Monday, July 11

FLORENCE

Aubrey!” Rae walked in as Aubrey grabbed an armful of clothes and threw them on her bed. Her backpack lay open across the pillows.

Rae didn’t know why her brain picked now, of all moments, to realize this, but Aubrey must have bought the bag especially for this trip. It was bright and sturdy and clearly brand-new. Unlike Rae’s, which she’d dragged around for years. Rae could picture it now: Aubrey at a store, trying out new backpacks; Aubrey sitting at her computer, looking up which ones were the most comfortable and the best for train travel. She really had put so many hours of thought and work into this trip.

Rae closed the door. “Aubrey,” she said again, “stop. What are you doing?”

“I’m leaving.” Aubrey tossed an olive-green tank top onto her clothes heap.

“It’s two in the morning. There aren’t any trains leaving now.”

“So I’ll go to the station and wait until there is one.”

Rae held up both hands. “Remember the last night we were in London? When you said you were worried about being axe-murdered? Doesn’t spending all night in an abandoned train station seem like a pretty decent way of making that happen?”

Aubrey looked under the bed, pulling out a few pairs of socks and underwear. “I’m not going to get murdered. That wasn’t an actual worry.”

“Dude, of course it was. And now I’m worried about it for you. Plus, you can’t just leave like this. You can’t pull a Jonah on us.”

“I’m not pulling a Jonah. I’m not going to make out with Leah in Amsterdam.”

Rae pretended to gag. “That is so not an image I wanted in my head.”

Aubrey yanked at the zipper on her bag. Rae had to think fast. It was obvious she and Aubrey weren’t on great terms, but that didn’t mean Rae thought she should leave. Leaving was so extreme. And impulsive. It wasn’t what Aubrey deserved after everything she’d done to get them all here.

Rae’s eye snagged on the nightstand, where Aubrey’s passport sat by a bottle of Clara’s perfume. She grabbed it and held it over her head. “There!” she said. “You can’t go anywhere without this.”

“Rae.” Aubrey scowled. “Stop being a child.”

“I’m not.” Rae stretched her arm farther, keeping the passport out of Aubrey’s reach. “I just want to talk to you for a minute.”

Aubrey let go of the zipper and crossed her arms. “Fine. Let’s talk.”

Rae shifted the passport behind her and backed up against the door, just in case. “What’s this all about? Is it because of Jonah and Leah?”

“Of course not.” Aubrey nudged a flip-flop across the floor with her toe. “I don’t give a crap about Leah.”

“But Jonah must have something to do with this. Are you mad at him for leaving? Or for coming back? Or is it like a Venn diagram of those two things? Come on, Aubs. Talk me through it.” Her hands were starting to go numb from being squished behind her, but there was no way she was giving in. Seeing Aubrey getting ready to run off had freaked her out. It had made her wonder if tonight was the last chance they would have to get their relationship right.

“I’m upset about Jonah,” Aubrey admitted. “He doesn’t want to be my boyfriend anymore, which is good news, because I don’t want to be his girlfriend, either. But that basically means we’ve been lying to each other for months. Everyone’s been lying to everyone. Including you.”

Rae exhaled through her nose. “What did I do?”

“You didn’t tell me about Clara.”

“Oh.” Rae’s arms slackened a little. “Yeah, I did do that.”

Aubrey rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “You’re in love with one of our best friends, and you kept that from me for how long? Days? Months? Years?”

“Um. I never said anything about being ‘in love’ with her.”

“But you are.”

“How on earth do you know that?!”

“Because. You’re my best friend. I know how you act around girls you like, and I know how you act around girls you really like, and you never acted either of those ways around Clara. Which means you must really, reeeeallly like her.”

Rae squirmed. It wasn’t news that Aubrey understood her better than anyone else did, but it was still disturbing to think she’d seen through Rae so easily. Especially since this felt so incredibly private. “I don’t know.” Rae scrambled to change the subject. “Is this because you’re in love with Gabe?”

Aubrey sat on the bed, crossed her arms over her legs, and put her head down on top of them. The light from another apartment building bent through the shutters and over her body.

“Holy shit,” Rae said. “Is that a yes? Are you saying we fell in love at the same time?”

“I’m not saying anything.” Aubrey’s voice was muffled.

“Holy shit!” Rae said again. “This is like if our periods synced. But so much weirder.”

