“If you need me to buy you a new computer, Hailey—”
“I don’t need you to buy me a new fucking computer!”
“Then what is your problem?” She sits forward and plants her feet on the floor. “You’re already dating someone else, so what are you still so mad about?”
I glare daggers at the numbers in my textbook, until eventually Danica asks, “Is he hot?”
I scowl up at her, and she tries disarming me with a smile.
“Your new guy, is he hot?” When I don’t answer, she pouts. “Come on, Hailey. I know you’re mad that I went so crazy, but can you blame me? My boyfriend got a crush on you while he was sleeping with me.”
It’s like a slap in the face, and the worst thing is that I don’t even think she meant for it to be. She was just stating a fact. An observation. A truth.
Mike was sleeping with her when he had feelings for me.
“Did you do it on purpose?” she asks, and I focus on the way her brow turns in, the unguarded way her eyes study me as she waits for my answer.
“No,” I tell her honestly, not needing her to elaborate any further. I didn’t make Mike fall for me on purpose—I was too busy trying to keep myself from falling for him. I never considered him developing feelings for me even within the realm of possibility. I’m still not sure why he did.
Danica nods to herself, focusing on an invisible spot on the coffee table, and then she looks up at me again, “I should hate him, right?”
I don’t know what to say to that. I feel like I’m slipping over a waterfall, drowning as I fall.
Danica props her feet back up on the table and begins applying a second coat of polish. “I wish I could, but I don’t. I just want him. I messed things up with him, twice, and I want another shot.”
“Why?” I ask, and when she questions me with her eyes, I clarify, “Why him?”
“Because I want him more than I’ve ever wanted anything,” she answers simply, and I give my attention back to my textbook. Or I pretend to, at least. There’s a feeling of wrongness smothering me like a woolen blanket in the dead of summer, and I don’t know how to kick it off.
“Can I ask you something honest?” Danica says, and I reluctantly look up at her. “What do you think made him like you?”
My throat dries, and I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“Come on, you have to have some idea,” Danica persists. “I’m guessing he liked the whole ‘nice girl’ thing, but do you also think he found you attractive?” Her gaze skips to my crazy hair for just a second before resting on my face.
“I really don’t know.”
My cousin sighs. “Can you come shopping with me tonight? I need to get a new number, and I want to look for an outfit that will make him remember why he fell for me in the first place.” She lowers one finished foot and concentrates on the other. “I was too busy obsessing over the band’s music video, and I think he felt neglected. And then you showed up with that damn care basket, and—” She dismisses the past with a wave of her hand. “I just need to make him remember why he loves me.”
“I’m heading to the shelter at three,” I tell her, thanking God that I keep a busy schedule.
“Then tomorrow?”
“I—”
“Look, Hailey,” Danica interrupts, pausing her toenail painting to level me with her stare. “I’m going to be really honest with you, okay? We both know I only moved to this town because I wanted to get back with Mike. You know that, I know that . . . My parents probably even know that too, but they’re willing to ignore it as long as I stay in school. But the thing is, if I’m not with Mike, I don’t want to stay in school. There’s no reason for me to stay in this stupid town.”
She lets that sink in before she continues, and I know where she’s going even before she goes there.
“And we also both know why my dad jumped at the chance to pay for you to come here too. He thinks you’ll help keep me in line, be a positive influence. You’re here to babysit me, Hailey, but if I’m not here, there’s no reason for you to be here either.”
That suffocating blanket over my face grows heavier and thicker and hotter.
“I’m not blackmailing you into helping me, Hailey. I’m just telling the truth.” She swipes the tiny brush over her little toe while I tumble over Niagara, entombed in my blanket. “So will you go shopping with me tomorrow?”
“I guess I have no choice.”
When Mike calls me an hour later, it’s one o’clock in the morning in Beijing. I pick up the phone, still trying to recover from my talk with Danica, and I spend the first few minutes of the call barely saying a word.
“Can I ask you something?” I cut in at a random point in the conversation. I’m not even sure what he was saying, since I was too busy replaying my conversation with Danica in my head.
“What is it?”
I take a steadying breath and release my lip from between my teeth. “When you realized you had feelings for me, were you still . . . did you and Danica . . . were you two still—”
I’m stuttering over my words, trying to hold together the pieces of my own fractured heart, when Mike says, “Whoa. Whoa. Hailey, no. I would never—”
“But Danica said—”
“Said what?” Mike scoffs. “Haven’t you learned you can’t trust a word that comes out of her mouth?”