Chapter 15

15

18 years old - Lily

" C an we stop at the pharmacy first?" I ask Nick the moment he starts the engine.

"Sure." He looks at me and frowns. "You feeling okay?"

"I have a horrible headache. We didn't have Tylenol left at home and I want to stock up on some before we get to the cabin. It's in the middle of nowhere."

His glance moves from the road to me, a look of concern visible in his eyes. "Since when?"

"Yesterday. Probably will get my period soon," I lie. Although a woman's menstrual cycle is fully capable of wreaking havoc on your mood and spring break plans in its own right, this headache is definitely brought on by the stress of planning my future.

I am so scared. About going abroad. About not being with Nick. But this is what I wanted. What I want. Besides, it's only for school and then I can go back to America. We've matured, right? We were thirteen when he moved, barely teenagers. We're adults now and we love each other. Thousands of adults have successful long-distance relationships.

"We can always tell them we're not going," Nick offers.

"I'll be fine. Besides, it's our last spring break together."

Nick stiffens for a brief moment before relaxing. It is easy to miss, but I catch him stealing glances at me. "Don't take anything tonight, alright? Don't drink either. Don't make it worse."

His focus shifts back to the road, but he has one hand on me, gently rubbing the back of my neck. I take my phone out and scroll through it, trying not to think about my life after the summer and failing miserably at drowning out the thoughts. A lot of things can happen in a few years. College girls would eat him up.

The cabin belongs to Tabitha's dad. Tabitha used to go here when she was a child with her parents, but when they divorced a few years ago, her dad moved up here and has made it his home ever since. I can understand why he chose to take up residence here. It's so peaceful and beautiful. The place is nestled in a secluded area, similar to her house in Elsham Cove. But instead of having a hiking trail overlooking the cove, a small lake is directly located next to the porch.

Nick stops the car and parks it on the gravel driveway. We can hear our two friends giggling inside with the front door wide open. I look for them, clutching the paper bags containing our burger dinner, while Nick slings our duffle bags over his shoulder.

"You guys made it!" Tabitha squeals when she spots me walking in. Her hair is in a messy ponytail and she is wearing a crop top, showcasing her new belly button piercing she got when Taylor got his tattoo. She hugs the both of us and shows us to the guest bedroom in the cabin. I look around the room and feel the jolt of excitement gathering in my stomach. It feels so surreal that the four of us are doing this. Judging by all of their faces, they are as overjoyed as I am to be here. I wouldn't have missed this for the world.

It feels so grown up to stay here without any adult supervision. I know this is technically not a real vacation, since this is Tabitha's dad's house, but this might as well be a holiday home in Scandinavia. I can't wait for them to visit me in Europe and go on real trips with me.

Once we are all settled in, we eat our burgers on the couch while a horror movie plays in the background on mute. After some time, Taylor puts his crumpled burger wrapper on the coffee table and goes to Tabitha's room.

"Let's have some fun now!" he yells.

We all jokingly mock him while shoving the rest of our food down our throats, secretly as excited as he is about to let loose. Taylor comes out with a tiny plastic bag of weed and sits down on the couch, where he proceeds to roll a joint for all of us to smoke.

Nick emerges from the kitchen with two tequila bottles and three shot glasses. He puts them down on the table and goes directly back to the kitchen again, only to come out a few seconds later with a few bottles of beer and a can of Coke.

"Why only three?" Taylor asks Nick, confused as he licks the rolling paper, not lifting his head.

"Lily has a headache." He comes back to claim his seat next to me and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear before putting his arm around my shoulder. To be fair, my headache got better after my orgasm earlier.

"You're not the boss of me, Nick," I tease.

"I kind of am, though," he whispers with a smile, which makes me smile.

Tabitha starts pouring the tequila into the shot glasses, overflowing the two of them. "Liquor before beer, you're in the clear," she screams as she lifts one least filled. "Cheers!"

I lift my soda can in solidarity when Taylor hands me the joint. "Here," he says. "Do the honors, since you can't drink. It'll probably make you feel better." And so I do. I light it up and stand up to crack open a few windows, letting the cool breeze in.

