Colby nodded. “Maybe,” he hedged. “We’ll see what my face is looking like, how about.”
“Send me a picture,” Joanna instructed, turning on her heel and heading back across the parking lot. “I’ll let you know if you’re too scary for young audiences!” She was gone before he could think of a reply.
Back in the car, he saw Doug had called while he’d been in the pharmacy. He’d called yesterday after their breakfast, too, to ask a question about Colby’s availability, but with everything that had happened with Matt, Colby hadn’t gotten around to calling him back. He sat there for a moment now, thumb hovering over Doug’s name in his contact list, before dropping the phone in the cup holder and turning the key in the ignition. He’d do it later, he promised himself, then pulled out of the parking lot and headed home to take a nap.
Twenty-One
Meg
That night, Meg was sitting at her desk eating a granola bar and working on her independent study—she’d gotten an extension, and permission to research Maxine Waters instead—when her phone dinged beside her with a text. I really miss you, Emily had written. Can we hang out this week?
Meg frowned. We hang out all the time, she typed, then deleted it letter by careful letter and told herself not to be such a bitch. After all, it wasn’t like she didn’t know what Emily was getting at: they may have had almost every class together, and they may have shared a bag of Pirate’s Booty in the cafeteria every day, but they hadn’t seen each other outside school since last Friday with Mason at Cavelli’s. Meg had texted both of them when she got back from Colby’s to apologize, to promise she’d just been freaked out about her dad’s engagement and everything was totally fine, but still there was something weird and chafe-y about their friendship the last few days, like a shoe rubbing a blister on her heel.
Now she sat back in her desk chair, her eyes landing on Colby’s gray hoodie slung over the armchair across the room. It still smelled like him: a little like Dial soap and bonfire and a little bit like the hamper. She’d worn it to bed every night since she’d gotten back from Ohio.
I need to get a dress for my dad’s wedding, she told Emily finally. Actually, the wedding wasn’t until Memorial Day, but it felt like a good low-stakes activity, the kind of thing they could do without talking too much about Mason or Cornell or anything else. Shopping tomorrow?
They went to the Short Hills Mall after school, loading themselves down with dresses and cramming themselves into a tiny Nordstrom fitting room just like they had before junior prom last year, both of them trying as hard as they could to act like everything was okay. “Oh my God,” Emily said, as Meg pulled a long blue dress off the hanger and over her head. “Did I tell you Andrew walked in on my mom and dad having sex the other night?”
Meg whipped around so fast she almost busted a seam, her eyes wide. Andrew was Emily’s brother, a sophomore at Overbrook with big ears and a goofy smile. “No!”
“He showed up in my room looking like he’d just seen the freaking Babadook,” Emily said with a grimace. “I guess he just, like, barged in there looking for clean laundry and got an eyeful of my dad’s bare ass? I don’t even know.”
“I mean,” Meg said, trying not to giggle and mostly failing. “I guess it’s nice to know that your parents are still, you know, attracted to each other?” She snorted. “You know, like . . . theoretically?”
“Is it, though?” Emily asked, and by now both of them were really starting to lose it. “Is it really?”
They wound up doubled over laughing, the weirdness dissolving between them as they cackled so loudly the saleswoman rapped on the door and demanded to know if everything was okay. They were finally pulling themselves together when Emily frowned. “Wait a second,” she said, reaching out and tugging the strap of Meg’s dress aside. “Is that a hickey?”
“What?” Meg startled. “No.” Shit. Meg hadn’t even realized hickeys were a real thing until she’d seen it in the mirror when she got home from Colby’s three days ago, her whole body lighting up like a pinball machine at the memory of his mouth on her neck. It had faded since then, but not all