Page 61 of Tips and Trysts

The revelation is unlike anything I’ve felt before. Everett could have called Dalton, but hechoseme. It tingles under my skin like the prickle of the weed we’re smoking.

I sigh heavily. “Will he lie to me again?”

Dalton’s head shake is quick. “Probably not.”

“How do I know?”

“Easy. One day, you decided you didn’t want to be a liar anymore. Have you told a lie since then?”

It’s my turn to shake my head.

“If he ever hurts you, you can hold both him and me personally responsible.” Dalton dips his chin. “But I’m certain he won’t.”

Breathing out, I take my phone out of my pocket. “I thinkyouwould have been a good therapist.”

He scoffs. “I don’t know why people underestimate my intelligence. I got my MBA at Harvard, for fuck’s sake. I make more money than any of you.”

“Hypothesizing here, but it’s probably because of the time you thought unicorns were real animals that went extinct.”

Dalton considers it. “Yeah, that was bad,” he admits before chuckling. “Would have been sick though, right?”

“Definitely,” I agree before I type a text to Everett.

Me

If someone betrayed your trust, what would it take for you to forgive them?

Within a minute of me sending the text, my phone buzzes with an email from Everett. Subject line:I looked up the definition of “grovel” tonight.

I open it, expecting to see another apology, but that’s not what I get.

It’s a link.

Tap.

And as the page loads, my eyebrows rise millimeter by millimeter until they can’t go any higher, until all I can do is let out a bewildered chuckle and say, “Ohshit.”

Twenty

EVERETT

I am in agony.

Cora has said a lot of harsh (if not objectively screwed up) things to me, and I’ve loved every syllable in some uniquely-Everett way. But what she said on Sunday burrowed beneath the layers of my skin to the bone. It lives in a malignant, lethal place, twisted in my marrow, weakening the very structures keeping me whole.

“I have nothing left to give you.”

Essie alluded to it at the hospital: other rich assholes. Now, after our fight, I need to find out who—who the fucking fuck—hurt her. Knowing that someone once broke Cora Flores—and my lies hurt her just as badly—is unprecedented torment.

I deserve these sleepless nights, the gnawing in my stomach, and the grayish bags under my eyes. I deserve the messages left on-read. I deserve Lander and Dalton’s knowing,I-told-you-so,-you-toolexpressions. I deserve Valeria’s glare when she dropped Lander off at the debate prep room at the University of DC. I deserve the email Cora never acknowledged.

I deserve all of it.

“Ev, what can I do?” Lander asks. He’s standing next to me, scrutinizing my reflection in the bathroom mirror.

I meet his eyes and immediately regret it. I don’t usually envy him. After all, my eyes are nice enough that one of my professors at Princeton asked me to apply for a master’s in German so I could help with his research, and the only word I know in German is “schadenfreude.” But today, looking at Lander’s luminous blue eyes, it’s abundantly clear that I—for the first time ever—am a mess.

“Nothing,” I reply, but I’m gripping the edges of the sink, which then reminds me of Cora.

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