“Hey,” I echoed, sinking into the plush leather sofa and stretching my legs out onto the coffee table.
She turned her attention back to her book, settling us into an awkward quiet.
Nervous energy coursed through me, and I sat up, leaning my elbows on my knees to hold my head. God, this was stupid. This was ridiculous. I had six months here with him. Watching him seduce everything in a skirt. How the hell was I going to handle that? Handle him?
“You saw him,” Penna said quietly, putting her book into her lap.
I nodded. “I ran into him. Literally. There were margaritas involved.”
“Did the alcohol help?”
I looked up. “It ended up all over him.”
She snorted, the first laugh I’d heard from her since I got here last week. “Good. Not that he needed it. He’s salty enough as it is.”
I laughed. “That he is.”
“How are you?” Her words were choppy, and I knew how much they cost her.
“Are you honestly asking? Because I’m pretty sure if you weren’t in that wheelchair you’d have no issue throwing me overboard.”
Her head tilted. “I’ve considered it.”
The last thing I could handle right now was Penna’s obvious disgust with my presence, and this was the only place on the ship I was safe from running into Landon. Fantastic.
The door flew open, hitting the wall. “Rach?” Leah yelled down the hall two seconds before she barreled in. “Oh my God! Landon and Pax are going at it right now. What happened?” She plopped on the couch next to me, her legs bare, revealing the parallel scars down the fronts of her legs that she’d kept hidden until this trip—until Paxton had brought out the brave in her. Her whiskey-colored eyes were wide, her brown hair in windblown disarray. Man, I’d missed her every day that she’d been here while I was back in L.A.
“I may have run into Landon.”
“Yeah, I got that part,” she said. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” I lied.
She laughed but stopped when I glared at her. “I’m sorry, but after he saw you today on the slopes, that’s all he kept saying. ‘I’m fine.’”
“He saw you on the slopes?” Penna asked, her book forgotten in her lap. This was the longest I’d seen her engaged in any conversation since the accident—since her sister broke her heart.
“He did,” I answered with an involuntary smile. “He looked up to wave to Leah, and I’d just gotten there. I had no clue he’d actually see me. But he looked like he’d seen a ghost.”
“And then he ran into the wall,” Leah said, her laughter rolling through her shoulders.
“No way!” Penna exclaimed, another laugh tumbling out. “Like into the wall wall? The side of the slope?”
“Exactly,” I said. “And then some girl ran over him on the lift.”
I wasn’t even near him, and his luck was already turning to shit.
“Oh my God,” Penna said, her laughter even louder. “Then what did he do?”
“He looked for you,” Leah said to me. “I mean, you were gone by the time he pulled himself out of the lift path, but he looked.”
My laughter died as that kaleidoscope of emotion turned in my chest.
“But what was weirder was that he didn’t ask about you,” Leah continued. “When I saw him, he never asked who was standing next to me.”
“He doesn’t care,” I said out of habit and defense.
“No, it wasn’t that. He was shaken. It was almost as if he thought he’d hallucinated you…like it had happened before.”
I met my best friend’s level stare. “That would imply he ever thought about me to begin with.”
“Rachel—”
“No!” I snapped. “He left me without saying good-bye. Left me standing there like an idiot in that ER with five rejected calls, ten unanswered texts, a shredded acceptance letter to Dartmouth, a fractured wrist from falling off our brand-new kitchen counter, and a broken heart—all while the ink on our lease, that I couldn’t afford on my own, was still wet. I sat in that apartment for days, knowing he’d gone back to the Renegades but just hoping he would still come home to me, too. Hoping Wilder had reneged on his goddamned ultimatum, or that I would at least get an explanation, or a good-bye. Do you have any idea how that feels—to be ghosted? Abandoned? Treated like you aren’t good enough for his love, his time, or even a fucking phone call? Leah, you of all people know what it was like for me to go back to my parents—to grovel and plead for help when I’d thrown my independence in their face. I gave up everything for Landon, and it wasn’t enough. So please don’t imply that he ever gave me a second thought.”
“You should let him explain,” Penna said softly.
“You can’t weigh in on this,” I told her. “Not if you want us to have a quasi friendship.”
She struggled with keeping quiet. I could tell by the set lines of her mouth, the way her hands gripped the sides of her book. “Okay,” she finally said. “But there are two sides to every story.”
Leah glanced between us and clapped her hands. “New subject!” Her eyes lit with excitement. “Pax arranged a trip to Nepal during the optional excursion week in India.”
Penna tensed, and my eyes flickered toward hers, which were pointed at her cast.