“So, are you and Eli fighting or something?” Claire says as we are waiting for the ferry, and I fold my fingers up tight and sink down into the seat.
“Hey,” she says, when I don’t say anything. “Abby, are you—?”
“I’m fine.”
“Bul shit,” she says. “What happened?”
I force myself to talk because it’s Claire and I trust her, and I don’t finish the story until we are on the ferry and the river is churning beneath us.
When I do, I look over at her.
To my surprise, she’s looking at me like I’m the dumbest person she’s ever met.
“What?” I say.
“‘I don’t know what to do?’” she says. “What a load of crap, Abby. You tel him you want someone to want to be with you, to kiss you—and he says that, he actual y fucking kisses you and says that, and you say you don’t know what to do and then wonder why he left? How stupid are you?”
“I’m not—”
“Yeah, you’re not stupid,” she says. “You’re just like your sister, though. You’re so sure things have to be a certain way that you’l do anything to make sure they are. God forbid you be honest with yourself and him, right? God forbid you say ‘I want to kiss you too.’”
“I figured that was implied by me kissing him back. I mean—”
“Oh, sure, because there’s nothing like putting your heart out there and getting nothing in return to make a girl feel good,” she says, so angry she’s practical y spitting. “You’re sitting here feeling sorry for yourself when al you had to do was be honest with him and—”
“I was honest.”
“No, you weren’t. You know what you want. You know what to do. You’re just afraid. I didn’t realize exactly how much you’re like—you and fucking Tess, I swear.”
“I’m not like—”
“You’re
“What?”
“You heard me,” she says. “Get out of my car.”
“But I—”
“I swear to God, if you don’t get out I wil push you out,” she says, and I stare at her furious face, so like Tess’s the day she found out Claire was pregnant, so much like Tess’s the day Claire walked by the house and Tess ran outside to throw food at her, furious like—
Furious like her heart had been broken.
“Tess,” I breathe, stunned, and Claire freezes.
now. No anger. Only pleading.
I stare at her. “Tess was … you and Tess?”
Claire is silent for a long moment and then nods once, slowly.
“And then you … you got pregnant and—”
“I had Cole,” Claire says, her voice going hard again. “And now here I am.”
“So when Tess found out, she wasn’t mad you were pregnant—”
“She wasn’t?” Claire says, cutting me off. “She made it so I had to drop out of school, Abby. You don’t cal that angry?”
I think of how sorry I used to feel for Claire. How I used to think that Tess was cruel for turning away from her best friend because she got pregnant like it was a crime or something.
Like she couldn’t bear to be around Claire anymore.
“You … you broke her heart,” I say. “You knew how she felt and you hooked up with Rick and—”
“Abby—”
“No,” I say, and keep talking. “That’s why you never said much of anything about Beth, right? Why you always smiled when I talked about them living together. You knew, and you’d hurt her, and I thought she was being cruel when you—”
“Stop,” Claire says, and I realize we are moving, that the ferry has docked and Claire is driving off the boat. Driving back into Ferrisvil e. “You don’t—Tess dated guys too, Abby.”
“Yeah,” I say slowly, thinking of al the guys who’d cal ed Tess, who’d hung around her. How she’d talk to them, maybe see them at a party or go on one date, maybe two, and then send them on their way. None of them had turned her into the furious, hate-fil ed person that Claire had.
None of them had ever touched her heart.
“But not like you did,” I say, and she recoils like I’ve hit her, then pul s over to the side of the road.