“I just want to go home. I miss my room and my parents and my stuff. I hate tiny bottles of shampoo, and I really hate these beds.”

Rae wondered if the wine was starting to get to her, or if this bizarre long day was finally wearing them both down. She pushed herself off the door and sat with Aubrey. “This whole Clara-and-me thing, it’s—kind of weird to talk about. And it’s still new. Nothing even happened till Prague.”

“But you had a thing for her.” Aubrey lifted her head, her hair falling from her ponytail. There were red wine splatters all over her shirt. “You must have. It explains why you never mentioned liking anyone this year. And why you were so dismissive of everyone you kissed.”

“I guess.” Rae rapped the passport against her thigh. “But people are allowed to keep a few secrets. It’s what humans do.”

“I don’t. Not with you, anyway. I’ve told you every embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me. I told you about stress-crying in the middle of my calculus final. And back in June, when the musical ended, I told you about kissing Gabe.”

Rae felt a brief surge of irritation. “Yeah. And you told me all about you guys going to Rome together. And about making out in Berlin. You didn’t spare me any detail.”

“That’s different!” Aubrey cried. “I wanted to tell you those things, but I—I couldn’t. We haven’t even been speaking. And I was confused. I didn’t understand why Gabe and I kept kissing.”

“Because you’re into him.”

“Yeah.” Aubrey dropped her head to her knees again. “Thanks.”

Rae ran her hand over the shaved patch at the back of her head. This wasn’t going as well as she’d hoped.

“I’m so unbelievably sick of change,” Aubrey said. “I hate that it’s happening all at once.”

“It isn’t,” Rae said. “You used to wear Adventure Time T-shirts every week and watch High School Musical obsessively. You don’t do that anymore.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Aubrey stood up, the floorboards murmuring. “That’s just growing up. It’s gradual. I tried to feel ready for graduation. And I tried to feel ready for this summer—I genuinely wanted my life to get so much bigger than it was. But I thought, when that happened, we’d be in it together.”

“Well, that’s ridiculous. We can’t be each other’s security blankets forever.”

“Which you made extra sure of. By choosing to go to Australia.”

“Well, where did you want me to go?” Rae couldn’t hide her exasperation. “New York?”

“Yes!” Aubrey said. “Of course I did!”

Rae shut up. What the hell? Aubrey had never said anything like that to her before. They’d never—never—talked about going to college together.

“It was what we planned.” Aubrey played with the ponytail holder around her wrist. “When we watched those old movies that Lucy likes. We talked about riding sleeper trains all over Europe and getting an apartment somewhere so we could be roommates. We were going to spend every summer in a different country.”

“But we were kids! We also talked about living in Antarctica and rescuing penguins.”

“Yeah.” Aubrey’s voice was almost pleading. “But that doesn’t mean it was all bullshit. Does it?”

Rae feigned an interest in the painting on the wall: the silent, unmoving fields, the sun frozen at midday. Of course it was bullshit. It had always been bullshit. Something fun to think about, something fun to dream about, but not something that was supposed to be real.

The last time they’d talked like that, they’d been twelve, maybe thirteen. And they were eighteen now.

Eighteen was when Rae was supposed to give up high school and her friends and her whole life in London. It was when she was supposed to bulldoze over everything and dive headfirst into whatever came next. Exactly the way her mom had.

But she wasn’t stupid—she’d always known that would be tough. So she’d tried to harden herself to the fear, tried to tell herself she didn’t feel it so much.

Rae thumbed through Aubrey’s passport. It was strange, because now she could see that Aubrey and Clara were pretty similar in one way. They both didn’t want to lose everything they had now. They both didn’t want to throw away their home and all the important memories they’d collected over the last few years. Clara had changed Rae’s mind about so many things. She’d made Rae understand that she wanted to hold on, too—to those small, wonderful hopes she had for her future, to all the moments she’d found with Clara.

But, for some reason, Rae hadn’t been trying to keep Aubrey in the same way. She’d been doing exactly what Aubrey had accused her of doing—pushing her aside, closing her out. And at the same time, she’d been pulling Clara closer.

Because she wasn’t ready to let go of Clara yet.

But, maybe, she was ready to let go of Aubrey.

“Don’t worry,” Aubrey said. “I’m not going to leave now.” But her voice sounded cold and flat.

Rae could only nod and stand up. She put Aubrey’s passport on the bed and left the room, closing the door and listening to it click—putting even more walls between them.