14. Clover

"Ikissed Neavh."

Bianca's eyes go so wide she looks like she's put a cartoon filter on her screen. She stares at me for several seconds until her mouth twitches, and I brace for what's coming next.

Her shriek is so loud I have to turn the volume on my phone down so my whole family doesn't come rushing in to see what's wrong.

"WHAT?" she bellows, in a display of supreme lung capacity. "YOU DID WHAT?"

I can feel my face heating up. I pull a lock of my hair over my shoulder and focus on fidgeting with the tips, like this topic is no big deal and I can totally sit here hunting for split ends while we talk about it.

Bianca sees right through me.

"Clover Emma Rivers," she says, in a voice fit for an elementary school teacher supervising detention, "tell me what the hell happened right now."

I give up on my hair and look back at my phone.

"Okay, so, we were working on the yurt," I begin.

Bianca snorts. I glare at her.

"If you're going to laugh at me, I'm not going to tell you."

"Sorry," she says, fighting to hold back a grin. "It's just, I still can't believe I actually convinced you to buy a yurt."

She snorts again. I groan and drop my head back onto my pillow.

"Biancaaaa! You told me the yurt was a good idea!"

"It is!" she says. "It's a great idea. Still, you have to admit it's also pretty fucking hilarious. Like, you're building a yurt."

I do my best to keep glaring. "Are you going to listen to my story, or what?"

She straightens up on the sagging couch in the shitty sublet apartment she's got for the summer.

"Yes, yes. I'm all ears."

She mimes locking her mouth shut and throwing away the key.

"So," I begin again, after making her wait a couple seconds to prove her silence, "we were out working yesterday, and, uh, we got into a pretty emotional conversation. Actually, first we found a salamander, and then—"

Yet another giggle interrupts me.

"Sorry," Bianca whispers. "It's just, of course this story includes a salamander. It is you we're talking about."

I roll my eyes. "Whatever. I don't tease you about your kelp fetish."

She gasps, her jaw dropping."Oh my god! I do not have a kelp fetish."

I shrug. "You think about kelp all day. Who's to say you don't think about it all night too?"

We stare each other down until we both burst out laughing.

"Just finish your freaking story, Clover!" Bianca demands.

I don't bother reminding her that she's the one interrupting. This video call has been exactly what I needed to recover from working at the campground all day after getting maybe two hours of sleep last night. We might make fun of each other almost as much as my sisters and I do, but I wouldn't trade Bianca's sass for anything.

"Fiiine," I drawl. "So, after we saw this salamander, we ended up having a pretty, um, intense conversation. Feelings were felt. Words were expressed. Then we sort of got carried away in the moment, and we ended up running down to the river to swim together. You know, because it was really hot yesterday. Then in the river, we, um, kissed."

There's nothing joking about Bianca's glare now.

"Feelings were felt?" she says, every word dripping with accusation. "Words were expressed? Clo, you're not seriously going to leave me hanging with that are you? What really happened?"

She's the only person besides my sisters who I let call me Clo. I don't normally think much about her using the nickname, but today it hits me like someone has punctured a hole through my chest.

Bianca might be like a sister to me, but she's still a friend. She didn't watch me grow up. She doesn't call the same house home.

We're also the same age, caught in the same in-between stage of life with no insight into what things are supposed to feel like on the other side.

I curl one of my arms around my stomach as the urge to shrink into a little ball takes over when I realize just how much I wish I could talk to my big sisters about this. They always tease me about being the know-it-all of the family, but in the long hours of confusion and worry that have gnawed at me since I kissed Neavh last night, I haven't felt like I know anything at all.

"What's wrong?"

Bianca's stern expression shifts into concern as she watches me.

"Nothing. I'm fine. I just feel a little…lonely."

My voice catches on the last word. Bianca brings her phone closer to her face, like she can use the screen as a portal to wrap me up in her arms.

"You're the only person I can tell," I say. "I just feel so distant from everyone here. Everything is different. It's like…it's like this place always stays the same, and I don't know how to be part of it if I'm changing."

"This is about more than Neavh, huh?" Bianca asks gently.

I nod and then switch to shaking my head. We both breathe a soft laugh at the contradicting messages.

"I don't know," I say. "I felt weird even before she showed up, but things have been extra weird since. She reminds me of things I forgot I used to feel. Not just about her. About me too."

Bianca nods a few times but doesn't say anything.

"I'm sorry," I say with another quiet laugh. "I'm not making any sense, am I?"

She gives me a half smile. "You're being frustratingly vague, but I get it. Some stuff is hard to put into words."

I press my lips together to keep from blurting more vague statements out.

The truth is that I can't even tell Bianca everything. She's part of the plan—the plan for my life I've been following without a moment of deviation.

Bianca and I have studied together for four years. We've lived together for four years. We're supposed to continue studying and living together in the same city at the same school until we've both got PhDs, and then we're supposed to keep working on conservation projects on this island for the entirety of the foreseeable future.

We've founded our whole friendship on that premise, just like I've founded my whole role in my family on the same thing:

I'll always be here. I'll always come back.

"Yeah," I say. "Some things are hard to put into words."

