Page 64 of One True Loves

Hot rage is boiling and bubbling in my stomach. I want to scream. I want to charge into them like a bowling ball into pins and knock them overboard. I want to flip a table like that Real Housewife who went to jail.

But most of all I want to cry.

I will not cry.

Before I’ve even made the conscious decision to do so, I tug off my Sea-Bands and chuck them at Alex. One sails past him into the water, but the other one hits him right on his left cheek. They’re not hugging anymore, so I don’t get two-for-one. But still, not bad for a girl who wasn’t allowed to do organized sports.

Alex looks up, and he has the nerve to smile at me. Like I didn’t just see what I saw. Like everything is perfectly fine.

My scrunched-up face must make it clear that that’s not going to fly, though, because first his eyes narrow like he’s not seeing me clearly, and then they go wide. He holds up his hands.

“Lenore.” Just my name. No explanation, because there isn’t one.

Natalia turns now and cocks her head to the side, examining me. Is she feeling sorry? Smug?

I take a deep breath, feeling the edges of my eyes begin to prickle.

I will not cry. I will not cry.

Instead I run.

The traitor tears at least stay where they’re supposed to until I make it into my room, out of Alex’s sight, but then everything goes to shit.

I throw open the door and collapse onto my bed, letting out a sob. A fucking sob. Like an idiot in a soap opera. And once I’ve let one tear escape, the rest flood out of me, uncontrollable and unrelenting. My face and chest burn with the effort

“What’s wrong?” Wally’s voice makes me look up from my pillow, and I see him standing there, frozen, eyes full of concern. “What happened, Lenore?”

I should feel touched that he even cares enough to ask, but it’s such a one-eighty from how he’s been acting that it just makes me mad.

“Don’t act like you all of a sudden care about me now,” I say, my words daggers, and he visibly shrinks back.

“I always care, it’s just—”

I hold my hand up, cutting him off. I don’t have it in me to listen to excuses right now. “Tell Mom and Dad I’m sick. That I’m staying on the ship.”

I leave the next part, “like I’ve done for you this week,” unspoken, but I can see from the guilty expression twisting its way across his face that he got that part loud and clear.

“Okay,” he says, nodding resignedly. “I, um—I hope you feel better.”

With that, he’s out the door and I’m alone. Well, not quite alone because I have my thoughts screaming and hollering in my head. They’re so loud and terrible that my temples throb and it feels like the room is spinning.

All this time, did he like me just because I was there? The proximity made me a convenient choice, so he could check another item off his ten-year plan.

Natalia was on his time frame, his high school sweetheart, all set to go to the same university as him. He thought he had that one-true-love, happily-ever-after bullshit on lock, but then that got messed up, so he had to fill in her spot quick. And I was the first girl he saw. Like he literally scanned the room and found me. He didn’t even try to hide that! I knew from the beginning!

So, what the hell was I thinking, dreaming this could be real? How did I let myself get swept away,again, when it’s been so clear all along that I was only a placeholder? Someone to have around “just until we get home.”

I’m sad, but mostly I’m furious at myself for being so stupid.

And all of the stuff we talked about last night, too!

Did I really convince myself that I could justnotgo to NYU in the fall? That I could take a gap year and make art and—stupidly, vaguely—figure out my path instead?

God, I’m such an idiot. My parents would disown me. They wouldmurderme. I would become the subject of one of thoseeight-part Netflix documentary series, and my parents would be all well lit in our kitchen, talking ’bout “... and we never saw Lenore again.”

Thank the lord I haven’t told them yet. I was living in a fucking dream world, and it hurts, but I woke up just in time.

There’s a knock at the door, and I sit up in my bed. Wally could open it with his key, so maybe it’s my parents coming to make me get up—which, for the record, they never did with Wally. Or it could be—no, he wouldn’t dare.

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