Page 38 of You Belong With Me

“Why didn’t you ever do anything? Why didn’t you confront him or tell your mom or?—”

“I couldn’t,” he said simply. He finally went to grab the soccer ball from the net, putting some distance between us. I thought he was going to stay over there, avoid having to talk about it any more, but then he kept going. “Being the oldest child, it’s like the third parent. And sometimes…” He shook his head. “Sometimes, you have to do what’s right for the kids over what’s right for you.”

“The kids,” I echoed. “You mean your sisters?”

Sebastian nodded. “I couldn’t tear their family apart by telling my mom. By forcing her to confront it. I thought it was better this way, so everything would stay normal, at least until they finishedhigh school.”

The words were more familiar to me than I would have liked, as I thought about my parents and the way they were sticking it out. I’d wondered, a few times, if they were just staying together until we were out of the house. If they thought that a divorce would have less of an impact on us as adults than it would as kids. But I hated being in that house, so full of tension all the time. And I wondered if Sebastian felt the same.

“You really don’t think any of them knew?” I asked. “None of them felt it?”

He shook his head. “Nah. Not until Lavender confronted him.”

“Lavender? You mean, she…” I couldn’t even form the words. The very idea of being the one to find out my father was cheating on my mother made me sick, and to imagine that happening to her…

“I try not to hold it against her,” Sebastian said, his voice empty. He dropped down to sit on the ground and I quickly followed suit, feeling like if I kept standing, I might collapse. “That she didn’t keep it to herself, I mean. But I spent so long trying to keep our family together—forheras well as Ainsley and Imogen and she just… threw it all away.”

My head was spinning. “She was probably doing what she thought was right.”

“I know she was,” he said. “That’s what makes it so much worse. It makes me resent her even more because now I have to wonder if she was the one who was right or if I was.”

I couldn’t even begin to imagine the weight he had felt on his shoulders for the last few years. The pain he musthave felt as he saw his dad return with those flowers week after week, knowing what they meant. To spend so long keeping quiet, only for it to all explode in that awful fight of the summer.

“I don’t think there is a right answer here,” I said honestly. “I think you both just did the best you could with the information you had.”

Sebastian pressed his lips together but nodded. I felt the same way I had outside the diner, where I so desperately wanted to help him, wanted to save him, but I had no idea how. I wanted to take him away from here, away from all the bad things in life and let him live free. But I couldn’t. And that hurt me more than anything in the world.

“Well, come on, then,” I said, getting back to my feet. I jogged over to the net to grab the soccer ball. “Why don’t we play best two out of three?”

Sure, it wasn’t a solution to anything. But as we played—me missing the ball almost every time I kicked at it and Sebastian almost tackling me every time I did get possession—I wondered if this was the closest I could give him to that little piece of paradise away from his life’s problems.

nineteen

“You looklike you’re about to fall asleep,” Clementine said. She lightly slapped both her hands on my cheeks. “Wake up.”

If only it was that easy.

After staying up so late with Sebastian last night, I’d been a walking zombie all day. I fell asleep in public speaking class and only got away with it because Ainsley covered for me, and by the time I started pulling on my swimsuit for this meet, I thought I might collapse.

“Alright team, huddle up!” Coach called. We shuffled over, the slap of wet feet on tile echoing through the expansive room. Coach launched into a pep talk, something about effort and staying focused and building momentum for the season, but all I could think about was the stands—and if Sebastian was there somewhere, watching.

The turnout for a swim meet wasn’t nearly as big as for the soccer game—and definitely not even close to as big as for the hockey game or for the football games—but thecrowd was big enough that I wasn’t sure I would be able to see everybody who was there. I kept staring over the shoulders of my teammates to scan the crowd, hoping to make eye contact with those brown eyes that would make me feel like everything was going to be okay. Because right now, all I could feel was dread in the pit of my stomach—dread about this meet and about the date I would have to go on after it.

Sebastian was probably somewhere in the crowd. He knew the time of the meet, which meant he must have been planning to get excused from class to come down and support Ainsley. But on every pass over the crowd that I did, his face was missing.

The people I did spot were my parents, both dressed in their work clothes and sitting upright like statues. Mom’s expression was blank, her hands folded in her lap like she was at a funeral. I told her once that most parents looked enthusiastic for their kids when they came to their games, hoping that she would act that way to fit in. I did everything short of telling her that she didn’t look perfect enough when she was sitting there, because I knew actually saying it would make her think I was mocking her. Her only response had been to sniff and say that it wasn’t dignified to act like that in public. So while all my teammates got cheered on, I got stony silence. It went well with the critiques after I left the pool—your dive was sloppy, your arm was too slow, you could have won if only…Neither of them were swimmers but it didn’t stop them from throwing around words like they were experts.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Clem asked as we brokeand walked to the end of the pool. “You look like you’re gonna be sick.”

“I kind of feel like I might be.” I tried to make it sound like a joke, but it came out flat. Clementine stared at me impassively. I forced a smile on my face, trying to push all thoughts of my parents, Thomas, and Sebastian out of my mind. “I’m fine. I can still swim.”

She bit her lip and nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. “Probably just nerves. First meet jitters.”

It wasn’t nerves. I knew that. But I nodded along like she was right, because that was easier than telling her how I was feeling right now. I didn’t even remember what event I’d been assigned. Backstroke? Butterfly? My brain felt like cotton. Everything else was loud—my heart, my thoughts, the echo of water slapping the pool deck—but none of it had anything to do with swimming.

I was thinking about Sebastian. Again.

And I hated that I was thinking about Sebastian, because I was sure he wasn’t thinking about me. Thomas was the one who should be on my mind, but every time I thought about him and the date we would be going on in six hours, I shivered. So I tried to think about anything else, but my mind kept falling back to Sebastian. The blank look on his face when he told me how his father had been cheating for years. The disdain in his voice when he said Tiffany thought their relationship was a game. The tension that surrounded him when he admitted he resented Lavender for telling their mom. I didn’t know how I expected myself to perform when all I could think about was the pressure he had on his shoulders, and if there was any way I could ease it.

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