Page 35 of Finding Her
She propped herself up on her elbows and looked at me, her blonde hair falling down her back. “Yeah, but…” Her face scrunched up. “I guess I just don’t really know Saylor all that well.”
I felt a little twinge of guilt at that, although I wasn’t sure why. I guess because I’d really been pushing Saylor and Lilah to be friends, but I hadn’t done much work to make sure that they actually liked each other. I just decided that since I was friends with each of them, they had to be friends with each other. I paused with the drawer open and glanced at her.
“You don’t mind that we hang out with Saylor so much, do you?”
“Of course not,” Lilah said immediately. Not so quickly that I thought she was saying it in a hurry, but with no hesitation either. I sighed in relief. Lilah laid back down. “I guess I just don’t know either of you all that well, do I?”
“You mean you didn’t know me that well when you decided to drag me into being your roommate?” I started rifling through the top drawer—nothing that interesting. Just a novel, a sleep mask, and some melatonin gummies.
“You don’t mind that I did that, do you?”
I just shrugged. Honestly, I had minded a little bit at the beginning, just when I first found out that I wouldn’t be living with Saylor. But now, looking around Saylor’s room, I could see that she was living her best life having her own space, so maybe it worked out.
“Nah, it’s been fun,” I said.
Lilah nodded and then turned to look at the ceiling. I glanced at the door just to make sure that Saylor hadn’t somehow opened it without me noticing. Although even if she had, it would probably be a little bit late for me to lie about why I was rifling through her nightstand. What could I say?Oh, I was just looking for your nail clippers?Still, I hurried to go through the bottom drawer, in case she got back soon.
I wasn’t expecting to find anything, which is why my eyes widened in surprise as I realized there was only one thing in there: an old Polaroid photo.
“Well, well, well,” I said, picking it up. “What do we have here?”
I guess that intrigued Lilah enough, and she no longer cared about going through Saylor’s things because she was at my side in a second, her head resting on my shoulder as she glanced over. “What is it?”
The Polaroid was a little hard to make out. It was a dark photo, but based on her outfit and the lights behind her, it seemed like it was at a party. It was a selfie, with Saylor posing with a boy. When I flipped it over, I realized there was something scrawled on the back:
Saylor and Crossy
New Year’s Eve
“No way,” I murmured. I flipped it back over, and now that I was looking at it through that lens, I realized it made sense that it was Crossy. His face was partially obscured from how he was tilting his head toward her, but the dark wavy hair and glasses were the same.
“Crossy,” Lilah said slowly. “That’s one of the hockey boys, isn’t it?”
I nodded and glanced at her. “It’s Bear’s best friend.”
Her eyes widened, but before I could talk about it any further, there was the sound of the electronic key at the door. I quickly put the Polaroid back where I found it and shoved the drawer closed. We both dove towards the rug, looking like we had been laying there the whole time. Well, actually, it probably looked more like we had dove and landed there just a second ago because that was exactly what had happened. But at least the drawer wasn’t open anymore, so Saylor had no reason to suspect that was why we were acting so weird.
It didn’t matter anyway because when she walked in, she was staring at her phone. She casually tossed her lanyard with her key card to the side and came to sit in front of us with a bowl of popcorn balanced precariously in her arm while her phone was in the other. She finally turned off her phone and put it down as she sat down in front of us and said, “Okay, let’s hear it.”
She looked at me bright-eyed, and immediately I forgot why we were here.
“Let’s hear what?”
I couldn’t remember at all. Not after seeing that photo. I was too curious about her and Crossy—where they had met so long ago, if that was why she was acting so weird around him at the beach, if he had to do with her feelings on love. What was it about that? I was so curious.
But she said, “How it went with Bear today, obviously!”
“Oh, right. That.” I ran my hands over my face as I thought about gym class today. It had been so awkward walking out there in those shorts. “I don’t think it bothered him at all.”
He’d been a hot mess in gym class today, but I didn’t think that had anything to do with the shorts. And anything that happened in gym class was overshadowed by what had come after… “I mean, he was kind of a mess, but I don’t think it was because of me.”
“Of course it was because of you!” Lilah said. “He was probably thrown off by how cute you looked.”
“What a freak I looked like, you mean,” I replied, glancing at her.
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, whatever. We can come up with other plans.”
“There’s no point,” I said. “We’re leaving on that camping trip in a few days anyway. What’s going to happen between then and now?”
