Page 54 of No One But Us

After we get our drinks, we fight our way through the crowd and manage to grab two barstools against thewall.

“So what’s the deal with you and James?” she asks. “I swear I’m not going to say anything, but there’s totally something weird going on with youtwo.”

It’s a relief to let it all out. This whole summer has been locked up inside me, since I can’t share so much of it with Ginny, and it releases like a poppedballoon.

“That’s bizarre,” she says when I conclude. “I get the age thing, but what’s this weird ‘things you don’tknow’?”

“I honestly have noidea.”

“Maybe he has a brain tumor. I saw that once, in a book. The dude had a brain tumor, so he’d hook up with the girl, but he refused tocommit.”

I laugh. “I’m pretty sure it’s not a braintumor.”

“Other possibilities—he has PTSD, he has a crazy wife locked in an attic, or you guys are competing for the same scholarship in your small Appalachian hometown,” she says, ticking them off on herfingers.

“He’s never been married, lives in NYC, and has never served in the military, but I’m pretty sure you nailedit.”

“You don’t know that he’s never beenmarried.”

“We live in a three-bedroom house. I feel like I’d have heard a crazy wife at thispoint.”

“Anyway,” she concludes, “the important thing is this: if he’s slipped up twice, he’s going to slip up again, and you know what theysay.”

I raise a brow. “I didn’t know there was a saying about repeated hook-ups.”

She slaps my hand. “No, dummy.The third time’s the charm. So we just need to make sure there’s a thirdtime.”

* * *

On Saturday night, Brooks is having a party—one I know James is attending, which means it’s oneI’llbe attending once I get offwork.

James leaves before I do, without even a glance in my direction. I swear he says goodbye to every person on the floor but me. Once I’m cut, I go to the bathroom to change into the dress Ginny talked me into at the start of the summer. I look at myself in the mirror and decide that if I’m going all Kelly Evans tonight, I might as well not half-ass it. I dig the makeup out of mypurse.

Kristy, still in her uniform, waits at the exit to drive to the party with me. She grins. “Wow. I didn’t know we were pulling out all the stops for thisthing.”

“You have a boyfriend,” I remind her. “Idon’t.”

“So that’s what tonight is? ‘Find Elle a man’ night?” she asks with a sly grin. “Or is it more specific to a certain bartender weknow?”

I laugh. “It’s possibly a bartender weknow.”

She bumps me with her hip. “Third time. Tonight’s thenight.”

“I hopeso.”

God, I hope so. That little seed of hope I started with last weekend is a dangerous thing. It’s grown like a weed, sprouted and bloomed inside me until I can feel it pressing outward against my chest, my rib cage, as if I don’t have enough space to containit.

What would it be like to actuallydateJames? Those hints of sweetness I see in him—what if they were directed at me? What if I got to wake up next to him every morning, hold his hand as we walked to work? It feels like this is supposed to happen. Since the day he helped me pick up my shattered school project, I have wished this day would come. It hasn’t even happened yet, and already it feels like I’m on the verge of arriving home after the longestjourney.

I know he will be on the back deck at Brooks’ house because he always wants to be outside. I make a beeline for the rear with Kristy at myheels.

“In a hurry?” sheasks.

I grin at her. “That obvious,huh?”

The back doors stand wide open, and James is the first thing I see when I step through them. That’s when I discover he already has company—Ashleigh. She’s sitting there with a smug smile on her face, tracing a pattern on his thigh with the nail of her index finger. He sees us and looks away, laughing at something she’ssaid.

All of my silly daydreams, my certainty—they fall apart like a house of cards, fluttering flat to the ground, as low as they cango.

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