Chapter 38

I’m meeting Sienna for drinks at a bar a couple of blocks from my new place. She had to talk me into it because I felt weird about making her come all the way into Seattle, but she said she wanted to get a peek at the apartment, and besides, it was easier for her to come into the city than for me to leave it.

When I show up at the bar, Cucumber, Lani’s there, too, sitting at a table for three with Sienna.

My stomach gives a weird little skip. I don’t mind hanging out with Lani, but I don’t think I’d be able to stand it if she actually started talking about Jack, or if it came out that they’d hooked up again.

This has been a really tough week. As much as I tell myself I’m doing the right thing for myself and Gabe, there have been tears at every bedtime, and I don’t mean Gabe’s. He’s actually doing okay—after that first night when he and I cried together, he seems to understand the lay of the land, though he keeps asking when he’ll get to see Daddy again. It was wonderful, this morning, to finally be able to say “tomorrow night,” since this is Jack’s weekend, Friday and Saturday nights.

I’m dreading it, though. The hand-off. The old awkwardness, back in force. Driving away from Gabe and Jack when all I want to do is hole up with them.

Sienna stands and gives me a huge hug. “Hey, sister.”

The words tug on a barely scabbed-over wound. In a different version of the world, we would have been sisters.

Lani rises, too, and hugs me. “Don’t be mad.”

“Why would I be mad?” I pull back to give her a quizzical look.

Sienna puts a hand on my arm. “We have something to tell you,” she says, biting her lip. “I thought Lani should tell you herself.”

“Um, okay?”

“Just, sit down. And we ordered you a drink. Here.” Sienna pushes something pink across the table, and I pick it up and take a sip. Meanwhile, my mind is racing, trying to figure out what the heck could be going on. My instincts tell me it has to have something to do with Jack…and then suddenly I know. Lani’s going to tell me she and Jack are together.

And I’ll be okay with that. I have to be, right? He never promised me anything, and I knew from the very beginning—the first very beginning—what I was getting myself into.

So why does it feel like I can barely breathe?

“Just tell me,” I manage to eke out.

“You might be angry at us at first,” Sienna says.

At us? What does Sienna have to do with it?

Lani gives me a pleading look. “It’s my fault. I made her tell me.”

What? What’s going on?

“Sorry. We’re confusing the shit out of you, aren’t we?” Sienna asks.

I nod and take a big ol’ drink of my pink goodness, because I am really baffled now.

“Start at the beginning,” Sienna instructs Lani.

“Okay. So, Jack’s been—”

“He’s been impossible,” Sienna blurts. “Like, won’t talk to anyone, drinking like a fish…”

“Grumpy as hell,” Lani confirms. “And not in a needs-to-get-laid way. And I don’t mean I was trying,” she says, so quickly she almost trips over the words. “I wouldn’t do that to you. Friends before men.”

I’m honestly shocked to hear her say that. And a little, well, distrustful. Because why would this woman, who barely knows me, put loyalty to me before a guy she’s known since high school? Touchily, I say, “Jack and I are over. If we ever even were.”

“Oh, you were,” Sienna says fervently. “You definitely were.”

I’m starting to realize that whatever they want to tell me, it’s not the kind of bad news I was anticipating. I take a cautiously hopeful breath.

Lani crosses her arms. “He’s a fucking disaster. I’ve never seen him like this, Maddie. And I’ve known him a long time. A long time. I won’t lie to you. That boy makes the rounds. So I feel like I speak from a place of extensive knowledge when I say that he has never tanked like this.”

Sienna nods ferociously. “Cosign. He’s a wreck.”

“So, after a couple of days of watching him look like the grim reaper, I finally asked Sienna what the fuck was up. And she told me she was pretty sure it had something to do with you. Which, I will honestly say, I was not surprised to hear. I thought there was something pretty fishy about how he’s been ever since you moved in—”

“I didn’t move in.” My voice has, once again, come out testier than I intended. “I—I was just crashing.”

“Whatever.” Lani waves her hand. “He’s been a freak since you moved in, and I was starting to get the feeling something was going on, and so when Sienna told me the two of you were sleeping together, I was actually relieved—like, okay, he’s not dying of cancer, or whatever. But then when she told me that you’d moved out, I was all, like, what the fuck?”

“So I told her what you told me,” Sienna says apologetically. “I’m sorry. I usually am good with other people’s secrets, but before you decide you don’t want to be my friend anymore—”

“—or mine—” Lani adds.

“—just hear Lani out.”

“So she told me your story, and right away, I was like, oh, I bet that woman, with the shoes and the bra, that was Penelope Mills. She had the hots for Jack that summer. She spent, like, the whole summer trying to get into his pants, and she was bullshit when she found out that he was with you—”

“Not with me,” I amend. Penelope Mills. Now the blonde with the shoes and the bra has a name, and it doesn’t make me feel any better.

“With you,” Sienna insists.

“So, here’s the part where you get up and walk out,” Lani says.

“I’m not going to get up and walk out.”

“No, because it’s not your style. You’re too nice. But you might want to after I tell you the rest.” Lani takes a big breath. “I messaged her. On FB.”

“You—?”

“I messaged Penelope Mills. We were never really good friends, but we are Facebook friends, and I figured given the situation it wouldn’t be too weird to ask her if she’d ever slept with Jack—”

“You what?” I screech.

“I asked her if she’d ever slept with Jack.”

Lani looks like she wishes the floor would swallow her. And I’m mad enough that she’s probably right to wish it.

“I can’t believe you!”

But I’m gradually starting to calm down as I realize that they didn’t get me here and feed me a pink drink so they could tell me what I already know.

Or believed I knew.

And for the first time, it registers, what they were saying earlier. Jack is a mess. Drinking, sulking, not hooking up.

Jack misses me.

I feel a flutter of stupid but very real hope.

“He was a mess after you left the first time,” Sienna says quietly. “He always said you caught him with someone else and that’s why it didn’t work out between you, but it never added up for me. I just felt like there was more to the story. So when Lani said she knew Penelope and she could ask her, I told her to do it.”

“What—what did she say?”

My voice is so small, I almost don’t recognize it.

Lani lays her palm on the table in front of me. “Penelope went to Jack’s apartment to seduce him. I guess she started taking her clothes off, but he said he wasn’t interested. He said he was with you. He made her get dressed and he threw her out.”

“That’s what you saw,” Sienna tells me triumphantly. “Penelope striking out.”

Once again, I’m having a lot of trouble catching my breath.

“But—”

I try again. “But—I—he—why didn’t he just tell me that?”

They’re both shaking their heads.

“You’re sure. You’re sure Penelope wouldn’t lie about that?”

Lani makes a scoffing noise. “There is no way Penelope slept with Jack. Penelope and I were very competitive in high school about our conquests, and if she had a chance to tell me she’d slept with Jack, she would have jumped at the opportunity.”

My world is rearranging itself around me, and not in an entirely pleasing way. “He let me think—he was okay with me believing—”

“I think you and Jack have some things to talk about,” Sienna murmurs.

I tip the rest of my drink back and set the empty glass on the table with a solid thunk.

“That’s an understatement.”