"If you don't want to tell me more about the kiss, that's okay," she says. There's no bitterness in the words, but I can tell she's fighting to hold back her disappointment. "I know it literally just happened, and if you'd rather keep it to yourself, I totally underst—"

"No, no," I interrupt. "It's not that. Sorry. I got all lost in my thoughts. We can talk about the kiss."

That at least feels like a safe subject—or at least, as safe a subject as kissing your ex can be.

"It was, um, actually a few kisses."

Bianca's eyes widen, and I feel the corners of my mouth lift up.

"Clover," she says in a scandalized tone, "do you mean to say that you and Neavh made out?"

I twirl my hair around my finger. "Um, yeah, you could call it that. I should probably also mention that we were almost naked in the river when it happened."

Bianca squeaks. "Oh my god! That sounds, like, hot."

"It was," I tell her, as a flush begins to creep up my neck. "So hot. You know, sometimes I'd wonder if I was hyping her up too much in my memory, but, um, nope. I was not."

Bianca's eyes get even wider. "Wait. Did you have sex?"

She whispers the last word like we're in the third grade.

"Oh my god, no," I say with a laugh. "We just made out. It was awkward enough afterwards. I can't even imagine what it would have been like if we had sex again."

Her face falls. "Oh no! It was awkward?"

"I mean…"

I pause and think back on the moments after we climbed out of the river, sopping wet and shivering in the growing chill of the twilight. We pulled our clothes on even though we were still soaked, and we didn't say much during the walk back to the campground, but it wasn't necessarily awkward at that point.

The silence between us almost felt comfortable, like our bodies had already said everything that needed to be understood between us.

Then we reached Three Rivers, and reality seemed to sneak up on us like a third wheel. We stumbled our way through a few sentences about Neavh needing to grab her stuff at the yurt. By then, it was almost dark, and we literally stumbled along the path in yet more silence that got tenser by the second. We were both so wrapped up in processing what happened that we forgot Neavh didn't have a way to get home until we reached the gate.

I said I'd borrow someone's car and drive her. She said she'd call David. I told her I didn't want her to have to stand around waiting. She said she'd be fine. I said I'd wait with her. She said I didn't need to.

We couldn't even look each other in the eye during our battle of polite offers. We were still at an impasse when a few staff members drove up on their way into town and agreed to drop Neavh off at David's place.

We didn't even really say goodbye, not with everyone watching us.

"We just didn't know what to say to each other," I tell Bianca. "It was all so surreal. She went home for the night, and once she was gone, I started freaking out. I don't think I slept at all last night. I have no idea where the hell we're supposed to go from here."

Some of the panic I felt lying in bed last night starts to squeeze my ribs again.

"Do you know where you want to go?" Bianca asks.

I make a choked sound that's supposed to be a laugh. "Do I sound like someone who has any idea what she wants?"

She chuckles. "Honestly, yeah, you kind of do."

I sit up a little straighter and gawk at her. "And what, pray tell, do I sound like I want?"

She flashes a smirk at me. "You sound like you want to kiss Neavh again."

I open my mouth to protest and end up making a series of incomprehensible sputtering noises instead. I snap my jaw shut, and Bianca's smirk gets even wider.

"Fine," I say. "You're right. I do want to kiss her again, but that's beside the point."

Bianca tilts her head. "Is it, though?"

"Yes," I urge. "It is. It doesn't matter if I want to kiss her again. That doesn't help me figure out what I'm actually supposed to do."

She taps her chin. "Maybe you're supposed to do what you want."

I'm about to hit her with an argument, but she beats me to it.

"Look, every time you've mentioned this girl in the four years I've known you, you have not sounded like someone who is over her, and judging by how things are going now, she hasn't gotten over you. Maybe this is your chance at, like, a do-over."

She pauses to stretch out a little on the couch.

"You two were really young when you met, right?" she asks. "I'm sure you've both changed a lot since then. Maybe you should just follow whatever this thing between you is and see where it goes."

She makes it sound so easy, like letting Neavh back into my life would be the simplest, most natural thing in the world. Part of me aches to believe her while the rest of me seethes with all the reasons she's wrong.

"But nothing has changed," I tell her, my voice strained with frustration, "even if we have. We still only have the summer. She's still leaving. I'm still staying. Hell, the whole reason she's even in River's Bend is to make enough money to leave. I'm literally paying her some of that money. If we…if we do this…"

A slash of pain makes me wrap my arm tight around myself, and I have to drop my voice to a whisper to keep it from shaking.

"Then we'll end up in the exact same place we did before."

Bianca gives me another look like she wishes she could reach straight through the phone. My eyes prick with heat. I swipe at them with my free hand and then roll onto my side so I can tuck my knees up to my chest.

"Maybe you won't," she murmurs.

I shake my head. "I don't see how. None of it makes sense. Nothing at all feels like it makes sense this summer."

"I know," she soothes. "I know, but I also know you'll figure it out."

"How do you know that?" I croak.

She gives me another soft smile. "Because you always do. You're Clover freaking Rivers."

I swipe a few more tears out of my eyes and thank her, but the ache inside me doesn't go away.

Maybe those words would have helped a few months ago, but right now, I'm not even sure who Clover freaking Rivers is.