Page 50 of One More Made Up Love Song
“You don’t have to drink alcohol to live,” I say, my tone defensive.
Carina winces. “I know. Of course I know that. I’m saying this all wrong. It isn’t even about the drinking, really. I just mean that—Ivy, you can’t control everything. You aren’t going to be able toalwayskeep me safe.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do.”
“You drove all the way to Malibu to retrieve me from a beach house,” Carina says. “It’s exactly what you were doing.”
“You weren’t responding to my texts!” I say, finally getting defensive. “And you were with Margot Valemont, of all people. I couldn’t just leave you there.”
“Ididtext,” she says. “I tried to tell you I was fine.”
I roll my eyes. “Carina, your message was full of typos. You sounded drunk. Which, maybe you were. Since that seems to be your new thing now.”
I regret the words as soon as they’re out of my mouth.Carina isn’t a drunk just because she spent two weeks partying.
But is she for real right now? She was with Margot, and she wanted me to just sit by and let her do her thing? Assume the pictures on Instagram were proof enough that she was alive and well?
“I shouldn’t have used my present circumstances as an example,” Carina says, her voice remarkably calm for how elevated she just made me. “But generally, Ivy, you know you do it. You drew me twelve different maps my freshman year at UT, showing me all the safest routes from my dorm to every single one of my classes. And you weren’t even a student there.”
“Those maps were useful,” I say, and Carina offers me a small smile before sitting up all the way and scooting toward me. She echoes my posture, sitting cross-legged on the bed, and reaches forward, taking both my hands in hers.
I begrudgingly comply, hating that Carina is somehow still charming me, even though I haven’t decided if I should forgive her for landing Freddie—and me—in the middle of a massive PR crisis she doesn’t even know about yet.
“Theywereuseful,” she says. “And I will always believe that I have the best big sister on the whole planet. But I’m not a dummy. You have to let me grow up. You have to trust me to decide for myself what kinds of risks I want to take.” She squeezes my hands. “And maybe you ought to take a few risks of your own.”
I roll my eyes. “Seriously? You’re gonna say I’m the one who never takes any risks? Have you forgotten what I do for a living?”
“Shut up. Your life is planned down to the minute. You never take any risks.”
“I took a job from a complete stranger whom I met in a bathroom.”
“Okay, that’s fair. But he wasn’tactuallya stranger.”
“Definitely still a stranger,” I say. “Just because I knew his name didn’t mean I knewhim.”
“Fine,” Carina says. “Five points for theone timeyou were brave five years ago.”
I purse my lips, happy to have won the point, but I can’t keep my brain from imagining all the risks she thinks I’mnottaking.
Except, she has to be wrong. Just because I’m notimpulsivedoesn’t mean I don’t take risks. I cross my arms over my chest. “I need an example.”
“An example of you not taking risks?” she says, and I nod. She smirks. “You’ve never told Freddie how you feel.”
I narrow my eyes. I’ve never told Carina how I feel about Freddie. Which means…what? She thinks she knows something about my feelings based on her own observations?
That has to be it, because as far as I know, she was already in the car when Freddie kissed me yesterday, and since she hasn’t said anything about it, I feel safe assuming she didn’t see it happen. And since she doesn’t have a phone, at least one not still wrapped in cellophane, and she’s been dead asleep for the past fourteen hours, she hasn’t seen any of the online buzz.
“I do not have feelings for Freddie,” I say, but the words sound completely hollow. If Mom figured me out, I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that Carina did too.
“Yes, you do. It doesn’t matter how many times you deny it. You aren’t going to make it any less true.”
“What makes you so sure?” I ask, clinging to the last tattered shreds of my denial.
Carina grins. “Mom was the one who first suggested it, but once she did, I started looking for clues, and they were so easy to spot.”
“Clues? Like what?”
She holds up her hands, ticking things off on her fingers. “The way you look at him, the way your voice changes when you talk about him, the way you have literally dated no one since you started working for him.”
