to press him about it, but in the end he just shook his head. “Look,” he repeated, crumpling up his sandwich wrapper and tucking it into the plastic bag, “bottom line is, I think you’re an idiot for wanting to work with that dude. But if you do, you should convince him.”
“Oh yeah?” Now Colby smirked; he couldn’t help it. His brother sounded—well, actually, he sounded like Meg. “Just go to his house, throw myself on his mercy, embarrass myself?”
“There are worse things in life than embarrassing yourself,” Matt pointed out. “Besides, you already do that all the time.”
“Fuck you,” Colby said, but there was no heat behind it. Then, more quietly: “Maybe.”
“Think about it, at least.” Matt boosted himself up off the bumper. “I gotta get back to work.”
Colby nodded. Once, back when they were real little kids, Matt had pulled a nail out of the bottom of Colby’s foot in the woods behind their house without ever batting an eyelash. Colby didn’t know why he was thinking about that right now. “Sure thing,” he said, lifting the pop his brother had brought him in a makeshift salute. “See you.”
Once Matt was gone, Colby lay back on the hood of the car, the metal uncomfortably hot through the fabric of his T-shirt and the sunlight prickling the bare skin on his arms. The logical part of him knew Matt had no clue what he was talking about, at least as far as things went with Doug; in terms of embarrassing displays that would solve exactly nothing, he might as well have suggested Colby get fully naked and do cartwheels across the football field at next year’s Homecoming. Still, he could feel the idea lodged under his skin like an extremely stupid, ill-advised splinter.
For a second, he wished he could ask Meg what she thought about it, though it wasn’t like he didn’t already know exactly what she’d say. He remembered that night on the phone: I just want you to be happy, actually. He hadn’t believed her at the time, and he thought he was probably right not to; still, he guessed that didn’t mean she hadn’t had a point.
Maybe it wasn’t the dumbest idea in world to try again, he conceded grudgingly, the sound of her voice echoing deep inside his brain. Maybe it was only the second or third dumbest.
Colby dug the heels of his hands into his eyes and shook his head to clear it. Then he heaved himself up off the hood and got back in the car.
Thirty-Four
Meg
She found Emily at her locker before their free period on Tuesday, tossing old worksheets into one of the big recycling bins that had appeared in the hallways so people could start cleaning out their clutter. Graduation was only a few weeks away. “Can we go somewhere and talk for a minute?” Meg asked, jamming her hands into her back jeans pockets. “Like. Please?”
Emily rolled her eyes, huffed a breath out. Then all at once her shoulders sagged. “Fine,” she said, slamming her locker shut and heading for the senior entrance without looking back to see if Meg was following. “Hipster salads?”
Meg hesitated, just for a moment. “Why don’t we do coffee instead?”
Outside, it was warm and rainy, that steamy smell coming off the concrete in the mostly empty parking lot of Rise & Grind. “So,” Meg began once they’d gotten their lattes, sitting down at a wobbly, slightly sticky table by the window, “I’m not coming to Cornell.”
“Uh, yup,” Emily said crisply. “So I gathered.” She sighed and took a deep breath. “Like, I’ll be honest: I feel like I don’t even know you anymore.”
Meg nodded. “I think maybe you kind of don’t.”
Emily’s eyebrows shot up. “Seriously?” she asked, like she’d been expecting Meg to protest, and normally Meg would have. Even now she felt the urge to do it like a physical thing—to smooth everything over, to do what she could to make it okay. Instead, she took a deep breath and set her cup down on the table.
“My mom broke her ankle on Saturday night falling down the stairs because she’s an alcoholic and she was drunk,” she blurted, counting off on her fingers. “I’m, like, ninety-nine percent sure I’m in love with Colby, which probably doesn’t even matter at this point because I don’t think I’m ever going to see him again. And I don’t actually like the hipster salad place.”
Emily just stared at her for a second. Meg watched as she synthesized the