The Last Best Kiss Page 17

  “I didn’t reject you. You never let me explain—”

  He cuts me off again. “And then I stopped caring at all.”

  “If you had just given me another chance—”

  “Strangely enough, once I’ve been publicly humiliated, I don’t rush back for a repeat experience.”

  “I didn’t mean to humiliate you,” I say, even though it’s getting harder for me to talk without bursting into tears. “I swear it. I know I hurt you, but I didn’t mean to. It just sort of happened. And I’ve been so sorry ever since.”

  “I know,” he says a little more gently. There’s a pause. I’m working my throat—lots of swallows and chin jerking—trying to keep it from swelling so much that he’ll hear the thickness in my voice. And then he says lightly, “I admit I probably shouldn’t have worn that brown suit to the dance. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  That lets me choke out a laugh that’s really a small sob, but at least I can pretend it’s a laugh. Maybe I’m fooling him. Maybe not. “You did get cooler,” I say in a voice that I try to make sound as casual as his. But it’s shaky. “I mean—look at you. Every girl at school wants to go out with you.”

  “I don’t know about that,” he says. “But all of that stuff—it’s in the past.” He actually puts his arm around my shoulder and gives me a brief sideways squeeze, releasing me almost immediately. “I’m glad we’ve been able to become friends again, Anna. And I’m really glad we finally talked about all this. It was sort of lying there all this time. I know you tried to talk to me right at the beginning of the year, and I wasn’t very receptive. I guess I wasn’t over being angry yet. But I am now. The past is the past, and we’re friends again.”

  “Yeah,” I say faintly. “Totally.”

  The band is finally entering the stage. They’re a funny-looking group. Two of the three guys have enormous waxed mustaches, and the third has enormous, overgrown muttonchops. They’re wearing frilly shirts, leather boots, and blue jeans. People applaud as they find their way to their instruments.

  We’re silent.

  Then Finn says to me, “So that Wade guy . . . ?”

  “What about him?”

  “You seem to be—” He stops.

  “‘Seem to be’ what?”

  “You know . . . It looked like you were both—” Another halt, and then he tries again. “I mean, maybe that’s why it’s easier to talk. Now that you’re . . . you know.”

  I decide I don’t have to help him out. To my relief—and maybe his too—the band launches into its first song, making conversation impossible. Everyone in the audience pushes forward with excitement.

  The guy who’s in front of me is wearing a wife-beater shirt and shorts, despite the fact that the temperature’s probably about fifty-five degrees now and dropping by the second. Fumes of alcohol and stale smoke waft off of him. He’s swaying unevenly—he doesn’t seem to have a firm grip on balance at the moment—and the way he keeps taking sudden, uncontrolled steps both backward and forward is making me nervous. I wish I had more space between him and me, but people are pressing up behind us, and I have no space to use as a buffer.

  “You okay?” Finn asks, glancing over.

  I force a smile. “Yeah—this is so cool.” But I’m miserable. I’m miserable because it’s too crowded, and people keep bumping into me. And I’m miserable because I can’t cling to the hope anymore that Finn never hated me. He did. For a long time. And even though maybe he’s stopped hating me—maybe—I’m miserable because he has now so completely friend-zoned me that I couldn’t claw my way out of there even if I showed up naked on his doorstep. And I’m miserable because he thinks Lily is braver and more creative and more original than I am. And I’m miserable because he might be right about that. And I’m miserable because the jerk-face in front of me keeps almost stepping on my toes, and I’m cold, and everyone except me is having fun.

  I look over at Finn. He’s watching the band, but the second I try to study his face, he turns to me. He’s always been super aware like that—impossible to sneak up on or steal glances at.

  “How amazing is this?” he shout-whispers. “I’ve listened to this song a hundred times—it’s amazing to hear it live!”

  I’m shouting back my agreement when the guy in front of me decides he should holler and wave his arm and takes a compensating step back at the same time. He doesn’t even notice that he’s crushed my foot or that I’m yelping in pain. But Finn sees the whole thing. He grabs the guy’s shoulder, and Big Foot turns around.