"You don't have to do that here, Lil," Tabitha says without looking at me. "My dad smokes inside the house. He won't care."

"Oh, okay." I walk away from the patio door. Arthur and my mother would have a field day, handing me and Bryce an assortment of punishments if our house ever smelled like weed.

After admiring the lake from behind the glass door for a while, I make my way back to the others and I come down to sit cross-legged on the floor next to Tabitha. She offers an opened bag of gummy worms to me after taking a handful for herself. By now, they are on their third shot of the night, probably not wanting to waste any time to get hammered. I pass the joint to Nick, who is sitting on the couch above me, and listen to the conversation that started when I walked away.

"Is it not weird, though?" Taylor asks Nick. Nick just laughs as he inhales the smoke and lets it sit inside his lungs for a bit.

He looks down to the floor at me and grins. I tilt my head in confusion. "Well, yeah, kind of," he answers before passing the joint along to Taylor, who takes it to the kitchen.

"What's weird?" I ask.

"That you guys were each other's firsts for everything except for sex," Tabitha says in a casual tone. "And oral sex." Tabitha starts laughing, but I fail to find the humor. I stay silent and keep my mouth shut. The three of them might already be drunk from the tequila shots they consumed in such a short amount of time, but I am still way too sober for this conversation.

Taylor reappears to pepper more comments that rub me the wrong way. About me. About Nick. "Like you guys got back together, and the other person was already not a virgin anymore," Taylor adds as he pours another round of shots. "That must have sucked. And the whole fucking Sienna mess," he continues. "Oh, man. What a load of shit that was." This time I snatch Nick's glass before he can protest and drink its liquid content down, earning me a glare from Nick.

Tabitha nudges Taylor with her elbow. "What?" Taylor asks her. "It's the truth." He shifts his body so that he's facing Nick, smiling, still clueless that both of us are affected by what he's saying. "Man, a lot of girls were simping over you at the start of the school year. You just had to pick her to be your fuck buddy, huh? I get it, she's hot."

Tabitha glares at her boyfriend and points discreetly to me, who is pouring tequila into one of the empty shot glasses and chugging it down in one go. Nick doesn't care anymore this time. He's just pinching the bridge of his nose, mortified by what Taylor is saying. It seems like Tabitha succeeded in getting her message across, but the room falls silent.

"I know, right? It still makes my skin crawl when I think about the fact that Nick's dick has been inside Sienna." Now all eyes are on me, but Nick's are different. Nick's eyes contain a mix of anger and hurt in them.

"I don't understand why you look so offended, Nick," I continue with my self-destructive rant, the sense of betrayal filling my veins. "You came back to town, and you stuck your dick in crazy." Tabitha elbows Taylor again and they start whispering something I can't make out.

Nick scoffs. "Funny you say that," he spits out. "As I recall, you had a boyfriend. An asshole of a boyfriend at that." His tone is bitter, not like the Nick I know.

"That's right." I raise my voice, trying to hide my regret at being triggered by Taylor's comment, knowing full well it's too late to undo it now and I'm too stubborn to stop myself. "I had a boyfriend. I didn't bang random fucking girls who threw themselves at me."

"Should I have tried to get in between you and Kevin? Is that it? Make you fuck me on the side?"

"Well, you didn't even try."

His hazel eyes are flaming with rage. Rage that he tries, and fails, to simmer down. "No doubt that's what Kevin did once I was out of sight. Did you cheat on me? Is that why you ghosted me?"

"We were thirteen when you left!"

"Oh, come on, guys," Tabitha intervenes. "This is really stupid. You both weren't even in a real relationship back then." Tabitha's attempt at being the voice of reason falls on deaf ears. I look at Nick with disbelief as he looks away and dips his chin down. Taylor is silently fiddling with his thumbs on the couch.

He knows I stopped talking to him because I couldn't cope with the death of my dad. I told him I kept on rejecting his video chats because I was too busy crying into my pillow, day after day. I apologized to him profusely. He's been taking me to the therapist I see once a month, for God's sake. The one my mother got for me at the school counselor's insistence a few years ago. How could he say that? I take the unopened vodka bottle inside Taylor's duffle bag and bang the door to the guest bedroom close.

Nick can go fuck himself.