A cool breeze came off the ocean, but the fire warmed my shins. Bundled into my sweater, I watched Corbin, his brother, and Val knock a Hacky sack around with their sneakers. It was about dark now and hard to keep track of the sack. Val had smoked half a blunt and kept missing it altogether. Anytime they got too close to the fire, I tensed.

Val had hijacked the boom box someone’d brought with one of her infamous mixed CDs. “Fade Into You” set a dreamy, romantic scene, stoking the embers of my heartache. It was as if I’d been walking through mud and fog since Tiffany’s announcement. I held my heels by their straps, my bare feet heavy in the sand. I couldn’t quite remember the words she’d used or her expression as she’d said them. If there’d been a tremor of uncertainty in her voice, if she’d checked Dad’s expression at any point. Did it matter? There was the Ritz, and Dad’s approval, and Manning’s consent, and I knew without a doubt, Tiffany would never let those things go.

So I had to.

A future I’d known so surely to be true began to slip away.

I startled when the Hacky sack hit my calf. I set down my shoes to pick it up, catching sight of the friendship bracelet around my ankle. I’d made it for Manning with love, and he didn’t even want it. What was I holding on to it for? I loosened it to work it off my foot.

“You’re supposed to send it back,” Corbin called.

I glanced up. The three of them waited. I abandoned the anklet and kicked the Hacky sack in their direction, but it landed in the fire.

“Lake,” the three of them cried.

“Sorry. I’m sorry.”

Corbin shook his head like I was the most adorable thing. He trudged over to where I stood, creaked open the lid of the blue cooler, and held out a beer. “You might as well since I can’t,” he said.

“Why can’t you?” I asked.

“Jesus, Lake. I’m driving you home. When have I ever taken a sip of anything with you in my car?”

Corbin. Why did he have to be such a gentleman, even when my mind was so wrapped up in someone else? I owed him more than I gave him. “Go ahead,” I told him. “I’ll drive us.”

“Then you should definitely drink. It’ll be an improvement.”

Val laughed, but I wasn’t in the mood to even force a polite smile. I didn’t feel like drinking. Didn’t feel like being here. I wanted to be back where Manning was, even if being around him was like sticking a finger in an open wound.

Corbin kissed my temple. “I’m sorry. I was only kidding. I’m sure it’s totally normal to sideswipe stationary objects two out of two lessons.”

It was true, but only because Corbin had done something to make me laugh. “You were distracting me.”

“Was I?” He slid his hand over my backside and squeezed. Just like prom night, my knees buckled, my breath caught. “It’s like pressing a button,” he whispered in my ear.

I hated how my body reacted to him, but at least I knew my pleasure wouldn’t always be bound to a man I couldn’t have.

“Why don’t you two just get married already?” Vickie asked.

Corbin dropped to one knee, looking up at me. “Marry me, Kaplan. Would you? I promise to make you real happy. At least twice a night.”

Everyone laughed. I even smiled. God, if anyone could pull me out of a funk, it was Corbin. If only love was as easy as that.

But it wasn’t. I looked over Corbin’s head at some movement in the distance, squinting into the dark at the big, shadowy figure headed our way from the parking lot. Manning. The man who, hours earlier, had joked with me about guest plates and then stood silently by while my heart broke. Everything that’d happened the last couple hours sat dangerously close to the surface. I didn’t know how I’d say all the things I needed to, but I’d never be able to stand here with him and pretend everything was normal.

I went around Corbin to meet Manning, to stop him from coming over here and making me look even more stupid. My nose tingled, words like betrayal and how could you and stop this bubbling up my throat as I pushed a few steps through the sand . . . and stopped where I was. Tiffany was on his back, waving at us. He touched her, carried her, kissed her, committed to a life with her and left nothing for me. It should’ve been me. I wanted it to be me so badly. Their playfulness shattered something in me, and I hiccupped, jolting some tears onto my cheeks.

A hand on my elbow pulled at me. “Lake,” Val said, tugging me back. “Come on, Lake.”

“No.”

“Come on. Come here.”

My body shook, my chest rattling. Val pulled me hard, away from the fire, away from everyone. “What . . . is it?” I couldn’t speak. It took everything I had not to burst into tears. “What do you want?”

“It’s him, isn’t it?” Val asked. “He’s the one. Your sister’s boyfriend.”

I shook my head hard. “No. He’s not.”

She wrapped me in a hug and squeezed me so hard, some of my tears splashed onto her shoulder. “I see it so clearly now. You should’ve told me.”

“You would’ve thought I was awful.”