  “Watch it!” Finn yells. “You just stepped on my friend’s toes.”

  “Sorry,” the guy says with an indifferent shrug. He’s taller than Finn and probably weighs fifty to sixty pounds more, so he’s not intimidated. He shakes off Finn’s arm. “Chill, dude,” he says as he turns back to the stage.

  Finn glares at the guy’s back and then says, “Change places with me, Anna.” He doesn’t wait for me to respond, just moves around and nudges me over into his old spot.

  Now I’m behind the guy’s girlfriend. She’s way too out of it to stomp on anyone’s toes—she’s so stoned, she’s practically catatonic. Her eyes are closed, and if she weren’t on her feet, I’d have said she was asleep.

  I shout my thanks to Finn.

  “Your toes okay?” he asks.

  “A little. I’m lucky he’s only wearing sneakers.”

  “Yeah, Doc Martens would have crippled you.” We both turn our attention back to the band.

  They start one of my favorite songs. I close my eyes and try to think about the music and nothing else, but Finn suddenly startles, bumping into me. I turn, thinking our drunken friend stepped on his toes, and see that Lily’s snuck up on us and is jabbing her index finger between his ribs. He writhes and pushes her hand away.

  “Got you!” she sings out. She squeezes between us. “Hi!” she shouts to me, even though it’s a quiet song at the moment. “Those guys were boring, so I came to find you. It wasn’t easy—I didn’t know you’d be so far up toward the front, and you didn’t answer your texts.”

  Someone turns around and hushes her. She puts her finger to her lips in exaggerated obedience. She listens to the band for a minute or two but then gets restless and pulls Finn’s arm around her, then grabs his hair and tugs his head down toward her so she can kiss him on the lips. He gives her a quick peck and then pulls away, nodding toward the stage in an I want to see this kind of way. Lily pouts and looks around, shifting from one foot to another.

  I’m watching the band again when she nudges my arm. “See those guys?” she says, pointing at a group of frat-boy types a couple of rows in front of us. “They’re passing around a joint. Think they’d share with two cute girls who ask nicely?”

  I shake my head and put my mouth close to her ear so I can whisper. “I’m not about to take drugs from strangers.” Isn’t that like Safety 101?

  “Oh, please,” she says. “They’re smoking it themselves—do you honestly think they’d put anything dangerous in their own joints?”

  “We don’t know where they got it from. They could be idiots who’d buy from anyone.”

  “Oh, they’re definitely idiots,” she says with a giggle. “They’re wearing USC hoodies. Are you coming with me or not?”

  I shake my head, and she tugs on Finn’s arm, then goes on tiptoe to tell him what she’s planning to do.

  I can’t hear what he’s saying, but he shakes his head, so I can guess.

  Lily shouts, “You two are both buzzkills. Stay here and stagnate. I’ll be back in a sec.”

  Finn grabs her arm. “Stay here.”

  She shakes off his hand and pushes her way forward. The woman who shushed her earlier glares at her, but Lily doesn’t even notice. Within seconds she’s up by the college guys and talking to one of them. She smiles flirtatiously and bats her eyes, and pretty soon they’re grinning back and in just a few seconds they’re handing her the joint.

  I glance over at Finn. “She does
what she wants,” he says flatly.

  “So I’ve heard,” I say.

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  seventeen

  Lily stays with the frat boys for several more songs, helping them finish off that first joint and sharing another one. Since she’s in front, I can watch her easily, and toward the end of the set, when she finally seems to be detaching herself from them, one of the guys grabs her around the waist. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but he obviously doesn’t want her to go—and seems to feel she doesn’t have the right to just walk away at this point. She laughs in his face and extricates herself and slips through the rows of people back to us. She sidles up next to Finn and leans against him. The guy who put his arm around her turns to see where she went. He sees her with Finn and looks briefly annoyed, but then he shrugs and turns back to the music, probably too wasted to care.

