“Listen, Margot—”
If it had all been different, I wonder if we still would have found ourselves here, together, like this. All three of us: Eliza, Levi, and me. I wonder if she would have befriended Lucy first, tucked me under her wing and let me tag along the way she always did.
I wonder if she would have been the fourth roommate, leaving me behind the way I left Maggie.
No. I shake my head. No, she wouldn’t.
I realize too late that everyone is looking at me now, a sea of craned necks, watching. Waiting for my rebuttal to whatever Levi just said. I had tuned it out, a hissing static ringing in my ears, and the room is tilting harder now, though I can’t tell if it’s from the beer or Levi or everything all at once, so I force myself to smile and turn toward Sloane.
“I should probably finish unpacking,” I say, facing Trevor next. “Thanks for the beer.”
“Margot, wait—” Levi says, but I turn around and walk out the door before he can finish. I vaguely wonder if he’ll run outside, too, chase me down and force me to talk—but, deep down, I know he won’t. Levi never really cared about me. I was nothing more than a gnat to him that hovered around Eliza: a pesky annoyance, something to be tolerated. A price to be paid in exchange for proximity to her. He never let me spoil his fun and I know this time will be no different. He’ll continue to do what he wants to do, take what he wants to take, batting me away or just ignoring me completely. Meanwhile, this was supposed to be my fresh start, a place to redefine myself, but now, with Levi here, I don’t see how that can happen. His presence alone is a reminder of the person I used to be, the person I lost when I lost Eliza—not only that, but I lost her because of him.
She wouldn’t have been where she was that night if he hadn’t brought her there. She wouldn’t have said what she said, did what she did, if he didn’t drive her to it.
If Levi Butler never came into our lives that day, invading our space as the two of us huddled beneath the dock, legs cramped and fingers pruned, Eliza would still be here, safe, with me.
Eliza would still be alive.
CHAPTER 12
I slam into my bedroom after making my way across the Kappa Nu backyard, through the shed and into the house, stalking past Nicole on the couch without uttering a single word. I’m hanging my head and massaging my temples—trying to think, to organize my thoughts—when I realize there’s someone already in here, a body hovering next to my bed.
“Jesus.” I jump, my hand shooting to my chest once I register her there. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Hi,” Lucy says, smiling like that day in the dorm. Like there’s nothing unusual about her being here, in my bedroom, without my permission.
“What are you doing?” I ask, though I regret it the second I say it. This is her house, after all. My room for just a few hours and my boxes barely unpacked.
“I left something in here,” she says, even though her hands are empty. “Who’s this?”
She points to the picture of Eliza and me on the mantel, the only decoration I’ve managed to put up, and I walk over to it, our tanned bodies tangled together on the dock mere feet from the spot Levi Butler once stood. Even now, after all this time, I can still feel the claustrophobic weight of him as we held our breath below; I can still register the hammering of my heart, the nervous energy generated from his presence alone.
“That’s my best friend,” I say at last. “Eliza.”
“If she’s your best friend, how come she’s never visited?”
I look at Lucy, eyebrows bunched, wondering what she could possibly mean by that. I haven’t even lived here a day. How could she have already visited?
“I would have noticed her in the dorm,” she clarifies. “She’s pretty.”
I tilt my head, realizing now that maybe Lucy had been watching me all year the same way I had been watching her—secretly, from a distance, eyes darting in the other direction after hovering in the same spot for a beat too long. I just never noticed. I open my mouth, ready to respond, when the door creaks behind me and I whip around, registering Sloane in the entryway.
“What the hell was that?” she asks, brown eyes boring into mine as she steps deeper into my room. “Who was that guy, an ex or something?”
“What guy?” Lucy asks, an eagerness in her tone. I see Nicole appear behind Sloane now, too, the dependent pet who can’t stand to be left alone for too long. The stares from all three of them attacking me at every angle.