Page 106 of Nothing Like the Movies

“We need to leave for the airport,” she said sheepishly, holding the keys to my mom’s car as she looked back and forth between the two of us.

“I need five more minutes,” I said, not evencloseto finished.

“No—I’m done,” Liz said, pushing her hair behind her ears. “Safe travels, Sarah.”

She marched away from me and toward the ice-cream shop, her rage whipping like a breeze behind her. I stared as she went inside, and I could see through the windows as she walked up to Joss and started talking.

God, I love the way she talks with her hands when she’s pissed.

“I’m really sorry.”

“What?”

Sarah was looking at me like a worried parent, like she was afraid I was going to break down. “I feel like this is my fault.”

“It’s not your fault.” I put my hands in my pockets and kept watching Liz through the window. “You didn’t force me to lie.”

“No, but I’ve been telling you for forever that you needed to be honest with Liz. Now you finally listened, and it backfired.”

“How do you figure?” I watched as Joss shook her head and put her hands on her hips.

“Um, all the yelling…?” Sarah replied, her voice full of sarcasm. “I hadn’t imagined it would go off the rails quite like that.”

“I actually think it’s good.” I looked back at my sister and felt relaxed all of a sudden. “The air has finally been cleared.”

“Huh,” she said, looking at me suspiciously. “I wouldnothave pictured you responding this calmly.”

“Well, you don’t know everything, do you, Stanford?” I teased, then looked up at the sky. It was a clear night, so clear that I could see a few stars in spite of the downtown lights, and it felt likesomething.

“Rewrite the Stars” started playing in my head as I thought about the fact that Sarah was right—itdidn’tmake sense that I wasn’t more upset right now.

But two things had just come into my head, realizations as clear as those tiny stars in the night sky, and they were making me really fucking happy.

The first—Liz was single now. She was finally available, and she didn’t seem to be all that broken-up about losing Clark.

All she’d screamed about was me.

Us.

And that was the second thing—her rage. Liz was livid, angrierthan I’d ever seen her, and that was… well, kind of fantastic.

Because it meant she hadn’t moved on.

She wasn’t over us at all.

Something that felt a hell of a lot like hope was buzzing through me as I looked up at those stars and pictured her face when she’d yelled,I don’t knowhowto be in the shoes of God, Wes!

Because instead of the measured looks I’d gotten used to from her, where it felt like her feelings were locked up tight, she’d looked at me with flushed cheeks and flashing green eyes, as if she was engulfed in the white-hot flames of her blazing anger.

Towardme.

There reallywasa fine line between love and hate, and Libby’s rage fueled me to burn that line to the ground.

What if we rewrite the stars

Say you were made to be mine…

CHAPTER THIRTY

---