“I imagine there’d have been some serious chafing if it were.” Elle snorted, immediately looking apologetic. “Sorry.”
Margot waved her off. “We talked, we just didn’t define it. And it was my bad, I guess, for assuming we were on the same page.”
“You weren’t?”
An iron fist gripped Margot’s heart. If it didn’t suck so badly, Margot would almost be amazed at how a decade-old wound could still hurt so badly. “No. Brad came back from his trip to Cancún.” She rolled her eyes. “He and I had homeroom together. Someone asked about the breakup and he shrugged it off. Said he and Liv had talked the night before. That they were working it out. Getting back together.” She swallowed over the knot swelling in her throat. “The first thing he did during passing period was head straight to Liv’s locker, and he—he just kissed her and . . . Liv let him.” The burn at the back of her eyes worsened with every blink, the ache in her chest growing larger until she feared her next breath would escape her as a sob. Fuck. Margot pinched her lips together, forcing air through her nose, getting a grip. She sniffed hard. “I told the nurse I wasn’t feeling well and went home. Liv texted me that night. Something along the lines of, Brad wants to get back together. Can you believe it? What should I tell him? I told her she didn’t need to worry about me saying anything to anyone about what happened over spring break. Because what happened on spring break stayed on spring break. And I, um, I told her she should get back together with Brad.”
Elle frowned. “Why would you do that?”
Margot laughed even though the last thing she felt was amused. “What was I supposed to do, Elle? She asked. She shouldn’t have had to ask. I thought—I thought a lot of things, and none of them mattered. Things were awkward for the next few weeks, but there was still a tiny part of me that hoped maybe it would be different when we left for college. Brad didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d be down for long distance, you know?” She took a deep breath. “Right before graduation, Liv dropped a bombshell on me, telling me she was going to WSU instead of UW. She chose Brad over me, over all of her plans, all of our plans. Again.
“So Olivia left. She moved across the state to Pullman with Brad, and that was it. Eleven years pass, and I don’t see or talk to Liv, and then one day I walk into a building in Queen Anne with my best friend to go meet up with my other friends and bam! She’s the wedding planner, and she’s . . .” Margot blinked hard and dropped her eyes to the floor, staring hard at her scuffed shoes. “She’s just as beautiful as I remember, and she’s standing right in front of me. And then she needed a place to stay and I gave it to her.”
Without warning, Margot had an armful of Elle. Elle’s hands cradled the back of Margot’s head, and—ow, that was Elle’s foot standing on the tender top of Margot’s instep. Margot winced but hugged Elle back; the inevitable bruises would be worth it for this momentary comfort.
Elle drew back and blinked. “Okay. That’s a lot.”
Leave it to Elle to manage to make Margot laugh at a moment like this. “I know.”
“How did I know none of this?”
“Because I didn’t want you to? No offense, but it’s really not the sort of thing you want to tell your brand-new college roommate. Hi, my name’s Margot. Would you like to hear all about my teenage heartbreak?”
“I’d have listened,” Elle said, sounding indignant. “If not then, I can’t believe you never mentioned this. Eleven years.”
“Honestly? Not to be a walking cliché, but this is really one of those it’s not you, it’s me things. I haven’t wanted to talk about this with anyone. No one knows. Not my brothers or my parents, not anyone. I could’ve gone the rest of my life without telling a soul, but . . . I don’t know what I’m doing,” she admitted. “I thought I could do this, but I don’t know, Elle. I really don’t know.”
“What’s this?” Elle asked. “You’re, um, clearly . . .”
Elle trailed off, expression earnest as she made another one of those vague gestures with her hands.
“Having really great sex? It’s not a question of whether she wants me like that. It’s everything else.” Margot needed something to do with her hands, so she moved on to the next rack of jackets, these in far less offensive hues.
“Did you consider, I don’t know, asking her how she feels?”