  The band finishes, we applaud, and I follow the two of them—their arms still entwined—back toward the VIP area. Lily suddenly lets go of Finn and runs ahead, dancing and twirling and flinging out her legs. Then she trips and falls down and doesn’t move. We both rush forward to make sure she’s okay—but she’s just lying there laughing.

  “You should see your faces!” she says. “You have identical expressions right now.” Her hair’s spread out on the field, which has to be muddy and gross—thousands of shoes have been churning it up all day—but she doesn’t seem to care. She smiles dreamily up at us. “I’m a twin, but I don’t look as much like Hilary as you two look like each other right now. Are you guys twins?”

  “She may be a tiny bit stoned,” I say to Finn.

  “You think?” He sighs and extends his hand down to her. “Get up, Lily.”

  She bats it away. “Don’t make me get up. I won’t be able to look at the stars. You guys should lie down with me here. It’s so beautiful.”

  “This is where people walk,” Finn says. He’s crouching on one side of her, and I’m on the other—both of us trying to protect her from the hordes of people walking by. “And it’s cold and late, and if you’ll just get up then the three of us can go to the nice VIP area where our friends are waiting for us.”

  “I thought you liked stars,” she says to him. “Aren’t you the star-app guy? The billionaire star-app guy?”

  “Sure,” he says. “That’s who I am. Now get up.”

  He reaches down to her, but she slithers away from him. “I don’t want to. I want to make grass angels. Like snow angels, only in the grass.”

  I grab her arm and shake it hard. “Get. Up. Now. I mean it, Lily. Three-year-old behavior is only cute in three-year-olds.”

  She scowls at me. “You’ve forgotten how to have fun, Anna.”

  “I never knew,” I say crossly. “Now get up.”

  Finn yanks on one arm, and I yank on the other, and we haul her to her feet. We each take an elbow and steer her through the crowd. “I can walk by myself,” she says haughtily. “You can let go of me.”

  “No, we can’t,” Finn and I say at the exact same time.

  We march her up to the VIP gate, where the security guards study our wristbands extra carefully and shine their flashlights in our faces for a few seconds. I guess we look suspicious, what with Lily’s giggling and asking them if they’ve ever shot anyone and then giggling some more.

  It’s crowded on the sloping lawn above the Galaxy Stage, and it takes us a few minutes to find our group. I help Finn maneuver Lily into a spot next to Hilary, and then I shift over to where Oscar and Lucy are sitting together.

  I’m happy to be reunited with them. Oscar and Lucy. Lucy and Oscar. My good friends. My best friends. Those good good friends of mine.

  “Hey!” I say, wanting them to know how happy I am to see them, how much I love them both. “I am so glad you guys—”

  Lucy cuts me off. “There you are. Finally. You said this would be fun, Anna. But I’m bored and cold, and I could be doing work right now or sleeping or something—anything—other than just sitting here. I am so going home tomorrow, and I’m really pissed at you for making me come tonight.”

  I turn to Oscar, but he’s in a bad mood too. “I just want to go back to the hotel,” he says wearily. “Enough is enough. I’m tired and it’s cold, and I don’t even like Rock Basic, and now that I’ve said that out loud, someone’s probably going to beat me up.”

  “So let’s go back to the hotel,” I say. It hasn’t been the greatest night for me either. I feel wounded and sad and jealous. And I can’t even talk to anyone about it. I mean, I could . . . but the idea of explaining it all even to Lucy or Oscar makes me just want to curl up and go to sleep. And while it might be nice to get some sympathy, I don’t want someone looking over at me to make sure I’m “okay” every time Finn and Lily kiss or hold hands from now on.

  Lucy agrees we should go, so we call over to Hilary, who frowns and comes closer. “We all have to leave at the same time. It’s a limo, not a shuttle bus.”

  “Yes, but you know what is a shuttle bus?” Oscar says. “The shuttle bus. From the festival to our hotel. They had a thing about it in the lobby. There’s one every half hour, right outside the gates.”

  The others hear what we’re talking about and join the discussion. Phoebe says that she and Eric want to go back too. Apparently she speaks for both of them now.

