, “will you come find me if you’ve got time to talk later?”
“What, tonight?” Meg felt her eyebrows crawl. “Yeah, why? You sound like Mason.” She grinned. “You’re not going to break up with me, too, are you?”
Emily’s eyes went saucer-wide. “What? No! I just—” She rocked back on her heels a bit, shaking her head. “Of course not. Like—you know you’re literally my favorite person in the entire universe, right?”
Meg frowned. “Of course I do. You’re mine.” She looked at Emily carefully. Did she know somehow? Had she been able to magically intuit that Meg was second-guessing the plan? It was only a matter of time, probably; they knew each other way too well for Meg to have gone on lying to her for this long. “Em,” she said, breathing in the sugar-scented air as she peered across the makeshift counter, thinking again of the stupid email burning a hole in her inbox. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing!” Emily promised, holding her doughnut half up in a salute and taking a step back toward the fairway. “I’ll see you later.”
Meg watched her go for a moment, uneasy, before busying herself brushing doughnut crumbs off the bright plastic tablecloth and adjusting their marker-on–poster-board sign. She was wrapping a napkin around a bear claw to hand to a guy on the debate team when her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out so fast she almost dropped it on the concrete, swallowing hard at the sight of Colby’s name on the screen.
Once, when