Page 77 of Count Your Lucky Stars
“Well,yeah. You just told me you heard...” She trailed off, making a vague gesture with her hand that didn’t mean much of anything but communicated plenty.
“We lived together for ten years. It’s not the first time one of us has heard the other”—Elle mimicked Margot’s hand movement—“you know. I mean, for goodness’ sake, mymomwalked in on you freshman year.”
And to this day, Mrs. Jones wouldn’t look Margot in the eye. Margot maintained that if Mrs. Jones hadn’t wanted to see Margot naked, astride the RA, she should’ve knocked before entering the dorm room she and Elle shared.
“Yeah, well, I guess I just didn’t anticipate the cat being let out of the bag quite so... I don’t know—”
“Pornographically?” Elle supplied. “I mean, from the sound of it,goodporn. The kind you have to pay for and where you know they’re actually treating the actors nice, you know? Quality stuff.” Elle cringed. “Not that we werelistening, ew, it was just difficult to tune out. But we tried. Really hard. We, um, turned the TV onreallyloud.” Elle smiled sweetly. “But kudos, Mar. It sounded like you guys were having an A-plus time.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ.” Margot buried her face in her hands and groaned. “Kill me now.”
Elle bumped her with her hip and laughed. “Lighten up. Don’t worry, it’s not like Darcy and I are going to say anything. Clearly, this isn’t how you wanted anyone to find out about...”
Margot peeked through her fingers as Elle trailed off, brows lifting as she waited for Margot to fill in the blanks.
Margot lowered her hands from her face and sighed deeply, the sound coming from what felt like all the way down in her bones. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Elle. But I’m in so far over my head, it’s not even funny.”
Elle’s smile slipped. “Okay, not laughing anymore. Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
Margot glared.
“The beginning that makes the most sense to you,” Elle clarified.
Margot took a deep breath and just... let it all pour out.
“Like I said, Olivia and I were friends. We werebestfriends. Wherever she went, I was sure to follow. If you were looking for her, you’d find me.” She bit her lip. “I mean, there was one summer where Liv practically moved in with us, my family. I had mono and she skipped cheer camp and gave up her spot on the varsity squad just so I wouldn’t be alone.”
Elle smiled, and if Margot wasn’t mistaken, it was a touch sad. Grim. Expectant. Leave it to Elle to read between the lines, to hear what Margot wasn’t saying. “Sounds like you two were really close.”
Margot scratched her forehead. “Yeah, you could—you could say that.” She swallowed, the lump in her throat growing. “It doesn’t really take a genius to see where this is going. At some point—I don’t know exactly when, because whoever knows exactly when these things begin—I fell for her. Hard. I was ridiculously, stupidly, ass-over-heels in love with her, and I didn’t realize it until she started dating someone else. Brad. He was an ass.” She rolled her eyes. “Not just because he was dating her and I wasn’t.”
Elle nodded and, to her credit, waited quietly for Margot to go on.
“It was fine. I—okay, no. That’s a lie. It sucked. There were copious amounts of teenage angst, and lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling and listening to Ingrid Michaelson sing about fragile hearts, and journaling. So much journaling.” She ducked her head and scoffed out a laugh. “I’m sure I filledseveraldiaries up with entries about how painfully unfair my life was.”
She’d yearned, pined, burned, perished. If it sounded painful and emotionally fraught, Margot had probably been there, done that.
Elle nibbled on her bottom lip. “Did you ever say anything?”
“Are you serious?” Margot snorted. “Of course not. Olivia was with Brad, and I didn’t want to ruin our friendship, so I kept my mouth shut.” Her lips twisted. “I managed to mess everything up without ever saying a thing.”
Margot glared at that atrocious jacket the color of pea soup. “Spring break senior year. Brad and Olivia were in one of the manyoffphases of their on-again-off-again relationship. He’d broken up with her that time. I did what I always did and came over with junk food and old movies and was prepared to be the shoulder Liv needed to cry on. But it didn’t happen like that.” Her mouth had gone dry, tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth. She swallowed hard, trying to generate some moisture. “Liv’s dad was away on some trip with his friends. We had the house to ourselves. Suddenly we were breaking out a bottle of bottom-shelf vodka, and next thing I knew”—her voice cracked—“she was kissing me.”
Elle squeezed her arm.
“It was, um, everything I wanted right there, and I just . . . I rolled with it. I didn’t ask questions. I mean, my best friend who I was stupidly in love with was kissing me, and I waseighteen and perpetually horny; what was there to question?” She laughed. To be that young and stupid. “One thing led to another, and we had sex. A lot of sex. I stayed the whole week at her house and we weren’t—we weren’t drunk the whole time. After that first day, we didn’t touch the vodka. But we didn’t really talk about it, either? I mean, wetalked. It wasn’t like a constant sex marathon.”
“I imagine there’d have been some serious chafing if it were.” Elle snorted, immediately looking apologetic. “Sorry.”
Margot waved her off. “We talked, we just didn’t define it. And it was my bad, I guess, for assuming we were on the same page.”
“You weren’t?”
An iron fist gripped Margot’s heart. If it didn’t suck so badly, Margot would almost be amazed at how a decade-old wound could still hurt so badly. “No. Brad came back from his trip to Cancún.” She rolled her eyes. “He and I had homeroom together. Someone asked about the breakup and he shrugged it off. Said he and Liv had talked the night before. That they were working it out. Getting back together.” She swallowed over the knot swelling in her throat. “The first thing he did during passing period was head straight to Liv’s locker, and he—he just kissed her and... Liv let him.” The burn at the back of her eyes worsened with every blink, the ache in her chest growing larger until she feared her next breath would escape her as a sob.Fuck.Margot pinched her lips together, forcing air through her nose, getting a grip. She sniffed hard. “I told the nurse I wasn’t feeling well and went home. Liv texted me that night.Something along the lines of,Brad wants to get back together. Can you believe it? What should I tell him?I told her she didn’t need to worry about me saying anything to anyone about what happened over spring break. Because what happened on spring break stayed on spring break. And I, um, I told her she should get back together with Brad.”
Elle frowned. “Why would you do that?”
Margot laughed even though the last thing she felt was amused. “What was I supposed to do, Elle? She asked. She shouldn’t havehadto ask. I thought—I thought a lot of things, and none of them mattered. Things were awkward for the next few weeks, but there was still a tiny part of me that hoped maybe it would be different when we left for college. Brad didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d be down for long distance, you know?” She took a deep breath. “Right before graduation, Liv dropped a bombshell on me, telling me she was going to WSU instead of UW. She chose Brad over me, over all of her plans, all ofourplans.Again.
