“Last-minute thing,” I said, and Bri nodded and then looked down, and I wondered if she’d just felt what I had—that I’d reached my limit of talking about things other than the elephant in the room.
“So I think I’ll head out,” Wyatt said to Bri, after the awkward silence had stretched to the breaking point, and I watched them have a fierce, silent conversation that ended with Bri glancing at me and nodding. Wyatt leaned forward, and was clearly about to kiss her, but stopped at the last moment, looked at me, then pulled back and gave Bri an awkward half hug/pat-on-the-head combo. Wyatt hurried past me like he was fleeing the scene of the crime, slamming the door behind him as he went.
I looked at Bri, who wouldn’t meet my eye, just turned and started walking up the stairs again, her steps heavy. “Come on,” she said over her shoulder. “We should talk.”
“You think?” I asked as I followed her up the stairs to her room.
“I know,” Bri said, looking down at her hands, which were twisting together. “I know, Andie.”
“But . . . ,” I said, trying to get my head around this. “What is even going on? I mean . . .” I looked at her, wanting her to jump in, somehow explain things so that I could understand them. “How did it happen?”
Bri let out a long breath and looked up at me. “The night of the scavenger hunt,” she finally said, and I felt my jaw drop open.
“Wait,” I said, shaking my head. I had been ready to hear that this had been a one- or two-time thing, that she now realized was a huge mistake. “The scavenger hunt was weeks ago. You guys have been . . . this whole time?” Bri nodded and pressed her lips together hard. “Did it happen when Wyatt’s car broke down?” Bri just gave me a look, and much too late, the penny dropped. “His car never broke down,” I said, feeling like an idiot for not putting this together sooner.
“No,” Bri said, her voice quiet. “We were starting to do the list when he told me how he felt. And I hadn’t wanted to admit it, but . . . I’d been feeling the same way too.”
I closed my eyes for a second, still trying to get this to be a reality I could deal with—that Bri and Wyatt had been together, in secret, for half the summer.
“Oh my god,” I said, sinking down to the floor, feeling like my legs were not really up for holding me at that moment. My eyes strayed over to her bed—it was messy, the sheets rumpled, and I knew for a fact that Bri made her bed, hospital corners and all, every morning. “Are you sleeping with him?”
Bri just looked at me—I could see the answer clearly written across her face. “Bri.” I suddenly thought of the day on Palmer’s roof, how quiet she’d been when we were talking about guys and bases, keeping this secret from all of us. Keeping it from Toby. “What about Toby?” I asked, feeling like this just kept getting worse.
Bri shook her head and let out a short laugh, the kind with no humor in it whatsoever. “Right,” she said, and I could hear her voice was tight, and higher, the way it was when she was getting emotional and didn’t want to show it. “Because of course this is about Toby.”
I just looked at her. “Well . . .”
“It’s always about Toby!” Bri yelled this, her voice reverberating in the room.
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” she asked, her voice still raised. “You found out I’m sleeping with Wyatt and your first thought was about Toby. Not me. I don’t get a morning at the diner where we all get to talk about it. I don’t even get to be with him in public, because of Toby. Because we need to protect her.” Bri brushed her hand across her face. “Nobody ever cares about making things easier for me. It’s always about Toby. It’s like I can’t even see myself sometimes when I’m with her, and I just . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she sat down on the bed, pulling her knees up underneath her.
I pushed myself off the floor and walked over to sit next to Bri on the bed. “Okay,” I said, hearing the question in my voice. I felt like I was so without a plan and so beyond anything we’d ever experienced that I had no idea what to do from here, how we should proceed. My first, automatic thought was that it should be Toby here, doing this, before I realized how crazy that was. “So tell me about it.”
Bri gave a trembly smile as she looked at her hands. “It’s . . . He’s . . .” She looked up at me. “You know he’s the first thing I’ve had that’s mine? Just mine? In, like, a decade? And it’s good.” She took a shaky breath. “It’s great. He’s so different when you really get to know him. He’s actually really funny, and he’s got such a good heart. And he gets me,” she said, more quietly now. “He sees me. I make him laugh, and . . .” Her smile got wider. “We just . . . work.”
“I’m glad for you,” I said. “I am,” I added quickly when she shot me a look. And I was—I was thrilled that Bri had fallen for someone she really liked. But there was almost no way to separate this from who it was she had fallen for. “It’s just . . .” I knew I didn’t have to say it. The underside, the shadow, of everything Bri was saying was that Toby was out there, not knowing any of this.
“I never wanted to hurt her, Andie. That’s the last thing I wanted.”
“I know that,” I said, my voice quiet.
“But . . .” Bri pushed herself off the bed and paced over to the window. “They never even dated. It’s not like he’s her ex, or anything. She has this crazy crush on him, but Wyatt told her that he’s not interested. And still she has this claim on him. And at some point . . .” Her voice faded out, and she bit her lip.
“What?” I asked, keeping my voice soft, thinking back to Clark, in the car, in the rain.
“At some point,” she said, then took a big breath. “It was like I was putting my happiness on hold for something that only existed in Toby’s head.” She stared at me with something like horror. “Oh god, I have to tell her the truth, don’t I?”
I let out a long breath. “Well . . .” Sitting between us, the elephant in the room, was that this had been a secret. That the only reason I knew—the only reason we were having this conversation—was because I’d caught them. That this might have been a different conversation if she’d told Toby before anything had happened with Wyatt. But now . . .
I played this through to the end, and it hit me. Just what this meant, really. For all of us. Because there was no way we got out of this, as a group, still okay. Even if Bri and Wyatt came clean now, I didn’t see Toby getting over this any time soon. If she found out by accident, it would be the same thing—but probably worse. There was no way out of this, unless . . .
Unless Toby never found out.
I pushed myself up to standing and walked over to the couch in Bri’s room, the one that was parallel to the bed, and felt something inside of me click back into place. Peter’s words from this morning were echoing in my head. We had to shape this narrative and figure out a plan while we still could. This was still fixable.
It had to be fixable. The four of us had to be okay. My friends had been the one thing I could always count on, and with everything else beginning to spin out of my control, I needed us to stay together. My dad might have a foot out the door, but I wasn’t about to let us fall apart.
“Bri,” I said, leaning forward. “Tell me how you see that playing out. You telling Toby you’ve been sneaking around all summer and lying to her.”
Bri’s chin trembled slightly as she pulled at a thread on her comforter. “I . . . ,” she started, then shook her head.