“No way.” She swayed us back and forth. “You’re my best friend. My right to judge you was automatically revoked when you earned that title.”

Relief filtered through me. Finally, somebody knew, and not just somebody—a real friend. “I saw him first. I knew him first.” My silent tears became quiet, snotty sobs. “I loved him first.”

“Does he know?”

I nodded into her neck.

She pulled me away by my shoulders. Her eyes were bloodshot but deadly serious. “He does? And how does he feel about you?”

I shrugged pathetically. “I thought I knew . . . I thought we . . . but he’s going to marry her.”

“You thought what—that he loved you back?”

“He does, I know he does,” I said. “But he won’t admit it. He pretends he doesn’t.”

“Oh my God. Are you sure?”

“Yes, but she’s my sister,” I said. “What choice do I have?”

“Do you really love him, Lake? Really, really love him, the kind of love that makes Rhett pine for Scarlett or Miss Piggy terrorize Kermit?”

I hiccupped again, this time with a laugh. “Only him. Only ever him.”

She sucked in a breath. “You have to tell him how you feel.”

Val was a closet romantic. She wanted there to be some resolution I couldn’t give her. It wasn’t that simple. “I can’t. I’ve tried, but he won’t hear it.”

“How long have you loved him?”

I couldn’t raise my answer above a whisper. “Two years.”

“If you live to be eighty, that’s over sixty more years you have to live wondering what might’ve happened if you’d spoken up. It’ll hurt when you rip off the Band-Aid, but only for a short time. Compared to sixty years, it’ll be nothing.”

Sixty years of this hell. I didn’t expect the pain of losing him to ever go away, but surely it would dull. Surely it would get easier. But she was right. I didn’t want to live that long wondering what-if? “If I tell him, I’m betraying my own sister, Val. How can I do that?”

She heaved a sigh. “I don’t have a sister but if you ever tried to steal my fiancé, even if you truly didn’t believe I loved him, I’d scratch your eyes out. Your sister is flighty. She’ll turn it into drama and then she’ll forget all about it.” She tapped a fingertip on my shoulder, twisting her lips. “Or . . . it’s possible she’d never forgive you.”

It was more than possible. Like that night in the truck, she’d have something to hold over me for life. Something far worse than anything she’d ever done to me.

“I guess the question is whether he’s worth it,” she added.

The truth hurt. It hurt in my chest, and it hurt coming out, because I didn’t want to feel this way, but I did. “He is.”

“If he’s your soul mate, then he’s yours. He can’t have two soul mates—it’s a fact. You deserve a happy ending, even if it means you have to be selfish and greedy.”

“You’re stoned, and you’re a film buff obsessed with happily-ever-after. Can I really take your advice?”

“Then don’t,” she said. She sounded serious.

I shouldn’t tell Manning how I felt. I knew I shouldn’t. But if I didn’t speak up before the wedding, I definitely couldn’t tell him after. “What if this is my only chance?” I asked.

“Then do.”

The acoustic guitar song on the stereo strummed the painfully taut strings keeping my heart from bursting. “What song is this?” I asked.

She closed her eyes, listening. “‘Into Dust,’” she said softly. “Also Mazzy Star.”

A commotion by the fire made us both turn. Manning and Corbin stood a foot apart, arguing.

“Don’t worry about me, and I won’t worry about you,” Corbin said to Manning as Val and I approached.

“Not worried about you, but you’re driving Lake, and that does concern me,” Manning said. He waited as Corbin took a long, pointed gulp of his Budweiser. “But go ahead and finish your beer,” Manning said smugly. “Tiffany and I will take Lake home.”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m not driving her. She’s driving me. So you can shove—”

“She doesn’t even have her license—”

Corbin raised his voice, taking a step forward. “Shove your self-righteous, judgmental bullshit—”

“Whoa,” Tiffany said. “No need to get worked up, Corbin. He’s just looking out for her.”

“You’d think I was the fucking criminal between us,” Corbin spat.

Manning met Corbin’s stride, getting in his face. Despite Corbin’s height, next to Manning, he looked like the teenage boy he was. “I don’t care if I’m FBI’s Most fucking Wanted,” Manning said. “I’m not going to stand by and let you put her in danger. You bet your ass I’ll always call you out on that.”

“Yeah?” Corbin asked, leaning in dangerously close. “Why?”

Heavy with meaning, the word sat fat and unsubtle between the four of us—why? A question I was pretty sure Corbin had been wanting to ask since the night he’d walked me back to my cabin and Manning had gotten upset about it. Why should Manning care what I do?

