Page 73 of The Getaway List
“I don’t know,” I confess. “It all just kind of happened so fast. This whole thing with his mom—it’s really been messing with him. But he was planning to go the whole time, so it’s not like he didn’t think it through. So I don’t know.”
Hats off to what might be the worst, most muddled answer to a question in history, because if anything I’ve only made the unease in the room all the more pronounced.
Mariella seizes on it, leaning in. “Do I have permission to blow up your spot in front of this entire assortment of boys?”
I’m almost relieved at the question. Like I already know she’s going to give me some kind of permission to say what my loyalty to Tom has stopped me just short of saying.
Except when I nod, she unexpectedly leans in and grabs the tote bag I had at my feet, yanking out the blank journal and holding it up.
“You have been carting this all over the place like a security blanket, but you haven’t written a damn word in it yet.”
I resist the urge to snatch it back like it is, in fact, a security blanket, and ask, “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You did the brave things,” says Mariella, with a firmness that tells me that she’s about to use that praise as a buffer for when she digs in deep. “You moved here and you finally talked to your mom, but you’re still just way too in your own head. So you’re not writing a short story and you’re putting off starting your coffee shop gig and you haven’t done what we’ve been waiting for you to do all damn summer, which is tell Tom Whitz you’re head-over-sneakers in love with him.”
My mouth falls open, but Mariella’s gaze stays on mine steady as ever.
“I’m not—I mean, that doesn’t have—” I take a breath that feels like only half of one, because my lungs are betraying me just as much as my flaming-hot cheeks. “However it is I feel, it’s got nothing to do with Tom leaving.”
“Sure it does,” says Mariella. “Don’t you dare pretend I didn’t have front-row seats to the ‘Riley and Tom are in love with each other’ show all summer. I’ve got all my ticket stubs to prove it.”
Everyone’s eyes are on us now, clearly expecting me to either get mad or fess up. We all know there’s no point in my denying it when we’ve been about as subtle as two teenager-shaped bricks.
“I’m not saying that I don’t feel that way about Tom,” I say carefully.
Jesse points a fork at me, like he was waiting for just enough of me to bend before he says, “You have to tell him the truth about how you feel then. I’ll bully you the way you bullied me.”
“Thanks for that, by the way,” says Dai. “If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be able to do this.”
Dai ducks forward so his face is mere inches from Jesse’s, so Jesse’s lips curl into an expectant, bashful smile, but just before Dai is supposed to kiss him he ducks farther down and swipes the bite of pancakes Jesse had poised on his fork instead.
“Thief!” says Jesse, indignant.
Dai grins through a mouthful of stolen pancake and obligingly kisses him. My heart cinches at the quick ease and intimacy of it, at the few moments like that I had with Tom before he walked out the door with them.
“I don’t need bullying,” I say with a sad smile. “He knows. I told him.”
Now it’s Mariella’s turn to be stunned, her eyes widening and brows furrowing at the same time in an expression so distinctly Mariella that I’d laugh under any other circumstances.
“That can’t be true,” she insists. “There’s literally no universe in which you told Tom you were in love with him that he’d still go to bumfuck nowhere.”
My voice is small when I answer. “Actually there is.” I swallow thickly, the pancakes I’ve already eaten churning in my stomach. “Because I told him to go.”
Mariella lifts a flat, open palm toward Dai. “Give me the ugly pancake. I’m throwing it in her face.”
“Wait, why would you do that?” Jesse asks me.
“Because I—because I don’t want to be the reason he stays,” I blurt. “Not when I have every ulterior motive in the world for it. Not when it would mean standing in the way of his chance to be happy somewhere else that he didn’t get here.”
“Riley,” says Mariella slowly, as if she’s afraid it won’t register otherwise. “Tom is happy here.”
I shake my head, feeling my eyes start to sting because I don’t want to have to fight her on this. I wish more than any of us that it was true.
She hands the notebook back to me. She’s right. I have been carrying it around like a security blanket. Tom never even told me for sure it was from him, but I think I knew from the moment I held it in my hands. It’s just that knowing made it scary, because it meant that suddenly I had more of him than I’ve ever had; suddenly I had so much more to lose.
“I see what’s going on here. You’re in your head about this. You’re too close to Tom to be objective,” says Mariella. “But none of us have been making googly eyes at Tom all summer, so we can, and trust me. Tom’s been happy here.”
I’ve got my knees hiked up so close to my chin now I might as well be in a human knot. “He doesn’t think so.”