  Lily says, “Let’s go back to the hotel and get into the hot tub.” She pushes her face against Finn’s chest. “Doesn’t that sound nice?” she purrs. “A hot tub?”

  “I could go back,” Finn says with a shrug.

  “Fine. I get it. Everyone wants to go back but me. So we’ll go back.” Hilary takes out her phone and punches a text to the limo driver.

  “What’s up with Lily?” Lucy whispers to me as we all stand up and head toward the exit. Lily’s holding on to Finn with one arm and wiggling the fingers of her free hand in front of her face, staring at them like they’re fascinating. “Is she still stoned?”

  “Not still. Again. She got high with some college randos.”

  “She’s not normally such a pothead.”

  “I know. She clearly thinks it’s what you’re supposed to do at a music festival.” Doesn’t that make her more of a follower than I’ve ever been? “I wonder if her dad will notice.”

  “I don’t get the feeling he’s the noticing type.”

  “Neither is mine.”

  “Mine notices everything,” Lucy says with a sigh. “I wish he didn’t.”

  “Really? I love your dad.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Me too.”

  It’s past midnight when we get back, but the hotel lobby and courtyard are still buzzing with activity—people are everywhere, laughing and talking and drinking and swimming. Most of them are around our age, so I’m guessing they’re also here for the festival.

  Even though she spent the drive dozing on Finn’s chest, once we’re out of the car Lily says again that she wants to go to the hot tub. We’re all up for it, except Lucy, who says she’s going to stay in the room and do some work.

  We change, and then Eric, Phoebe, Oscar, Finn, and I travel back down from our rooms to the lobby together. The guys wear board shorts and T-shirts. Phoebe and I wear the hotel bathrobes over our bikinis. Everyone’s in flip-flops. When the elevator stops at the lobby, a gray-haired couple is waiting to get on. They eye us suspiciously as we all emerge. “You’re going swimming now?” the wife says.

  “Just a quick one,” I say, feeling oddly guilty.

  The man holds open the elevator door with one arm and glances around at all of us. “So what’s going on tonight? We’ve stayed here a dozen times before, and it’s always been quiet—just a normal hotel. But tonight it’s crazy.”

  I explain about the music festival, how it’s on a fairground just a few miles away from the hotel. He shakes his head unhappily but thanks me for the informatio
n.

  “They should have told us when we booked our room,” his wife says as the elevator door closes behind them.

  “Well, that was a downer,” Eric says. “Our mere presence made them sad.”

  “Eh, they’ll pop a bunch of sleeping pills and be fine,” Oscar says. “That’s what my parents would do, anyway.”

  We head through the big French doors in the back of the lobby, which lead onto a series of outdoor pathways, one of which leads to the pool, and hot tub area. There are groups of people talking and laughing and calling out to one another, but once we get inside the pool gate, only two people are actually in the hot tub: a guy who’s sitting down and a girl in a bikini who’s straddling him. Their mouths are pressed together, and his hands are roaming around her back.

  We hesitate, but then Phoebe shrugs. “It’s a public place,” she says, and barges ahead. The rest of us follow her and start taking off our bathrobes and flip-flops around the edge of the tub.

  The girl becomes aware of us and slips sideways off of the guy’s lap. She whispers in his ear and he nods, and before we even get in, they climb out of the tub and walk away.

  “What about Hil and Lily?” asks Phoebe as she and I dip our toes carefully in the water to see how hot it is. Not as hot as I’d like, but hot enough. “Where are they?”

  “It takes them longer to go up and come down,” Oscar points out. “All those extra flights.”

  “One of the downsides to having a penthouse suite,” I say. “Extra elevator time.”

  “All that canned music,” he says. “It’s just miserable.”

  Eric wades right into the tub and makes a braying sound as the hot water hits his chest. “Nice. Can someone turn on the jets? I forgot.”

  “No, don’t,” Oscar says, following him down the steps and settling on the bench. “I find them overstimulating.”

  “Seriously?” I say. “You delicate hothouse flower, you.”