“Because she’s my girlfriend’s little sister,” Manning said.

“Is that all?” Corbin asked.

“Shut up, Corbin,” Tiffany said, pushing between them. “You’re being a drunk idiot.”

Corbin picked up my heels. “Am I drunk, Lake? Am I an idiot?”

They waited for me to answer, Corbin and Manning’s eyes intently on me. I didn’t know where my loyalty should lie, but at that moment, it wasn’t with Manning or Tiffany. I went to Corbin and slipped one arm around his waist as I placed a possessive hand on his chest. “No to both.”

Corbin’s heart beat strongly against my palm. Manning pushed up his sleeves, his forearms tense and veiny.

“Don’t,” Corbin said under his breath so only I could hear.

I looked up at him. “What?”

“You know what. Don’t use me to get what you want.” He peeled my arms off him and walked away as I stood there. Perfect. Just what I needed to end this night, being humiliated in front of Manning and Tiffany by the one person who rarely let me down.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Tiffany said to me, glancing back at Manning. “Is that okay? I need to talk to her about something.”

He took a pack of cigarettes from his hoodie pocket and smacked it against his palm, looking between both of us. “Fine by me. Don’t go far.”

Tiffany looped her elbow with mine to walk down to the water. It felt like cozying up with the enemy, except that Tiffany’s shampoo and scent and hair and body were as familiar to me as my own. I needed the kind of comfort only a sister could give me, but I also didn’t want to go anywhere with her right then.

“Everything okay with you and Corbin?” she asked.

“There is no me and Corbin.” I sniffed. “You know that.”

“But he’s so perfect for you, Lake. You need to try harder.”

“He’s not . . .” Manning. “He doesn’t . . .”

“So who does?” she asked. “Aren’t there any guys at school?”

“They’re boys.”

“If you don’t practice with boys, how will you handle men?” We stopped walking and she glanced back at the fire, presumably at Manning. I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to know where he was. How he was. Always. Even while he was shredding my heart. Manning looked back at us as he talked to one of Corbin’s brothers.

“I mean, I don’t know why you don’t just go for it,” she said. “He obviously loves you.”

My breath caught in my throat before I realized she was looking beyond Manning, at Corbin. “This is what you wanted to talk to me about?” I asked, annoyed.

“No. Yes. I don’t know.” She snuggled closer to me against a gusty breeze. “We haven’t talked much since I moved out.”

“We have dinner together every Sunday.”

“You know what I mean.”

It wasn’t the distance causing our rift. Did she know that? Did she know what she was doing to me, how much it hurt to even look at her right now? I could barely swallow their kissing and cuddling in front of me, the knowledge they were having sex, and now . . . she was taking forever from me. It didn’t belong to her, and she had to know that, even if I hadn’t said it aloud. I might’ve kept my love for Manning in the dark, but it was as impossible to ignore as the sun. “Do you love him?” I whispered.

Either she didn’t hear or pretended not to. She smiled. This time, she was looking at Manning. “You know what he told me in the car? Dad’s so happy about the wedding that he might try to make it happen this summer.”

My mind reeled. My thoughts had been spinning since the party, and I wasn’t sure I could take much more. A wedding, this summer? My dad, happy? I wanted to take my arm back from her, but I was afraid I’d sink to my knees. “But it’s already summer.”

“If Dad’s offering up the Ritz, I’m taking it before he changes his mind. We have a lot of work to do. I haven’t been this excited to do anything in a while, probably not since high school. First, you and I should take a trip to Barnes and Noble to clean out their bridal magazines. We’ll need to stock up on Post-its to color-code the dresses by length, neckline, fabric . . .”

I billowed my sweater with my free hand to get some air against my skin. “Why can’t Sarah help?” I asked. “You always say how bad my fashion sense is.”

“I mean, she can.” Tiffany looked at her pink-polished toes as she dug them into the sand. “I just thought you might want to.”

The disappointment in her voice was evident even to me. Any other time, any other man, yes—I would’ve been happy to see Tiffany this way. More than happy. Normally everything was dumb or bogus or uncool or pathetic to her, yet on the biggest day of her life, she wanted to include me. But this was Manning. My Manning.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t,” I said. “Maybe there’s some other way I can help.”

Tiffany laughed so loudly, Manning, Corbin, and everyone else looked over at us. “Don’t worry. I think we can find a few things for the M.O.H. to do.”

“M.O.H.?” I asked.

“Duh. Maid—of—honor.”

The maid of honor . . . Tiffany’s maid of honor?

Me?