“He deserves it, don’t you think?” Shara says, tugging her robe around her.
“Obviously I think he does, but like … he’s your dad.”
“Chloe, if you think he’s hard on you, you should come to dinner sometime.”
There’s a pause as Chloe takes that in. She can see it’s more complicated than that. Shara looks tired, like she’s lost some sleep over it. The pink in her hair is fading faster than it should. Chloe wonders how many times her parents have made her wash it.
“Is that why you did it? To get back at him?” Chloe asks. “Or was there another reason?”
“There were a lot of reasons,” Shara says, glaring at her missing bedroom door. “I guess, though, if you’re asking, I hadn’t decided if I was gonna do anything with what Rory gave me until I heard what my dad was gonna do to Georgia. And then what he did to you.”
Once she’s said it, she turns back to Chloe.
“Is that all?”
“Yes,” Chloe says. Of course it’s not. “I mean, no, there’s—why didn’t you come to Belltower on Friday?”
“My parents took my phone when I got back,” Shara says. “I didn’t know about it.”
“Oh,” Chloe says. When she puts it like that, it does seem obvious.
“And even if I had heard,” Shara goes on, “I promised to leave you alone.”
“Oh,” Chloe repeats. “Right.”
Shara tilts her head back, realizing. “You never read that card, did you?”
“No, I did,” Chloe says. “Like, twenty minutes ago.”
Shara purses her lips. “So you’re here because—”
“Because I know what it means,” Chloe says. “Although, it does feel worth mentioning that you could have gotten the same thing across by kissing me like I told you to.”
“Sorry, what part of you sitting on my chest screaming at me was supposed to make me think that was actually a good idea?” Shara says.
“Okay, but—school last week,” Chloe says. “You could have—”
“I kissed you first,” she points out. “Twice.”
“But those times didn’t count,” Chloe says. “They weren’t real.”
“They were,” Shara finally admits. “I just … didn’t know it at the time.”
“So you were following me around last week, because you—”
“Because I was trying to work up the nerve to do it right, but you kept acting like it was still a game.” She sounds the way her handwriting looked in the wrinkled postscript: worn out. “So if you came here to reject me, do it already. It’ll give me something to ruminate on during Bible study.”
“That’s not what I came for,” Chloe tells her.
Shara blinks. “It’s not?”
“Technically, that was part of the plan at one point,” Chloe confesses in a rush, “when I thought you were still— But, no, I—I came here to tell you that—that—”
She didn’t have time to prepare what she was going to say. She feels like the spine of a book about to crack and spill out all the love story guts.
How does she say this?
“That my best mornings are the ones when I pull into school right after you, because I know you’ll have to watch me walk past your car.”
What.
“What?”
“Or, no, it’s—that time I had to peer edit your essay in AP Lang?” She can’t believe she’s going to admit all this, but she doesn’t know how else to explain it. “I still remember it. Like, entire sentences from it, because I was trying so hard to come up with notes that were smarter than what you wrote, so you’d go home and think about it. I’ve found out your locker number the first week of every year, so that I’d know exactly how many times a day I’d pass it.”
“Chloe—”
“Shut up, I’m not finished,” Chloe says, and Shara shuts her pretty mouth. “Sophomore year, when we were lab partners, I’d go to the bathroom every day before chem and fix my hair because I knew that was the closest I’d ever be to you, and I—I wanted to be as much of a distraction to you as you were to me. Do you get it? I wanted you to see me.”
Shara doesn’t say anything, only nods. Chloe has to swallow a smile. It’s a rush—the feeling of explaining something about herself that feels insane and being met with Yes, of course.